SEPPELTSFIELD FALLS RANDALL'S WAY

WARREN RANDALL

Vales Wildcat Relieves Hacca Of Her After Dinner Headaches
Randall And Co Make Daring Barossa Raid
by PHILIP WHITE

For a sum yet to be disclosed, McLaren Vale grapegrower Warren Randall has bought Janet Holmes á Court’s share of Seppeltsfield, the pride of the Barossa Valley.

After a rather confused series of transactions, Fosters, in 2007, sold Seppeltsfield the brand, the buildings, the Para grenache vineyard, and nine million litres of fortified wine to The Seppeltsfield Estate Trust, whose unitholders included the shareholders of Kilikanoon, the Clare wine brand considered by many to be punching above its weight, and Mrs. Holmes á Court, whose precise business acumen made her seem an unlikely partner. Nathan Waks became Managing Director and Bruce Baudinet Chairman.

Joseph Ernst Seppelt migrated to Australia from Silesia in 1849. The first vintage was in a family dairy, but by 1867, the first of the majestic winery buildings was under construction. Seppelts began laying down their Para port for long-term storage in 1878, and now release a fabulous century-old wine each year.

The vast heritage-listed bluestone complex costs over $400,000 per year to maintain.

Warren Randall and his backers from the Andrew Garrett days, Warren Ward and Andrew Fletcher, are the largest private owners of vineyards at McLaren Vale, owning at least 20% of the district’s vineyards. Randall habitually buys vineyards which become available, provided they have full water licenses. His company is contentiously planning a subdivision of the old Tatachilla Winery in McLaren Vale’s main street; while his vineyards are reasonably responsibly managed environmentally, Randall is not famed for his conservation record.

He was sparkling winemaker at Seppelts Great Western in the 1980s, and then worked with Andrew Garrett, under whose ownership the great old Romalo Cellars opposite Penfolds Grange burned down in the ’nineties. With Garrett colleagues Ward and Fletcher, Randall bought Tinlin’s, the bulk wine retailer, in 1993.

This Seppeltsfield move can be seen as McLaren Vale’s first major push into Barossa territory since Hardy’s bought the Barossa Co-op, and built the controversial Barossa Valley Estate opposite the Seppelt family’s Greco-Roman mausoleum at Seppeltsfield.

There has been intense, almost unseemly vineyard establishment around Seppeltsfield, Marananga and Greenock Creek since Michael and Annabelle Waugh’s Greenock Creek wines began to attract the adulation of Robert Parker Jr. in the ’nineties. Newcomers include Two Hands, Torbreck and Hardy’s/Constellation. Greenock Creek probably has more perfect scores, or very high nineties, from Parker than any other Australian winery. Its vineyards border Seppeltsfield on the north boundary.

The Waughs have almost completed their removal of the industrial pig and chicken farm that dominated the creek immediately north of Seppeltsfield. They bought it last year, and have removed tens of thousands of tonnes of iron and concrete from the site, cleared and rejuvenated the creekline, and will soon establish new vineyards there, opening up a whole new vista for visitors to the historic valley.

Through this acquisition of the famous Para Vineyard at Seppeltsfield, the move also puts Randall in control of a huge volume of old vine grenache, which is on the ascendant as a premium fine wine style, particularly in McLaren Vale, where brands like d’Arenberg and Yangarra are booming.

JIMI HENDRIX DROWNED IN RED WINE

Purple Haze All Around My Brain 
Aussie Doc Backs Murder Claims
Bob Brown The Green There Too
 by PHILIP WHITE

Jimi Hendrix drowned in red wine.

Tappy Wright, 65, a roadie who worked for Hendrix, has just released a memoir, Rock Roadie, in which he claims Hendrix, 27, was murdered by his manager, Mike Jeffery on September 18, 1970.

The book alleges that the almost-bankrupt Jeffery told Wright that Hendrix was “worth more to him dead than alive”, took out a $2 million life insurance policy, then arranged with Hendrix’s junkie girlfriend, Monika Danneman, and some hired hands to sedate Hendrix and force red wine down his throat until he drowned.

Hendrix had been considering changing managers. The book claims Jeffery, an ex-secret serviceman with close underworld connections, confessed the murder to Wright a month before he was killed in a plane crash.

Dannemann, whose drug consumption almost equalled that of Hendrix, committed suicide in 1996.

John Bannister, now 67, the Australian doctor on call at St Mary Abbots Hospital the morning Hendrix was admitted, came back to Australia two years later, and practised as an orthopaedic surgeon until he was deregistered for fraudulent conduct in 1992.

Since the publication of Rock Roadie, Bannister, who lives in Sydney, told The Times of London that the murder theory is “plausible”.

Bannister had no idea who his dead patient was.

“Somebody said to me ‘You know who that was?” Bannister said. “That was Jimi Hendrix’ and, of course, I said, ‘Who’s Jimi Hendrix?’.

“He was very long”, he remembers. “He was hanging over the table we had him on by about ten inches.

“When you are in casualty, one always tries very hard to resuscitate people. There’s always a hope. We worked very hard for about half an hour but there was no response at all. It really was an exercise in futility,” he said.

Bannister said that Hendrix was quite literally full of red wine.

“The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine. I have never seen so much wine. We had a sucker that you put down into his trachea, the entrance to his lungs and to the whole of the back of his throat.

“We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair.”

“It was just extraordinary. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine.”

In his retirement speech from the Australian parliament on 5th June 2012, Senator Bob Brown, former leader of the Australian Greens, confirmed that he was another Australian intern on duty in casualty that night.  He said Hendrix had been dead for some hours when he saw him, and that Bannister signed the death certificate. 

Rock Roadie seems destined to sit alongside Phil Kaufman's Road Mangler Deluxe as a piquant tell-all loaded with early seventies rock lore. Kaufman, who produced a recording for Charles Manson, amongst other things, was the roadie who backed his old hearse into the California morgue, stole the body of Gram Parsons, took it up to Joshua Tree and burned it.

