STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/168

Full transcript of an interview with

PETER WALL

on 22 August 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

2

OH 692/168 PETER WALL

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.

3

OH 692/168 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

NATIONAL WINE CENTRE ORAL HISTORY.

Interview with Peter Wall on 22nd August, 2002.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Peter, where and when were you born please?

PW: I was born in the Royal Hospital for Women. (Laughs) Opposite

Victoria Barracks in Sydney, in Paddington.

In what year?

PW: 1939.

And who were your parents, Peter?

PW: My mother was Florence, nee Anderson. She was the daughter of the

one time Editor and Manager for the Dubbo Despatch and the Western Age,

which were two significant papers in rural New South Wales, which

persisted until the papers were all amalgamated. I remember when I was

an audit clerk, we used to audit the Federal Government national

advertising process because it was all handled through an agency that

worked in conjunction with Gordon and Gotch. They were the major

periodical distributor in New South Wales for all of the newsagents. And I

think in Western Australia. They had offices down here in Victoria. So the

Dubbo Despatch and the Western Age were still around in the late 50’s.

They were part of what happened with Murdoch press and Messenger press

and the other who gradually absorbed all of those rural and regional

newspapers.

So that’s your mother’s family. What about your father? What was

his name?

4

PW: My father was Leo. He was the youngest son of Mary, nee Hunt, and

William Chandos Wall. William Chandos Wall had interests in gold mining.

Took part in the latter gold diggings and fossicking that occurred around his

electorate, which was in Mudgee. He was also the Member for Mudgee in

the pre-Federation Parliament in New South Wales. And both sides of the

family had been in Australia for generations at that stage, so their origins

were English and Irish mainly.

Did you have siblings, Peter?

PW: Yes. I have two brothers and two sisters. My younger brother,

David, has the Romavilla winery. He acquired that from the Bassett family,

who had owned and operated it since it was founded back in the 19th

century. His son, Richard, is now the winemaker there.

And my other brother, Bill, who’s a doctor, at one stage had an interest in

going into the wine industry, which never really materialised, but his son,

Gary, is the present President of the Australian Society for Viticulture and

Oenology. So there’s a bit of a presence of the Wall family now in the wine

industry.

Now, Peter, had your parents an interest in wine?

PW: No. My father was a dentist. My mother was trained as a nurse.

So you wouldn’t have had it in your home so much?

PW: Oh, yes, I think on high days and feast days there was always a

bottle of wine on the table. And I think as kids we all had a sip of it. You

know, it was an occasional drink. I think the preference of my father and

his brothers would be to have a Scotch maybe or drink beer. It was just at

that era I think when I was a kid when the first impact of the post Second

World War immigration was being felt in Australian society. So there were

pasta bars where you could have a glass of rough red, both in Sydney and

in Melbourne. To a lesser extent I think here.

Much less here.

5

PW: Came a bit later in South Australia.

The Bohemian was here I think.

PW: So, no, it wasn’t through that that my interest in wine came about.

It was when I had left school.

You were educated in Sydney?

PW: Yes.

Whereabouts, Peter?

PW: I was educated at Riverview, which is a Jesuit college on the northern

side of the harbour. And again, it was part of sort of a culture where I

think a lot of my school peers, you know, drank wine. I mean, it was part

of the fabric of more sophisticated living in Sydney. And the feeling of

being the inheritors of European tradition I think sort of are alive when you

go to an institution like that that traces its origins back 400 years. So

those feelings of tradition and associations with—we had, for example,

Jesuits there who had in part been trained in Europe. They had moved to

Australia as part of the Jesuit scheme of moving their staff around all over

the world. So they were fluent in French, for example, and spoke about

the culture of France, rural France, good food and good wine, being part of

that.

So we’re talking table wine, are we, rather than the fortified, which

was predominant in Australia at the time?

PW: Yes.

I think I was talking to James Halliday who said that there was a section of Sydney society very much conversant with good table

wine in that era in his experience.

PW: Yes. I’ve spoken before about knowing the Byers family, who were

hoteliers and had the local pub. Sir Maurice Byers was the late Solicitor

General for Australia, the one with Simon Boyle in the conflicts over the

dismissal of Gough Whitlam, and called before the Bar of the Parliament,

6

but Maurice and his brother, Paul, became friends and that certainly—they

had a very keen interest in wine.

(Tape restarted)

PW: So you’re right, there was a part of Sydney that knew good wine and

was interested in it. In fact, the first Viognier that I tried was through Paul

in the local hotel. He was a good friend of Doug Lamb’s. And that was

another element that I’m sure James would’ve spoken to you about, that if

you’re interested in fine wine in Sydney, at some stage or another, because

there was a smaller band of aficionados, you would run into them. I met

Don Ditter, and very soon, Len Evans and Max Lake and, of course, Doug

Lamb. Doug was the one that one day when Paul and I were down in his

cellars, which were down in Kent Street, or down that end of town, down

near Pyrmont, had said, ‘Why don’t you try this? This is Chateau Grillet’.

And, you know, that was in the late 50’s. So all of these were quite rare,

and that had a (couldn’t decipher word) of about three hectares. So, you

know, Doug was there in Europe fossicking out wines and knew that there

was, as you’ve said, enough interest in those fine wines in Australia for him

to make a business out of it.

By this time, Peter, would you be studying at university, or

working?

PW: No. I was studying accountancy. It was my ambition then to

become a chartered accountant, although probably saying it was my

ambition is a bit over-stating it. It was a holding pattern really while I

worked out what I really had an interest in. That’s typical, isn’t it? You

know, you’re eighteen when you leave secondary school and you’re asked

to make a decision about the rest of your life.

Anyway, I was happy to go on doing that, but slowly I became more

interested in wine and it did seem at that stage to be a good opportunity. I

was interested in food and wine, and I had a reasonable palate. I wouldn’t

lay claim too much damaged by years of excess. (Laughs) And I’d met

interesting people. You know, at that stage I’d also been tracking up to the

7

Hunter and spent some time with the Draytons, and met Murray Tyrrell and

some of the other aficionados. Karl Stockhausen was up there even in

those days. And Perc McGuigan, Brian’s father. So, you know, the

romance of wine was real. There were these colourful characters who

worked in interesting environments and created great wines. So it became

a conviction that, yes, it was something of an interesting career that I

could pursue.

