STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL … · STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J....
Transcript of STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL … · STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J....
STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
OH 692/76
Full transcript of an interview with
ROSS JENKINS
on 3 December 2002
by Rob Linn
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library
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OH 692/76 ROSS JENKINS
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.
Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.
This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.
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OH 692/76 TAPE 1 - SIDE A
AUSTRALIAN WINE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.
Interview with Ross Jenkins on 3rd December, 2002.
Interviewer: Rob Linn.
Ross, where and when were you born?
RJ: I was born in 1925 at Tanunda in the Barossa Valley.
Who were your parents, Ross?
RJ: Edward (Ted) Jenkins, and my mother was Freda Jenkins. They
actually were born in the Kapunda area, and Dad came to Tanunda as a
result of being able to get a job at Chateau Tanunda. Strangely enough it
was the place where I started working as well. So they settled in Tanunda
early 1925, and I was born towards the end of 1925. So that’s how my
parents started.
What did your father do?
RJ: Well, he worked in the winery at Chateau Tanunda. Then a few years
after he had been there—I think he was there for about four years—my
aunt, who’d married a fellow by the name of Bill Petras at Tanunda who
had a winery -
Ross, that was down Langmeil -
RJ: Yes, that’s right.
- he took ill and died, and he was only about mid forties, or towards fifty.
And my aunt appealed to Dad to help her out and take over the running of
the business.
Now, there was a very substantial vineyard as well as a winery, and Dad
then moved into that operation and stayed there for about ten or twelve
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years. And we lived in the Petras home at Tanunda when I was a young
boy, and so I witnessed all the growing of the grapes, the vineyard work
and the ferments, and all the winery operations, and I suppose it was
pretty much in my blood. (Laughs)
Could you just describe that time at Petras to me, Ross?
RJ: Yes. The cellar itself was a nice stone building with all the storage,
and then there was an iron building outside of that with open fermenters.
They were concrete tanks—open tanks—for fermentation, and a series of
closed tanks as well. And then there was a crusher, which received the
grapes, and a press. So it was a fairly simple operation.
Hand press?
RJ: It was a hydraulic drive press, and a cage, and all the must (or skins)
from the tanks was tipped into that and then it was pressed. So that was
the operation in its basic form, and it was quite adequate for their
purposes.
What type of grapes were being grown in the vineyard? Would you
remember that at all?
RJ: Well, there was quite a lot of Shiraz, Mataro, Sercial I remember. And
Doradillo. There wasn’t much Riesling. I think they had a little bit of
Riesling. There were Sherry—a grape called Sherry—a bit of Cabernet
Sauvignon, Mataro I think I mentioned, and Grenache. I think they were
the main varieties.
You’ve raised something interesting for me. In the Barossa that
Sherry grape they think was a Spanish grape, don’t they? Is that correct?
RJ: Yes.
I can’t remember it’s name.
RJ: I can’t either. Oh, there was Pedro as well—Pedro Ximenes—which is
also a Spanish grape I understand.
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Were Petras actually making wine?
RJ: Yes. They were making it and marketing it. So it was a complete
operation really. Vineyard, winemaking and maturation and selling under
their label.
And fortified, was it?
RJ: Yes, nearly all fortified wine. Some dry red, Claret styles.
So a drier style?
RJ: Yes.
And did you have wine at home?
RJ: Yes. We used to drink it regularly.
Table wine as well in those years?
RJ: Yes. I think it was mainly fortified wine that we drank. Not that I
drank any at that stage because I was pretty young. (Laughter)
Yes, but your parents were.
RJ: Yes.
Now, I’m just trying to remember. On Langmeil Road where the
winery was, was the house opposite that? On the other side of the road?
RJ: No, the house and the winery building were on the same side, and on
the opposite side there was an orchard.
Yes, that’s right.
RJ: I don’t think there was any vineyard there.
Because it’s all housing there now, isn’t it?
RJ: Yes. Oh, there was a small vineyard across the road—yes, that’s
right—in the early stages but that was pulled out pretty early on.
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So you grew up in this tradition, Ross. Was the Barossa a very
wine focused place even in those years—the 20’s and 30’s?
RJ: Yes, very much so. The wine industry was really the basic industry of
the Valley, and everybody knew about it and consumed wine. There were
quite significant consumers of wine in the Barossa, and they would buy it in
gallon and two gallon jars from the winery and take it home and drink it.