PHYLLOXERA COPS: RIPPING UP RULEBOOK?

THE HENSCHKE FAMILY'S HILL OF GRACE VINEYARD; A PRIME EXAMPLE OF THE HISTORIC VINES AUSTRALIA WILL LOSE WHEN PHYLLOXERA COMES TO SOUTH AUSTRALIA - CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO VISIT PHOTOGRAPHER MILTON WORDLEY'S WEBSITE

Bug Boards Buggered In Clear Language Stakes
Conspiracy Or Confederacy Of Dunces?
by PHILIP WHITE

In May, I wrote the following story in The Independent Weekly:

As you enter the national Wine Centre from the Botanic Gardens, you’ll find signs on its big automatic glass doors saying “Be careful when entering building”.

This must be a warning about the sniffing machine inside. I pushed the cabernet button, and out squirted a stink that brought bad coffee and woodsap to mind. To counteract this, our National Wine Centre seems now to be staffed largely by shiny bright young Indians, all chatting crisply to each other by walkie-talkie. Shut your eyes, and you can be on a sort of sub-continental space shuttle.

I’d been invited to address the Wine Press Club about the 2009 vintage.

But first up was Stephen Strachan, Chief Executive of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia. To paraphrase him, perhaps too crudely, Strachan suggested that in spite of the heatwave, the crop of 2009 was about the same size as 2008, meaning there’s still the little matter of Australia needing to cut its vineyard by twenty per cent.

Stuart McNab, Executive General Manager, Viticulture and Grape Resources, Fosters, was next. He spoke about the quality being better than many thought it would be, about Victoria’s smoke taint being nowhere near as bad as many claimed, and agreed about the tonnages, suggesting there was still the little matter of Australia needing to cut its vineyard by, well, about twenty per cent.

I agreed about the quantity and the quality, and the smoke and the heat, but said there was already a foolproof plan in place which would inevitably reduce Australia’s vineyard by at least twenty per cent. This, I explained, was the nasty little matter of the Vine Industry Nursery Assocation, the body representing the nurseries who propagate and sell vines, secretly lobbying to pull most of the sharp teeth out of the anti-phylloxera regulations so that vine material can be shipped around Australia without heat treatment. Heat treatment involves sanitising baby vines with hot water to kill phylloxera. There’s a three per cent loss incurred in this procedure, which the nurserymen would prefer to avoid.

The big grape buyers, like Fosters, Pernod-Ricard-Jacob’s Creek-Orlando, Constellation, Australian Vintage (formerly known as McGuigan) and Yellowtail, all exert huge pressure on nurseries and vignerons to grow new varieties to supply a thirsty but bored market with new flavours, which means new varieties. Relaxing the anti-phylloxera laws would facilitate much faster access to these new varieties.

There’s also the little matter of the enormous profits the vine nurserymen stand to make when phylloxera spreads, as they would then be mobbed with orders for vines grafted to phylloxera-resistant rootstock to replace the vineyards killed by the relentless phylloxera.

Wayne Farqhuar, vice chairman and member of the management committee of the Vine Industry Nursery Association, recently revealed his concerns that this relaxation of the laws would lead to the spread of phylloxera. Farquhar is a Barossa nurseryman AND an owner of an old vineyard. Old vineyards, the sorts of ancient treasures that South Australia has many of, and the rest of the world bugger all, are what makes South Australian wines special. This is what he wrote to an elite group of key players and viticulturers on May 8th:

“I would like to comment on the abysmal draft protocols put forward by Vine Industry Nursery Association as listed in the document attached (Protocols movement of vine material Phylloxera Exclusion Zone to Phylloxera Exclusion Zone). These protocols make no sense as the nurseries are required to do no treatments at all, and will completely undermine the current border security which will surely lead to Phylloxera continuing to spread throughout Australia and ultimately undermine the only marketable thing Australia has going for it that is OLD VINES.”

PRICELESS OLD VINEYARDS OF PRE-PHYLLOXERA CLONES, LIKE GREENOCK CREEK'S WORLD-FAMOUS ROENNFELDT ROAD, ABOVE, WILL BE THE FIRST TO GO WHEN PHYLLOXER CROSSES THE BORDER - photo: LEO DAVIS

On May 26th, Paul Wright, Chairman of the Vine Industry Nursery Association, advised Farquhar that he was fired, for “bringing the association into disrepute and damaging its ability to carry out its objectives”.

Prue Henschke, an ardent anti-phylloxera campaigner, told me that “when it becomes possible to move vines, from one jurisdiction to another, in the hope that the supplying nursery has kept within the law, we are at great risk of spreading this deadly pest. The whole process must be improved, and speeded up, but the regulations need also to be tighter, and there is no single existing body which can be relied upon to facilitate these seemingly contradictory changes.”

Dudley Brown, chairman of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association put it more succinctly.

“It’s one thing to make a faster car”, he said. “But it’ll need better brakes.”

As I left the National Wine Centre, and its happy background chatter of Bollywood English on the walkie-talkies, I encountered more signs on the inside of those big glass doors. Yep, same message: “Be careful when entering building”. So I stepped out into that beautiful garden, very, very carefully.

In response to this publication, Paul Wright, Chairman of the Vine Industry Nursery Association wrote a letter to Daily Wine News, which was published there on 16th June 2009:

“The Vine Industry Nursery Association is an invited participant to the National Vine Health Steering Committee, an advisory body to the Federal Government on biosecurity matters. The National Phylloxera Management Protocol has been developed by National Vine Health Steering Committee to prevent the spread of phylloxera. The National Vine Health Steering Committee recognises that with the growth in viticulture-based industries across Australia there comes an increased risk of phylloxera infestation through the movement of grapevines and grapevine material or associated contaminated items. The national protocol will raise awareness of the risks and provide those in the industry with consistent guidelines for their risk prevention or management.

“Companies with interstate connections will welcome the national protocol and an end to ‘border confusion’.

