APPELLATION SOUTH AUSTRALIA: NUTS

CARTO GRAPHICS' CLEVER NEW TOPOGRAPHIC MAP FOR BAROSSA GRAPE AND WINE AS SEEN BY THE FIGHTER PILOT ... THE ALTITUDES HERE, HOWEVER, ARE EXAGGERATED FOR EFFECT. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Mount Lofty Ranges Regions
Wrong Borders, Wrong Names?
Who's In Charge Of Change?

by PHILIP WHITE - this story originally appeared in THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

The Barossa Grape and Wine Association has just released a clever, handsome and revealing topographical map of the viticulture zone called Barossa. This transverse slice of the South Mount Lofty Ranges was delineated by the local vignerons and the Geographical Indications Committee, a subsidiary of the Australian Wine And Brandy Corporation, the Government statutory authority which polices wine law.

The map was made by Carto Graphics. As it was completed, I coincidentally noticed an increase in wineries using Mount Lofty Ranges as their location. The official wine appellation doesn’t suit them.

There are two reasonably distinct ranges that run from the tip of the Fleurieu to Peterborough; South Mount Lofty Ranges from Cape Jervis to around Eudunda; North Mount Lofty Ranges further to the west, running through Clare and Burra to fizzle out in the desert around Peterborough. North and west of them run the Flinders: Southern, then Northern. These names are official topographical names for standard maps, so they can be easily located by people all over the world.

Not so for our official wine appellation boundaries. These are, well, different. There’s a huge slab of country called The Adelaide Superzone, which includes the Barossa, Fleurieu and Mount Lofty Ranges Zones. The latter Zone contains the Adelaide Hills, the Adelaide Plains and the Clare Valley Regions. The Adelaide Hills Region contains the delineated Sub-regions of Lenswood and Piccadilly Valley, as well as other land that extends north to where the appellation abruptly and illogically becomes the Eden Valley Region in the Barossa Zone, as distinct from the Barossa Valley Region to the west.

Like the Barossa Zone, the Adelaide Hills are not on any ordinary map. This is a colloquial and nebulous term for some of the hills in the South Mount Lofty Ranges. Kuitpo, Mount Barker, and Hahndorf are in the Adelaide Hills Region, Harrogate and Kanmantoo are not. Dumb.

What a pity these boundaries were not set on existing place names, or more easily determined geographical and geological features that were on maps for a century before Australian wine appellations were invented! I initially suggested that the Adelaide Superzone was so named because everyone in the wine world was presumed to know of the whereabouts of Adelaide University, which is smug about its wine course. GIC members have since scorned this idea. Because Adelaide proper is not in any hills or ranges, the South Mount Lofty Ranges Superzone would have had more natural clarity, as Adelaide is on their floodplain and piedmont.

Then, the North Mount Lofty Ranges would make more sense as a Zone, as does the Southern Flinders Region, which I had the pleasure to officially open some years back. There’s not much call for a Northern Flinders Region yet, but this may become necessary if those who insist the Earth is cooling prove correct.

When you examine the fine new Barossa map, it becomes very clear that the Barossa is a distinct valley that runs north-south between the Barossa Ranges on the eastern side, and the ridge that runs from Kalimna in the north, south through Greenock to Gomersal on the western side. The enormous, monocultural tax-dodge vineyards recently planted outside the Valley on the western flats around Sandy Creek have nothing to do with the Barossa or its flavours. This should be Adelaide Plains. Similarly, the upland vineyards in the chaotic network of ranges and valleys to the east of the Barossa Range have nothing in common with the Barossa, other than that Valley’s propensity to use their finer fruit to improve its own, which they can still do without losing the precious Barossa moniker. The dodgy intellect of this is revealed by the new map. They made their Barossa far too big. Dumb.

THE HILL OF GRACE VINEYARD, MUCH IMPROVED BY PRUE HENSCHKE SINCE MILTON WORDLEY TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH. IS THIS IN THE BAROSSA VALLEY?

