JOURNALISTS, WINEMAKERS AND IMAGE

Media madness: It's been a big week for extravagant  helicopter abuse and minor wine scandals in the luxury living section of Australian politics and media. The author wonders whether winemakers, hacks and pollies have far too much in common ... photo DRAGAN

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity, and the scribes keep writing it all down
by PHILIP WHITE 


"After enough years newspapermen begin to pall on other newspapermen; they begin to take their good qualities for granted and wince at their shortcomings, of which the most common are a vanity that sometimes borders on the thespian and a sort of perpetual mental adolescence that I think stems from starting a fresh story every day or every week or month and never having time to get to the bottom of anything." 

I know, I know, that's a big quote to start a yarn but it's one damn lovely  sentence in every way and so fine a thing in form and content that only a fool would lay a chisel on it.

Also, it's Joe Liebling (left), a very favourite writer who covered the Second World War for The New Yorker. He filed that line about my line of work from Algiers in January 1942. Liebling wrote of the war from the point of view of a gluttonous genius: even under repeated Stuka fire in a bunker in the desert he wrote of scrambling duck eggs. His Between Meals - An Appetite For Paris is essential; his reportage of the halitosis of Charles de Gaulle a pinnacle of bitchy hiss.

Alcohol aside, in my post-war experience it has been journalists of a blinding range of ineptitudes or skill who have been responsible for the popular image of winemakers. This is because in winemakerworld there are very few operatives who will spend one dead cent on advertising their product or themselves.

They get it for free.

They have no idea how lucky they are. There are no milk writers, or bread columns. But every paper and shiny mag -  digital or tree-based - has at least one wine writer, whether real journalist or shill on the take. Their job is to promote the consumption of alcohol.

A wine writer lends convenient sanctity to those pages and pages of pension day liquor advertisements which have nothing at all to do with gastronomy.

The busy contemporary wine scribe scene is largely the way it is, internet chaos notwithstanding, due to the work of newspaper drink writers like Walter James, Len Evans, Richard Beckett, James Halliday, Jeni Port and Mark Shield (below), who in one combination or another made the game competitive from the early 'seventies on.

"Go get me a yarn about wunner them winemaker characters Whitey," the Ed would bark. Characters the winemen were: only a few hundred of them when I started; there are thousands trying to be characters now.

By characters I mean blokes who'd done not much more than drive tractors and drink beer. Blokes who'd scratch their arse with one of their hands while shaking yours with another one. And they were blokes. Apart from Pam Dunsford, Di Genders and Ursula Pridham.

Most of the winemakers in McLaren Vale were chook farmers when I began watching them for a living. Their wines mainly stank of hydrogen sulphide until the advent of the mechanical harvester, when they gained the added complexity of hydraulic fluid.

Long time ago, mind you. In many clever aspects of the wine business, this region now leads the world. Think Grenache.

But we still have these thirsty hacks on the one hand and your plonkmongers on the other. The first lot, who have a deadline every day or week seem to feel a kindred flush or some twist of bittersweet jealousy when writing about the winemakers, who have one deadline per year.

Which is not to say their lives are simple or easy: like good all-round journalists, the successful winemaker must master an unlikely range of skills. If such achievement remains out of grasp of either side, a great deal of utter bullshit will be required. I mean even more per acre than we regularly spread.

Winemaking? First, you're a primary producer who really must understand tractors and dirt and grass and water and stuff. Basic plant physiology, climate and pest management. Poisons, plumbing, irrigation. Agricultural accounting.

Then comes a layer of secondary manufacture, covering everything from factory design to basic biochemistry. Industrial yeasts, acids, clarifying agents. Flavourants. A degree of gastronomic intelligence comes in handy here. Then you'll need packaging skills, transport local and international, design, marketing and sales ... export law and public relations, the lure and lore of the restaurant and pub world.

Governments then expect you to be expert in tourism.

You have to be fluent, currently, in Hipster.

But critically, the modern winemaker must always be ready for that moment when the publisher sends the journo to do a nice colour piece for the food and wine section. For free.

There is a great deal of trust implicit here. Like the winemaker will trust that the writer never mentions the dangers of alcohol, but only lovely things about lemons and limes and roast fowl, with just the right dash of colourful character. This trust so far has been well-placed from the winemakers' point of view. The hacks are complicit. Peace in the valley.