“The national protocol does not replace existing State Government legislation and it is important that the relevant detail of legislative and regulatory requirement are obtained from the department of Agriculture or Primary Industries in each state, or the Phylloxera and Grape Industry Board of South Australia.

“The Technical Reference Group of the National Vine Health Steering Committee has reviewed the national protocols and has suggested some draft amendments. As part of their industry consultative process, some draft amendments relevant to vine nurseries were passed to the Vine Industry Nursery Association representative for comment by Vine Industry Nursery Association members. Issues were raised by Vine Industry Nursery Association members. On 20 May 2009 the Vine Industry Nursery Association representative reported back to the National Vine Health Steering Committee that Vine Industry Nursery Association could not endorse the draft amendments and that they should be returned to the Technical Reference Group for further review.

“Recently there has been published some editorial in e-news media, presenting this matter in an entirely different and incorrect way. The wine journalist, Philip White of Independent Weekly, was apparently misinformed. The resultant article was sensationalist, inaccurate and damaging to genuine debate on biosecurity. It is disappointing that this journalist did not verify the accuracy of what he published.

“Vine Industry Nursery Association is a responsible member of the viticulture community. Vine Industry Nursery Association would never propose a change to the phylloxera protocols that could increase the risk of a phylloxera incursion into non-infected regions.

“For further information about Vine Industry Nursery Association or phylloxera protocols, contact Paul Wright on plwright@vinewright.com.au .”

To determine the accuracy of my story, I had gone straight to the top, to Alan Nankivell, the Chief Executive Officer of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia. I asked him to supply me copies of the existing protocols and the draft of the proposed new ones. On Wednesday 13th May he responded thus:

Dear Mr White,

The current endorsed National Phylloxera Management Protocols are located at http://www.gwrdc.com.au/rtopics.asp?ID=25

Unfortunately I have no authority to release the draft protocols to you, as I am not a member of the National Vine Health Steering Committee and the National Vine Health Steering Committee are yet to discuss them.

Yours faithfully,

Alan Nankivell

Mr. Nankivell had sent me this e-mail on 13th May at 6:28PM. But at 4:54PM on the same afternoon, he’d sent the very draft protocols I’d requested to a list of concerned winemakers in McLaren Vale, who had been alerted to the proposed changes by Drew and Rae Noon. In an attached letter, Mr. Nankivell wrote the following response to these people:

Thank you for your correspondence expressing concerns about the Draft changes to the National Phylloxera Management Protocols.

As I understand it, the National Vine Health Steering Committee was requested by Vine Industry Nursery Association at its meeting held on 17th May 2007 to have the National Protocols revisited to consider the movement of material [from] Phylloxera Exclusion Zone [to] Phylloxera Exclusion Zone. According to the Vine Industry Nursery Association document circulated with the National Vine Health Steering Committee papers, dated the 2nd May 2007 “Re: Vine Industry Nursery Association Proposal to vary the movement of Vine Plant Material into NSW” where the issues for the Nursery industry were highlighted due to the changes in New South Wales’ Phylloxera Exclusion Zone status.

The National Vine Health Steering Committee requested that the National Phylloxera Technical Reference Group note the request by Vine Industry Nursery Association when it reviewed the National Protocols subsequent to the 17th May 2007 meeting. The draft protocol was put to the National Vine Health Steering Committee in November 2008 for consideration, however discussion was deferred at the request of the Vine Industry Nursery Association representative at that meeting so further discussion could take place within Vine Industry Nursery Association. It is my understanding that Vine Industry Nursery Association is seeking comment from its membership.

Discussion

When Mr Wright claimed that “Vine Industry Nursery Association is a responsible member of the viticulture community ... Vine Industry Nursery Association would never propose a change to the phylloxera protocols that could increase the risk of a phylloxera incursion into non-infected regions” he was ignoring the fact that his association had already had the New South Wales law changed, to permit transfer of vine plant material from one place to another without heat treatment. This writer has yet to discover one grapegrower or winemaker who was consulted about this new legislation.

When Mr. Farquhar blew the whistle, the Vine Industry Nursery Association was quietly working to have the same relaxation instituted to allow movement of grapevine planting material from New South Wales and Victoria into South Australia without hot water treatment. Victoria is the home of most of Australia’s Phylloxera. As I have made clear, the draft was already written.

When Mr. Wright said “Companies with interstate connections will welcome the national protocol and an end to ‘border confusion’,” he was, of course quite right, and this isn’t completely to do with the transport of cuttings and rootlings. By dramatically reducing the paperwork, the new regulations could also mean that Fosters, for example, could now more easily bring must and juice directly from, say, the Yarra Valley, which has phylloxera infected zones, to its gigantic Bilyara refinery at Nuriootpa in the Barossa for winemaking, eventually saving untold millions of dollars. Great Western; Karadoc: enormous savings could be made by closing these wineries and trucking must and juice to the Barossa.

Richard Hamilton, a senior employee of Fosters, where he answers to Stuart McNab, is chairman of the National Phylloxera Technical Reference Group. He is also chairman of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board of South Australia. So this Fosters man, to whom Mr. Nankivell answers, reviewed the protocols as Chairman of the National Phylloxera Technical Reference Group, as required by the National Vine Health Steering Committee in response to the Vine Industry Nursery Association’s request to have the protocols changed.

Weirdly, as chairman of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board of South Australia, Mr. Hamilton now says he wouldn’t admit green vine material into South Australia without hot water treatment, contradicting his own recommendation.

How could this be so? Could it be in page five of the new protocols, where it says “Movement of phylloxera risk vectors (also described as ‘hosts’ within government legislation) across state borders or between defined quarantine zones or phylloxera exclusion zones must comply with the relevant state legislation. State legislation is generally based on the National Protocol.” The italics are theirs!