And being fortified wine, well, there was no worries about ullage1 in the
containers. It was very common to pay a visit to somebody in the Barossa
and they’d offer you a schluck, as they called it, which is a glass of fortified
wine.
The schluck I think’s become very well known. (Laughs)
Ross, growing up with that, were you also educated at Tanunda?
RJ: Yes. I went to Tanunda Primary School and then to Nuriootpa High
School, and I had two years there. I hadn’t made any decision to leave
school at that time but I got a message sometime in December that Ian
Seppelt at Chateau Tanunda wanted to see me. He was the manager there
at the time. So I popped in to see him and he was offering me a job. And
apparently he’d gone to the Headmaster of the Tanunda School and
described to him what he wanted, and the Headmaster must have
obviously mentioned my name. So he offered this job, and the pay was £1
per week, which seemed quite adequate at that time. It’s practically
nothing now. And I started on the 2nd January, 1941, having completed
my Intermediate at High School. In some ways I’ve often regretted not
going on and studying more, but it seemed too good an opportunity to
miss, and I took the opportunity up.
This would have been age fifteen for you?
RJ: Yes.
1 Ullage or air space – part full
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My first memories of Chateau Tanunda was that it was such an
imposing and magnificent edifice. In your days when you began,
Ross, was it still that magnificent building?
RJ: That building has been the same, I would say, since it was constructed
in 1891, and it’s still very much the same today. The internal part of the
building has changed somewhat, but the exterior is very much the same as
long as I can remember it.
Well, internally, when you first knew it, what was it like?
RJ: Well, it’s a very thick stone wall building, the back half of which was
completely underground. It was quite a deep cellar. I suppose it would
have been 20 to 25 feet deep from ground level at the back. It was into
the side of a hill, and the front of the building, of course, came out onto
ground level. But because it was underground and it was two floors—there
was another floor on the top—it was a very cool cellar, and it was
absolutely ideal for maturing dry red wine, for instance. The bottom part
of the cellar was filled with 1,000 gallon and 500 gallon vats—that’s about
4,500 litres or 2,250 litres—and they were all stored with, mainly, dry red
wine.
I can remember a barrel hall at the top level. Would that be right?
RJ: Yes, that’s right. Brandy was a long suit of the Chateau of course—
Chateau Tanunda Brandy—and quantities of that were made that were
quite large. It had a very big market share. The top part of the building
was mainly devoted to storage of brandy, which had to be matured for two
years in wooden casks, and that’s where the hogsheads, as we called
them, were stored up there. Eventually another building at the back of the
Chateau was added on, in the same architectural style as the main
building, where the growth of the market was taken up with extra storage.
So when you came into it, Seppelts owned it. Is that correct?
RJ: Yes.s They bought it in 1916.
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That’s right. I think originally it had been a company that included
a lot of growers around the Barossa.
RJ: The Adelaide Wine Company was the name of it.
That’s right.
RJ: It was mainly formed as a cooperative type operation, but they
weren’t able to make a success of it and sold out eventually.
What was your first job there, Ross?
RJ: I was a clerk and laboratory assistant, so I did some clerical work in
the office and a lot of the laboratory testing.
Had you had any laboratory experience before?
RJ: No experience. Did a bit of science at high school, that was all.
And who were the people that you were working with there?
RJ: Well, Ian Seppelt was virtually manager and the only one in the
technical type operation there, and there was a lady, Louise Heuzenroeder,
who was a most efficient female. She was absolutely outstanding. So I
had some pretty good training in office efficiency. She didn’t do any of the
laboratory work of course, but Ian Seppelt was the man who taught me
what to do in terms of the laboratory work and gave me my initial training
in winemaking and all that sort of thing.
So with the laboratory work, what was there for brandy that was
needed at that stage?
RJ: Oh, not a lot for brandy, but we had all this red wine in storage and
we had to test for sulphur dioxide and alcohol levels and all that sort of
thing. And we took lees samples and examined them under a microscope,
and that type of work.
Did you find that interesting?
RJ: Yes. Very interesting. I really liked that part of the work.
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And what was Ian like to work with?
RJ: Good, yes. I found him very friendly and helpful, and he taught me a
lot actually, and I’ve got him to thank for my initial learning in the wine
industry.
Were there other cellar staff there as well?
RJ: There were about 30 to 35 cellar-hands, all local people. At that time
they were working a 48 hour week, and their wages were £4.3s. (Laughs)
That eventually became a 44 hour week, and eventually 40 hours.
