CHAPTER 17 | 1930–1938 – The Dead Dog Bounce
to the making and husbandry of all wine types, with remarkable cost savings, when employed by Penfolds for the rest of his working life. In a nutshell, he saved the 25% wine component that previously had to be destroyed by distillation due to bacterial spoilage. From that time, around 1940, Australia became a world leader in the making of table wine.’ . . . Up until the mid-1930s, Western Australia’s Swan Valley was still best known for its fortified wines. But even in this outpost of Australian wine, there was foresight and invention when winemaker Jack Mann started experimenting with what he thought was semillon to make a white table wine. Undoubtedly, he had stumbled on vinestock material brought out from the Cape Colony during the mid-19th century at the beginning of settlement. But it would not be until the 1950s that the vines were identified as chenin blanc. His son, the scientist Dorham Mann, said his father’s ‘principal philosophy was always to process ripe fruit – beautifully ripe fruit – for the particular wine style that you were making. Because you always got the most flavour from well grown ripe fruit, and more softness in the style.’ But such individual wines needed a market, and it was the flamboyant Sydney wine merchant Johnnie Walker who popularised Houghton’s white burgundy. It still survives in the Australian wine market as Houghton’s White Classic and continues to offer a unique expression of the Australian west. . . .
‘The use of pH, phase contrast microscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, etc., were all tools that contributed to an understanding and control of the winemaking process’. – Ray Beckwith, ‘Keeping Good Wine Good and Other Matters’, unpublished personal memoirs, c. 2021
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