Some of the fascinating legal possibilities inherent include the notion that they’re drafting regulations nationally, which due to the free trade laws between the states since federation, will eventually outweigh any South Australian legislation anyway. Fosters, for example, could easily be the first major complainant to have the state of South Australia comply to the national protocol in the name of free trade.

Thanks largely to the diligence of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia, this state remains Phylloxera-free.

Associate Professor Peter Dry, University of Adelaide, is a member of the board of Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia and is a member of the National Phylloxera Technical Reference Group which endorsed the proposed Vine Industry Nursery Association protocols. He is consultant to several vineyard development and management companies, and associate editor of the Winetitles’ Australian And New Zealand Wine Industry Journal, publisher of the Daily Wine News. His son Nick works at the Yalumba grapevine nursery with Robin Nettlebeck.

Sandy Hathaway, secretary of the National Phylloxera Technical Reference Group, also works for the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board of South Australia and assisted the Vine Industry Nursery Association draft the proposed protocols.

Robin Nettelbeck is deputy Chairman of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia and runs the largest grapevine nursery in Australia for Yalumba.

Bruce Baker is government Manager of Plant Health Compliance and Surveillance at Primary Industry And Resources South Australia. He supported the proposed protocols at the National Vine Health Steering Committee. David Cartwright, Chief Inspector of Plant Standards at Primary Industry And Resources South Australia is on the board of the Phylloxera And grape Industry Board Of South Australia.

So contrary to Mr. Wright’s claim that I am “misinformed, sensationalist, inaccurate, damaging and disappointing” I suggest that I’ve done a lot of diligent investigation of this story, and that if I am in any way misled, this is solely due to the arcane and impenetrable wall of confounding acronyms and duplicatory/conflicting bodies, boards and committees which seem incapable of supplying information of any clarity, and instead rely on impenetrable acronyms, obfuscation and pettifoggery to conceal their ambitions.

This is an unfolding story. But put most simply, it seems members of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia are involved in committees that are suggesting changes to the protocols which relax the current requirements, and make green vine material movements, and the shipping of must and juice much easier. I would be very happy if this theory was wrong, and would welcome documentary evidence to prove this. But I’d like to know what due diligence has been undertaken by committee members who have been entrusted with the approval of these changes.

Have the objectives of the Phylloxera And Grape Industry Board Of South Australia changed without any levy payer knowing? Where’s the consultation?

Remember Prue Henschke’s comment in my original article?

“When it becomes possible to move vines, from one jurisdiction to another, in the hope that the supplying nursery has kept within the law, we are at great risk of spreading this deadly pest. The whole process must be improved, and speeded up, but the regulations need also to be tighter, and there is no single existing body which can be relied upon to facilitate these seemingly contradictory changes.”

And the riposte of Dudley Brown, chairman of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association?

“It’s one thing to make a faster car”, he said. “But it’ll need better brakes.”

Leon Bignell, the vigilant Member for Mawson, which includes the Mclaren Vale wine region, is forming a small parliamentary committee which will meet later this week to attempt to unravel this confounding mess.

DRINKSTER eagerly anticipates the findings and recommendations of this committee.

HANGOVER-FREE ALCOHOL? KIDDING!

PROFESSOR SAKKIE PRETORIUS OF THE AUSTRALIAN WINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: 'THEIR SCIENCE IS SOLID".

Expat Sethefrikens Plot End To Hangovers No More Morning Sickness Adelaide Lass Finds Dream Spirits
by PHILIP WHITE

On the face of it, it looked like Quack Week. The titterers and tweeters buzzed afresh with the claims of Dr. Hennie van Vuuren, of the University of British Columbia's Wine Research Center, who spent sixteen years working out how to genetically modify yeast to make a wine which is less likely to cause hangovers. The trick yeast produces fewer biogenic amines. These, as Professor Sakkie Pretorius, of our brilliant Wine Research Institute explains, “can lead to headaches and other symptoms in sensitive people”.

Until now, wine yeast has been happy converting sugar to alcohol. In reds, and some whites, like chardonnay, winemakers then use specific bacteria to undertake a secondary, malolactic ferment, in which these microbes convert the harsh, metallic, but natural malic acid of grapes to the softer, creamier lactic acid of milk. Biogenic amines are sometimes a side product of this conversion.

“I know these researchers and their research quite well”, Prof Pretorius told me. “ Their science is solid: they created two genetically-modified yeast strains that have been cleared for commercial use in the USA, Canada and Moldova. This particular GM Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeast (ML01) contains bacterial and non-Saccharomyces genes that enable it to convert malic acid into lactic acid. By using this malolactic yeast, winemakers don’t have to rely on malolactic bacteria to conduct the malolactic fermentation.

“From a winemaker’s point of view, the fermentation process is a lot more streamlined and reliable because the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations are executed by a single organism,” he continued. “But the critics of these consumer-benefits claims argue that winemakers can achieve the same thing (i.e. avoidance of biogenic amines) by using malolactic bacterial strains that do not produce bioamines”, the Professor explained.

“The people who commercialised this yeast claim that by using it, winemakers can avoid the use of bacteria and by doing so, their wine will be less likely to cause hangover-type reactions in some sensitive wine drinkers.”

Because North American wineries are not obliged to declare the inclusion of a GM product on the wine labels, it’s difficult to discover how many winemakers there are using the new GM yeast.

“It’s a very different story in the EU and Australia,” Prof Pretorius said. “The official position of the Australian wine industry is that no GM organism be used in commercial winemaking until there is broad acceptance of such practices in the global market place. Needless to say, it is likely to take quite a while (and a bit longer!) before the majority of consumers will embrace GM foods and beverages - even if they are willing to inject themselves with GM insulin and vaccines et cetera.”

