CHAPTER 13 | 1900s – Federation
CIRCA 1901 PB BURGOYNE TINTARA BURGUNDY South Australia
This wine brand epitomised the strength of the Australian burgundy market in the UK. By Federation, PB Burgoyne had established a remarkable network of growers, including Hardy’s, Reynella, Wirra Wirra, and Seppelt in South Australia. He was also about to develop the Mount Ophir Winery in Rutherglen, Victoria, which opened in 1903, with vigneron Thomas Hardy as the guest speaker. By the 1890s, Burgoyne had secured a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria, which was extended during the reigns of King Edward VII (he promoted the business as ‘Growers to the King’), King George V, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth II. In 1901, 736,754 gallons of Australian wine were imported into the UK, and this increased to 992,854 gallons in 1903. This massive increase of 256,000 gallons corresponded to a comparable decline in French wine. Burgoyne believed that the public preferred ‘the fuller bodied, generous burgundies produced under the Australian sun over the thinner and colder wines of the Continent’. This was also emphasised in statements to the South Australian wine industry. He believed that vignerons could produce wines with a ‘grapeness – unknown to the continent’. (This character, regarded as pure fruit definition, was rediscovered during the 1980s.) Meanwhile, in the UK, the French were greatly affected by Australian competition. As noted in The Advertiser’s ‘Chronicle’ on the 19th of February 1903, it was ‘stated by the trade that Australia alone provides one-fourth as much wine for the British Market as do the combined departments of Gironde (Bordeaux) and Côte-d’Or (Burgundy)’. PB Burgoyne’s Harvest Burgundy, marketed as ‘a generous wine of absolute purity’ and a ‘produce of pure Empire’s Vineyards’, was derived from Australian and South African vineyards and was very successful in the UK market, but it was also available in other countries, including India.
A postcard promoting the Tintara brand from P B Burgoyne & Co., ca 1910. By 1910 the Tintara brand was drawing wine from Rutherglen as well. [NMA 1986.0117.3186]
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