Peter, could you talk just a little about some of those Hunter characters because many people may not—Murray, of course, has

been around. Perc is a bit hidden these days.

PW: Yes, well, I’m not even sure that he’s still alive.

Yes, he is. Or he was, last year.

PW: He managed the Dalwood cellars for Penfolds, and was there getting

on with life. Don Ditter down in Sydney, I recall Peter van (couldn’t

decipher name) was working with him in those cellars at—where did they

work? Pyrmont, was it?

Pyrmont, I think.

PW: Yes. So Don was bringing wines up from South Australia and

coordinating all of the blending out of those Pyrmont cellars, which were

the main bottling facility for Penfolds. So Don was in that position where

he really was, in a broad sense, managing the technicalities of the Penfolds

wine, although Ray Beckwith was down doing great science in, I’ve always

felt, the technicalities of winemaking in Australia in that era, and Perc was

up there looking after the making. I always got the impression that he felt

that he was the more practical person in the Penfolds organisation. He was

there managing the vineyards and managing the winemaking in a practical

sense, and there were these sort of boffins down in town who tried to

overlay a more impractical view and suggest to him how to suck eggs. So

certainly as the years rolled by and there was rationalisation and Penfolds

moved out to Wybong and planted some vineyards out there, I think Perc

8

became a bit disenchanted with the process. You know, he’d be one to tell

you that he was a bit disgruntled about things as they were evolving, but

he was typical I think of that whole Hunter community. They were always

interested to see a fresh faced youth, who would come along and have an

interest in what they were doing. They were always encouraging and

helpful, and it really moved me along the path a bit because they all said,

‘If you want to get somewhere in this industry these days, you have to go

to Roseworthy and take the formal training’. So even those people that

hadn’t had that experience, you know, perceived that the era was

changing, and I think Perc was typical of that. I mean, he saw the

inevitable and would be encouraging to somebody who was entering the

industry.

So did that direct you immediately to Roseworthy, Peter?

PW: Yes. That was the consensus view at that stage. I’d met a lot of

people in the industry, at Penfolds and Lindemans. I don’t know if I’d met

Bruce (couldn’t decipher name). But going to industry, you know, I joined

the Wine Co-operative Society, the organisation there that was buying

parcels of wine and supplying it to their members. So they had functions

where you would meet Len Drayton, and you’d meet Murray, and you’d

meet the characters that were accessible in New South Wales, but there’d

also be visiting (sounds like, firemen) up from South Australia. Yes, I kept

getting that message to move ahead and take some formal training in

oenology.

And this is after you’d become a qualified accountant, Peter?

PW: No. I wasn’t interested enough to push ahead with it. Every year or

so one of the partners at the accounting firm I worked with would nag me

about how far I was progressing in my studies, so I’d sit for another exam

and get another unit, but my heart really wasn’t in it. And I was somewhat

apprehensive that if I did all that, and I’d invested the energy and the

effort, that it would prejudice my resolve to look for other opportunities. I

9

wasn’t prejudiced then in any way. And finally when I was fed up enough I

just left and applied for work down here in South Australia so that I’d be

closer to Roseworthy and could get on with the studies.

How did your parents greet this movement towards wine, Peter?

PW: Oh, they were fine. My father was quite ill at the time but I think he

was just keen to see all his kids pursue whatever they wanted to go into.

There were doctors and lawyers and my father was a dentist, so they were

sort of professionals and that was sort of part of the process that you’d

have some professional qualification and follow life as a professional

somewhere.

So did you start writing letters to wine companies in South

Australia, Peter?

PW: Yes. I’d written away to most of the major companies. Stonyfell.

Yalumba. Hardys. Penfolds. Orlando. Glenloth had a presence in those

days as well.

They were still at Happy Valley then, weren’t they?

PW: Yes. I came down here with all of those companies who were

prepared to interview me for a position. I announced that my ambition

was to go to Roseworthy and that I was looking to get some experience in

the industry in the interim. For the first week that I was down in South

Australia I just went around and people interviewed me, and I interviewed

them, as to the prospect for a job. Stonyfell had offered me a job, and

Yalumba, and Glenloth, and Hardys. So I had to make a decision.

Out of the choices on option I thought Yalumba probably was about the

right size. It was small enough but, not withstanding that, diverse enough

to provide a good opportunity, and I liked the people. In my interview with

Yalumba—we’ve spoken about this before—it was the serial interview. It

started off with the cellar manager, Ray Ward, and then I was passed over

to Rudi Kronberger, and then on to Alf Wark, and finally on to Wyndham

Hill Smith. They all wanted to have a look at this potential candidate. Sort

10

of late in the day they must have had an opportunity to exchange views.

Then Rudi finally was the one who said, ‘Yes, fine, you can start next

Monday’. So I had a good view of the people, and they were sympathetic

and I felt that would be a good environment to work.

Brian (couldn’t decipher name) interviewed me for Stonyfell, and I met

Peter Lehmann at that stage. He was running the Angaston cellars. And

Bob Hardy and Dick Heath had interviewed me, and Ray Beckwith with

Penfolds. All of those people were very easy to get along with—

sympathetic people. So there had to be some other. It was a combination

of elements I think that got my interest at Yalumba.

I was going to say, Peter, with the personalities you’ve described

who spoke with you, while they all had one aim in the company,

they were very distinct people, weren’t they?

PW: Yes.

Because Ray’s personality is quite different from Alf’s or Windy’s or Rudi’s, of course, and each of them to each other.

PW: Yes.

Was it a fascinating place to go to at that time?

PW: Yes, well, for someone uninitiated it was like a mysterious temple,

full of all these nooks and crannies and arcane processes going on. And a

lot of it was, at that stage, folk loric. You know, there were traditional

things done. A lot of them had a good foundation in experience and

rational process, but there were a lot of other things that were just done

that was part of the traditions.

And I remember at Yalumba in the upper barrel storages in the main

building, every Christmas the floors would be swabbed with boiled linseed

oil. Eventually this had built up to a residue that was just sticky, and there

was this quarter of an inch of sticky, slowly drying and polymerising linseed

oil on the floor that stuck to the bottom of your boots for the rest of the

year, until it was repeated again the following year. No-one had said after

11

the wooden floors were completely saturated with linseed, ‘Stop!’