Pity our dear friends at Constellation don’t understand the advantages of such crisp intellectual clarity. These vandals who are intent on butchering their conservationist image – Banrock et al - by replacing John Reynell’s 161 year old vineyard at Old Reynella with more Tupperware Tuscany, are also in the poo with the US Federal Trade Commission. While Constellation hadn’t tried the product on Australians – alcopops are heavily fraught here lately - it had been flogging a kiddylikker, Wide Eye Schnapps, in the States, promising that “consumers who drink Wide Eye will remain alert when consuming alcohol.” This is, no doubt, because of its high caffeine content: the one schlück delivers the sort of confusing mixture of depressive alcohol and stimulating caffeine that our bottle-scarred warriors ingest when they sink a few Red Bulls with vodka.

Constellation has had to agree with the Federal Trade Commission ’s ruling that their marketing “was deceptive, unsubstantiated, and in violation of federal law ... Constellation fuelled the misperception that mixing alcohol and caffeine helps people stay alert,” said Eileen Harrington, of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The truth is that alcohol and caffeine could be a dangerous mix, and a claim like that can have very serious consequences. There is no credible scientific evidence to support the claim that consumers who drink Wide Eye will remain alert.”

After wasting a scrillion on this deception, Constellation has dumped Wide Eye and retreated hurt.

Which I can’t say for Louise Radman, under whose byline The Adelaide Magazine reports the discovery of a suite of powerful drinks that seem likely to fix everything. “High spirits” was the head. Below welled this murky nonsense:

“The Australia distillers of Vodka O have released a new range of chemical-free spirits. Their gin, tequila, white rum, dark rum and Scotch have been zapped of all the nasties that they say cause hangovers.”

So what the precious name of Bacchus is this booze made from? No substances produced by or used in a chemical process (them’s chemicals)? No H2O (that’s water)? No C2H5OH? (this powerful inflammable stuff, sometimes called ethanol, or alcohol, is a dangerous psychoactive dehydrating depressive drug which looks pretty much like a chemical to me). Jeez, Louise! Where’s Australia’s Federal Trade Commission?

CONSTELLATION BOSS KNOCKS PARKER OFF

ROBERT PARKER JR.: DICKED AT THE DECANTER POST BY CONSTELLATION'S SANDMAN.




Dr. Vino Costs Bob A Point Blogs Dig Out Five Bed Boat Drinkster Has A Thinkster
by PHILIP WHITE

So. The Parkerilla has fallen to number two on The Decanter Power List. Boo hoo.

What makes this writer weep tears of rage and grief is Parkerilla’s replacement at number one: Dick Sands, 58 year old chairman of Constellation, the company currently planning to plant a two hectare yuppie ghetto in place of one of South Australia’s most famous vineyards, the 161-year-old creek block established by pioneer John Reynell.

Parkerilla’s petit plunge from grace comes after much white noise on the cobweb. Since His Blogness Dr Vino first blasted Parker’s shotgun rider, Jay Miller, for picking up a US$25,000 freebie called his last trip to Australia, the internet has buzzed with ill-informed gossip critical of both men.

Particular attention has been paid the October 2007 junket up the dying Murray River, when Californian baconmonger Dan Phillips, of the Californian Grateful Palate wine shipping agency, and his winemaker, Chris Ringland, entertained Miller for days on a houseboat with five bedrooms and a jacuzzi.

Putting the bedwork aside, one can’t help wondering why Miller didn’t write a passionate piece on the wine industry’s contribution to the death of the River, or indeed why he hasn’t got stuck into Dick Sands for his proposed destruction of South Australia’s number one heritage vineyard. But one thought maybe one should nail one’s foreskin to the mast and explain DRINKSTER’s attitude to freebies lest Dr. Vino extends his attack.

Of course this writer accepts free wine samples. Sometimes he also accepts free car rides, or food. He had been known to chug up the River on one or another of Robert O’Callaghan’s old wooden boats in the ’eighties, and has even caught aeroplanes with tickets bought by others.

He even gave Dan Phillips quite a lot of free advice when he first began sniffing around Australia for wines that would tickle the old Parkerilla’s fancy.

Perhaps the best way of summarising DRINKSTER’s attitude to all this is to reprint in full an interview conducted by Jane Nethercote in October 2004 for The Reader, the forerunner of Crikey.com. :

“Philip White is a wine writer, editor and broadcaster who has contributed to many newspapers and magazines here and abroad,” Nethercote wrote. “He has written the wine column in Adelaide’s The Advertiser for sixteen years.”

Jane Nethercote: What do you think about the standard of wine writing in Australia and abroad?

Philip White: There’s too much thespian vanity; not enough imaginative, attractive, intelligent writing. There’s no poetry. The glossies are repetitive gastroporn. Nobody admits that alcohol’s a deadly drug. Publishers want lots of brand names in bold face, so their spacefloggers can sell ads. Who writes about organics, or wine, environment and salinity? Industrial grapeyards threaten our River and ground water like cotton and rice do. Surely water’s gastronomically important?

JN: Is the wine writer’s job just to find and recommend good wines, and identify bad ones, or is there a wider role to educate, inform, editorialise and entertain?

PW: The job is to sell newspapers by doing all that reliably. Few take your advice if your writing’s not attractive.

JN: What do you say to people who say they can’t understand a lot of wine writing?

PW: Who’d blame them? English lacks words specific to flavours and smells, unlike our vocab for colour. Winos revert to confounding, exclusive language. Like film crews: they develop a patois that gives them privacy on the set. I could talk about “yeast autolysis” and nobody’d twig. But call a Krug “nipple polish” and most readers get my drift.

JN: What are your credentials?

PW: My mentors were all great winemakers: Max Schubert, David Wynn, Gerard Jaboulet, Jack Kilgour. All dead and gone, while their wines live on. In the seventies I was a thirsty writer who gradually discovered my good memory for aroma and flavour. Now I taste over 6,000 wines a year, and constantly travel the vineyards. I have to get out and taste the dirt.

JN: Why become a wine writer?

PW: My lovely brother and cousin were killed on the way to my grandmother’s funeral, so I stayed in the pub for four months. Eventually a mate suggested I should apply for a job editing a wine magazine that wanted a writer rather than a wine snob. They pointed me at a bench of all the Jimmy Watson winners to date and asked for my descriptions. I got the job. I could work and keep drinking.