And would they have stopped for their morning schluck at this stage?
RJ: Yes. That was quite an interesting thing really because they’d have a
drink at 10 o’clock in the morning—some of them had two drinks—and not
just little two ounce glasses. They had pony glasses, which were probably
nearer to four ounces I guess. It amazed me, the capacity of many of
those fellows. They’d have a couple of glasses at ten o’clock, and then
another couple at lunchtime, and go home for lunch, and three o’clock in
the afternoon again. So it was quite a sight really to see these fellows
drinking such a lot of wine and yet being able to work and not be affected
by it. Admittedly, they worked really hard. It was hard work in the
wineries in those days. All the vat washers had to get into the vats and
swill hot water around inside to clean them, and that was tough work.
Much of the wine and brandy that was sold was sold in hogsheads, which
had to be rolled up onto a truck and then up-ended, and all that sort of
thing. So it was fairly heavy work.
Did it have its own cooperage there?
RJ: No. We were very close to John’s cooperage, which was just across
the road from where we were, so we used to take all the casks over there
for repairs. And there was some mighty repairs required, too, because
those casks were used for transporting to interstate places and overseas.
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Then they were sent back and, of course, they were damaged quite
extensively through handling and so on and required a lot of repairs.
So other than your laboratory work, Ross, what did your clerical
work entail at the time?
RJ: Well, I had to pay the fellows once weekly. Work out how much
they’d earned in overtime and all that sort of thing, and pay them. At that
time the means of assessing the quantities of brandy that were filled off
into casks to be stored, they were weighed empty and weighed full, and we
got the specific gravity of the brandy and worked out how much weight of
brandy there was. From that we could calculate the liquid gallons in the
container, and then we knew what the strength was and we had to
calculate the proof gallons in each cask. And all this had to be done in
conjunction with the Customs and Excise Department, who had two officers
at Chateau Tanunda, so there was a lot of work involved in all of that. So
there was a fair bit of clerical work there.
What, in keeping them happy?
RJ: No. Keeping the records up to date. (Laughter) And then, of course,
during the vintage the grapes were all weighed and we had to calculate the
value at the particular price per ton for that variety, and then we entered
that into ledgers. It was all done manually, and doing tons, cwts and
quarters in pounds, shillings and pence was a pretty complicated system.
We couldn’t decimalise it easily, so we had ready reckoners and all that
sort of thing to work it out.
I was going to ask if you had them. (Laughs)
RJ: Yes.
Oh, that would have been some type of work. Not simple.
RJ: No. And we had to keep an account for each grower, and then they
were paid usually an advance payment in—I think it was the end of March
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and one at the end of April, and then a final payment probably by the end
of June.
Did the growers have a fairly precarious life in those days? Would
you recall?
RJ: No, I don’t think they saw it that way. They had a fairly good market
for their fruit, and fairly good relations with the winemakers, and I think
they were fairly happy. Later on, of course, it became difficult when it got
nearer to that vine-pull time in the 1980’s. Wineries were more inclined to
take all of the fruit that was available and they weren’t under any pressure
to minimise their intake because of capital availability or whatever. There
was a greater tendency just to take the fruit available within the vintage
than there was later on.
Would that have been to do with the fact that the wineries were
largely family owned, do you think?
RJ: I think so. And at that time the winemakers were able to write into
their books the value of wine at about a shilling, or one and six, per gallon,
or something like that, which was way below the cost of production. So
tax-wise it didn’t affect them too much. They were writing down the value
of their stock at the end of the period and that minimised their tax profit,
as it were. So there weren’t too many difficulties in that regard for the
winemakers.
Did you have much contact in your early years with the wider
Seppelt family, Ross?
RJ: Not a lot until about 1946 when I came back after the war.
(Tape restarted)
Talking about contacts with the other members of the Seppelt family.
I went into the Air Force in 1945. Only for a brief time, about eighteen
months, because the war was over soon after I went in. And when I came
back Ian Seppelt indicated to me that he wanted me to take more
responsibility, and I came into contact then with the other members of the
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family, mainly because I had to go to Head Office a couple of times and
gradually met a wider number of the family members.
So Head Office was at Seppeltsfield?
RJ: No. Head Office moved to Adelaide in—I think it was 1940, or
thereabouts.
Right.
RJ: Just before I started working for the company, and the Head Office
was in Gresham Street, Adelaide.
Oh, was it?
RJ: That was the one behind King William Street. The Gresham Hotel was
-
Yes, I remember the Gresham quite well.