(Laughter) It just went on.

And it was interesting in those days that all of those premises were

bonded. That was another curious environment to work in. There were

resident customs officers there, and some of the tanks that had under-

bond product in them were locked and other tanks were free store. So

under bond and free store.

And there was all of that jargon as well, and processes that on the face of

it—I mean, if it had never been explained to you about the content number

for a fortified wine, you wouldn’t understand the jargon. So this was the

amount of alcohol per gallon so that they could see—the idea was that a

quantum of wine had a certain dollar value of duty embedded in it by virtue

of the alcohol that was added. The volume might vary by evaporation but

the dollar value of the dutiable spirit in it remained the same. So if you

lost some by evaporation it didn’t make any difference. The quantum that

was left was the content. That was the processes that were around wine

but the whole process of handling dutiable spirit, let alone distilling it and

accounting for all of the wastage, and accounting for all the customs rules

that it had to be handled in a certain way, and distillation charges had to

be declared, and there had to be a process of reconciliation of the spirit

that was in the original wine with what eventually you ended up after the

distillation.

So what did those customs blokes do all day? Not a lot?

PW: No. They’d write up the books, and supervised the clerks that were

doing it for the company. They were the custodians of the keys, so it was

necessary to go and get either a customs officer or to get their keys. In

some cases there were two locks. There was the proprietor’s lock and the

customs’ lock for the wine that was under bond. So it was another artefact

that was just mysterious. You know, all these code numbers that were on

the barrels, and that reflected the clerking process and all of the rules, that

a batch of must or wine needed to be declared, and it needed to be in a

12

discrete container. And then you needed to add to that a discrete(?)

quantum of alcohol and spirit. So sometimes in the hurly-burly of vintage

those things were just not practical, and there was a running battle

constantly between the customs officers who wanted the licensee to stick

strictly to the rule and the winemakers who were just getting on with life

and with no intention to defraud. You know, have any practice that was

fraudulent but just make it easy to make the wine.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

Peter, your early days at Yalumba, was that also spent out at

Roseworthy with time there as well? Were you to-ing and fro-ing?

PW: No. For the first fifteen months I worked in the cellars and that also

involved visiting other wineries, so there was a good opportunity to meet

the winemakers in a lot of other companies. It was a much smaller

industry in those days and the opportunities for young aspirant oenologists

were very good. It was sort of an open exchange of information and

everyone saw, I think, oenology students as the next generation of

managers even in the industry, so people were always very generous. And

there was a tradition of that in the industry.

Which other places would you have gone to at this time, Peter, in the first fifteen months?

PW: All around the Barossa Valley for example, and McLaren Vale. There

were opportunities to go to visit other wineries, so it might be to go down

and talk to Hardys about distillation, for example, and there were always

visitors passing through. I remember the Knappstein family and the

Haselgroves, and there were all the local winemakers. Peter Lehmann, as

you know, had worked at Yalumba, so he was very comfortable in that

environment and would come up and talk to Rudi. And Bryan Dolan in the

13

same way. He was looking after the winemaking for Hardys with Neil

Lindsay. I think Neil might have been the other one who was a graduate in

that year with Ian McCrae and Phil Laffer. They’ll remember.

And then there were the principals of the firms that would come up as well.

Was Jim Irvine around the place at that time?

PW: Yes.

At Dorrien, would he have been?

PW: Yes, could have been at Hardys at Dorrien. But certainly he’d moved

on to Krondorf at some stage then.

There were people like David Crosby who eventually went on to be involved

in Dalgetys, for example. David had spent some time selling cosmetics as

a marketer, I think with Ponds.

Anyway, as I say, there was that whole passing parade of principals.

People like Henry Martin. It’s hard for me to separate over the years who

specifically I saw then and who I saw subsequently because it just sort of

all blurs into the process.

Did you feel though that you’d fallen on your feet, Peter? This is

really where you wanted to be, unlike accounting?

PW: Yes. It was something that I felt very comfortable with and felt

confident about. The opportunities that we had to be trained in things like

tasting were fantastic. George Fairbrother was the trainer lecturer at

Roseworthy in wine tasting and really was a show judge. Henry Martin had

travelled a lot overseas. It was a huge amount of international experience

that was available, and fantastic palates in the industry, so from that

aspect alone it was terrifically rewarding. Young people I think have

amazing palates. You just have to train them. You do tend, I think, to sort

of lose that olfactory and gustatory acuity as time marches on. It’s the

same issues of ageing with all human beings. Those were terrific

opportunities. I felt it suited my natural skills and talents and so I felt very

comfortable.

14

So on a broader level, including social life, Peter, was it a good time

for a young man in the Barossa?

PW: Yes, well, that’s another thing. It was no different from most rural

communities and the local farmers’ sons were ploughing along, figuratively

and literally, with their work on the farms, and that professional level for

the young doctors who were working in country practices and young

lawyers—any young professional male—was seen as a good prospect for

the marriageable daughters in the area. That just sort of meant that you

had fairly easy passage. You know, you were invited to the parties and the

balls and whatever was going at the time. You only had to mix that a bit

with the normal raging testosterone that was in all young males and it was

an exciting time. And the wine industry had a bit of romance about it.

There were a lot of visitors to the Barossa Valley, people who, even in

those days, were the beginnings of wine tourism. There was a lot of

interesting people to meet, and people who were interested and had the

same feelings about that environment that I’ve explained. You know, that

it was rather arcane, and in that mystery there was interest. So to have

somebody who aspired certainly, but who professed to know a bit about it

and could show people the pathway into the mysteries, that was good. It

gave you the entrée at least to hold these people’s attention for a while.

Peter, I was thinking, were there some really outstanding people in the Barossa that you could say, well, that particular wine product

or that particular wine was their baby, that were known all over?

Rudi’s Rieslings were very famous. And Ray was known for his early bottling ideas. Were those things widespread as you came

into the area?