But maybe the catalogue of winemaker skills should stop there.

It's when the winemakers take control of their own image that things get interesting. A bridge too far. Give them a sniff of budget, a loose idea and a film crew and let them go it alone and you might begin to understand who they think they really are.

Having mastered all those remarkable skills listed above, many winemakers now also believe they are great writers, directors and actors. 

The outstanding contemporary example of this is an ad on Youtube. It's called VALO Wine - a flight of unforgettable encounters. Really. Let me lead you through a few of the more unforgettable encounters.

We're in a vineyard with Mark Lloyd, who's pretending to prune. A biplane flies over low; he looks at his tank watch, drops everything and heads off to lunch, which explains why he's pruning in his dinner jacket at the wrong time of year with a watch you could swap for a house.

Because movie.

Because the inevitable medium-close-up of a chicken being dismembered by an expert. Because having almost regained control after losing it on a corner, some twat comes hooning up the gravel drive in a supercar. Then we see a row of boxes a bit like the ones girls used to carry their party 45 singles around but one of them has this giant aubergine-type thing in it.

Most journalists are happy to discuss the possibility of assistance with travel arrangements ... the author with Tim Knappstein's Boeing Stearman

Back that with the Last Supper shot with Chester Osborn as our precious loving Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ and two of the twelve turn out to be beautiful women. A little black helicopter chases the supercar through a vineyard too fast, interrupting an Italian-looking bloke who's frotting somebody on the ground. Back inside, Emmanuelle Bekkers hands the giant aubergine to Pete Fraser. They're wearing white gloves. He pulls the stalk out of it and the biplane flies past again. A bloody great luxury speedboat like drugrunners use down the Keys swooshes by, then the giant aubergine gets filled up with wine and goes back in its box. 

Luxury speedboats? Hacks love 'em

Somebody delivers a huge roast femur to a little dog on a beach. Mobster types get in a black limo near some white buses and a bit more biblane business goes past while a woman has a very high stiletto discomfort and then the supercar arrives somewhere else leading to the series of gastroporn vignettes, a tractor, more helicopter and eventually we see all these silvertails called The Masters Of McLaren Vale having a fine old nosh-up.

Fair dinkum.

Many journalists also like access to supercars

If this is not a good sharp picture of who these McLaren Vale winemakers think they are, or how they prefer to be regarded, then somebody has lost quite a lot of money.

If it's my region's wine imagery I want projected at me, and that's all they got, I want it instead from a Liebling, Shield, Beckett, James or a rogue like Evans. Give me the word of an expert; a seasoned newspaper hack who's used to standing in the shadows watching through their own veil of thespian vanity.

I haven't once mentioned the truth, but mark my words: you'd be more likely to get close to it this way. And it'll be cheaper. While it lasts.



Here are six helpful hints:

1. If selling science, technology and craftsmanship, try this. 
2. If selling wine, learn to talk straight like this.
3. If you need lots of money for a bright new wine, try this.
4. To show off your country and teach some history, click.
5. If it's decanters you're selling, learn how to do this.
6. Link your product to its lifestyle? Learn your clientele.

Oh, and here's an extra one at no cost:

Notice how women fit into all this? Where? 
 

RIESLINGS FROM YALUMBA HIGH COUNTRY

Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Riesling  2015 
$25; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 85 points 

To this observer, Pewsey Vale vineyard Riesling has been distinguished over many years by vegetal, almost grassy aromas and flavours that remind me of autumnal vine leaves, or at least their stalks, or petiols. Marsanne often shows this, and Semillon too will show it. It's not like the primary lawn clipping grassiness of, say, Kiwi Savvy-B, but a more complex, partly-stewed sort of an affair. Sometimes a product of location as much as variety, a version of it is easily achieved anywhere with any variety if harvesting machines just happen to pick too many leaves as they rattle the grapes off.  Vintage pressure, see? 

Given the stature and total volume of this wine and its domination of shelves and lists, it's obvious many people enjoy this distinction, but this new vintage allures me because that character is greatly diminished. Instead we have the insinuations of fresh lemon and lime and maybe lemon verbena. 

