THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
vinegar, was the most common problem. Some winemakers were also bothered by their wines going through secondary fermentation. Previously, it could be prevented by using sulphur matches. At the turn of the century, malolactic fermentation was still little understood. The invention of a Salvator, or pasteurising machine, promised to prevent its occurrence. Wine was rapidly heated to around 140–160°F before being cooled down. A demonstration of the Salvator was made at Fairfield Cellars in 1904 by Victoria’s short-lived State Viticulturalist Malcolm Burney. Although reported as a great success, there were wider concerns about the effects of heat on wine. Observers knew already that pasteurisation ‘partly destroyed the bouquet and the fine flavour of good wine’. Even by the 1850s, a secondary fermentation was expected, and winemakers knew that leaving the wine properly topped up in barrels and bunged after primary fermentation would protect it from acetic spoilage and promote secondary fermentation. This whole process was described by William Macarthur in his letter XV entitled ‘Secondary Fermentation’. Although pasteurisation machines were regularly advertised, the process, unsurprisingly, did not catch on. . . . The use of colonial wine to christen Men of War (warships) became a more frequent custom by early 1901. A correspondent of the London Times had observed that countless Royal Navy ships had been constructed using British materials or labour but were sent to water and named with a bottle of wine that had ‘not been a product of Britain or of the British Empire’. According to Walter Burroughs, editor of the UK’s Naval Historical Review, it had been Sir John Cockburn, agent- general of South Australia, who had successfully lobbied the Admiralty ‘to break the monopoly of French wine in launching HM ships in favour of Empire wines from South Africa and Australia’. It was noted by the Adelaide Register that ‘such concessions on the part of the mother country, though trivial in themselves, and of but little significance from a commercial point of view … have a distinct value of their own as a matter of sentiment and from a graceful recognition of the unity of the empire, which cannot fail to be fully appreciated in our colonies’. Notwithstanding that Australia had become a federation of states on the 1st of January 1901, just some days earlier, the bonds with Britain were still highly valued. According to the Adelaide Register , the wine used at the launch of the battleship HMS Russell on the 19th of February 1901 was ‘drawn from a case of South Australian produce presented to the Admiralty by Sir John Cockburn’. On the 10th of February 1906, the new heavily armoured battleship HMS Dreadnought was also launched with a bottle of Australian wine. . . .
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