PW: Yes, well, it wasn’t the era when the traditional products that had

always been there, the flor sherries and a whole range of fine wood-aged

and flor developed sherries were available, all the fine Ports and the great

mysteries of Port blending, but Henry Deinhardt had just been recruited by

Colin Gramp to run the first Seitz and M.....schmidt equipment that Gramps

had imported for sparkling winemaking. Deinhardt was the predecessor for

15

Günter Prass, and he and Günter were good friends. Henry went back to

Europe to eventually run the (sounds like, Gal-bickle-heim) Co-operative. I

met Henry in Germany years later. So, yes, there was more of an interest

in table wine generally, but particularly in new opportunities for sparkling

wine. Ian Hickinbotham and Roger -

Warren?

PW: No. His name will occur to me in a minute. He subsequently worked

with Wynns. Anyway, I’ll come to that in a minute.

So they were working at Kaiser Stuhl on different techniques. They were

not on the same bent as sterile bottling as it was practiced at Orlando but

more on post bottling sterilisation. There was a lot happening in that era of

the early to mid 60’s, and I think there was more planting of those fine

white table wine varieties, particularly Riesling, and to a lesser extent

Semillon. At that stage Leo Burings, Orlando, Yalumba and Knappsteins at

Clare were planting out Riesling. Jim Barry was encouraging it. So you

had something like half the total crush of Riesling was within those people

that I’ve named, and also with Salters.

There’d always been a reasonable quantum of dry red made, mostly out of

Shiraz in those days, but increasingly there was interest in Cabernet

Sauvignon. And Cabernet was planted out both in the Barossa Valley,

McLaren Vale and in some of the new irrigated vineyards up in the Murray,

in the South Australian areas in the Riverland. There was starting to

become available more varieties that were specifically suited for table

winemaking, so it was the beginning of that era.

And we were all in a bit of a scramble for grapes. There was a lot of

Mataro around, and a lot of Grenache, but although that fine winemaking

was going on the main bulk of wine sales were in flagons in those days, or

in bulk. A lot of wine was being shipped in bulk out of the Barossa Valley.

To various places. Where tankers would go in the night. (Laughs)

16

PW: Yes. So it was fed into the wine trade in Melbourne and Sydney and

bottled finally by other people. Licensed places.

Doug Crittenden from Melbourne, Peter, has told me that he would

come over and try batches and then ship it over and bottle in Melbourne.

PW: Yes.

And that that was really the start of, in one sense, a big interest in

table wines came from these bulk bottlings.

PW: Yes. But there was also a lot going in barrel up to the cane cutters in

Queensland.

Really?

PW: Both Yalumba and Salters used to make Kew(?) Claret—that was

Queensland Claret—mostly from Grenache. It had to be slightly volatile.

You know, it was the flatness and slight volatility that appealed to the

Italian drinkers up there in Queensland because it more reflected those

wines that they were used to in Italy. I mean, it wasn’t volatile to the point

where it was undrinkable, but it was just those tones, if you like, in the

wine that appealed to that whole work-force of very hard working Italians

that came to Australia in the post war era.

So this was a lot of wine going up there, Peter, was it?

PW: Yes. Certainly the bulk of Yalumba’s red winemaking in those days

went into these bulk sales, that together with the wine we were putting

into flagons ourselves. So there was quite a big trade between Penfolds,

Orlando, and Rovalley, interestingly enough, had a very big trade in

flagons—flagon white and flagon red.

So Liebichs were at Rovalley at that time?

PW: Yes.

Darkie?

17

PW: Yes, Darkie and Mick. So, you know, sold under labels that were

Hock for the white and Claret for the red. And a softer red, which was

Burgundy. One without quite the tannin grip.

Tell me, Peter, before we go back to have a look at Yalumba again,

how was Roseworthy for you after you’d had that first fifteen

months? Were you there for the full two years, or did you do the

full ag course as well?

PW: No, only the oenology course during two years. Roseworthy, I think

it’s fairly typical of the agricultural colleges in Australia at the time. They

saw themselves as an educational institution for farmers’ sons, and farm

lads that were a bit unruly and had to be disciplined. The managers of

those educational institutions were quite happy to let a certain amount of

bastardisation go on because they thought this was character building. I

mean, in modern educational theory I think it was just absolutely absurd.

It was still a terrific deployment of resources for a few people. The

oenology course, as I’ve said, was run out of facilities where there was a

pilot winery and a pilot distillery and two or three laboratories for analytical

and microbiological work, which were devoted to four students. (Laughs)

We had four lecturers for four students, so no wonder eventually the

course was reviewed and the whole institution of Roseworthy was reviewed

as to its effectiveness, but it was a good opportunity.

There was, officially, no consumption of alcohol allowed on the premises,

so the oenology students were always seen as bit of a sore thumb because

they were drinking. And I think there was a certain resentment because

the oenology students typically were more mature students. They’d either

come through the ag course or they’d come in from industry as mature age

students. So that was fine.

But I loved it. I thought it was a terrific opportunity. It was the study that

grabbed my interest. I’d always been predisposed to maths and science.

It was right up my alley and I pursued the studies very enthusiastically.

We were fortunate to have an honours graduate teaching us biology, bio-

chem and organic chemistry, and he was an ex post graduate student of

18

Krebs(?) who worked in the University of Leeds, and who was the

discoverer of the Krebs Cycle. This is one of the main metabolic pathways

in life.

What was his name, Peter?

PW: Brian Gerard. He’s now a manager for finance with one of the

Melbourne secondary schools.

So there was that feeling that we were at the cutting edge, that we were

going out into industry to apply the new science of biochemistry, a better

understanding of the whole processes of fermentation and microbiology in

an industry where there were few people who had that knowledge at the

time. It was also a good opportunity for me to get some experience of

farm work. I’ve always thought myself lucky that I had to lump wheat

bags and ram them and sew them and to be involved in the cultivation,

and to some extent in the dairy work and the poultry farming. This was

carried out on the college as well. So a terrific opportunity. I mean, it’s to

take the best out of those opportunities.