JN: What are the most overused adjectives in wine writing?

PW: Buzz words come and go. Mineral and minerality are currently overused and abused. Which mineral do they mean? All minerals taste different. Once it was mercaptan, which nobody could define. When Bob Haupt was editor of The National Times he pinged me for using “herbaceous” because it wasn’t what he called “user-friendly”. So for months I recommended only user-friendly wines.

JN: Do you ever buy wine, or do you just drink all your freebies?

PW: I’ll start the day tasting a dozen or so free samples before dressing, and progress from there ’til I’m shagged. It all goes down the sink. It’s lonely work. I can’t wait to get to The Exeter for a drink at the end of the day: Campari, gin, or vodka with bitters in the summer; whisky in the winter; maybe a wheat beer. I buy wine for special meals, or to accompany specific dishes.

JN: With so much free wine, and so many invitations to enjoy the hospitality of wine producers, how does a wine writer stay independent?

PW: The moment I recommend inferior drinks, my reputation wilts. The premium wine community is very small, and nothing escapes attention. I rarely accept free trips or attend extravagant launches - you’d get arse cancer from all that magazine food. Independence is elusive while you’re friends with makers of the best wines internationally.

JN: How do you feel about wielding your critical power?

PW: Nothing pleases me more than seeing success bless a winemaker who’s done it responsibly, cleanly, intelligently, healthily, and modestly. I search for them relentlessly, and urge my readers to share my joy in a glassful. Conversely, I hate cheats and greed, so the hell with those.

JN: Do you ever get sick of drinking wine? Can you afford to?

PW: I can’t afford to swallow most of the monocultural, industrial, refinery-made wine which “makes the industry what it is today”.


THE AUTHOR, CENTER, HARD AT WORK WITH MEN WHO'VE BEEN KNOWN TO GIVE HIM FOOD: CHEF SO, "SINGLET NUMBER ONE", LEFT, AND CHEONG LIEW, RIGHT. PHOTOGRAPH BY MILTON WORDLEY.

KYEEMA: PLANE CRASH TOOK THE BEST

THE AUTHOR AT THE REYNELL VINEYARD FIRST PLANTED 161 YEARS AGO: A PRICELESS HERITAGE GARDEN SENTENCED TO DEATH BY SUB-DEVELOPMENT BY CONSTELLATION, THE COMPLICIT ONKAPARINGA COUNCIL, AN INTELLECTUALLY DECREPIT GOVERNMENT AND A DEVELOPER DELIGHTFULLY CALLED PIONEER HOMES. WOULD GREAT MEN LIKE THOSE WHO DIED IN THE KYEEMA BE BUILDING A YUPPIE GHETTO HERE? photo KATE ELMES

Trophy Honours Great Wine Men
Who Would We Now Mourn?
by PHILIP WHITE - This was first published in The Independent Weekly

Colin Gramp, a friend and mentor, has sent me a letter. It came in a parchment envelope, with his fair hand’s perfect cursive gracing the front. Inside was The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette of November 1938, which contains the obituaries of his Dad, Louis Hugo Gramp, Sidney Hill Smith, and Tom Mayfield Hardy.

Together with a great South Australian parliamentarian, Charles Hawker, and fourteen other worthy souls, these leaders of the Australian wine industry died when the Douglas DC-2 which carried them, the Kyeema, crashed into Corhanwarrabul, below the summit of Mt. Dandenong in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges.

Colin was seventeen years old at boarding school, enjoying the usual afternoon cuppa with the boys in the common room when he heard the terrible story on the four o’oclock news.

Colin is a chipper, bright man to this day, but talk of the Kyeema brings a cloud to his sparkle, and he casts his gaze to the side, and down, and pauses his conversation while he remembers, then regroups his thoughts, and very carefully comes back to you.

It is a sobering treat to read of these patricians. Sidney Hill Smith was 41 years of age. He’d enlisted in the 3rd Light Horse at eighteen, was badly wounded at Romani, and lay on a stretcher in Egypt until he was shipped home. At 26, he was managing director of Yalumba. He travelled the world promoting Australian wine and Yalumba, and was a king hitter on the Viticultural Council, the Winemakers’ Association, and the Chamber of Manufacturers. He was a hyper-active member of the golf, jockey, tattersalls and commercial travellers’ associations. His cortege at Angaston was one mile long. He left a famously revered widow, Christobel.

Tom Hardy, “one of the leading vignerons in the Commonwealth ... and a gentleman to his fingertips” was a bachelor of science studying viticulture and oenology in France when the King of England went to war with his cousin the Kaiser. Tom came home, joined the 9th Light Horse, and went back to fight in Egypt and Palestine. After the war, he ran the Federal Viticultural Council, sat on the Wine Board, and became managing director of Thomas Hardy & Sons. Like his amazing wife, Eileen, he was a formidable competitive sailor.

JOHN REYNELL'S ORIGINAL VINEYARD BY THE CREEK: SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S FIRST COMMERCIAL VINEYARD? WOULD TOM MAYFIELD HARDY HAVE RIPPED IT UP FOR INTENSIVE HOUSING AS CONSTELLATION IS DOING? Photo - KATE ELMES

Hugo Gramp, managing director of Orlando, was “an expert judge of wines” and “a thorough and persevering type ... meticulously painstaking in all he undertook”. He sat on both the Viticulture and Winemakers Associations and while “he possessed a retiring disposition and his whole life was absorbed in the industry he loved,” he was nevertheless the untiring patron of his Barossa village, Rowland (Orlando) Flat. His cortege could not be measured: the graveyard was too close to his new house, where the service was conducted. But 2000 mourners sang Abide With Me.

When these men died, the wine industry hit a great warp. Their influence had been immeasurable.