RJ: And the offices were there.
Yes, that was quite a dark little street there, if I remember.
RJ: Yes. And the wind used to blow up and down that street! (Laughs)
I remember that only too well. At the back of Miller Anderson there. It would rip down the lane.
RJ: And at that time the Adelaide branch of Seppelts, where they did the
bottling for the local distribution, was in that building as well, and it was
some years later that they bought the property at Flinders Street and that
became the Adelaide branch and the Head Office remained in Gresham
Street.
Yes, that was many years later, wasn’t it?
RJ: Yes.
So, Ross, you come back from your flying days in the war -
RJ: Flying days! (Laughter)
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Flying day, then. The short time. You would have been grateful for
that I would have thought.
RJ: Yes.
And you’re given this new challenge. What form did that have over the years to come? Where did you go in the firm?
RJ: Well, he, Ian Seppelt, virtually was taking more responsibility in
Adelaide with Head Office tasks and I was left with a lot of the day to day
operating responsibilities of Chateau Tanunda. That eventually led to my
appointment as the manager there, I think in 1956.
So you were still a relatively young man then.
RJ: Yes, I was. I was only about 30/31 when I was appointed to that
position.
Did you do any further study in those years at all?
RJ: Well, I had studied accountancy soon after I went to Chateau
Tanunda. This was through Hemingway Robertson who were -
Oh, the Institute.
RJ: - correspondence teachers. I found that pretty hard work actually
because you didn’t have anybody to talk about any problems. So I did
that, and I studied as much as I could about the winemaking operations
without going to any formal schools at the time. But then later I did some
training in management at the Institute of Technology at their
management course there, and I went to an advanced management course
in Honolulu in 1971, which was a six week live-in course there. So I had
some opportunities for further managerial training anyway. At that time I
also visited wineries in California and Europe, so that was really good
experience and quite an eye-opener, too, to see the way that they did
things there. That was about the time when the wine industry was
changing rapidly to more table wine and less fortified wine.
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What did you see there at that time, Ross? We might as well move
forward.
RJ: Well, the thing that struck me most about California I think was the
attention that they gave to temperature control there. Many of their
buildings were insulated. In the Napa Valley, for instance, it was so cool at
night that by pumping cold air into insulated buildings at night they were
able to keep a cool temperature during the day time. And of course, lots of
our wine was stored in tin sheds and all that sort of thing. It became
apparent to me that temperature control and so on was very important.
And as a company Seppelts hadn’t invested too well in equipment for the
making of table wine and the maturation of table wine. I would say that
we were probably a little bit behind the eight ball there because we were so
strong in fortified wine and brandy that that gave us our profit
opportunities at that time. So there was a need to do things a little bit
differently. That’s probably more what I learnt as a result of that trip than
anything.
Ross, Seppelts have been famed for their ports and sherries, haven’t they?
RJ: Yes.
And their very fine flor sherries.
RJ: Yes.
Did you have anything to do with that production at all?
RJ: Well, I went to Seppeltsfield eventually and was manager there for a
few years before I was appointed production manager of the company,
when I had to move to Adelaide. So I was pretty closely involved with a lot
of that for about six years. But the flor sherries at Seppeltsfield were
absolutely outstanding really, and the building in which they’re stored is a
nice building with high roof and nice temperature control, and it’s ideally
suited for the making of good flor sherry.
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Ross, let’s just finish off the overview of your career. We’re up to—
what?—the late 60’s/early 70’s.
RJ: Yes. 1961 I went to Seppeltsfield, 1956 I was appointed manager of
Chateau Tanunda, and 1961 I was transferred to Seppeltsfield as assistant
manager, and Mel Bell was still the manager there at that time. He retired
in 1966 and I was appointed manager of Seppeltsfield.
And then in 1968 I was appointed the company’s production manager, and
I was the first non family member to have a senior position in the
company, and I was asked to transfer to Head Office. So I took up the
position there. I think the reasoning behind that was that we had a Great
Western winery, a Rutherglen winery and then the wineries in the Barossa,
and I think it was thought that it was best to have a chap in charge of all
those things stationed at a neutral position. (Laughs) Plus the fact that
the company was moving into developing a costing system for making the
wine, and we were fairly well up I think, even if I say it myself, in the
leadership position in developing that costing system, and I was very
closely involved in working that out. And we had what we called a
standard costing system. In other words, we set standards of gallons per
ton—or litres per ton—that we would expect, and what the standard cost
was then of each litre for the cost of the fruit that was used to make that
wine, and so on.
