THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
The parlous state of the Coonawarra Fruit Colony was recognised by Bill Redman after the sale of Coonawarra Cellars to Château Tanunda in 1916. Around this time, he contacted Douglas Tolley of Tolley, Scott & Tolley at Hope Valley, who agreed to take his crop as long as it was vinified into wine. Using rudimentary equipment, he managed to make adequate quality wine for bulk sale. For some years, the arrangement worked well, but Douglas Tolley stopped buying his Coonawarra burgundy in 1920 as their own fortunes began to decline. Soon, Redman was in contact with Lieutenant Colonel David Fulton, the owner of Woodley’s Wines, former commander of South Australia’s 3rd Light Horse at Gallipoli and apparently a graduate of Roseworthy Agricultural College. On Fulton’s advice, Redman altered his harvest dates and winemaking to make a lighter claret style, aged in oak for a year. These wines were sent to Woodley’s at Glen Osmond in the Adelaide Hills for blending and bottling. For years, the celebrated Woodley’s clarets comprised Coonawarra wine without any reference on the label to its regional provenance. Although recognition was scant, in 1928, Bill Redman tried to persuade the Coonawarra blockers to form a cooperative to sell fruit to Woodley’s, but to no avail.
‘Dreams abandoned, lives without purpose, women without husbands, families without family life, one long funeral for a generation and more after 1918’. – Bill Gammage, Australian historian
. . . While it is true that a pall of grief hung in the air, Australian vignerons were generally optimistic about the future of the industry – they knew that it had to adapt to new market conditions and expectations. Already, new vineyards were being planted in McLaren Vale, the Barossa, and the Murray Valley to meet the demands of the future market. Although the Export Bounty Act was not finalised until 1924, discussions about tariff preferences between the British government and federal ministers during and after the war were generally seen as something that would help the wine industry to prosper. The threat of prohibition was staved off, and a new, long, drawn-out battlefront with European governments on Australian wine names would become a feature of debate for many decades to come. Vineyards would greatly expand over the next decade, especially in irrigated areas, resulting in an enormous increase in wine production. For example, in the 1918/19 period, 8,692,837 gallons were produced, whereas in 1929/30, production more than doubled to 17,731,891 gallons.
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