Subsequently where I’ve been on the curriculum committees for both

Charles Sturt University and for the Adelaide University courses in oenology

and viticulture, we’ve been moving those courses in Australia to more and

more technical knowledge. I think we pushed them out from three year to

four year under-graduate courses just to get the quantum of additional

intellectual development and learning into the minds of the under-

graduates. So it had come from two years of being a very practical

training course to the needs of the industry now being far more technical,

and in this era for people to be able to handle what we colloquially call feral

ferments, so to be able to deal with a whole range of yeasts and to avoid

the spoilage that’s possible in that environment, and to take the best

aspects of flavour development. Although it appears that the industry’s

retreated from using quite sophisticated isolated yeasts and yeast strains,

to move back towards using indigenous yeasts. You know, out of the

population on the grapes and in the wineries, it is very risky. It is a move

19

where you need to give up the surety of the outcome, but it’s possible

because the knowledge of the microbiology of wine has just lifted

enormously in the last twenty years. So it was a different training in those

days. In all industries I think it’s just gone through this evolution now

where to get new outcomes you need to have more knowledge, and that

requires a lot more training, a lot more development for the young people.

Each generation has its time, Peter, as you were saying.

PW: Yes.

Its time and its method I guess.

You’ve come back from Roseworthy to Yalumba. Are there some critical events that occur in the 60’s in your life at Yalumba, and in

a broader sphere, that you look back on and say, well, they were

very important to the industry, or to me?

PW: You and I have spoken before about the commercial aspects of the

industry at that time. It wasn’t vertically integrated, and grape growers

grew grapes and winemakers bought them and made them into wine, and

then they sold the wine either through agents in various States of

Australia, or with a little bit of local trade, or they sold it to merchants like

Doug Crittenden who would then bottle the wine and blend it possibly and

sell it under their own label. Fairly soon, in my mind, the starting point

would be to get more efficiencies in the bottling process. So rather than

send our wine out to be bottled, send it in hardwood wax barrels interstate,

where you lost control of the quality of it, and where we were making that

change between predominantly fortified wine to a mix of table wine and

fortified wine, and that quality control aspect was very important. It hadn’t

been so important with fortified wine but with table wine, if you didn’t

handle it properly, you would end up with wines that were volatile, oxidised

and spoiled much more easily. So first of all to take control of those

quality outcomes, but secondly, because the commercial advantages of

buying packaging materials in bulk, and then selling the wine as bottled

wine, would provide a cost advantage. We would then instead of buying a

20

few thousand bottles of glass we were buying hundreds of thousands of

units of a particular bottle. So there were cost savings in that.

But fairly quickly it became apparent that it was also an opportunity in the

first instance to take the margin. So instead of having that margin eroded

by you sending it in bulk and someone else bottling it and taking the gap

up between bulk supply and presenting bottle wine to the wholesale

market, that as a commercial advantage became apparent. And there was

a lot of negotiation with our agents when we brought all the bottling back

to Yalumba, ostensibly on the basis that we controlled the quality, but

clearly in our part of it by Alf and Windy and myself was this process that

we would be bringing back the margin. And then subsequently that

evolution went on and enabled us to represent ourselves, open up offices in

the other States of Australia. And that was happening right through the

whole industry. So it was the beginning of rationalisation and a move

towards the vertical integration of the industry that has gone on ever since,

as well as providing for the aggregation of the industry into more efficient

quantums of market excess and control.

21

OH 692/168 TAPE 2 - SIDE A

NATIONAL WINE CENTRE ORAL HISTORY. Interview with Peter Wall on 22nd August, 2002.

Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Peter, you were saying there’s this very significant change in

commercial terms occurring, and in controlling the output as well. What about on a technical side? Is there a movement, say, in the

vineyard and in the winery to improve things as well?

PW: In the winery everyone was moving towards sterile bottling, so

implicit in that is much better control of the microbiology of wines. And

again a fair knowledge of what was happening.

In the vineyards by the early 70’s I, for one, was questioning whether or

not the traditional practice in the Barossa Valley for viticulture was the best

way to achieve a commercial outcome. We had the experience of irrigated

vines in Yalumba’s holdings up at Waikerie, and quite a number of the

others—Penfolds, Seppelts—they all had irrigated vineyard holdings. So we

knew the efficiencies and the yields of irrigated viticulture.

I recall that there was a horticultural conference in the Barossa Valley in

1972 and I was one of the speakers and spoke of the possibility of

irrigating grape vines in the Barossa Valley, and I suggested that I could

see a time in the future when all the viticulture in the Barossa Valley would

be irrigated. That had George Kolarovich and Günter Prass in the paper

the next Wednesday saying that this was an outrageous idea and we’ll all

be ruined. You know, the perception of irrigated fruit quality was that it

was just no good at all. That was the environment when people were

starting to look at irrigated viticulture. There was quite an obvious 120ml

water deficit in most years to bringing the grapes to full and abundant

maturity. So that was the era that we were in. So both in the vineyards

and in the wineries there was a practical application of new technology, the

technology of managing irrigated crops, and that required adjustment in

the way that the vines were pruned.

22

I remember in the late 60’s at Yalumba where the vines out at Pewsey Vale

were more grown like Bonsai plants because they were pruned so savagely

relative to the available soil moisture. So if you’ve reduced the number of

buds, you’ve reduced the canopy, it wouldn’t lose so much water, and it

would have enough to bring a few bunches of grapes per vine through to

full maturity. So the idea of just letting the vine be a bit more vigorous

and giving it some irrigation was somewhat heresy at that stage. And

subsequently I think probably it was over-played to some extent, and there

has been a retreat, but certainly no-one now would think in terms of, yes,

I’ll grow the grape vines without irrigation. I mean, there are a few

vineyards that are handled in that way in the Barossa Valley but not many.

Something like 10%. So I think it was just a better knowledge and having

more sophisticated equipment, and so the ability to handle grapes speedily.

And one of the great advances was in temperature control, and when loads

of grapes were measured—each load was measured for its temperature on

receipt at the winery—we soon realised that that was a major problem of

degradation, and that led to machine harvesting in the middle of the night.

And the grapes instead of coming in at 30 degrees and above, were coming

in at 20 degrees. You know, the degradation process is accelerated

logarithmically as you go up in temperature.

And then there was the introduction of must chilling, and it brought the

whole process under much tighter control. Wasn’t as much time for those

varieties that didn’t benefit from skin contact to be in contact with the skins

in that hot, low sulphide environment, where they were prone to oxidation.

