HOLLOWAY'S CHRISTMAS CONUNDRUM

THE McLAREN VALE WINE REGION. THE VILLA RASH AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS SHOT HAS ALREADY COVERED THE NORTHERN THIRD OF THE REGION, AND WITH GOVERNMENT INSISTENCE, IS CREEPING DETERMINEDLY SOUTH photo STACEY POTHOVEN

Urban Development v. Planning
Minister's Decision Will be Made
Under The Cover Of Christmas
by PHILIP WHITE

While you are chug-a-lugging through your festive season, safely away from the drudgery of the daily news, Paul Holloway, the Minister for Urban Development and Planning, will quietly make a decision which will have a permanent and deep influence on the way our wine regions look and function.

In fact, he will be forced to face the bipolar nature of his responsibility: the issue festers away on the crossroads where development and planning collide.

THE HON. PAUL HOLLOWAY, MLC, MINISTER FOR MINERAL RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT, URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, AND MINISTER ASSISTING THE PREMIER IN PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGEMENT

As the development man, Mr. Holloway has been very keen to see Fairmont Homes get on with an intensive housing estate at the infamous Seaford Heights site, at the entry to McLaren Vale and the Fleurieu Peninsula.

This is where his planning capacities will be sorely tested. Having repeatedly made public statements before the election, promising that there would be no more housing developments in our precious wine regions, he has since also uttered words of awkward frustration at the fact that the winemakers, grape growers, tourism operators, and ordinary citizens of McLaren Vale are in defiant opposition to his pet project on some of the most significant unplanted geology in the entire McLaren Vale region.

THE AUTHOR (left) WITH CONTRIBUTING GEOLOGIST JEFF OLLIVER, DISPLAYING THE GEOLOGY MAP THEY CO-AUTHORED WITH GEOLOGISTS WOLFGANG PREISS AND W.A. "BILL" FAIRBURN photo KATE ELMES

Since the publication of the official Primary Industries and Resources SA map, The Geology Of The McLaren Vale Wine Region, it is becoming evident that many of the region’s best wines come from the oldest (older than 500 million years) geology – as opposed to the recent (younger than 56 million years) marine sediments of the Willunga Embayment.

But the official Geographic Indicators boundary of the McLaren Vale wine region extends well beyond the Willunga Embayment, extending north of the Ochre Cove – Clarendon fault to include Happy Valley, and all the land from Hallet Cove south through Lonsdale, Christie’s Beach, and Port Noarlunga. This is all geology of the more ancient groups: perfect for super-premium vine growing. It is almost completely hidden beneath inexorable villa rash, and it will stay that way.

We came, we saw, we concreted. The vast majority of the region’s very best vineyard sites has already gone to housing: the development side of the equation has blitzed the good sense of reasoned planning, although the geology was known to PIRSA long before the map was published.

“Because they’re wine regions, also significant tourism regions, it would not make sense to have urban encroachment to a significant extent into those areas,” Holloway had wisely promised of the Barossa and McLaren Vale before the election. “So we’ll avoid those ... areas and the areas that we’ll be looking at for future expansion are those areas where there’ll be less impact on the important tourism and economic areas ... why would you want to encroach on areas that are important to the economy because of the significant contribution that they make to the state’s economy through the wine industry and the tourism industry? Clearly that would be put at threat if we allowed rampant urban development within those areas."

Hardly had Mr. Holloway’s government been re-elected than it became evident that he was determined to proceed with the Seaford Heights development, on the grounds that his government “has not added any land in the southern parts of Adelaide to the urban boundary other than Bowering Hill and as Leon [Bignell, Member for Mawson] has just mentioned to you we we we’ve changed our policy on that in relation to uh keeping that for for tourism purposes … This particular land at Seaford Heights has been zoned residential for twenty years and it was er in the urban boundary for, ever since we’ve had an urban boundary.”

Both these statements were made on ABC radio. There has been constant rebellion in the Vales, huge letter-writing campaigns, intense internet activism on the We Oppose Seaford Heights Facebook site, a huge tractor rally which blocked McLaren Vale for an hour, and two blistering speeches at the Onkaparinga Council, by Dudley Brown, chairman of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association until just a week back, when he stood down as he’d always promised to do, having completed his two-year term.

“It’s a key point if you’re talking about saving the McLaren Vale wine district, um, you know we’re very concerned about the entrance to McLaren Vale and Leon’s made that point strongly and we we agree with him and there does need to be a proper buffer on that road, that once you get out of Noarlunga and you head up into the top of the hill and then down into the the Willunga Basin there into McLaren Vale, you do need to have some protection from urban growth and that’s, I believe it was part of the original plan and we’re certainly we’re certainly we’ll certainly be looking at that … ” the Minister said on ABC Mornings on November 1st.

In the Barossa, at Mount Barker, and in McLaren Vale, the Labor government had almost perfected a mechanism that was extremely difficult for concerned residents to deal with. It was dependent on the state government and the relevant local council engaging in a Punch and Judy biffo session, in which both blamed the other for the nature of distasteful development, giving angry citizens an unfathomable, whizzing tangle to fight.

This is precisely how both tiers of government worked with Constellation wines to uproot John Reynell’s heritage-listed 162 year old vineyard at Reynella to make way for intensive units earlier this year.

THE JOHN REYNELL VINEYARD, SOURCE OF THE FAMOUS REYNELL SELECTION CABERNET SAUVIGNON, NOW COVERED IN INTENSIVE HOUSING photo KATE ELMES

“Labor people fluff and bluster about the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide sorting all this,” I wrote in The Independent Weekly in October, “whilst rural Councils get on building ghettoes to guarantee a good supply of rate-paying Labor voters. They don’t consult until the original locals are seething with rage, by which time there’s a whirlwind of planning technicalities, with both echelons of government blaming the other for the very existence of the plan, or its lack of taste and sensitivity ... When opponents finally feel that they’ve landed a winning blow on this spinning genie, poof! It disappears, and there’s a new ghetto in its place.”

But once the McLaren Vale winemakers, led by Brown (left), belatedly realized the imminence of the Seaford Heights development, they geared up very quickly to voice their anger. After a very prickly and packed Council meeting, and an enraged speech by Brown wound to an end, the Onkaparinga Council washed its naïve hands of the hot project, as it had envisaged it.

By convincing council to vote its version of the project down, the protesters had cut their enemy by half: it was only the Labor government left to fight. Blows could be properly aimed.

This led the snookered and obviously piqued Holloway to announce that he would be taking the development over. He accused the council of “flip-flopping,” and told parliament “If every council were to do this, there would be virtually no land left ... there would be absolutely no land available for any future growth for the city.”

While determinedly pro-development Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg (left) survived the recent council election, the composition of her council changed, much to the delight of the protestors. The new council was not obliged to follow the ruling of the old, so last week, the new council met, and Dudley Brown gave it another shot.

“The grape industry of McLaren Vale contributes average annual revenues of approximately $80 million to the local economy,” he said. “It employs sustainably managed and renewable water for over 95% of its irrigation needs while employing over 700 people on a full-time basis. Another 300-500 people are engaged as a second source of income and many more on a contract or part time basis.

“The wine industry of McLaren Vale accounts for over 10% of the national wine output by value, employs over 2000 people full time and contributes $700 million per year in revenues,” Brown continued.

“The tourism industry of the McLaren Vale area just within the Willunga Basin contributes $160 million per year to the local economy comprising over 240 different tourism businesses in accommodation, food, wine, arts, transportation and other areas. Any conservative multiplier would suggest that our industries support another 3000 jobs locally and another 3000 across the state. We provide the single largest source of employment, rates and tourism of any sector of the city of Onkaparinga’s economy.

