CHAPTER 13 | 1900s – Federation
and pasteurisers. Wineries would need to become factories ‘with proper appliances’, and vignerons would be required to adapt to market conditions by growing or grafting the best varieties. The Queensland Department of Agriculture was already promoting change and supplying cuttings of finer grape varieties. A five-acre nursery vineyard was planted at Gatton Agricultural College to supply the local wine industry with the best varieties of French, Spanish, and Portuguese varieties. Nonetheless, the Queensland wine industry was severely challenged by cheaper and better wines from South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales. Its survival would be dependent on higher quality and a loyal local market. An estimated 30,000 people were dependent on the Victorian wine industry at the turn of the century. Melbourne was a bustling city, with about 150 listed wine and spirit merchants. In 1905, the Viticultural Society was established, which eventually included many of the members of the Central Wine Association, which had been formed in 1891 to furnish wine judges for the Melbourne Show. Among them were the vigneron Hans Irvine, who was appointed president, and wine broker John Wilson Bear, whose family owned Château Tahbilk. One of the society’s first tasks was to recommend a new state viticulturalist. The incumbent, Malcolm Burney, had only lasted about a year, resigning after taking up a position with Peter Bond Burgoyne, who had established a thriving export market in the United Kingdom. By the early 1900s, anxieties about wine stability and spoilage promoted improved hygiene in wineries, including the steam cleaning of barrels and the use of sulphur to protect wine from spoilage. The addition of tartaric acid to achieve stability and wine was not Practice yet. When the pH scale (the negative logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration) was introduced by Danish scientist, Soren Sorensen of Carlsberg Laboratories in 1909, it opened up a better understanding of the composition of beer, wine, and other liquids, especially after the introduction of the pH meter in 1934. Acetic spoilage, in which wine becomes
Château Tanunda Winery, Barossa Valley, South Australia ca 1900. [Château Tanunda Collection]
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