The wine's not as bony, stony and austere as many of the smaller vineyard Riesings from the old rocks of the Barossa Range and Eden Valley, and it's not as intensely limy as many of the the Clare versions. This makes it a lot more approachable and open-hearted. I suspect folks who find those rather challenging, adults-only specialties a one or two glass affair will find it much easier to tackle a whole bottle of this year's Pewsey Vale. 

Heggies Eden Valley Riesling 2015 

$24; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points 

As the neck tag on this bottle suggests Heggies produces the "the best fruit in Eden Valley," it's interesting that this wine is $1 cheaper than the Pewsey Vale, which comes from another of Yalumba's collection of Barossa Ranges vineyards.

Unlike, say, Penfolds, which proudly trumpets its brand across the widest array of price ranges and wine types, Rob Hill Smith has long structured his winery's many brands to appear as if they come from smaller, more nuts-and-berries, unassociated producers. A chain of Rockfords, if you like.

Altogether a more impressive wine for the hardcore Riesling nut, this one seems more Germanic in its freshness and fruit: it has more nashi pear juiciness and lychee/rambutan flesh, and pretty flashes of cosmetics and face lotions. It's a wholesome, youthful, vibrant aroma.

The Rieslings of Polish Valley are often like this.

That fleshy texture makes me think of the oilier weed-eating fish, like Coorong mullett, silver perch or even European carp if you can be patient enough to remove that extra row of bones. To be more specific, this Heggies would go just swimmingly with a yellow curry of carp, provided the fish is not too muddy.

Take a brace of these to Chinatown. You could have so much fun they'll find you sleeping with the empties.

Even more tempting notion: sneak in and poach whatever fish they've put in the Heggies dam. Poach with tarragon and white onions. That'd be a hard-core act of terroirism.    

THELMA SCHUBERT: AN OBITUARY

Bright minds: Thellie Schubert listens to Dr Ray Beckwith's 100th birthday speech at Penfolds' Kalimna homestead in the Barossa, February 2012. 

After the Second World War, when Penfolds tried to convince Ray to take over the chief winemaker's role at The Grange winery at Magill, he convinced them instead to appoint Max Schubert, a decision which changed forever the lives of Thellie and Max, and led to the development of Australia's most revered wine ... photo by Thelma's nephew, Richard Humphrys ... click on images to sharpen and enlarge

A fresh gap in our wine royalty:

Thellie dies in peace at 95 years -

dignified, elegant and humorous

by PHILIP WHITE  

Another significant connection to Australia's pre-war wine heritage has broken with the death on June 14th of Thelma 'Thellie' Schubert.

Thelma was 95 years old.

She knew what life was like as a wine widow for decades before the death of her famous husband, Max, in 1994.

Like all modern winemakers, Max spent a lot of time on the road. Vintage involved long non-stop drives to Dalwood in the Upper Hunter, endless nights at the Nuriootpa winery or in Penfolds' Murray Valley or Coonawarra vineyards, and exhausting stretches on the sales and promotional trail, wearing the shoeleather.

Always at home raising their two children, Sandie and Brentyn, Thelma accepted this. She was Max's ground crew.

"I was born in 1952," their daughter Sandie Coff said in her eulogy, "and Mum was often sole parent throughout Dad's trips, which went for several months at a time, and throughout his career for several days in many weeks of the year.

"Amazingly Mum never complained about being alone ... even after Dad died."

Anglesey Estate, early '80s ... Thellie in the middle. In retirement, Max consulted to his stockbroking mate's Anglesey winery on the North Adelaide Plains. L-R: Leah and Jack Minnett (owners), Thellie and Max Schubert, Anglesey distributor David Porter and winemaker Lindsay Stanley ... it was at this lunch that Max explained to me the importance of those old bush vine vineyards, especially the Grenache, which he loved to use as a blender to give his mighty cellaring reds an early lift of rosy freshness ... the Anglesey vineyards have all been replaced by droll eave-to-eave dormitoria and villa rash ... photo Philip White

Thelma Humphrys was born in 1920 at Kooringal, near Burra in South Australia's mid-north. After sister Viva she was the second child of Maude and Clem Humphrys. They lived together with her grandparents at their venerable and grand homestead at Hanson, out on the grain flats between Clare and the Bald Hills of Burra - country not dissimilar to that of Moculta, where Max, the son of a blacksmith, was born and raised.

ruins near Burra ... photo SA Film Corporation
 

In her childhood Thelma's family moved to Rose Park in the suburbs and then to Uraidla in the chill Adelaide Hills. She was joined by two sisters, Dorothy and Laurel, and a brother, Arnold. They remained close throughout their lives and the many cousins they raised were big on family get-togethers at lunches, picnics and parties.