“Moreover, as McLaren Vale is the highest cost region in SA for wine production, the economy is increasingly dependent on tourism and cellar door visitation as a path to profitability. Evidence of this is that cellar door numbers in the region have expanded from about thirty ten years ago to over eighty at present. This success story has evolved despite major wine companies withdrawing over 50% of their grape consumption and production from our high cost region over the past decade.”

And on he went, presenting fact after fact - you can read the full speech below.

Brown accused both council and state of totally missing the importance of the site’s soil and geology, and referred to my writings on the issue, pointing out that “an article in The Independent Weekly critical of Seaford Heights citing the evidence of this map” led Minister Holloway to “cancel the planned public launch of the map because of the embarrassment caused by this article and overwhelming evidence of this map.”

THE BOTTOM THIRD OF THE GEOLOGY MAP ... THE TOP THIRD OF THE REGION, WHERE THE BEST OLD GEOLOGY LIES, IS COMPLETELY COVERED IN HOUSING ... THE ONLY INCIDENCE OF THESE ANCIENT GROUPS EXPOSED IN THE WILLUNGA EMBAYMENT IS THE SITE OF HOLLOWAY'S PET HOUSING AND LIGHT INDUSTRIAL PROJECT

After making some positive and creative suggestions about what should be done with the site, he finally demanded that council

1) protect as much of the Seaford Heights site as possible for agriculture by any means necessary including requesting the Development Plan be returned to Council

2) impress on the Minister the importance of the location and geology of Seaford Heights

3) include Seaford Heights in the process for the protection of the region’s agricultural lands

4) delay any development at Seaford Heights until legislation can be considered and adopted to protect the agriculture of this region

5) take the position that residents want the highest and best use of this site for the future of the region for all of its residents to be the point for consideration, not what is easiest for the developer to build

6) To send a message to staff that “business is usual development and consultation” in the region is a thing of the past and that it now wants the best for its residents, not the easiest for developers.

Council reacted accordingly, acknowledging Minister Holloway’s letter advising that he would continue the process for the Seaford Heights Development Plan Amendment, but requesting “that the Minister consult with council and the community prior to proceeding further with the Seaford Heights DPA, particularly in relation to any changes he proposes to make to the consultation version of the Seaford Heights DPA,” and listing the bodies, groups and individuals who now should be involved in the new process, and concluding “that in the absence of a commitment from the Minister to consult further with the council and the community on the DPA, the Minister is advised that council objects to his intent to continue the process for the Seaford Heights Development Plan Amendment.”

This became a motion which was put and carried: another of the distasteful morsels Minister Holloway will be chewing with his turkey. Expecting him to need further convincing of their rage, McLaren Vale residents, meanwhile, escalate their angry lobbying.

While they hold their collective breath once all the journalists and news writers have taken their Christmas leave, these citizens will be watching the Minister with forensic scrutiny. The next Tractor Action may not be quite so polite.

THE TRACTOR ACTION PROTEST; HUNDREDS OF AGRICULTURAL VEHICLES CLOGGED McLAREN VALE AND ITS MAJOR ARTERIAL ROADWAYS ON AN OTHERWISE PLEASANT WEEKEND photo LEO DAVIS

LVMH AND THE FINE ART OF PACKAGING

Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey
Beautiful Things For Beauties
And Flavours That'll Teach You

by PHILIP WHITE

Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey is an interesting outfit, if only because not too many prestige handbag manufacturers own so many of the world’s best wineries.

Because its business is making bags to contain the sort of squirty stuff and warpaint repair kits and other mysterious tools that women tote as sidearms, one pays particular attention to the way LVMH packages its wine, much of which is also squirty.

It should be good.

The vast perfume part of the business aside – it includes Dior, Givenchy, Guerlain, etc. - Louis was, in fact, a packer of women’s clothes. A Jura chippie’s son who ran off to Paris at fourteen, he soon found himself apprenticed to Monsieur Maréchal, who sent him to pack the clothes of the Empress Eugénie and her gang everytime they left the Tuileries. Folding, folding, folding …

But 150 years later, in France, particularly Paris, there is no better shopping accoutrement than the Krug shopping bag. These were available only to visitors to Champagne Krug, the world’s most exclusive winery, which also happens to make the world’s most exquisite wine. The bag was heavy paper, bearing the unforgettable Krug logo embossed in thick gold ink in its sides. Even empty it hung with great authority on posh champagne-coloured handle straps of braided silk.

Full, it held three individually boxed bottles of Krug.

As with LVMH’s perfume business, a Krug box is a work of art that almost matches the squirty stuff within. But the old Krug bag is a beast so much more scarce that this in itself is one of the principal reasons to lust for it.

Krug has no cellar salesroom. The winery is part of the integrated Krug family’s households, built around a modest courtyard and a beautiful garden clos in a leafy suburban street in the small provincial city of Reims. One must be invited to enter its cool portals.

Having preached for years the gospel that its Dom Perignon was the world’s greatest Champagne, LVMH had some difficulty when it bought Krug from the punch-drunk Remy Cointreau in 1998. The marketing architects had to quietly slide the smaller, more esteemed brand in on top, without making all those scrillions of dollars of Dom propaganda look like a stack of steaming merde de taureau.

THE 1996 KRUG CLOS d'AMBONNAY BLANC DE NOIR IS SELLING BETWEEN $2,000 AND $3,000 PER BOTTLE ... EVEN AT THAT PRICE, THEY DIDN'T SEND ONE TO DRINKSTER. DAMN!

And the difference? Now that one is old enough to drink, one drinks Krug when one can. When Mick Jagger was young enough to drink, he drank Dom. And although both lots are stuffed with the same blissfully-perfumed CO2 unique to the part of France where they make sparkling wine after the methode traditionelle, the Krug has fewer, more petite cavities.

That Krug bag was better than a black Amex. From Paris to Marseilles it opened great doors otherwise slammed shut upon meandering antipodeans, even when it held only a Bundy rum zip-bag chilling a six-pack.

Almost in return, LVMH has had a few buccaneering antipodean wine adventures of its own – owning as it does Cape Mentelle, at Margaret River in Western Australia, Domain Chandon, in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, and the giant Cloudy Bay, in Marlborough, New Zealand.

In 2006 it rather instantly dumped Mountadam, on High Eden Ridge, when its Paris board decided four wineries here was one too many. New owner David Brown has spent all that time attempting to get the business back to the style its creator, David Wynn, had planned. David’s son Adam sold suddenly in 2000, some time after his father’s death. David’s grand widow, Patricia, died only last week.

Perhaps to convince the writer that all’s tres bonnie in the matter of Kiwi Savvy-B, the big French bagman put extreme effort into the packaging of its latest Cloudy Bay, the 2010. The outermost layer was plain brown paper, decked with an alluring Par Avion sticker and a Customs Dec.

Regular subscribers to the research of the New York based Luxury Goods Institute should be aware that since all the money in the world went funny and shrank a few years back, public extravagance in purchasing fell from favour amongst the discerning rich, and while the Blahniks and Loubos still teetered in flocks from the shoethiers, the new purchases were discretely carried in plain paper bags.

So this brown paper was promising, even when it obviously disguised no shoebox.

Beneath the plain paper lay a tight layer of bubble-wrap. Bubbles again, see. In turn, beneath that, a stylish fitted sleeve of matte cardboard the colour of young champagne, tightly bound a single-bottle wine box. That sleeve off, one found three of its interior panels devoted to attractive photographs, full bleed. One of a whiskery young winemaker with a valence in one hand while his other pushed a snifter into his face, superimposed by the word “Aromas”. With a flourish.

The next, a platter of raw tuna with a glass of white, blurry in the background; “Texture”. An ECU of a hairy finger around the stem said “Vibrancy” in panel # 3.

