CHAPTER 17 | 1930–1938 – The Dead Dog Bounce
George V and Queen Mary and the inscription ‘Good for you/good for Empire’, the medal highlighted an optimism for the future, even though the dark cloud of German re-armament and totalitarian ideology had begun to hover ominously over Europe. . . .
1935 YALUMBA CARTE D’OR RIESLING Eden Valley, South Australia
Yalumba Carte d’Or Riesling was considered ‘the most classical of all’ Eden Valley rieslings produced during the 1940s and ’50s. A string of great vintages (1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1945, and 1947) brought the brand and the region to national prominence. After picking the fruit at 12 degrees Baumé, ‘the fruit was hand pressed and the juice separated from the marc without delay. The wine is bottled at six or eight months and matured in glass for four years or longer; each vintage is thus kept separate and the wine is one of the very few in Australia to be labelled in a vintage year.’ Like many legacy brands of the period, it gradually became commercialised, reaching its apogee in the 1980s with an advertising campaign featuring a car door and the hilarious antics of British sitcom ‘Fawlty Towers’ character Manuel, played by actor Andrew Sachs. By the early 1960s, Yalumba had already pinned its riesling future on Pewsey Vale, a property founded in 1847 that had gone out of production in 1930. Contour-planted with colonial vinestock material on one of the highest elevated locations in the Eden Valley, Pewsey Vale epitomises an Australian fine wine ideal: ‘a single site estate vineyard with provenance’. The 1935 Yalumba Eden Valley C047 Cabernet Sauvignon also vies for recognition. It was a stand-out wine at Yalumba’s museum tasting in 1995. Len Evans described it as having ‘lovely flavour and amazing intensity’.
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