Thelma's memories of Uraidla and Summertown were of cold fingers and aching backs in the strawberry fields, fog, the long horse ride back and forth to school and her father coasting down the treacherous Greenhill Road with the motor off to save petrol during the Depression.

"If someone had said to Mum 30 years ago that she'd live to 95 she would never have believed them," Sandie said. "She was amazed she'd lived longer than her own mother who died at 71.

"Mum was labelled  'delicate' when she was a child, due I think to her fainting easily, and she always considered she was not as robust and energetic as her other three sisters.

"But when I took Mum to a new GP a couple of years ago the doctor examined her and said 'Thelma you're not delicate - you're tough!'"

A dinner to celebrate Max's 99th birthday, February 2014: family and friends, L-R: Di Davidson, Brentyn Schubert, Annabelle Collett, hosts Sandie and Gary Coff, the author, Lorien Coff, Thelma Schubert and Ann-Marie Chin ... photo Milton Worldey

Having completed her schooling Thelma studied business management before taking a job in the office at Harris Scarfe's department store.

Around this time her family moved down from the hills, to a house on Penfold Road.

"Then she got a job in the office at Penfolds," Sandie continued. "It was there she met the young Barossa-born apprentice winemaker, Max Schubert. Dad told the story of their first date when he went to pick her up and had to endure her sisters peeking at him, whispering and giggling.

"Obviously he persisted," Sandie explained, "despite going off to the War for three years before they married ... I don't know how Mum's generation got through those times ... Dad would visit Mum on his army leave and she'd say goodbye not knowing if it was for the last time."

In joining the army, Max had defied the fierce order of Penfolds managing director, Frank Penfold Hyland, who threatened to sack any worker who went to war. But Max was very aware of his family's Silesian status, and the way Australia had imprisoned similar 'German' settlers during the First World War.

"I volunteered for service," he would say, "to prove I was 100 per cent Australian ... I learned there was absolutely no bloody future in wars."

While Thelma worked in the office at Penfolds Grange at Magill, Max was learning his cruel lesson at the other end of the earth. After surviving terrible action against Germany in North Africa, he served in Greece, Crete, the Middle East and Ceylon.

"Mum got six days notice that Dad had the leave to enable them to marry in 1944," Sandie said. "Somehow the wedding was pulled together in that time and they honeymooned in Port Lincoln before he had to return to the War.

"That parting must have been excruciating."

Max was sent off to the New Guinea jungle campaign to stop the the Japanese invasion of Australia. Before their surrender in 1945, he contracted malaria. He came home exhausted and ill to Thelma and returned to work, to find himself demoted to lab assistant.

They were tough days, but these were tough people. They lived in a two-storey share house on Port Road. Thelma quit her paying job, as was expected of freshly-married women. The stylish country girl in her hated that loud and grimy place, and as her infant son Brentyn started escaping to make solo expeditions across the vast expanse of traffic she reached the end of her tether.

Penfolds' attempt to move their great wine scientist Dr Ray Beckwith from Nuriootpa to take the chief winemaker's role at The Grange at Magill changed things for the better for Thelma and Max. Ray preferred to stay in his beloved Barossa laboratory to do science. He convinced Jeffrey Penfold Hyland to give the job instead to the delighted Schubert.

Three right royal hooters: the notorious Alfred Scholz, manager of Penfolds' Nuriootpa Winery for 47 years, pours two of his troublesome lads a port: Dr Ray Beckwith, left, and Max Schubert ... note the ironstone

 

"Penfolds offered Mum and Dad a company house on Penfold Road," Sandie recalled, "but they'd seen a house nearby on Romalo Avenue that Mum fell in love with. She would regard it as 'such a pretty house surrounded by landscaped gardens and paddocks, gum trees, birds and fresh air,' all just a short walk from Penfolds through the widespread vineyards."

A great place to raise kids.

Thelma was always grateful for Jeffrey Penfold Hyland's assistance in moving her there with three year old Brentyn while Max was off on his legendary fact-finding mission in Europe in 1950. He came home buzzing with the Grange recipe in his head, settled in with his beloved wife, and went to work.