A small white card dropped out, addressed personally in a standard computer cursive font, “A classic Marlborough vintage in 2010 has allowed us to produce a Sauvignon Blanc with brilliant intensity. We have added a small portion of barrel ferment to give it a weighty texture, which is balanced by a minerally-citrus acid backbone. It shows aromas of ripe lime, grapefruit, nectarine, papaya and mango and floral notes of orange-blossom, gooseberry and sweet fennel. The wine is refined, fleshy yet focused and refreshing. Feel free to e-mail me or contact your Moet Hennessy distributor if you have any comments. Cheers, Timothy.”

Then came the handsome iced coffee-coloured lined cardboard box, with CLOUDY BAY on the lid. While certainly not in the league of the Krug box, or indeed its legendary bag, this was a complex affair, held closed by hidden magnets until opening a little like an accordion, or the border between Germany, the ancestral home of the Krugs, and French Alsace. (“Back unt forth like a madwoman’s accordion, that border,” a vinolent grannie once explained across her beer in Kaiserberg.)

So, defeat the calm, persistent magnets, insist on the opening of the box, and behold a beautiful crimped sort of spongiform packaging sheet - three of them, actually – swells up, along with another type of packer - two blocks of it - deliciously coloured like nougat.

And lying there amongst all this dry froth, the form of a bottle, itself tightly twisted in two 1m. x 50ml. sheets of white tissue paper.

(Mustn’t forget the eighteen-page recipe book, explaining how one cooks the sort of food that Cloudy Bay aficionados are expected to cook while they drink, and also offering the uncertain wine critic the opinions of superior experts Michael Cooper, James Halliday (only 94 points for the 09), Wine Business Monthly, and Fergus McGhie.)

The wine seemed marginally more complex than the standard Cloudy Bay, but nowhere near as masterly as the one one saw there a decade back, when one suggested the standard one was simple and tiresome compared to what would happen if one had been made with wild yeast in old oak and held on lees. As winemaker Kevin Judd was absent on that day, his assistants huddled awhile and then asked one whether one could keep one’s trap shut if one were offered one which under no circumstance was the boss to know one had been shown. One agreed, and out came one which eventually became Te Koko, the twice-the-price king-hell proper Cloudy Bay Sauvignon blanc one can buy only if one persists.

It is heartening to discover some of this intelligence has finally hit the standard CBSB, and that not all the winemaker’s budget has gone into packaging.

The box of six new releases from Cape Mentelle, meanwhile, was your basic brown cardboard slab with bottle separators inside, to stabilise the necks, and another set along the opposite side, to stabilize the bottoms. The latter had collapsed completely, leaving the bottles to clunk dangerously against each other like a set of symphonic bell gongs. A little flat, if anything. Some genius has even changed those handsome, ageless labels to something shiny.

It used to be my favourite colour, chrome.

Like Cloudy Bay, Cape Mentelle is a much larger refinery than it was when LVMH took over. In reality, neither wine bears much similarity to its forebears, but I think the New Zealand product has not fallen as far behind the new wavers as have the Westralian blingsters, whose winemaking budget could even match its packaging. Maybe the Mentelles should be concerned that they do not soon follow Mountadam into oblivion: when the big handbagger decided it had to drop one of its antipodean adventures, that one went in a flash, with workers dismissed summarily, leaving tools scattered and wheelbarrows full of setting cement.

On the other hand, Krug looks safe. They’ve replaced the old paper bag with another three-bottle container, interestingly manufactured to order, not by Louis Vuitton, but trunk specialist Pinel & Pinel. Each of the thirty made took over 700 hours of skilled artisans’ time.

The Krug brown colt-hide exterior has corrosion-proof nickel-plated copper corners, hinges and handles, and one can have one’s own moniker added to the Krug logo in nickel-plated letters on the lid.

Inside, it’s all bright red calfskin. François Bauchet designed the ice bucket, WMF the truffle-grater; the tulip glasses are the bespoke Krug shape, the caviar spoons mother-of-pearl, and “another ingenious feature is that the trunk lid folds out to make an elegant table, while a wool and cashmere tablecloth, fine china and four leather stools appear as if by magic, ready for a sumptuous picnic, or an impromptu celebration.”

Most significantly, this handbag contains three bottles of Krug Grand Cuvée and will involve a consideration of, what? A smidge over $60,000, in Harrods? Oh, they sold out?

Then try the Krug Escape Artists series trunks, which hold only one or two bottles apiece but are a steal at $18,000 a pop. The Blue Trunk is set up for cigar lovers; the Red Trunk is for poker players, and the Silver contains a Samsung T9 MP3 video player with Bluetooth, a JBL “On Tour Plus” sound system, and a bottle of Krug Rosé.

Buyers must legally be over 21 years of age. Unless they wrap their trunks in brown paper.


Krug Champagne 1996
$500; 98++ points

Any duffer must agree with the Krug family when they call this vintage “extreme, eccentric champagne”. On another level, it’s that way because it’s so stubbornly, insistently Krug in its style, being a combination of the dogged determination of the Krugs to maintain their house distinction through a unique formula honed consistently since 1843, and one of the most formidably confounding vintages in a century.

1996 was the last Krug vintage to which Paul Krug II contributed: it was blended by him, his sons Rémy and Henri, and his grandson Olivier, who famously reported “Throughout his life, my grandfather shunned exaggeration of every kind. But on this occasion, he looked at us and said ‘I think this may well be the next 1928’.”

Which is saying something. While the 1928 was growing ricketty when I last tasted it in the early ’nineties, it still had the whiff of sublimity, a skerrick of its original fruit, and astonishing, living natural acidity holding its old flesh to its austere, rigid skeleton.

1996 was a freak year, weather-wise. The on-off summer alternated between sodding rain-driven humidity and extreme dry heat, which eventually surrendered to a sunny, clear autumn with freezing nights. The Krug system of pressing each parcel of fruit in or near its source vineyard, then fermenting and ageing the must in neutral, old Argonne barrels and taking complexity from deliberate oxidation and extended lees contact, whilst eschewing malo-lactic fermentation, the reserve then stored in chilled stainless steel away down in the chalk until required, always gives wine of character and finesse far beyond the sum of its components. And by deliberate oxidation, I mean it: once the Krugs have decided on the composition of each cuvée, its barrels are drawn from below and tipped on the blending room floor, from whence the wine flows back down a pipe through the chalk to the blending tank way below. The winery smells very good at assemblage!

The vagaries of 1996 have obviously bowed very low to the Kruggiste method, for this wine is indeed an astonishing, perfectly polished thing of beauty: the typical Krug counterpoint of extreme complexity with unlikely finesse. Chardonnay, Pinot noir and Pinot meunier have been blended to conjure a wine of such beauty and confidence that it seems almost matter-of-fact. Normal. The done thing. Oh how I wish! Ripe anjou and comice pears seep calmly through the bouquet, with some sort of exquisite honey and ginger brioche, yet to be invented. The palate is creamy and reassuringly smooth in that strangely assertive and matter-of-fact way, and ever-so-gradually tapers off, leaving a rapier of stern acidity and the feeling that something very very rare and special has just happened to your gustatories. The aftertaste is incredibly fresh and enlivening; the bead and mousse ever so fine, gentle, and persistent in its caress.

I once asked Henri how much research they’d done into the secret of Krug’s tiny bubbles. He said such information was a highly confidential secret of Krug but admitted he’d spent many years counting them. So. The price? Sell your car.


Krug Champagne 1998
$550; 97+++ points

There's an apocryphal yarn about the murderer who, upon being strapped into the electric chair, looked at his executioner and said "This'll teach me". This wine always reminds me of that. I don't really know why: the damned thing is so profoundly confronting in its beauty and intensity that the mind does go silly, in a willy nilly, electrocuted sort of way. Thoughts fall to the floor and shatter harmlessly about the drinker: they no longer count. Perhaps it's also the serene expectation that one will soon be found dead in one's chair with a really silly smile and a glass, empty, clutched in a grip that makes Charlton Heston's rifleman speech look like something uttered by a total softcock. The smell of an organic wheatfield, almost ripe, after the lightest rain. The smell of the most delicate brioche. Hazelnut. Wet chalk. Sliced, poached almond being fastidiously placed on a perfect marzipan icing in the kitchen of La Crayere. Oyster mushroom, and enoki. I can smell it for an hour, happy to postpone the execution. But finally, involuntarily, the glass finds its way to the lips, and like all Krug, just seems to evaporate into my organs. My body. The corpuscles, the genes, the chromasomes vibrate in immaculate harmony, and purr. This must send a transmission so powerful it can be received by other life forms, billions of light years away.

