GRIFFITH WARS AND YELLOWTAIL

I once asked Coonawarra and Mountadam winemaker David Wynn why Australia's biggest official internationally recognised wine appellation was called South East Australia.

"Because they won't say 'Griffith'," he said with a chuckle.

David had been deeply involved in setting up the current model of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme (MIA) with the Whitlam government in the early 'seventies. This was made possible by the diversion of Australian Alps waters as the finishing touches were being put to the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Australia's huge hydro-electric generator in New South Wales.

Various branches of the Wynn family ended up owning big MIA vineyard blocks at Griffith, along with their generous irrigation water allocations.

David Wynn with the author and Howard Twelftree, aka John McGrath, in the early 'noughties.

Terry Jones was the editor of the local Griffith newspaper in those heady days when not only enormous amounts of cheap wine came from Griffith, but also a great deal of Australia's marijuana. 

The veteran Late Night Live broadcaster Phillip Adams has reviewed Terry's new book, The Griffith Wars, co-written with Tom Gilling, and just published in paperback by Allen and Unwin.

You can hear Phillip and Terry discussing it here.

The growers of Griffith are quick to hit the streets and demonstrate, like when the Murray Darling report came out, advising irrigators that their water allocations may be reduced to keep Australia's biggest river system alive.

Meanwhile, talks of the Mafia drug connections outlined in The Griffith Wars linger on.

Pertinent to the wine industry, former Yellowtail director Marcello Casella remains on bail after his alleged involvement, with two other men, in a $5 million drug bust.

In 2015 Casella, a champion clay pigeon shooter, and owner of Australia's biggest ammo factory, Bronzewing, which he built in Wynn's old Yenda winery, paid less than $3000 in fines after Griffith police seized five tonnes of ammunition and 86 kilograms of explosive propellant illegally stored in a shed on his property. Those charges forced the closure of the factory.

To read an expert outsiders' view of the Yellowtail business, check David Morrison's blog The Wine Gourd. 

To view Yellowtail's contentious 2017 Super Bowl ad, click here. As if the lingering whispers of those bad old days were not enough, this ad was widely ridiculed for taking the image of Australia and its wines back to the Ocker seventies.