"This was the house they bought and lived in thereafter and Mum thankfully never had to leave," Sandie said.

Max loved it, too. His constant travelling convinced him the prettiest lights on Earth were those he'd see flying into Adelaide, and he frustrated his young  family by insisting that the best place to spend the holidays was at home.

The next decades must have been as thrilling and scary a ride for Thelma as they were for Max as he pursued his Grange dream and steadily built the Penfolds brand. She was always ready to mix with and entertain international clients and customers, and she loved the carefree sherry-sipping days aboard Jeffrey and Margaret Penfold Hyland's yacht. They were close.

As they were to Governor Sir Donald and Lady Dunstan in the decade in which Max was in charge of the South Australian gubernatorial cellar. Max would confide, in his quiet chuckle, that not much spitting took place when the four of them sat back to examine his recommendations.

Thelma was always an accomplished social networker, loving her long phone calls with her girlfriends and relatives, her two children and her grandchildren; always excited about the next Christmas or the beach holidays and her regular G&T giggles watching The Football Show with neighbour Shirley Rossiter.

While her kids grew, playing in the vineyards, she became a good knitter and seamstress. Sandie recalls cajoling her into crocheting a bikini for her. Once the kids had grown up and gone, she took up china-painting - she was good - and yoga. Thelma loved beautifully-carved antique furniture that reminded her of her grandparents place. Yet her home was a study in elegant, almost understated decor.

It is a beautiful little house.

Max eventually got to show his beloved some of the world he knew on their extended 1974 world trip; on another occasion Thelma coaxed him into catching a ship - he'd had enough of those in the War - to visit Japan, home of the enemy he'd been sent to stop in the jungle.

They had much fun together, living it up in style, happily accepting the generous hospitality of the best of the wine world.

Veteran Penfolds Magill winemaker (56 vintages now) John Bird, left, with Sandie Coff, former Penfolds chief winemaker Don Ditter, Dr Ray Beckwith and Thellie, at Ray's 100th ... photo Richard Humphrys

After Max's death, Thelma had increasing trouble with her ageing bones - in her last thirteen years she endured broken hips, spine fractures and a broken leg. But true to her form, she retained her poise and calm dignity, dressing beautifully with a sculptured coiffure, ever-ready for a dainty sip of something delicious, and delighted to be included in any type of wine world conversation.

Thelma was always interested.

"We are so grateful Mum was taken quickly and painlessly," Sandie said, "while still being able to live at her home, and knowing her children and grandchildren were well and happy.

"She never complained about her disabilities, apart from being slow, and she remained in remarkably good spirits and kept her sense of humour. Her focus always remained on her family - particularly her grandchildren who she adored."

Thelma was a true beauty through and through. She was always a delight.

And yes, sadly, another of our learned links to the pre-war wine world is broken. 

Good Queen Thelma with the royal court of Penfolds' winemaking team, past and present ... photo Richard Humphrys

Below is one of my most treasured possessions. I'd kept this lovely card from Thellie in the fold of a special book which I lost moving house. After years of misadventure or maybe just pure unblemished adventure it came back to me, tattered, bashed, without the book, intact.

Thelma Schubert is survived by her son Brentyn, daughter Sandie, and grandchildren Alicia, Cassie, Lorien, Brittany and Sam. She will be missed.

SAS AND COLIN CHRISTIAN: ART OF DINING

Every modern home and tasting cellar will need exceptional resin sculptures of nuts things about human mouths and the nightmares of all those of us who dream every night that teeth will grow from within us and devour us and everyone else. Like rest your tired forehead on your beloved's breast? Not with this ivory action. Listen to you chew. Ewp. No fanks. But without these meditations we may never ask ourselves what will happen next and therefore never prepare for fucking anything. Check and buy the skrilliant works of Sas and Colin Christian. That's their image of their own Open Mind, above. Kick 'em along: make more, better, sticky ... I know how this feels: The tongue withdraws suddenly like a lizard's and surprises one's companions with its energetic lickings and emergences through the several holes in the head. If perchance these grow shut and heal like sunspots, it will force its way through anew, following a fresh impulse and a sudden surging growth of teeth. 

Please keep your calcium up, and try not to stare. We are normal.