It must have been very unusual for the time -
RJ: It was.
- because that was practiced in a lot of other industry but certainly
not in winemaking.
RJ: Not in winemaking, no. And the hard part was to establish those
parameters, such as the litres per ton that you obtain, how much was lost
in the meantime by filtration and clarification, evaporation and other
wastage, and then come up with a net figure that you ended up in the
bottle to sell. So to establish those standards was quite a big operation,
and it took a lot of work to set up that formula.
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Ross, was that to sort of have a standard type of management
accounting?
RJ: Yes, that’s right. We had consultants in during the 1960’s and they
were very keen to set the system up.
Was that PA or somebody, was it?
RJ: It was Cooper Bros.
Oh, yes.
RJ: I spent a lot of time with the fellow who was doing the study at the
time and we eventually worked something out.
And then when I went to Head Office I was appointed associate director of
the company in 1972, and as assistant general manager in 1975, and I was
appointed a director in ‘77. So that’s about the end of it, and then I retired
in 1988.
I wouldn’t have thought that it was that long ago.
RJ: I had nearly forty-eight years with the company as full time
employment, and I did some consulting work for about three years, so I
managed to clock up about fifty years of association with Seppelts over the
time.
Ross, could you tell me some of the more memorable experiences
that you might have had along the way?
RJ: Well, I suppose the most memorable are some of those things that
happened in the early days at Chateau Tanunda. I remember that—
nothing to do with winemaking—there were five fellows there who regularly
invested in Tattersalls, and they won the first prize in 1941, which
happened to be £10,000. Now that doesn’t sound a lot of money in today’s
terms but each one of those chaps was able to buy a car and a house and
still have about half his share left over. That was quite an amazing thing
for a young fellow like me, just in his first year of work, and have these
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fellows win all this money. They bought cases of Abbot’s lager, and then
shipping it over from Melbourne, and we celebrated. (Laughs) So that was
quite a unique happening in the early times.
But I suppose some of the things that really did strike me were the
changes that took place in the industry, and the mechanisation that
occurred from unloading grapes by hand and then forking them off of a
load to eventually bins being dumped into a dump bin from transports.
That was a great development.
And then the transition from casks for moving wine to stainless steel. As I
mentioned, we shipped everything to bottling places around Australia and
to customers overseas in casks, and that wasn’t a very efficient way of
doing it because the casks would all dry out on the return journey and
they’d soak up a bit of wine themselves, and the losses were quite
substantial. Plus the fact that when they went by sea, and most of them
were transported by sea in the early days, the wharfies were renowned for
a bit of pilfering, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to lift a hoop on a cask
and drill a hole and drain out some brandy from a cask, and then put the
hoop back again. So that was a very significant development, the
changeover from wooden cask to stainless steel tankers for moving wine.
TAPE 1 - SIDE B
RJ: Transition to table wine, which was of major impact to the industry.
This meant changing all of the production methods. Making fortified wine
was a very simple operation. You didn’t have to worry too much about
temperature control because you removed the juice from the skins and
fortified it while the must was still sweet, and it meant a totally new
approach to winemaking. And then the introduction of refrigeration and
other techniques in the industry, which were required.
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And of course brandy, which was a big product line for us at Seppelts,
particularly with Chateau Tanunda brandy. We had all sorts of upsets on
the way there because of great increases in Government excise and so on.
It affected the sales and they went down on the graph at a pretty rapid
rate when the Government increased excise by a big amount. But
gradually that became less prominent as a product, and virtually faded out
you might say. Not a very significant item in the total industry today at all.
But I suppose the other significant thing was the changes in variety of
grapes that were being grown, that were necessary. This was a pretty
difficult thing because it took so long to establish a vineyard and you had to
think about three or four years in advance and make predictions of what
your requirements were.
And I know that there’s been a lot of criticism about the vine-pull but, quite
frankly, I don’t view it as being such a big error or disadvantage to the
industry as it’s made out by Phillip White, for instance, when he writes.
Because most of the varieties that were removed were unwanted varieties
at that time. Things like Doradillo and Pedro and the Sherry variety, which
we were talking about before. And Sercial. Pretty well useless for table
wine. Although there was a lot of Shiraz pulled out as well, it was only a
fairly minor portion. Well, not minor, but not terribly significant in the sum
total. And I think it was a good thing because it got rid of a lot of small
growers in the industry who didn’t bother about planting up again, and left
the inroads for people to establish bigger vineyards and do it commercially
and properly. So the industry I think in the long run gained a lot out of
that move that occurred about that time. But it was a big worry for the
growers because winemakers were not prepared to take more grapes than
they needed for their estimated future sales, and if the crop was a bit
bigger, the growers had tremendous problems in disposing of all their crop.