I remember Remi Krug remarking twenty years ago that he admired the way I guzzled the Grand Cuvee, rather than inhaling common air through it to make that obscene gurgling noise and spitting it like an Englishman. "But I am thirsty,” I responded, “and anyway, Krug comes properly perforated with bubbles installed by the Krug family. It needs no other air buggering it up." And so it goes. No need to change the technique. Gulp it down! Have it from a bigger glass! Pour yourself a tumbler! Do it again! Sell your house!

PRACTICAL KRUG: BOOKER AND WHITBEAD PRIZE-WINNER DBC PIERRE ENJOYING A BIRTHDAY BOTTLE OF GRAND CUVEE AT THE TIME OF THE AUSTRALIAN LAUNCH OF LIGHTS OUT IN WONDERLAND, THE THIRD VOLUME IN PIERRE'S TRILOGY ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OFCAPITALISM blurry photo by PIKE

PS: for a touch of light and movement, go back to the handbag at the top and click its latch.

SEAFORD HEIGHTS: BROWN BLASTS COUNCIL

DUDLEY BROWN, LEFT, AT THE RECENT TRACTOR ACTION PROTEST IN McLAREN VALE, WITH, L-R, DEMO ORGANISER LAURA JACKSON, CHALK HILL WINES PROPRIETOR JOHN HARVEY, THE AUTHOR, AND PETER DAWSON, FORMER CHIEF WINEMAKER OF CONSTELLATION WINES AUSTRALIA, NOW A GRAPEGROWER AND CHAIRMAN OF THE AUSTRALIAN WINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE photo LEO DAVIS

Brown Browbeats Bullshitters
Final Speech As Chairman Is
Stacked With Awkward Facts

SPEECH TO ONKAPARINGA COUNCIL 7 December 10 by DUDLEY BROWN, RETIRING CHAIRMAN OF THE McLAREN VALE GRAPE WINE AND TOURISM ASSOCIATION

My name is Dudley Brown. For the past two years I have been the Chairman of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association. Today was my last day in the job. Although I speak with an accent, I am an Australian citizen.

The McLaren Vale wine region’s borders which are call a GI are recognized by international treaty to be roughly contiguous with the borders of the City of Onkaparinga. Like you, we represent the entire city of Onkaparinga and not just the town of McLaren vale.

Part of our charter is to maintain and preserve the rural amenity of our region for future generations to enjoy.

The grape industry of McLaren Vale contributes average annual revenues of approximately $80 million to the local economy. It employs sustainably managed and renewable water for over 95% of its irrigation needs while employing over 700 people on a full-time basis. Another 300-500 people are engaged as a second source of income and many more on a contract or part time basis.

The wine industry of McLaren Vale accounts for over 10% of the national wine output by value, employs over 2000 people full time and contributes $700 million per year in revenues.

The tourism industry of the McLaren Vale area just within the Willunga Basin contributes $160 million per year to the local economy comprising over 240 different tourism businesses in accommodation, food, wine, arts, transportation and other areas.

Any conservative multiplier would suggest that our industries support another 3000 jobs locally and another 3000 across the state. We provide the single largest source of employment, rates and tourism of any sector of the city’s economy.

McLaren Vale is consistently recognized by key media such as Australian Gourmet Traveler and Delicious as the number one wine and food region in Australia.

It has the #1 regional restaurant in Australia at Fino, it is the #1 region in Australia for local produce, the home of two of the top ten wine lists in Australia at the Victory and Fino, the host of Australia’s richest landscape art prize, the most valuable vineyard land in Australia and the highest value wine exports from Australia both by average price and in volume.

When the planning decisions for the proposed Seaford Heights suburb were made between the 1960’s and early last decade, the McLaren Vale wine industry was:

a) Spread out with many vineyards in the northern half of the current City of Onkaparinga

b) Much less intensive in nature relative to other crops

b) Less than 10% of its current size economically

c) Insignificant in terms of tourism

Since that time, a large portion of the historic viticultural areas in the northern part of the city have been developed for suburban development with the oldest vineyard in Australia bulldozed with this Council’s acquiescence at Reynella last year.

At the same time, the southern part of the region has been much more intensively planted to vines. This part of the city is now, by far, the most intensively planted wine region (relative to other crops) in Australia.

The result has been an economic explosion of wine production and tourism in the region. McLaren Vale now accounts for: 25% of state grape and wine production by value, the highest per litre price for exports of any region in Australia, the highest total value exports of any wine region in Australia, the most successful job creator relative to water and grape inputs of any wine region in Australia and is the largest contributor to tourism of any SA region outside of Adelaide.

Moreover, as McLaren Vale is the highest cost region in SA for wine production, the economy is increasingly dependent on tourism and cellar door visitation as a path to profitability. Evidence of this is that cellar door numbers in the region have expanded from about thirty ten years ago to over eighty at present. This success story has evolved despite major wine companies withdrawing over 50% of their grape consumption and production from our high cost region over the past decade.

The result of this adaptive response to adversity is a wonderful and diverse set of tourism experiences that enable visitors to return many times and always have new experiences available to them. This is the exact type of organic economic development that state and local governments should be protecting and promoting rather than threatening with unsuitable development.

No other industry or area located in the City of Onkaparinga can list so many “best in Australia” gongs.

The Seaford Heights development is located at the entrance to the gateways to the tourism regions of McLaren Vale, the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The land adjoins the beginning of the vineyards of the town of McLaren Vale on the Victor Harbor Road and the open spaces of South Road. It is the point where suburbia fades away and the holiday experience begins for more people than any other region in South Australia.

Any development that occurs here should be designed from the context of the site’s importance as a place of transition from the suburbs to a major wine and food tourism region not as an extension of the suburbs. Further, the site should also leverage the assets and possibilities presented by its proximity to an international airport for tourists, the city of Adelaide, major universities, one of the most economically important wine regions in Australia, a two-way freeway and a reliable supply of reclaimed water. Aside from the freeway, the current plan ignores all of these assets. For this reason alone, the Council should reject the current DPA as a hasty and ill-considered outcome for the entire region.

The documents for tonight’s meeting reveal that while the strategic location of this site as a transition zone from the suburbs to Australia’s most important wine and food tourism region seems to finally be understood, the importance of the soil and geology of the site are not understood at all.

In fact, the Mayor and staff, particularly Terry Sutcliffe, have repeatedly questioned the validity of the readily available geological information. Unfortunately for them, they are wrong in their beliefs and doubly wrong in trying to make others question the facts in this matter. That the people elected and hired to protect our interests would do this is a matter that you have the power to correct.

AN EARLY PROTEST AT SEAFORD HEIGHTS. AMANDA RISHWORTH (LABOR PARTY) WAS RUNNING FOR RE-ELECTION TO HER FEDERAL PARLIAMENTARY SEAT. SHE FILED A POLICE REPORT ALLEGING THE THEFT OF HER CAMPAIGN POSTERS FROM PUBLICLY-OWNED ELECTRICITY POLES. NOBODY HAS BEEN CHARGED; RISHWORTH WAS RE-ELECTED

The facts at Seaford Heights are these:

The exposed geology of the site is 600-650 million years old. We know this because the state government’s best geologists studied and reported on this site to the state government over thirty years ago. However, this data was not published as a map until July of this year when MVGWTA paid to have it published in partnership with the state government’s PIRSA section. In fact, the state government was so proud of this effort that Minister Holloway was going to hold a public launch of this map in July.

