CHAPTER 13 | 1900s – Federation
Black Portugal, also known as the Oporto grape, was probably tinta amarela from the Douro (according to François de Castella in 1942), but inaccuracies in cataloguing were an Australian speciality. There are sources that suggest that some black Portugal plantings could have been carignan or even mataro. Mataro, the Spanish synonym for mourvèdre, and therefore an acceptable Australian name as well, was also known as esparte in Victoria and lambruscat in New South Wales. The Australian idiosyncrasy of calling syrah ‘shiraz’ and cabernet sauvignon ‘carbonet’, or ‘carbenet’, is steeped in an age of non-standardisation and difficulty in pronouncing the French language. Auldana Vineyards also continued to prosper throughout the Australian Commonwealth. A special commissioner from the Adelaide Chronicle , in 1909, said:
From a spectacular point of view there are few places more impressive than Auldana in full working order during the crushing season. From the delivery of grapes in the Old World style per bullock-dray, through the various stages of fermentation and treatment, to a walk below ground along the bottle-lined corridors hewn out of limestone, until one emerges upon the scene of champagne-making in its many processes, and winds up with a banquet in the hall of a thousand casks, no better effect could be stage managed to afford a glimpse of another world. –––––– . . .
Turn-of-the-century Auldana Cellars St Henri clarets were beautifully packaged in Bordeaux-type bottles with unique tamper-proof riveted capsules. Historian and vigneron John Wilson of Wilson Vineyard in the Clare Valley believed that St Henri was the first ‘trade-named’ wine in Australia. By Federation, the map of the Barossa had also changed dramatically, with a patchwork of vineyards across the valley floor and a substantial increase in production. Although less impactful than McLaren Vale and the Adelaide region, the Barossa soon became a regional powerhouse, thanks to the federation of Australian colonies in 1901, a highly motivated Lutheran population, and increasing domestic and export markets. B Seppelt & Sons, at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley, released its first Para tawny ports in 1902 to take advantage of the new tax-free interstate trade. Described as ‘the showplace of Australia’, the thriving winery complex, with its remarkable gravity flow fermentation house built into the side of a hill, crushed 3,169 tons of grapes that year. One journalist proclaimed in the Kapunda Herald in November 1905: ‘The magnitude of the works and the quantity and quality of wines, spirits and vinegars produced, is unequalled in Australasia’.
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