So the incidence of oxidised juice character was reduced.

A lot of improvements came out of better understanding and better control.

The difference there was that if you want to control 500 tons of grapes in

terms of temperature it might require ten horsepower, but if you want to

control 2,000 tons of grapes in per day then it just goes out from there.

You’ve got thousands of kilowatts—yes, probably thousands of kilowatts—

of electrical energy in the compressors, and spatially you’ve got to provide

ways of getting refrigerant around large tank storages, and the ability to

23

quickly and efficiently process bigger presses and bigger drainers. So the

capital investment in applying the new knowledge and technology at that

scale was enormous, and you’ve seen it as you’ve gone around the

Australian industry now.

Yes.

But, Peter, to a degree was that offset by the fact that with the very fine quality sherries and Ports and fortifieds, you needed to store

them for many years, so in fact you had a capital asset sitting in

vats, if you like. Whereas with table wine, which was becoming

more and more accepted by Australia, that was able to be got out much quicker to the market place. Would that be true?

PW: The average age of wine went from about three years when I joined

in the early 60’s down to about 1.1 years stock at the end of June. So,

yes, that was a big difference, but partly there were the stock valuation

benefits. So you had concessional values allowed to the industry and

showed up only when you sold the wine on. In those initial days, when you

were holding three years stock, it was more of an advantage, but when you

were just holding a bit over a years stock, the financial advantage wasn’t

as great. And when the Federal Government announced that it would take

away that concession, it didn’t mean as much pain then -

This is in the 70’s, wasn’t it?

PW: Something like that.

- as it would have in bygone eras. Meant a bit more for companies like

McWilliams and Yalumba that were still major fortified wine sellers, and I

think probably the lobbying with the Federal Government not to discontinue

those concessions was driven a lot by companies like Yalumba and

McWilliams.

Did you have much to do with those discussions on that level, Peter?

PW: Rudi retired in ‘72, so I was in charge of the manufacturing for

Yalumba from then on, and I think it was in the mid 70’s that I joined our

Board. And as I’ve spoken about before, it was always very open at

24

Yalumba. If we were recruiting somebody, it could be very well that Windy

would want to be in on the act and want to meet whoever it was, as he had

done with me. And we would all talk about the common problems with

running the cellars.

My interest and involvement was always at that level. I always was

interested to find out more about the nuts and bolts and how the whole

thing hung together. And when we came as I’ve suggested to this process

of getting more margin toward vertical integration, it was quite clear. I

saw that as driven as much by the commercial outcome as by the technical

outcome. It was always very frank. I’ve always felt—was it Albert Einstein

who said that we are standing on the shoulders of giants, when referring to

his view of Newton? Yes, it was always that the industry was innovative

and interesting, and people had that view that it was a whole industry,

even though it was divided more in those days between the grape growers

and the wine makers. The wine makers always had—in those days it might

have been 10% of their own manufacture, but during that period of the

mid 50’s through to the 70’s it went up in vineyard holdings, from

roundabout that level of 10% up to about 20 to 25% even. I saw some

figures recently where it’s now 20-odd% of the total grape supply that is

grown by the wine makers themselves, but that’s spread across far more

wine makers these days. There’s 1400 licencees now, whereas it may have

been 50 or 60 wine makers.

A big difference.

PW: Yes.

Peter, just as an aside, I’ve had other people who’ve worked with

Windy talk about him. Could you just give us a resume of how you found working with Windy?

PW: He was always ambitious to do a lot of things, to push Yalumba on.

He had a very active mind. He was interested in a lot of things. In the

sport as a racer of racehorses, and as a cricketer. He loved meeting

people. He was very much a people’s person and, certainly, was a risk

25

taker. He had come to be the General Manager of Yalumba in an era where

his real interest was marketing. When I joined the company he was very

keen to enter whatever new section of the market was appearing, and it

was at that time to do with sparkling wine. So he was very keen to follow

the trend and to become a manufacturer of sparkling wine.

It was interesting that Rudi was more of a traditional approach to

winemaking and didn’t want to sail out into unknown, unchartered waters

as much. Until things were technically proven, Rudi was hesitant to get

involved in them. Yalumba had been a very traditional wine maker, so

there was always this healthy banter between Windy and Rudi. He was

fair-minded and saw the development of the company as a responsibility

for a whole lot of people as well, who were his employees.

What else can I say about him? I enjoyed his company, and he and I were

good mates until he died. But he was very fair and reasonable, and was a

great mentor to me. He was very patient. He was far more patient with

people who didn’t do what he said, or what was suggested. Certainly

patient of the inevitable errors that we all fall into. So he was very fair.

I remember talking to Ray Ward and it was quite obvious that

Windy was patient. (Laughs) Ray was often amazed. He’d be

sacked on the Friday and still come back to work, and Windy would say, ‘Are you here again, Ray?’ (Laughs)

PW: He was a nice man.

Just as a deviation away from the personal, Peter, I want to ask a

couple of things that I’ve been fascinated in your career. One was

your use of Stelvin seals, and the other was your looking around Europe for grape varieties, if it happened in that way, or bringing

those clones back. Could you talk about those two things for me

please?

PW: Yes. I think it has to do, as I said, with younger people having acute

olfactory capacity. I suppose I was always disappointed when one had

spent so much time creating really delicate and fine wines to have them

ruined by a cork, which at that stage was a minor cost. You know, a few

26

cents per bottle. And we were always haunted by that oxidation problem

with fine wines. Apart from the taint, there was the oxidation.

At Roseworthy the project that I elected to do was to use a range of

stoppers in sparkling wine—in champagne. So we had used a range of

plastic stoppers, and the diffusion characteristics of oxygen through any

gasket system, whether its cork or Stelvin (couldn’t decipher word) or a

plastic stopper, just amazed me. When you measured it, as far as we

could, and certainly when we tasted it, the oxygen diffusion—particularly in

sparkling wine you have a pressure differential created by the CO2 in the

bottle with the outside atmosphere of, you know, six atmospheres to one.