Another fact is that there is no undeveloped site of this quality and age that exists in any other wine region in the world. It is truly an asset of international significance.

Another fact is that we know this geology will grow world beating wine grapes because there is another pocket of these soils in the Barossa Valley called the GSM triangle that has produced more perfect wine scores than any other sub-region in the world. This is where Grange, Greenock Creek and Torbreck are grown. This is a very big deal.

Another fact is that Seaford Heights is actually superior to the GSM triangle in the Barossa because of its proximity to the cooling breezes of the sea.

Another fact is that there is a virtually unlimited supply of ecologically friendly reclaimed water across the road from Seaford Heights that could be used to develop this site for agriculture.

Another fact is that the city’s planners made no effort to obtain or understand the readily available geological information about this site in its investigations in preparation of the DPA. The DPA suggest merely that the site has “grey brown loams suitable for foundations and gardens.” As a ratepayer, I find this level of willful ignorance and incompetence by our staff unacceptable.

Despite our understanding of these geological facts, we obtained an independent opinion as to the suitability of the Seaford Heights site for viticulture from Warren Randall so that the Council might understand this better. His letter has been distributed to you tonight. Please read it closely.

Warrens letter makes the international importance and economic potential of the site for viticulture very clear – at least ¾’s of a billion dollars of revenue over the next forty years for this region. Despite your Mayor and staff not understanding the value of this site, the rest of the world does.

Dozens of articles have been published all over the world in newspapers, magazines, blogs and web sites about the potential destruction of this site. The publicity created by destroying this land will last for generations and prevent our region from ever being recognized as one of the most important wine regions in the world.

The final fact is that prior to the public release of the geology map, one of the authors, Philip White, published an article in the Independent Weekly critical of Seaford Heights citing the evidence of this map. Minister Holloway subsequently cancelled the planned public launch of the map because the embarrassment caused by this article and overwhelming evidence of this map.

Some more facts:

The DPA for Seaford Heights was supposedly developed with the input of the Council and, by extension, the community. The MVGWTA was never consulted at any formal stage of the DPA process about this development despite the Councils statutory obligation to consult with significant community stakeholders. Only after we raised a ruckus (and following the official community consultation stage) did the mayor hold a special meeting to hear our concerns. Despite this, she does not yet seem to understand them.

MAYOR LORRAINE ROSENBERG: 'DOES NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND".

Another fact is that no serious use alternative to the proposed development was considered. Had we been consulted many other higher value uses would have been proposed for the site. What ideas would we have offered had we been asked?

Our region needs tourism infrastructure such as a significant hotel and restaurant space to continue to prosper. McLaren Vale is the only major wine region in the world that lacks a hotel. A hotel would create immediate economic value for the existing businesses across the region as well as jobs.

The region desperately needs high paying white collar jobs. The current DPA envisions low paying retail jobs. These McJobs jobs was the idea of city staff. On a wages paid or wages per square metre basis, these are about the worst jobs we can create at this site for our region. I’m pretty certain the staff didn’t concern themselves with these details either.

The wine industry needs office space, room for new cellar doors to open, storage and other uses. Another idea is for Flinders University to open a satellite campus for its national research center for ground water. McLaren Vale has the oldest managed basin in Australia and is the best test site in Australia to do this. Another is for Flinders to use the site as a location for a fourth stream for their business school in international hospitality management. Or, an institute for culinary arts and sommeliers. No one from the city has even approached any of these potential investors and employers to discuss these serious possibilities. I have and I know there is interest. These would all add far greater value to the region over all time horizons than another suburb with big box retailers that destroy our region.

What about a transit oriented development near the proposed tram station with high density housing close to south road that would supply significant affordable housing and preserve land for open space and viticulture?

What about building higher density detached dwellings like those at Lochiel Park that attract higher income residents who would create more high paying jobs nearby?

While there are many more, all of these are possibilities that create more value for our region by creating more sustainable high paying jobs and communities for people of all ages and incomes than the current proposal. The fact is that none of these possibilities were considered by the city staff in the preparation of the DPA. Just chain stores and business as usual suburban development.

AN ANGRY DAVID PAXTON IN HIS PRIZED GATEWAY VINEYARD, WHICH IS MANAGED WITH FASTIDIOUS RESPECT OF THE ENVIRONMENT. THE HILL BEHIND HIM IS THE SITE OF THE PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT - photo KATE ELMES

The final fact about Seaford Heights is that once the earth is turned for development, the land is destroyed forever for the highest possible agriculture use in the world. The question we have repeatedly asked without obtaining an answer is this: “knowing all of this, what’s the rush?”

What we expect from this Council are the following:

1) to protect as much of the Seaford Heights site as possible for agriculture by any means necessary including requesting the DP be returned to Council

2) to impress on the Minister the importance of the location and geology of Seaford Heights

3) to include Seaford Heights in the process for the protection of our agricultural lands

4) to delay any development at Seaford Heights until legislation can be considered and adopted to protect the agriculture of this region

5) to take the position that we want the highest and best use of this site for the future of the region for all of its residents to be the point for consideration, not what is easiest for the developer to build.

6) To send a message to your own staff that business is usual development and consultation in our region is a thing of the past and that we want the best for our residents, not the easiest for developers.

The fact is that this region has been sold out short by a lack of creativity and imagination by the people we employ to advance our interests and by a lack of leadership by the people we have elected to oversee them. Instead, we have a Mayor who publicly blames the Council, the State government and a vocal minority (that’s us) for the problems presented by this horribly flawed proposal.

In his closing arguments in the trial defending the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, John Adams famously said: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” We expect this Council to be guided by facts, not political expediency, prevarications or the willful ignorance of the mayor or the Council’s staff, in its deliberations tonight.

The final and most important fact I will present tonight is that we have a new council that is not bound by the decisions of the prior council. You alone have the power to take charge of this situation. We expect you to represent us appropriately by doing so. People and newspapers and magazines and bloggers all over the world are watching you tonight. We trust you will act accordingly.

... And Council's Response?
Some Sense At Last!
Now We Start Again ...

FROM THE MINUTES OF THE CITY OF ONKAPARINGA COUNCIL, TUESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2010

Cr Wenham MOVED an AMENDMENT

Considerable consultation and discussion has focussed on, and identified, different forms of development on the Seaford Heights land than that proposed by the developer.

Council strongly believes that these issues warrant further investigation and consultation, along with the list of unresolved issues previously identified by the former council. And subsequently at Government Planning and Coordination Committee and 30 November 2010 meeting convened by Leon Bignell.

1. That Council acknowledges receipt of the letter from the Minister for Urban Development and Planning of 29 October 2010 advising that he is proposing to continue the process for the Seaford Heights Development Plan Amendment.

2. That council request that the Minister for Urban Development and Planning consult with council and the community prior to proceeding further with the Seaford Heights DPA, particularly in relation to any changes he proposes to make to the consultation version of the Seaford Heights DPA. This includes the unresolved issues raised from the public consultation process (including the inclusion of planning for Seaford Heights development in the current planning for the protection of the Willunga Basin) and outlined in Council’s resolution of 7 September 2010 on this matter and communicated to the Minister thereafter.

3. That the consultation outlined in (2) above include a facilitated workshop involving:

• Selected City of Onkaparinga elected members and staff

• Parties who have made formal submissions on the DPA

• Department for Planning and Local Government

• Department for Transport Energy and Infrastructure

• Land Management Corporation

• Department for Environment and Heritage

• Environment Protection Authority

• Department of Trade and Economic Development

• SA Tourism Commission

• Department for Primary Industry and Resources

• State member for Mawson Leon Bignell

• Federal member for Kingston Amanda Rishworth

• Minister for Southern Suburbs

4. That the consultation outlined in (2) above also include an investigation of development form and land use appropriate to a gateway and transition to the Fleurieu Peninsula and the Willunga Basin eg mixed use development incorporating medium densities, offices, tourist accommodation, entertainment, cellar door and retail, university education.

