CHAPTER 16 | 1920s – Bountiful Years
full-time oenology course at Roseworthy in 1936. He attended the college with the lauded John Guinand, who later became a winemaker with Angove and the Emu Wine Company, and Ron Haselgrove’s brother Colin attended in 1927. They generally attended the college as auditeurs-libres , which meant that they could attend lectures freely, possibly because their French was so rudimentary.
‘Roseworthy in those days was a great place for the development of character, with plenty of work and play. On getting a Diploma I decided to try the wool industry, and went out in the sheds to complete my wool classing course, the theory of which was taught at Roseworthy.’ – Ron Haselgrove (who entered Roseworthy Agricultural College at age 16)
A pivotal Roseworthy Agricultural College figure in the industry at this time was Ron Haselgrove, who worked for six months for a wool-broking firm in Adelaide before realising that a career in the wool business required a stint in Bradford, England. With neither the money nor the inclination, he returned to Roseworthy as an assistant state analytical chemist. By chance, Haselgrove was encouraged by Ron Mowat, the departing oenologist and viticulturalist at Roseworthy (who was headed to Seppelt in Great Western), to apply for a job with Leo Buring. Prodigiously talented yet with no experience in the field of wine, Haselgrove was lent Mowat’s lecture notes, which he copied and memorised. In the evenings, he put in a few hours of wine analytical work. Impressed by his aptitude and initiative, Leo Buring soon employed him as an assistant oenologist working with Emil Sobels in the Clare Valley. Haselgrove’s first vintage was at Renmark Growers Distillery in 1921, where, he said, ‘Buring spent a few days with me for a start and then said, “Make 50,000 of currant, 100,000 of Gordo” and disappeared for a month’. It was the beginning of a pivotal career. Ron Haselgrove’s ambition and belief in Australian wine carried the industry forward during the post-war years. . . . With the immediate traumas of World War I behind them, Penfolds was a model company that invested heavily in new vineyards and wineries around the country. Their reward for this investment was rapid expansion and being a beneficiary of war reparations in the form of Spessart oak for wine maturation. New patented equipment, including crushing mills, racking devices, and ‘slagetto’ (a type of cement used for paving) tanks were installed at Nuriootpa. After vinification, the Adelaide Mail reported on the 11th of October 1919 that the wines were ‘run off into casks and dispatched to Magill by rail from Penfolds
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