And it was a big difficulty during that period of the 1980’s, and eventually
brought about that vine-pull.
Would it have been too, Ross, that some of those growers would’ve
depended on the Government money to even survive at that point.
19
RJ: They would’ve.
It was very tough, I believe.
RJ: Yes. But there were some people who abused the system and used it
as an opportunity to get out of it. They had gone into it as an investment
venture. So that was the part that was unfortunate. But I think you can’t
just think of those, you’ve got to think of the fellows who were really
suffering as a result of what was happening, and they were dependent
upon what they got from the Government at that time.
And Ross, were there other factors involved there, too? I mean, I know that by that time that certainly some of the wine companies
had become taken over by larger corporate organisations.
RJ: Yes.
Was that changing the way that they were approaching purchasing
grapes?
RJ: Yes, I think that changed the industry markedly. Of course, I think
the industry needed some change, too, because it was a very production
focused industry. The families who owned the companies were all very
production oriented because they were mainly involved in the making of
wine and they saw that end of it a bit more strongly than the marketing.
And I think the takeovers by outside companies made the wine industry
much more marketing focused. They had to look more closely at the
potential of the market, and then they were much tougher on the amount
that was going to be invested in production facilities and the grapes that
were bought and all that sort of thing. So that brought about some
enormous changes from about the early 1970’s onwards.
Did you find that working for Seppelts that you still had interaction with other wine companies in those years?
RJ: Yes, quite a lot. In the production side, particularly, there was very
good rapport between the different personnel in the industry.
20
What about memorable people, Ross? Were there some that come
to mind readily over the years?
RJ: Yes. Well, I think people like Wolf Blass, of course. He’s a memorable
person. Peter Lehmann is another one. He wanted to go his own way and
help the growers in the Barossa, and he did a very good job in that regard.
And he’s highly respected because of that. I’ll have to scratch my head to
think who were the memorable people at the time.
There were a lot of characters in the industry right through, and of course
there was some pretty heavy infighting that went on, too, in the
winemakers’ associations. Everybody tended to try and make things go
that would suit their own company and there wasn’t quite the cooperation
that there ought to have been, I don’t think, from a total industry
perspective.
This is—what?—in the 50’s and the 60’s?
RJ: Oh, no. I suppose it was occurring then but I wasn’t so intimately
involved as I was from about 1970 onwards. There were some quite
horrific differences of opinion.
I remember there was a move at one time when brandy was slipping that
we should reduce the age requirement for brandy from two years to one
year, or some lesser time, to lessen the capital investment required. And
of course, Tom Angove was bitterly opposed to that, and he fought good
and hard. He was genuine, too, in his belief that that maturation period
was necessary. But others thought that, well, the consumer should have
the right to choose whether he wanted his brandy to be matured for two
years, or whether at one year it was more suitable and he could get a
slightly cheaper product that way. That was one thing that I remember in
regard to industry type activities.
I was on the Standard Bottle Committee of the industry for quite a long
time, and was Chairman of that committee for quite a number of years.
We had some immense problems to undertake when we metricated the
system, and then we changed the bottle sizes slightly. For instance, we
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tried to standardise the heights of the bottles, and we had long-necked
Hock bottles and had to reduce that size. I remember at one time I think
we had five different Riesling bottles in existence that were being
transformed from something that was to something that we wanted in the
future. So that was a very long and complicated operation to get through
all of that.
And I think metrication and the technical committee had some heavy work
to do, too, in implementing new laws for winemaking.
Now, along the way in all those industry wide events that you were
involved with, Ross, did you have strong social interaction, say,
with people like Tom Angove? Did you meet those people?
RJ: Oh, yes. Quite often had social activities. And of course, there was
the old Wine Week that used to be held that was very much a social
occasion. I wasn’t too much involved with that at that time, but there were
technical conferences and other conferences of the industry where we used
to meet for a period of four days perhaps, and a lot of interaction occurred
at those times. They were very useful occasions, both to enjoy and also to
learn something.
And Ross, you’ve mentioned already the change from fortified wine styles to the table wine styles. Did that involve a new generation
of winemakers coming in with that as well?