5. That Council advocates the significance of the Seaford Heights geology and the need for this to be considered as part of this DPA.

6. That in the absence of a commitment from the minister to consult further with the council and the community on the DPA, the Minister is advised that council objects to his intent to continue the process for the Seaford Heights Development Plan Amendment.

Seconded by Cr Olsen.

The AMENDMENT was PUT and CARRIED. It then became the MOTION which was PUT and CARRIED.

SPRING: THE VALES STREAMS WERE FIZZIN'!

PAN by SYDNEY LONG 1898 ART GALLERY of NEW SOUTH WALES ... LOOKS A LITTLE LIKE AUTUMN, BUT CALL IT A SMOKY SPRING EVE, SQUINT YOUR EYES, OPEN YOUR NOSTRILS ... YOU'LL GET THE DRIFT

Return Of The Juicy Sward Spring Hits Casa Blanco Start Playing The Flutes
by PHILIP WHITE - from the recent archive

10 September 2010

Start playing the flutes. The wood-sylphs and trolls of winter are not yet faded, yet already the elves and pixies of spring are loose in the landscape, making the fields vibrate. August had not yet taken his bow when that glorious sploosh of a winter made way for the first bonnie days of the new season. The streams are fizzin’, the flats are squelchy; the hillsides are making water. Suddenly there are lambs everywhere; the baby waterbirds will be next, and lines of stern ducklings will soon be marching across the lawn. The air is sweet.

The glory vine at my casement is pumping out leaf as the last few pruning gangs adapt to the change from pruning in the rain to pruning in the crisp spring frosts. Their expert job is almost done.

It is hard to explain the depth of delight I derive from watching the mentality, the very technology of viticulture changing like it is. Not too many years back nearly all our vineyard country was so thoroughly blitzed with petrochemical herbicides that if you suddenly removed the vines there would be desert.

In some Lutheran vignobles, it seemed the pastors must have been preaching the gospel of Recreational Cultivation: when there’s absolutely nothing left that needs doing a bloke feels nervously obliged to jump on his tractor and get out there give those vineyards hell. Miss one blade of grass and your wife might get shunned at church. This technology is gradually fading.

Many proud professional viticulturers have found the trend confronting to their vanity: the vineyards don’t look nearly so tidy with other plants in them, and Lord knows, everybody that drives past can see that half of that is weeds!

BRITISH RHONE EXPERT, JONATHON LIVINGSTONE-LEARMONTH, DRINKING GRENACHE IN McLAREN VALE IN THE SPRING - photo KATE ELMES

But increasingly, particularly in McLaren Vale, the vineyards are full of juicy sward and the growers are using sheep and cattle to replace the weeds with neat little dollops of the best fresh fertilizer. So we see electric fences appearing in vineyards, and stock gates. In search of a bit of a scratch the cattle may break the odd tap or weak post, but they soon learn to graze along the vine rows in a bunch, and there’s no need to spray anything.

Suddenly, there’s a reason to have a couple of winery dogs. But these will be tougharse kelpies to work stock, not loll around the fire at cellar door, sniffing the women, waiting for the photographers from the Winemakers’ Dog porn annual to come around for the spreadshot.

SPRING IN McLAREN VALE: DOUG GOVAN'S RUDDERLESS VINEYARD, ON THE GULF St. VINCENT, AT HIS VICTORY HOTEL ON SELLICKS HILL - photo MILTON WORDLEY

One morning at Yangarra I found all the staff catching a fine feed of redfin in the dam. Uh-huh. After two brisk hours of casting spinners, the buckets of fish were mulched and fermented in fertilizing tea for the vineyard. The tank containing this sinister brew, with all its herbs, bacterium and yeasts, is near the dovecote. It’s called The Bitch, and some days she smells like Bangkok. She’s greedy.

The dovecote is there to attract raptors: the white pointers of the sky. Neither prey birds nor pigeons eat grapes, but the hearts and brains of pigeons are full of the high-octane sugar the raptors need to make their deadly raids. As the goshawks and falcons call by this convenient drive-in, they scare the bejeezus out of all the starlings, parrots and pesty birds that eat grapes.

It doesn’t completely beat the gas guns, but by Bacchus it helps. If we could somehow make the tight wires of trellised vineyards less lethal to the hunting raptor’s wing bones, they would be much more at home, and feel like an essential part of the team.

EARLY SPRING IN THE HIGH SANDS VINEYARD AT YANGARRA: PREMIUM GRENACHE BUSH VINES NOT WATERED SINCE THEY WERE PLANTED IN 1946 - photo STACEY POTHOVEN

Goshawks are particularly messy diners. One got sprung red-beaked in the dovecote, and my goodness he’d made a mess. The survivors were cowering in the eaves watching the carnage unfold below.

“Get that thing outa here! He just ate my wife’s brain!”

THE HERITAGE-LISTED DOVECOTE AT CONSTELLATION WINES' CHATEAU REYNELLA


I notice the dovecote at Constellation Wines’ Chateau Reynella could use a little careful restoration and cleaning. This, the Algonquin Hotel of the Pigeon World, used to sit further up the hill, in the vineyard where all the houses want to be. It was there to attract raptors, to scare the grape-eaters. Now it’s attracting the odd goshawk to the corporate carpark, where the Falcons have wheels.

And vignerons end up erecting those dumb plastic falcons that flop sickeningly about on the ends of their dumb poles.

As you drive around our vignobles this spring, become your own aficionado with my vanishing vineyard test: imagine what the field would be like if the vines suddenly disappeared. If there’s still balance in the garden, compliment the winemaker. Befriend them.

Look at the pruned vines now, before they are lost in their leaf. Have they been manipulated to grow great yields of industrial plonk? Or are they mean and racy like those vineyard kelpies, trimmed for persistence in an honest, modest expectation of success? You’ll soon learn the difference. Compliment the landlord. Buy the wine.

I’m sorry to mention those spring frosts.

CAB MAC v COKE - AUSTRALIA v FRANCE

STEPHEN HICKINBOTHAM 1983 - photo WHITELIGHT

Making A Pause Refreshing Having Bought Jacob's Creek France Copies It
by PHILIP WHITE - two recent additions to the archive

2 July 2010

In the early ’eighties a brilliant young winemaker, Stephen Hickinbotham, decided Australia needed a bottled red wine that would fight off the dodgy French Beaujolais Nouveau which was threatening to catch Australian attention.

An early adherent to the notion of premium wines having a sense of place, a home base, and a distinctive terroir, Hick was also aware that the irrigated Murray-Darling was about to start producing a lot more amorphous red than Australia could drink.

To make the most of this, he modified the Beaujolais winemaking technique called maceration carbonique, invented and sought patents for the simple, cheap equipment his new technique required, and registered the name Cab Mac. His elegant script logo was deliberately designed to look like Coca Cola.

But like Beaujolais Nouveau, which vanished in an international currency shift, Cab Mac only threatened to catch Australian attention: after a few exciting vintages, Hick was killed in a plane crash, and the whole exercise fizzled out, in spite of it being sold for expansion to John Valmorbida, who then owned Mitchelton winery.

It was a great pity, because Cab Mac was reliably a much better wine than the baby Beaujolais, and was vastly superior to the bladder pack reds which now make up a great deal of our red output (last year we drank 96.7 megalitres of bottled red vs. 56 megalitres of bladder pack).

Last week, Valérie Pajotin, the diva directrice générale of the Association Nationale Interprofessionelle du Vin de France, or ANIVIN, announced that France should now approach its wine manufacture in a totally new way. She even named that great French-owned product, Jacob’s Creek, and triggered an international frisson when she said “It’s like creating a well-known brand name, like Apple or Coca-Cola”.