The South Mount Lofty Ranges are a continuous geological feature that extends to Cape Jervis, and yet the Southern Fleurieu is not included in the Mount Lofty Ranges Zone, while Clare is. Dumb.

The McLaren Vale Region is part of the Fleurieu Zone. It sensibly drew most of its boundary according to its geology and topography, following the escarpment formed by the Willunga fault line from the Victory pub to Kangarilla. The western boundary is sensibly the sea. Part of the reason this region stretches north across the Onkaparinga to include Glenthorne Farm and Chateau Reynella is to protect them from housing development. Which will look really dumb if governments and owners continue with their nefarious villa rash. Which the intellectually decrepit Rann government has just permitted to occur in letting Constellation Brands rip out John Reynell's heritage vineyard which had been in full premium wine production for 161 years. Forty-one tiny apartments will replace it. The winemakers of McLaren Vale can take a deep bow for permitting this to happen. And Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg, who will eventually fall on her own fork. Show Lorraine a hill, and she'll immediately want somebody to put a shed on it.

In the meantime, there's an unholy row brewing between Jane "Spock" Lomax-Smith, the Minister for Tourism, and the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association over the naming of the Fleurieu, the Peninsula which McLaren Vale sits upon. The McLVGWATA should not really be claiming any holier-than-thou rights to naming intelligence until it cleans that idiotic acronym up. But the winesmiths of the Vales want the Fleurieu name officially changed to Fleurieu and McLaren Vale, which J-Lo the Vulcan will not abide.

Consider Doug Govan of The Victory Hotel. His two tiny Rudderless Vineyards behind his mighty pub sit astride the boundary separating McLaren Vale from Southern Fleurieu. This line should logically follow the creek, flowing just south of his pub down through Cactus Gulch to the Gulf. Instead, the appellation line actually divides one of his three tiny Lots, as delineated on the Hundred and Section maps determining ownership.

Doug’s dog Swahili could have worked that one out.

Just as we constantly adjust electoral boundaries to suit demographic changes, and rename electorates, surely we can begin correcting some of this really stupid mess.

VICTORY HOTEL PUBLICAN, DOUG GOVAN, TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF HIS BELOVED SWAHILI, WHO IS CONSIDERING THE BOUNDARY OF McLAREN VALE AND FLEURIEU. SWAHILI IS IN McLAREN VALE. THE COOPERS SIGN IS IN SOUTHERN FLEURIEU.

The Victory's Rudderless!

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by PHILIP WHITE
This was first published in The Independent Weekly in August 2008

“Fire authorities sift through Victory Hotel ruins” blared my browser. Not The Vic! Had Bacchus torched one of our best pubs in exchange for my glee over the demise of Starbucks?

No, it wasn’t Douglas Govan’s Victory, that hallowed thirst emporium on Sellick’s Hill. It was the Vic in Brisbane that Bacchus blitzed. Along with all those Starbucks. I mean, bad luck, Brisbane, but… Whew.

There was an essay competition. “I won it with an entry under my own name”, says Douglas. “And I also came third with another entry under another name. With the winnings I bought a Sony amplifier. I had no speakers or anything. Just the amp. I’d turn it on and marvel at the little green light. There was a Japanese kid at school with big stereo headphones. He let me try them on and once I was in there – like wow! Stereo! Suddenly I understood. I got right into music. I got into some serious platter-spinning. The wheels of steel. Within a few years I was running nightclubs, and eventually made enough money to buy a pub.”

….just in case you were wondering where great publicans come from….

And Douglas is a great publican. The Vic, which he’s owned since 1989, is the most successful and respected public house and victualler in the McLaren Vale region, if not the whole of the Fleurieu. Now it also has three wicked little B&Bs, which together add up to something along the lines of the Great Bed Of Ware, which held around twenty passengers at a time in the White Hart Inn in Hertfordshire, as reported in Billy Shakespaw’s Twelfth Night. Another great pub.

