CHAPTER 15 | 1914–1918 – World War 1
By 1919, the vineyards at Auldana were harnessing Clydesdale horses rather than the oxen that had previously been used for farming. Typically, their work was ploughing, scarifying, and cartage of grapes to the winery. According to winemaker George Chinnery’s daughter SA Chinnery, ‘The wine was transported to the city and other outlets by horse-drawn trolleys and carefully packed with straw covers in cases when bottled, or by keg, puncheon, hogshead, two-gallon earthenware jars in wicker baskets, etc., when in bulk, all securely roped around’. Increasing mechanisation, including more cars on the road, also had tragic results. On the 11th of July 1918, VS Kinsley, an employee of Walter Reynell & Sons, collided with a van and horses belonging to Ernest Gottlieb Helbig on the road between Gawler and Adelaide. One of the horses was killed, and the van was damaged.
‘The pulling out of old vines, some being more than 60 years old, the planting of new vines, pruning, ploughing, scarifying, topping of long shoots, dusting young foliage with sulphur, spraying, harvesting, the smell of sweating horses, and the pungent smell of the burning heaped cuttings after pruning and the companionship of workmen was all part of our life’. – SA Chinnery, Memories, Burnside Historical Society, vol. 7, no. 1, 1987
. . . Among George Chinnery’s workers at Auldana was Jack Lange, who arrived at the winery before World War I and then returned in 1918 after service in Europe. He remained a winemaker until 1942. During that time, he was in charge of making St Henri Claret, which won gold medals in London. Afterwards, he worked for Penfolds as the cellar supervisor with winemakers John Davoren and Newton Harris until his retirement in 1963. The end of the war slowly saw export markets return. But judging by export manifests, it was intermittent. In 1919, from New South Wales, Penfolds consigned 106 cases of wine to Madras, India, and six cases to Borneo, and Lindeman’s sent 150 cases of wine to Calcutta. Meanwhile, Thomas Hardy despatched 30 cases of wine to Calcutta and five cases to Hong Kong. By 1920, Lindeman’s was shipping 50 hogsheads to London, and Penfolds shipped 40 cases of wine to Shanghai. Penfolds Minchinbury wines were being exported to India, Japan, Manila, Noumea, ‘the East generally’, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. All of these shipments were signs of life and hope for renewed prosperity, but it would take a few more years before the trickle of wine became a flood of exports, especially to Great Britain.
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