After interminable Gallic wrangling, this new ANIVIN body has the job of promoting France’s new Australian-style refinery-made wine. In a sense, Pajotin has replicated the young Hick’s dream, and even dared to mention the C-C-words.

Most of Australia’s grapes go into amorphous bottom-shelf blends which sell in the vulnerable nether regions, where the tiny profits are at the mercy of endless currency fluctuations, and the whims of new rival countries which can produce similar products at lower costs than we can manage.

Their labour is cheaper; they usually have much more water than us, and their environmental awareness and controls are nowhere near as restrictive as Australia’s.

Add a flash of critical discontent like our plonk has attracted in the USA and UK in recent years, and a great degree of the Australian wine business suddenly looks a lot more rickety than anyone seems ready to admit.

And just when we thought we had France licked, Mme. Pajotin has lurched it back into the picture, big time.

There are 861,075 hectares of wine grapes in France. Australia has 162,550 hectares.

While the pointy end of Australia’s premium wine business is finally beginning to understand the importance of local geologies and terroir, which the best of the French have understood for centuries, the rest of the French have finally legislated to make possible enormous inter-regional refinery blends, just like the dud end of our business.

This new megabulk appellation is called Vin de France. And while it appears, on the face of it, to be more along the lines of your baby Beaujolais than Cab Mac in quality, Mme. Pajotin’s threatening to very quickly rattle the trendy end of Australia’s cage.


She’s taking the great Ocker wine refinery doctrine, demolishing France’s inter-regional blending restrictions, and is about to replace France’s knowledge of wine regions with a new knowledge of varieties.

She’s determined first to teach French lasses whether they’re Pinot grigio girls, Sauvignon blanc girls or Chardonnay girls – she’s a Chardonnay girl – but is already challenging the vast grapeyards of France to open their floodgates with giant blends that Australia simply cannot match.

While Colombard/Chardonnay and Carignan/Shiraz sound uncannily workaday Ocker, this country simply could not mount a counter-attack with Chardonnay/Gros manseng, Terret/Sauvignon blanc or Gamay/Shiraz, which Mme. Pajotin’s right onto.

And she’s looking way past the borders of France: she’s determined to win back the shelves of the UK, the USA, and Germany, with fewer brands of more consistent varietally-labelled mega-blends than ever before.

In the same week that every Australian politician with a propensity for travel and red teeth was leading a delegation of their favourite Australian winemakers into China, Mme. Pajotin uttered that C-word, too.

One thing about the Chinese. Their wine business has been inextricably entwined with France since the days the English poured them a Cognac as they paid for their tea with shiploads of opium. French wines were the only grape-based alcohol in the courts of Beijing and Shanghai long before Mao took his walk, and China still proudly thrusts forward bottles of Dynasty, the Remy-Martin joint venture that commenced with Frenchmen teaching China how to plant and manage vineyards right when Hick was working on his first Cab Mac.

JACOB'S CREEK IS NOW AN INTERNATIONAL TORRENT: PERNOD-RICARD CONSULTANT AND FORMER BOSS WINEMAKER FOR JACOB'S CREEK, PHIL LAFFER, NOW WORKING ON BIG NEW PERNOD-RICARD VINEYARDS IN NORTH CHINA

Now we see Pernod-Ricard, the giant French pastis empire which owns Jacob's Creek, busy establishing vast vineyards in China. Who knows - If the history of the Pernod and Ricard families' attitude to such important terroir as Steingarten is any indicator, we may soon see a Chinese Jacob's Creek.

The Chinese prefer long-term relationships.

Winemaker Of The Year Dutschke Resurrects Cab Mac At St. Jacobi The Perfect Sunshine Slurp

1 October 2010

Wayne Dutschke, Barons of Barossa Winemaker of the Year 2010, slunk a slinky blast from the past onto the market during the winter. He’s rekindled Stephen Hickinbotham’s early ’eighties invention, Cab Mac.

The ingenious Hickie had been infuriated by Australia’s infatuation with Beaujolais. The macho Aussie Dollar bought many Francs in those days, and to quote John Cale, “the Beaujolais was raining”.

Beaujolais is the impossibly cute vignoble south of Burgundy en route to the Rhone. It grows Gamay, an audacious juicy red which the vignerons traditionally vinify by carbonic maceration, where bunches are fermented whole in small containers so the wines can be sold quick and fruity.

The most obscene marketing perversion of this was the annual Beaujolais Nouveau release, when vignerons hired helicopters or whatever it took to get the first wine from the new vintage to market. I recall wine-bearing paras leaping into the Thames to get it into London gullets one year, and distributors doing very silly things to be the first into Sydney with the barely-fermented folly.



Eternally scheming of ways of outdoing the French, Hickie reached into his winemaking father Ian’s vast knowledge and theories about collapsible plastic wine containers. In the ’sixties Ian had worked hard on the adaption of the Italian vinegar bladder pack for use as a fine wine container – the wine “cask” - with David Wynn and Penfolds, and had also played with the idea of using bag liners in concrete wine tanks to minimise oxidation during the industry’s post-war conversion from sticky fortifieds to premium dry wines.

Shipping containers fitted with such liners are the standard bulk export containers now: giant oxygen-free bladder packs.



Instead of tanks, Hickie used potato pallets, those wooden pallet-sized boxes of about a metre deep, designed to be shoved about and stacked by forklifts. He patented a plastic bag liner which could be sealed to prevent oxygen ingress, but was fitted with a valve, so the normal CO2 of ferment could escape under its own pressure.

You simply picked grapes directly into these big bags in boxes, zipped them shut, and left the grapes to ferment within their own skins. Sometimes, to preclude oxygen and cool the fruit, he’d put big chunks of dry ice – frozen CO2 – in the bottom of each bag.

The shallow nature of the pallet ensured there was insufficient pressure on the bottom bunches to squash the berries, so there was absolutely minimal free juice running in absolutely minimal oxygen.

WAYNE DUTSCHKE

If you wanted to hurry the ferment, you left the pallets in the sun. To slow it down, you put them in the cellar.

Each berry is its own little sealed tank in this technology. As the wild yeasts of the vineyard begin to ferment the juice within each grape anaerobically, they extract a different spectrum of phenolics – tannins and colour - to those that would be exctracted from the same grapes submerged in juice in a normal whole bunch ferment.

Once the average alcohol reaches, say, six percent, the bags are tipped into the crusher and the ferment continues normally in tank. No oak is required, and largely regardless of the red variety used, the wine displays an intense cherries, nuts and berries freshness with a sort of gentle spiciness that normal ferments rarely produce.

While it’s dry, and not sweet, the result is a little like the effect of botrytis on sweet whites: this peculiar method naturally produces a smoothed-out flavour of its own, which can be more pronounced than the normal varietal indicators.

Hick registered the name Cab Mac, had a logo drawn that matched the cool breeziness of the Coca Cola calligraphy, and released a string of reds that were immediately noted for their vivacity and unabashed freshness of fruit.

JENNY REGAN AND STEPHEN HICKINBOTHAM. MID-EIGHTIES







John Valmorbida, owner then of Mitchelton in the Goulburn Valley, bought the system and the brand and continued with it for years, with the input of winemakers Don Lewis and Wayne Dutschke.

Hickie was killed with his partner Jenny Regan and five other close friends in a plane crash at Cairns, and Cab Mac became another of his brilliant ideas and inventions that were never fully extended.

Remembering this at a time when Australia is blamed with making wines too strong and too thick for easy refreshment, Wayne Dutschke took a look around the internet, and discovered the Cab Mac name was available for a song. The product had been let languish when Brian Croser bought Mitchelton, and since he sold his empire to Lion Nathan, now part of Kirin, the giant Japanese brewer, Cab Mac simply and stupidly slid into oblivion.

