THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
Trained as a viticulturalist and analytical chemist at the University of Montpellier in France, O’Shea pioneered traditional French vinification techniques at his Mount Pleasant vineyard in the Hunter Valley. His winery, which was first called L’Hermitage, would become the centre of wine culture in New South Wales during the 1940s and ’50s. From the 1920s until his death in 1956 (aged only 59), O’Shea would make some of Australia’s most memorable modern shirazes based on single vineyards – Old Hill and Old Paddock – and from grapes brought in from neighbouring vineyards, including Tyrrell’s, Elliott’s, and Drayton’s. Although he would struggle commercially (Australians drank mostly beer, spirits, and fortified wines at the time), he would go on to capture the interest and imagination of an emerging generation of table wine drinkers. . . .
And Wine is also wisdom, which announces As Maurice does, we should drink common wine As well, for too much fine wine spoils the palate. And he is quiet and shy behind his fame. – From ‘A Poem for Maurice O’Shea’, by Geoffrey Lehmann
Hauling Vats into 2 Bond at Bleasdale, Langhorne Creek, South Australia ca 1928. [Bleasdale Collection]
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