Imagine what it would be like if the bosses of Fosters, Pernod Ricard, McGuigan/Australian Vintage and Constellation were suddenly removed from the international wine mess. I don’t wish them death, by any means; I just imagine them all suddenly sailing away. There would be no change. These absentee landlords have no names, and their corporations are loaded with queues of young wannabees and wouldbe-couldbees panting to get hold of the power. Say then, they too, would be gone. There would be no difference. Like other average businessmen, they would fade quietly into oblivion.

The Constellation boss who decided to uproot the old John Reynell vineyard to install an intense yuppie ghetto must have felt that crude surge of power unique to those who decide to destroy. In doing so, he proved himself a greater businessman than his predecessors, who couldn’t quite bring themselves to do it, and so failed in battle, thus begrudging the shareholders their essential fast returns. Anybody who has worked with such creatures, and watched them at close range, would know the perverse rippling of jaw muscles and necks that accompany such deliberations.

The men I mentioned first worked hard into their futures. They thoroughly knew and respected the decade-long cycles of the wine industry, and were constantly planning two, three, and four cycles ahead. They were conservatives, meaning they conserved what was good.

Now we have gum-gnawing sophists who call themselves conservationists whilst they turn entire communities off, empty our only River of its water, and destroy sacred landforms and sites in the pursuit of quick return for the faceless shareholder, so that within a few years, they may move on out, victorious, and sit instead on the board of something else, where this raw and rude dance of destruction and indulgence can be repeated.

Andrew Hardy has set up a wine show award to honour his grand-dad’s cousin, and Michael and Robert Hill Smith’s grand-dad, and my dear friend Colin’s Dad. Their sombre, great cortege continues to extend. Which is not what you could see happening to the caskets of anybody now running the show.

AUSTRALIAN PLONK: WHO'S ON THE BRIDGE?

JOHN REYNELL'S SECOND HOMESTEAD, A LONG COLONIAL COTTAGE RENOVATED WHEN HARDY'S BOUGHT IT IN HONOUR OF THE VINEYARD OPPOSITE IN WHICH THEIR FOUNDER FIRST WORKED. CLICK IMAGE FOR BACKGROUND STORY - photo KATE ELMES

Press Gang Delivers New Oz Crew
What'd Old Tom And John Think?
by PHILIP WHITE

Sir James Hardy wrote in The Age, Melbourne, on 23 OCT 1984:

One day in 1850 my great grandfather Thomas Hardy walked down the drive-way of the Reynella winery and farm, to the south of Adelaide, and asked Mr. John Reynell for a job. He got it, for the humble wage of seven shillings and sixpence a week, and stayed for a year and a half, before leaving to earn some money, and, in 1853, start his own wine company.

Today my company owns the beautiful Reynella property, and of course, we are still making wines there which bear the name Reynella.

I sometimes wonder what John Reynell and Thomas Hardy would think of today’s South Australian wine industry.

So who actually runs the Australian wine industry?

There’s a new guard, some of which I shall attempt to summarise:

The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation is the Australian Government statutory authority responsible for the global Wine Australia marketing program, regulating Australian wine exports, collating and analysing Australian wine sector statistics, assisting Australian wine producers and exporters with trade access issues, and defining and protecting Australia’s wine regions.

Changes there are dramatic. The brand new chairman is Jim Dominguez, a former investment banker who is Commissioner (chairman) of the Private Health Insurance Administration Council. Among his board positions are Arrow Voice & Data, O’Connell Street Associates Pty Ltd, Pacific Knowledge Systems Pty Ltd and Wesbeam Holdings. Previous board and advisory roles have included Tat Hong Holdings (Singapore) and Fuji Xerox (Tokyo).

Dominguez will join board members Andrew Moore, Mark Purbrick, Dr Tony Jordan, Dr Kevin McLintock, Josephine Rozman, Kate Thompson and Natalie Toohey.

And now this board keeps an eye on a brand new CEO, Andy Cheesman. In what was almost his last breath as Chairman, the outgoing Hon John Moore AO, a former Minister of Defence, said “As a highly experienced wine industry executive, Andrew has been tasked with forging closer links with the other wine sector organisations to provide coordinated strategic direction and leadership as the sector adjusts to a rapidly changing global wine environment. We are delighted to welcome an executive of Andrew's calibre.”

ANDREW CHEESMAN: CROSER ANIMAL?

Cheesman said: “I look forward to working closely with the new AW&BC board and the other industry organisations, to provide leadership to our stakeholders as we implement a consistent and credible industry strategy. I am committed to the AW&BC providing an efficient, agile, stakeholder orientated service and being genuinely accountable for implementation.”

Cheesman became Petaluma’s accountant in 1998. Founder Brian Croser floated, and when the brewer, Lion Nathan took it in 2001, Cheesman took his boss role. He became the brewer’s winery operations director in 2004 and took over as “strategy manager” in 2006. In fact, just as Croser spent his life preparing to sell his baby Petal, Cheeseman has spent years successfully grooming it, as well as Knappstein, St Hallett, Preece, Tatachilla and Stonier, for sale to the Japanese brewer, Kirin. Staff of these wineries hope Kirin will spend money on them; others say there is little chance of anything happening other than their dismemberment and sale. Kirin was interested in the breweries.

“As a highly experienced wine industry executive, Andrew has been tasked with forging closer links with the other wine sector organisations to provide coordinated strategic direction and leadership as the sector adjusts to a rapidly changing global wine environment,” Mr Moore said.

He made no response to allegations that Cheesman is a Croser animal.

The Winemakers’ Federation of Australia is the peak industry lobbyist, and body representing Australia's wineries on all national and international issues. It exists to advance and protect the interests of Australia's winery operators. It spends a lot of time telling the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation what to do.

In February, Bruce Kemp was named its new president. Mr. Kemp was CEO of Southcorp from 1992 to 1999. Since then he was busy in his Global Wine Advice consultancy, and maintaining his chairmanships of Pipers Brook Vineyards and Anthony Smith & Associates, a manufacturer of synthetic wine stoppers. He’s on the board of Tarac and advises the Macquarie Bank on winery business issues. He was chairman of Winepros, the defunct wine website business set up by Len Evans and James Halliday.