And even under those conditions oxygen will still diffuse across the plastic

membrane into the wine. So when the Stelvin became available—and it

was a French invention invented by (couldn’t decipher name), the

mechanical cork as they called it, who operated out of Chalon(?) on the

Rhone, the birthplace of photography. That’s where they had their factory.

They were subsidiary of (couldn’t decipher name), the big European glass

maker. I had visited them in the early 70’s, and when we put down the

trials and looked at the results it was quite apparent as to the advantages,

particularly in Riesling, which was our main interest at the time in fine

wine, where we were carving out something of a unique opportunity for

Yalumba. It was quite obvious that this did present considerable

advantages. So we pushed ahead.

There was a lot of minor technical development in the way the closure was

applied. There had to be, as with a good crown seal, some draw over the

finish to stretch the metal to get really good compression with the wine.

And in the end we were not using a single stud screw, as it was called, but

a twin stud screw so that the cap, when you turned it, exerted more

pressure on the bridges to get a harder break—a faster break. So there

were those refinements that were changing the support profile of the neck,

which were developments that we took forward at Yalumba, which aren’t in

the current offering. We’ll rediscover them, I think, later—the advantages.

27

Certainly the redraw one is current, but some of the other aspects of the

closure that we developed in the 70’s I think will come back again.

Were you pooh-poohed, Peter?

PW: Well, the same old thing. It was seen as screw-cap wines. The

people who knew about it, knew the technical advantages, were absolutely

supportive. They thought it was a heroic move in marketing.

I can remember Ian Hickinbotham writing a few articles about it at the time.

PW: In support of it?

In support of it. Very strongly. For instance, I think it was in

Melbourne he was writing.

PW: I think he’d been involved in the early tastings. I don’t think there

was any problem with it from the technician point of view, and certainly

there wasn’t among us at Yalumba. We were absolutely convinced. Windy

and all the others that were involved—Mark—they’d all had the tastings.

They all knew where the advantages were, so there was quite a conviction

about that. It was when we came to sell it. It was just apprehension of

how the market would react to it. We had put a fair amount of effort into

both marketing it and selling it. We spent a lot of time with our own staff,

drilling them about the appropriate responses, and to be able to give at the

retail level, and hopefully the final customer for the wine. I think it will

happen. It’s an undeniable issue.

At the Viognier conference last Friday, at the final tasting, of the bottles

that were opened—there were eight wines presented in the final tasting.

Of the bottles that were opened to pour enough wine for 250 people to

have a sit down structured tasting, 15% of the bottles opened were corked,

and that’s been the Australian experience. Between 5, almost as a

minimum, and 20, is what you run into. Certainly you don’t run into the

20% taint level often, but you do on occasions. But certainly very seldom

28

you’ll get below 5%. That’s been our experience in opening the wines for

show judgings and so on.

(Tape restarted)

Peter, you were just saying off the record that you actually had

some bottled off from the early 70’s.

PW: Yes. Anyone who’s been exposed to the wines over that period, you

just would have nothing else except an intellectual conviction. I mean, to

the point where I would say not to do it is really disadvantaging the

Australian consumers.

Both red and white?

PW: Both red and white. Now there was been some reservation and

hesitation, and if you read what’s been written about it, there’s been this

feeling that, yes, well, red wines are a bit different and the micro-

oxidation—this a little bit of oxygen that’s leaking through the cork is good,

but it hasn’t shown up in our tasting experience. Someone was pointing

out to me the other day, (couldn’t decipher name), the great French

ontological(?) scientist, has identified that wine bottle maturity (the bottle

character you get) is more a reductive process than an oxidative one. And

if the wine has been subject to enough oxidation, again at a very low level,

during its evolution prior to bottling, then all the things you need from that

subtle oxygen input to the wine, like the stabilisation of the pigments,

that’s all happened before you bottle. And then you bottle, and then these

productive processes lead to the bottle developed character. So, you

know, again I feel that the disadvantages that you get in any wine from the

taint of the cork is the problem to overcome. Once you’ve got it in bottle.

Peter, was it about the same time that you became interested in different grape varieties?

PW: Yes. Well, generally I think I was interested in viticulture. Table

grapes had zoomed ahead in, say, the 60’s—the beginning of the 60’s.

After those vines had been in the ground for twenty years some of the

29

problems we were getting in warmer soils with nematodes had started to

show up. And we’d opted to irrigate the grape vines. And overall,

viticulture was grabbing more attention. People were looking at the use of

nematode resistant rootstocks. That gave us an opportunity in our vine

propagation regime to rapidly bring on new clones, to try new combinations

of rootstock and so on. So out of that there was an opportunity.

Viticulture technology was zooming on the same way that wine technology

had zoomed on. And we had the experience of having to ramp up very

quickly with the existing clones we had in Australia. Chardonnay, for

example, and Pinot. I think there was a realisation that we really didn’t

have the best for those varieties in Australia. So initially our pursuit of vine

material from Europe was not new varieties so much as better clones—

better clones of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. But also there were

opportunities to use some of the varieties that we didn’t have a lot of in

Australia. Viognier is one of them, of course. Selected clones of Pinot Noir.

And better clones of Merlot than we had here in Australia.

Personally I’ve always had an inkling for things that are different, and I

suppose I think that novelty certainly appeals to the consumers. We had a

deficit in what varieties and what clones we’ve had access to in Australia.

If you look at the grape varieties of Italy that we don’t have—we have a

variety like Viognier and (sounds like Swarv-ay), called Garganega.

What province was that?

PW: In Veneto province. Just down the road from Venice you have the

district of (Swarv-ay). And of course we don’t have really a lot of

plantings of Nebbiolo in Australia, although that is a variety that does

reasonably well. Certainly it’s cool climate grown in Piemonte but it’s

grown on the warmer slopes in Piemonte.

TAPE 2 - SIDE B

30

PW: A lot of material we had in Australia had come from accredited virus-

frees, they were called, sources. We had brought a lot of material in that

was nominally virus free from UC Davis, the University of California in

Davis, and that collection was husbanded by the viticultural department

there under the control of a professor called Goheen, who was a virologist.

Anyway, that was part of what I perceived as a particular focus in the

English speaking world, that virus freedom in itself is no great shakes.