All of which says something. The Vales generally had good pubs. In 1845 The South Australian praised “the extensive and rich valley of McLaren….almost the whole of the country inns visited on this trip are neatly and cleanly kept…everywhere the traveller meets with civility and attention…and there was no lack of good viands”.

The Vic did disappoint me, once. A decade back, I stupidly went down there for a restorative steak on New Year’s Day. Came in a bit late and shaky, but there stood Douglas on the lawn, up to his ankles in beer cans and butts. Incredulous. It had been a large night. “You gotta be joking!” he said when I asked to be fed. “Take a look around. If you’d eat anything I cooked today you’d be mad. Look at me! Go back to The Barn Whitey.” Even Lord Nelson had his bad day on the mighty vessel which gave this inn its name.

Since then, The Vic has well and truly made up for that brief, forgiveable lapse. Nowhere will you buy better, fresher, simple seafood, or more succulent steaks. Try that eye fillet. (No pun intended, m’Lud). And then there’s the cellar. Oh my.

Pubs with great wine lists? The Exeter. The Wheatsheaf in Thebarton. But the Victory’s is the best. You may know another; it’s not jumping to my mind. Take a tumble down into The Vic’s cellar, and you’re suddenly far too deep behind the lines: out in the nether regions beyond thirst being your major excuse: greed takes over. Eat your plastic. Retreat.

See. You can’t. You look about: Castagna. Cascabel. Chablis. Chevalier. Cullen. Greenock Creek. All the best, impossible to procure pinots. Wines from temples so great and rare and secret that I never mention them.

And now The Vic’s getting bigger. Douglas has built a huge new cellar, which will permit him to display for sale some of the various thousands of premium rarities he’s been collecting and maturing. There’ll be a new verandah for smokers, with a view clear down to somewhere near Antarctica. So what’s the catch? Well, the front bar’s about to get a lot bigger, too. That’s the price you pay.

Then there’s the little matter of the vineyards, one either side of the pub - one in McLaren Vale; one in Southern Fleurieu - planted from cuttings from Douglas’s favourite vineyards. Follow the track between them for five minutes and you’re in the ABC Range in the Northern Flinders. Literally. Same geological group: the fossils, and the vegetation. Come back down the gorge, and again you’ve got that view over the Gulf St Vincent, patron of viticulturers, vinegar makers, lost stuff, and schoolgirls.

Given the nature of The Victory, these wines are sold under the Rudderless brand, which has nothing to do Kevin. Made by Justin McNamee at Samuel’s Gorge, they’re something else, too. Shiraz, grenache, graciano, malbec, mataro and viognier, growing in sparse dirt that tastes nearly as good as the pub food. Seriously. I’ve tasted it all. A smorgasbord.

And since I’ve been snide about Starbucks, try The Victory’s coffee. They’ll even make a castrato. All you get is the squeak.

OOPS! CHEERS FOR VICTORY

(Letters, The Independent Weekly, August 15-21, 2008)

Philip White (IW August 8) is wrong when he asserts it was Lord Nelson’s mighty vessel which gave the Victory inn its name. Local history can be a fragile thing.

To wander down the old coach road that meanders its way over the Sellicks Hill Range from Pages Flat Road to Sellicks Hill is to walk what was once called The Victory Road. In 1859 the then long-disputed question of the route for a road from Noarlunga to Myponga and Yankalilla was finally settled. For his part in that outcome, Aldinga Council Chairman John Norman was considered a local hero, and the result of his incessant exertions, a grand triumph.

The ceremony to open the road was held on Tuesday, March 15^th at the new inn on that road and a celebratory dinner was held there that night. The inn was named Norman’s Victory in the hope that it would be a perpetual commemoration.

To shorten the name of this great little pub to the Victory, though somewhat sloppy, can be seen as a term of endearment.

Chris Davies,

Willunga.

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