“The industry's oversupply, policy risks associated with growing community and government concerns about binge drinking and better integration of our key industry bodies will be priorities during my term,” Kemp said in his first WFA statement.

In 2001, when Fosters Beringer were about to move on Southcorp, which he’d just left, he said “I think what we're seeing is some consolidation within the industry as major companies try and increase their size and scale to ensure that they are going to be able to move what is going to be significantly increasing volumes of wine into the international market.”

Mr. Kemp’s board includes Philip Laffer of Pernod Ricard Pacific, John Grant of Constellation Wines Australia, Ian Johnston of Foster’s Group, Brian McGuigan AM of Australian Vintage, John Angove of Angove’s, Robert Hill Smith of Yalumba, Mitchell Taylor of Taylors Wines, George Wahby of McWilliam’s Wines, John Ellis of The Hanging Rock Winery, Denis Horgan AM of Leeuwin Estate, Colin Campbell of Campbell Wines, and Peter Schulz of Turkey Flat Vineyards.

Which leads us to the biggest wine show on Earth. Constellation has had the gutting knives out. CEO Bob Sands went home this year with US$6.36 million, squeezed over the $6.2 he took in 08. On top of his $1.1 million salary, 10% up on 07. On top of $904,850 in performance incentives, and perks worth $266,449, mostly on private jets. He also took stock and options valued at $4.1 million on the day they were granted, up from $3.6 million the year before.

CONSTELLATION'S MAJOR AUSTRALIAN BUREAUCRACY BEEHIVE: OPEN-SPACE OFFICES NOW FILL THE OLD REYNELLA WINERY. Photo: KATE ELMES

Constellation was a bulk plonkmonger set up by Bob’s dad, Marvin, in 1945. It does Corona beer, many spirits, Robert Mondavi wines and Clos du Bois. It’s been flogging its cheaper rotgut spirit businesses, and says it’s moving into the premium wine business.

Bob had taken over from his big brother, Dick, who became chairman, and walked home with US$6.86 million in fiscal 2009. Plus perks.

Constellation bought BRL Hardy in 2001 for $1.1 billion, making it the world’s biggest vintner. It began its retreat from Australia in August, putting three wineries, 23 vineyards, and 350 jobs on the market. In March, it said it would lose another 400 jobs worldwide.

Constellation’s new CEO for Europe, Australia and New Zealand is Executive Vice President, Business Development Corporate Strategy and International, Paul Hetterich. But John Grant, Constellation’s Australian President, will have to answer now to a middle man, Troy Christensen. This came as Constellation admitted that its auditor, KPMG, had reported accurately when it said Constellation’s financial and inventory reporting systems left a lot to be desired. Grant’s Australian bit got the main share of the fire, particularly for its slack accounting of vineyard realities. This may or may not include the letting go of the main enviroman, Tony Sharley, at Constellation’s formerly green triumph, Banrock Station.

TONY SHARLEY, THE BRILLIANT ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTIST WHO MANAGED THE BANROCK STATION SWAMPS AND MARSHES UNTIL THEY DRIED UP: SUDDENLY LET GO BY CONSTELLATION'S JOHN GRANT

"Management concluded that the company's internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of February 28, 2009,” the KPMG document said. "As a result it was at least reasonably possible for discrepancies to accumulate in these inventory accounts, which could have resulted in material differences between the actual costs for inventory on hand and the costs that should have been released to cost of product sold.''

To show ’em, Grant stood up at Mildura the other day and announced that Australia’s wine surplus is now 40 per cent of combined annual domestic and export sales, and that Constellation would be chopping prices paid for grapes by 30% next vintage – 30% below break-even for growers.

“We've been signalling consistently to them that they need to downsize,” Grant said. “Those growers who are considering exiting the market should do so.”

Grant is the driving wheel behind Constellation’s destruction and subdivision of John Reynell’s 161 year old vineyard at Reynella.

RAZOR WIRE AT REYNELLA: ONCE THAT 161 YEAR OLD VINEYARD OPPOSITE BECOMES A YUPPIE GHETTO, THERE'LL BE A LOT MORE NEED FOR SECURITY AT CONSTELLATION - Photo KATE ELMES

Then comes Fosters.

Choco Johnston, Fosters’ CEO, has been taking flak for appointing foreigners to bale out his blue beer ship, and he’s done it again with his choice of new wine boss. It’s David Dearie, of Brown-Foreman, the huge whisky-gin-tequila company which happens to include Jack Daniels and Finlandia. And some wineries. Of course, Dearie’s come from the wine branch, most recently in western Europe and Africa.

As he walks in, Dearie sees the following Fosters’ vineyards - 4,000 ha of ’em - hit the block: Clare Estate, Roeslers, Matthews Road, Partalunga, Roscor, Tamar, Blewitt Springs, Langhorne Creek-Blass, Lindemans Padthaway, Padthaway Blass – Garretts, Gales & Tolleys, Duck Pond, Schultz, Guthries, Cluny, Robertsons Well, Glenroy, Kirribilli, Denman, Roxburgh, Yarrawa, Cumbandry, Hill of Gold, Mountain Blue, Tumbarumba, Tumblong, Yankabilly, Lake Cullulleraine, Baileys of Glenrowan, Glenlofty and Racecourse. Newcomers might not grasp the list of great brand names that grew from many of these great vineyards. Being a newcomer, Dearie probably won’t worry much either. He’s one who prefers to let others take the risk. Vineyards are like corn.

Can’t stop without giving Amy Russell, of the Winemakers Federation, a go. She thinks Australia’s been a great vineyard environmentalist, but hasn’t told anybody.

"Especially in terms of things like agro chemical management,” she said. “So we've been doing that for several years and we're now just formalising that into a real environmental assurance scheme. We've been providing the same sorts of information to the market, but not badging it as an environmental assurance program."