THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
built petrol-driven 2.5-kW Delco-Light plant system that could drive a 110- volt generator. This would machine- power winery lighting and the Gramp’s domestic power for several years before the Barossa Valley was connected to the state’s electricity grid. But electricity would take many decades to rollout into Australia’s wine regions. At Dalwood in the Hunter Valley, for instance, electricity would only be reticulated in 1949. And during the early 1950s, Coonawarra would still be operating without mains electricity to power its refrigeration. Typically, ferments continued to be controlled and cooled down by blocks of ice. . . . Another issue that concerned Australian vignerons in the late 1920s was the presence of scuds in dry red wine after primary fermentation, small effervescent beads that give a faint fizz. It was a phenomenon that was known for many years, but no one knew what to do about it or how to control it. According to Ron Haselgrove, Oscar Seppelt had been studying this post- fermentation problem in Vienna during the early 1900s. Knowing that Ron Haselgrove had studied at Montpellier Agricultural College just a few years earlier, he was invited to Seppeltsfield to discuss what could be done. Haselgrove recalled that ‘[a]s I had recently returned from France, the first to be at Montpellier for some 20 years, he was seeking help, but of course, in those days and for
Many Australian wineries used steam power or petrol motors during the 1920s and beyond, despite the rollout of mains electricity to the main centres of the population. The use of steam power was sometimes dangerous. At Morris of Rutherglen, a worker was seared by hot steam when a vat exploded. And Herman Julius Karlvist, who worked at Penfolds as a boiler man, was killed in a freak accident at Magill in 1936. But it was typical for wineries to use petrol- powered drive shafts to generate direct electricity for lighting. There is still an example of this rudimentary technology at St Leonards winery at Wahgunyah. The Gramp winery, later Orlando, at Rowland Flat, also operated a purpose-
Hardy ’ s Wines of Tintara advertising, from the 1920s.
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