RJ: Yes. Well, of course, young winemakers were coming on all the time,
and you had fellows like John Vickery who became world renowned as a
Riesling winemaker, and still is. And found quite a lot of new winemakers
who specialised in areas, and they built a reputation for themselves.
And I think individuality became more prominent then because you could
make wines from different areas, where the grapes were grown, and they
would be very different wine styles. And determining what was the best
style, whether it would be Coonawarra or Eden Valley or Clare, was always
a great talking point and opportunity for people to prove their ability to
make something better by picking a better vineyard. And individual
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vineyard wines became prominent, too, which was never heard of in the
early days.
And did Seppelts go down that path as well? Of the individual
vineyard wine.
RJ: To some extent, yes, because we had vineyards at Drumborg and
Padthaway, and we pioneered virtually both of those areas. Karl Seppelt
was the man responsible for that. We certainly were able to make some
very individual wines from, particularly, the Drumborg area. And Great
Western was also a fairly unique area in that sense because there weren’t
too many other vineyards in that area at the time.
Actually you were also one of the pioneers in cold climate
winemaking in the Mount Lofty Ranges.
RJ: Yes.
You bought Partalunga I remember.
RJ: That’s right. I remember buying that vineyard, and it took us a while
to develop it but it proved to be a very valuable vineyard.
Magnificent.
RJ: Yes.
Does that mean that firms like Seppelts were pretty much on the cutting edge, Ross? Did you find that in your experience?
RJ: Yes, pretty much. I think Orlando were the pioneers in a lot of the
work because they started back in the 1950’s. In 1953 I think they bought
their first pressure fermented Riesling out, and then of course their
embarking on the Barossa Pearl bandwagon. And I still think that that was
the thing that turned a lot of people to table wine. Sweet lolly water it
might have been, but that’s what the people liked and they bought it, and
as a result of drinking that they gradually acquired a taste for drier wines
and appreciated the quality and flavours in various dry wine table wine
styles.
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Despite its sweetness it was still heavily fruit driven, wasn’t it?
RJ: Yes.
Very fruity.
RJ: Yes.
Yes, I think we owe Colin and Günter and some of the others a
great deal of thanks.
RJ: Yes, I think so. I think anybody who is not prepared to acknowledge
that is not really facing up to the facts.
It’s remarkable to me that in your lifetime, Ross, so many technical
changes have happened. When you talked about going to the
laboratory at Chateau Tanunda, my guess is, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, it would have been pretty much standard laboratory
equipment -
RJ: It sure was, yes.
- but by the time you retired you would have been faced with all
sorts of massive changes.
RJ: Yes. Well, I didn’t work in the laboratory in my later years, but some
of the equipment like spectrophotometry and so on was quite fantastic, and
now of course it’s all computer controlled. And the Australian Wine
Research Institute did a lot of valuable work in assisting the industry to
develop better laboratory techniques as well.
Did you find that the quality, particularly of table wine, improved over time?
RJ: Yes. Most definitely. Our red wines, you might remember that we
had a big downturn, mainly because somebody used the word histamines
in relation to red wine and it tended to turn people off a little bit. That was
in the 1970’s. And we had a mini boom early 1970’s and then it lost its
weight later in the 70’s. But by the 1980’s, winemakers were making more
fruit driven red wine, and it had more character and liveliness, and it was
enjoyable to drink young, whereas previously the wines were fairly heavy
24
and were not so good as young wines and needed more maturation. That’s
the way that I saw it anyway. From the early 1980’s onward I think there
was some massive improvements made in the styles of red wine, and white
too. And of course, we had the introduction of Chardonnay, which was
barely planted in 1970. There was very little Chardonnay in Australia, and
by the late 1970’s there became a very significant volume of it, and
Chardonnay was developing into a winner as far as the market was
concerned.
Actually there wouldn’t have been huge amounts of Cabernet
Sauvignon in 1970 either.
RJ: No, there weren’t.
By 1980 that would’ve been beginning to take off.
RJ: Yes.
It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Ross, did you have much to do with the boom in export?
RJ: Not much. When I retired I think exports were selling about ten
million litres. They are now well over the two hundred million. And that
was an amazing transformation that occurred. It had started about the
time of my retirement. And of course the industry was cutting its throat in
discounting and so on in the mid 1980’s. We had all sorts of problems
because it was barely profitable—the industry—because of this discounting
that was going on, and that was because there were too many grapes and
people were obviously trying to quit their wine. But then the development
of the export market was absolutely unbelievable, and the growth that
occurred. And of course the industry was able to invest more because they
were able to get a more steady price for their product. They didn’t have to
discount or go out and offer deals to sell it and so on. So it really has
transformed the industry throughout the 1990’s.