There are debilitating viruses but mostly they’re sorted out by practical

viticulturists. If you’ve got a plant that doesn’t grow well and is not fruitful,

it’s usually discarded for very straightforward reasons. You don’t need to

virus index it. It’s been sorted out long before that. Or if you have a plant

that hasn’t got the right flavour, or if you have plant material that, when

you graft it, causes a great loss of vigour. So these graft transmissible

stem pitting(?) viruses and the like that are a lot around in Europe, once

you’ve sorted out those in a practical way you don’t really need to screen

much beyond that.

Now I know this will be heresy for those looking after the quarantining

process for plants in Australia. I’ve always been a strict adherent to the

process because we couldn’t do anything else. My involvement in the

development of the Yalumba nursery means that we absolutely had to be

squeaky clean at all times, but I’ve always had a healthy scepticism about

the advantages to Australia from all these processes of isolation,

quarantine etc. And it was proven to be the case. There were so many

mix-ups that occurred in that Davis collection that subsequently found their

way to Australia. We didn’t get the right varieties that were named. There

was a process that yielded clones that were virus free but had nothing to

recommend them in terms of taste characteristics or viticultural

characteristics. So in this era it’s a bit more informed and now people are

looking to have good viticultural resources. And at the Viognier conference

the other day there was just an analysis of what clones we’ve got in the

31

pipeline for Viognier—heat treated clones—that have had the major viruses

eliminated, as well as a whole lot of other clones of various origins from the

United States and from Europe. So slowly I think it’s starting to bite but

we need a more colourful viticultural palate.

And we have been enormously lucky with the response we’ve had out of

Europe. In my foraging around Europe to get new clones and new

varieties, you need but ask. Australia has a great debt to Europe. In some

of the forums I’ve been in over the years where it’s been negotiating

position for Australia, there’s always been some antipathy between the

Europeans and the Australians in these negotiations over trade access to

their markets, or whatever it’s been. But at the practical level, when you

get past that and get down to dealing with winemakers or viticulturists,

they have been extraordinarily generous. And it’s only a matter of us

asking someone like (sounds like, Raymond Bernard), the great professor

of viticulture at Dijon(?) if it would be possible for Australians to get access

to their clones that have been selected out of mass selection programmes

that have run on for decades, and he’s just said, ‘Yes. Here they are’. I

mean, that level of generosity has -

It’s marvellous.

PW: Yes. It’s very humbling.

Peter, coming around your generation particularly, it seemed to me from talking to people that winemakers were, if you like, apart

from the vineyard? Not centuries ago but in modern parlance,

there’d been a gap between the two. You talk as if the two are one, and certainly my experience today would be younger winemakers

believe it all happens in the garden.

PW: Yes, that’s true. That was another part of the evolution. Having it

sort of grow up around me, and growing up around it, it was imperceptible

to me. I wasn’t conscious of it, but I had a keen interest in viticulture and

always subscribed to that theorem that the vine quality came out of the

fruit quality and that was very dependent on knowing what happened in

the vineyard. We spoke earlier about Perc McGuigan, and Perc would see

32

himself, I’m sure, as a viticulturist, probably with greater emphasis than he

was a winemaker. You know, where there were sole proprietors of small

wineries like Maurice O’Shea was in the Hunter—you know, the people

were doing both. I think there’s probably always been a pattern, and now I

think it’s been more recognised and people have given it a name, but it

always there. The technology has advanced and now I think you need to

have a lot more technical knowledge about what a deficit regime is for

growing grapes, and for the interaction of (couldn’t decipher word) material

and rootstock, and a knowledge of the taste characteristics of different

clones, their maturity characteristics. It’s become a lot more complicated.

Life used to be simple. It does require some quite in-depth knowledge of

viticulture by most young winemakers.

Peter, just tying off the interview for today so that you’ve got some

time up your sleeve. Looking back over the last two or three

decades, are there one or two major alterations or changes in the

industry that have come home to you as being the big moves?

PW: Well, I think the restructuring of the industry in the 80’s to give us

brand Australia strategies has really capitalised on the goodwill in the

industry. It was always there but it was hammered together to form the

Winemakers’ Federation. At the time I felt that the electoral college

process that we decided on then really was not the final model, and I’ve

been very happy to see the evolution. You know, it’s more hierarchical

now and provides for regional and State organisations to have a voice in

what is after all the politics of the industry. I think that’s been very

effective.

We have got on with the (couldn’t decipher word). So although there’s

been great controversy rage backwards and forwards about taxation—and

you’d notice that. If you read about the industry, it hasn’t been the only

issue. We’ve got on with making sure our resource base is correct. The

industry now tracks the finance it needs for growing to the extent that it

has, and if you look at the area of grape vines in Australia between 1996

and 2002, it’s grown by around 60%. So that resources growth has

33

demanded, you know, all of the infrastructure keeps pace so the

development of capital investment alone in the industry has been

substantial. So the financial implications, the recruitment of the talent we

need to run an industry like that, the professionalism that’s come into the

industry organisations—you know, the staff numbers continue to climb.

The more sophisticated investment of the Australian industry and market

development, and investment of people in that area. The deployment

outside of Australia of a very sophisticated international effort in

distribution and marketing. If you had sat down to plan where we are now,

I’m sure you would’ve been daunted by the implications of that level of

growth. But the industry’s shown great capacity to go about that. To hold

the annual marketing conferences that we’ve held in the last few years. To

not rest on our laurels but to make sure that the strategy 2025 is current

because our competitors internationally have seen the success of Australia

and they’re copying, or trying to copy, what we’ve done. That I think in

terms of the working environment and for the industry has been the

greatest change. I give a lecture to the uni students on water resources

every year for Adelaide Uni, and to see their level of sophistication and to

see their enthusiasm still is fantastic.

I recently took on the chairmanship of the National Wine Industry Research

Cluster. That’s, again, another element in the evolution that there is now a

private enterprise style research facility been established where individual

organisations—all companies—could go along and say we want you to do

(couldn’t decipher word) analysis on this range of wines using your

specialised research equipment, or analytical equipment. And we’ve got

that there as a facility in Australia. Those things come out of sophisticated

industry, and that sophisticated industry’s come out of the restructuring we

went through in the 80’s.

Peter, thank you very much for giving me time today.

PW: You’re welcome.