Dutschke couldn't believe his luck.

WORKING DUTSCHKE'S St. JACOBI VINEYARD, Ca. 1900

His wine is from old vine Shiraz from his home block at Lyndoch. He used small airtight tanks, where the berries sat for nearly a fortnight before crushing. The ferment was finished normally, and the wine bottled and released.

The resulting Cab Mac 2010 is a modest 13.2% alcohol and is the perfect sunshine slurp for spring or summer weather. The normally floral nature of Lyndoch Shiraz, reminiscent of the best of Beaujolais anyway, has an extra layer of bright maraschino and marello cherry, and a subtle nutmeg spiciness that looks all the world like good oak.

So, we have a spunky 2010 dry red that slots neatly between Grenache and Pinot in style, at a cool $20, and an easy 92 points. You should be into it by the time your patio vine casts a proper shadow.

BOTTLE RECYCLING IN S.A. CUCKOO'S NEST

WAVY GRAVY: THE CEILING OF AESOP BOTTLE SUPPLIERS IN ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, IS MADE FROM RECYCLED BOTTLES.

Kesey's Ghost Keeps SA Clean Beverages Container Legislation Could Help Original Drinkers 
by PHILIP WHITE - (from the archive, June 2010)


My first thorough exploration of the bottled grog racket was in the red hot summer of 72-73. That winter, the world had run out of petrol. In the evenings, I could stroll all the way home - from the University of Adelaide to my squat in posh Walkerville - in the middle of the road, whitelining.

There were no cars.

We staged a Wole Soyinke play, Kongi’s Harvest, in the Union Hall, directed by Rob Brookman, with Ben Yenge and yrs truly on congas and bongos, and nobody came. Nobody.

But once the juice began to flow again and the summer blasted in, Adelaide began a boozebinge that would have today’s interferist wowsers aflame with disgust. The very confronting notion that civilization stops without petrol seemed to fuel a thirst previously unseen.

THE EARLIEST AMPHORAE CLAY BOTTLES WERE MORE BRITTLE THAN GLASS, BUT IF BROKEN THEIR SHARDS WERE USED ON ROADWAYS AND IN BUILDING MATERIAL








In those days I worked from dawn til dusk in Brierly’s Boy Scout bottle yard in Carrington Street. Jalopies would come in from the pubs, stacked high with tattered sacks full of empty bottles. They’d reverse against a loading deck beneath a rusty galvo roof so low I couldn’t stand erect. But I’d unload the truck, unwire the bags in a crouch, drag ’em across the bench, and tip the bottles down a chute.

At the bottom was a fifty foot conveyor belt surrounded by leering women from eastern Europe: no spikka, until my exhaustion slowed me down so much I couldn’t keep the belt full, when they’d scream for more to avoid the boss’s tongue lashing. They’d expertly flick the bottles over their shoulders into various bins, depending on the colour of the glass. Beer came in 750 ml. Pickaxe brand bottles; they went into crates for refilling. The air was full of extreme noise and flying glass.

The roof was so hot that one day I flaked out, and slid down the chute face-first, embracing a bag of bottles. I came-to halfway down the belt, waking to the laughter of the lasses, my arms about my bag of shards. The boss, a giant hob-nailed blue singlet Italian brute from the Po Valley, turned the belt off, put me under his arm, slopped me on the baking asphalt and handed me a hot frothing Coke. The women’s giggles turned to screams of demand before I’d got half of it down, and the Big Po ordered me back on deck.

That week the bastard bit my pay for the Coke.

NOT ALL CONTAINERS PRESENT PROBLEMS IN THE RECYCLED GLASS CHAIN ... SIX BOTTLES OF MOUTON-ROTHSCHILD 1996 IN ONE AT THE FICOFI TASTING, KAESLER WINES, BAROSSA S.A. 2010 - photo LEO DAVIS














The half hour lunchtime was spent in the pub across the road, rehydrating with fast pints of Southwark. I could down six with my sandwich, then back to that hellish unloading dock. At night, I’d tip glass powder from my boots and the crotch of my jocks. The homeward ride on Hellie Sangter’s pushbike was rather abrasive.

Enriched with such hands-on research, I found myself consulting to the Department of Environment a few years later, sorting out the paper mess left after the passage of the South Australian Beverages Container Legislation. This inspired piece of brilliance was designed to keep the state clean. It’s hard to explain how much litter there was: the joint was disgusting. We’d isolate a piece of road, a park, or a beach, collect all the rubbish, itemise it, then bung a deposit on whichever item made up more than a certain percent of the total. So bagmen and scavengers would clean the state.

This was an act of thievery, really – we basically pinched the revolutionary Oregon Bottle Bill, which had been devised in response to the demands of Richard Chambers, an experienced backwoodsman and logging equipment salesman with a bright green bent.

Ken Kesey was also reputed to have had input in this bill. I never met Chambers, but thanked Kesey at an Adelaide Writers’ Week a few years later, and he certainly spoke as if he’d had something along the lines of a fair bit to do with it, but probably usually did quite a lot of that, given his enthusiastic demeanour. It's a terrible pity he's not available for more help now that the South Australian Labor government has knocked the mental hospital down and built a film studio in its place. A new version of Cuckoo's Nest would be apt.

KEN KESEY, STRIPED, CENTER, WITH HIS MERRY PRANKSTERS FROM THE ACID TESTS, BESIDE THE "FURTHER" BUS. KESEY DIED IN 2001, AFTER A STROKE, DIABETES, AND COMPLICATIONS ARISING FROM A LIVER OPERATION

The efforts of Vicky Berger, Chambers’ Republican Representative daughter, eventually saw the Oregon bill extended to include water bottles in 2007.

The breweries, Coke (which virtually owned KESAB - Keep South Australia Beautiful), and Pickaxe bottles fought like pigs to stop our borrowed act. They seemed to think that South Australia would suddenly cease drinking, which was plain stupid. But we prevailed, and suddenly the state was the cleanest in the land. It still works, yet remains unique in Australia.

Lately, I’ve been talking about the ravages of alcohol with mates on Blackfella country. With all other drugs, government’s gradually learning to attack the vendors, rather than the addicts, and it beats me why this isn’t applied to those nefarious peddlers of sweetened ethanol. The deadly havoc they wreak is obvious.

Since the template is there, solid in legislation in the Beverage Container Act 1975, it should easily be applied to the tribal lands for another purpose.

If the community leaders imposed a fifty cent deposit, the kids would collect all those millions of stubbies, cans, and silver pillows and hand them in for some serious pocket money. The collected containers could then be itemized and catalogued. It would suddenly be very clear who was supplying the drug.

In places like The Alice, the vendors remove bladder packs from their boxes at the counter, flatten the cardboard and stack it behind the cash register. The besotteds lurch out, guzzling from the glittering modern equivalent of the wine skin, leaving behind the cardboard, with its polite health warnings about standard drinks.

So the bags themselves should display the health warnings, and be bar-coded to identify the manufacturer and the dealer.

Once a community could present an accurate list of such garbage items, the list could be published, and we would see who was responsible for what. These companies could then be presented with an invitation to pay for the damage they had wrought, and concerned investors could adjust their share portfolios accordingly.

Only a fool would suggest that this would cure the disease of alcoholism, but the bush and its original inhabitants would look and feel a lot better, whilst those who profit from this disgusting degradation could be identified, and leant on for some rehabilitation funding.

Just a thought.

FRI 25 JUNE 10


MANY ORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS REACT ANGRILY TO PRESS IMAGES LIKE THIS (TIME MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2006 - "THE DEMON DRINK"), AND SUGGEST THAT ONLY A MINORITY OF THEIR NUMBER DRINK TO EXCESS, AND THAT WHITE PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY OVERALL TO DRINK TO EXCESS.