I’m just thinking, prior to the discounting, a lot of the product markets would have been tied to interstate breweries and
wholesalers, wouldn’t it?
25
RJ: Yes.
And I think Seppelts became involved in their own distribution
networks, too, about that time, didn’t they? I’m just trying to -
RJ: Not in a major way. I think we were reliant upon the big distributors,
but the deals that were being done were unbelievable. You know, what
would be offered to buy a pallet or a truckload lot to liquor dealers bore no
resemblance to what the average liquor outlet might have to pay. It was
just unbelievable, the discounts that were being offered at that time.
I thought you were into management accounting. (Laughter)
That must have been pretty hard really.
RJ: It was. Very difficult to make ends meet. I remember when we were
taken over by the brewing company following massive attacks by Mr
Spalvins and Adelaide Steam that we really found it hard to make a
reasonable profit because we were very heavily committed to champagne
at that time. Champagne was being sold for 3.99 a bottle for about ten
years I reckon, and costs were going up all the time. So it was quite
obvious that the margin was being lessened over that period of time.
That must have been very hard for you at Seppelts with that great
tradition at Great Western -
RJ: Yes.
- of very fine sparkling making.
RJ: Yes. The wines were improving all the time. They were getting
better, and that was being done at some cost anyway, and yet we couldn’t
get any more for the finished product.
Ross, without being overly voyeuristic about this, were there problems with a family company in those years of tight market
profits? What I mean is, I guess in old family firms you have
people looking for their cut of the surplus at the end of the year,
and wine being such a capital intensive industry, it must have been quite difficult at times.
26
RJ: It was very difficult indeed. I remember in the 70’s, when I saw the
need for some investment in better equipment and so on to enable us to do
a better job to make table wine, because we needed to make more of it, it
was just near on impossible to get enough funds to do it. A family
company wasn’t prepared to borrow too much. They couldn’t afford to
borrow too much either. And of course their shareholders were expanding
within the family as the families grew, and many of them if they couldn’t
see a reasonable outcome would be selling their shares. That’s what
happened to Seppelts eventually, that the outside of family shareholders
grew to a greater proportion than the family shareholding, and that’s why
we got under a share market attack. So it was an enormous problem to try
and fund the sort of developments that were necessary to meet the
developing market changes.
That would have been a terribly frustrating era, I’m sure.
RJ: It was. Very difficult.
Did you come to feel very, very close to the company in those
years?
RJ: Oh, yes. I think when you grow up in a company, and advance in that
company, you get very close to it.
But hopefully you didn’t have to bear the family tensions as well too much.
RJ: Well, in some respects one did, and there were quite a lot of tensions,
but I suppose that’s only natural that you do so when you get to a senior
level and are a director of the company—become close to that.
They may have been of long standing, anyway, for all I know.
RJ: Yes. Well, I think they were, from what I hear. (Laughter)
I don’t know.
So just looking back over your career, Ross, what would have been the greatest changes over time? You’ve mentioned the changes in
drinking styles. Was there anything else?
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RJ: Really the changes in drinking styles that caused the need for different
equipment and development of processes, and then that in turn caused
changes at the vineyard end.
The tying together of all the forecasts was a fascinating thing for me. I
was very much involved in forecasting for the future. To be able to make
the prediction of where we should be in five years time—because it took
the best part of five years to get a vineyard into production—and where we
were going to get the raw material from on an ongoing basis, was a
fascinating thing, and one couldn’t help but to be engrossed by it
throughout the whole of your activities.
So in a sense you rolled with the punches of the changes -
RJ: Yes.
- but the changes in themselves made changes, from what you’re
saying.
RJ: That’s right, yes. It was a fascinating industry in that regard I think.
I always have said that the wine industry is one of the most fascinating
industries that you could hope to be in because of the enormity of changes
and the time cycles that are necessary to be observed in meeting those
changes.
Ross, I guess it would be true to say that as a young lad of fifteen
starting at Chateau Tanunda with your background at Petras, and
at Chateau Tanunda as well, you would never have dreamt of
seeing the industry where it is today.
RJ: No, never. Never.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me, Ross. It’s been a real
pleasure.