CHAPTER 20 | 1950s – Boom Times Again
The St Henri label was revived by John (Jack) Davoren (1915–1991), whose family had enjoyed a long association with Penfolds. Jack’s father and grandfather had each worked at Dalwood, a historic 19th-century Hunter Valley vineyard near Branxton. Originally owned by the Wyndham family, it was subsequently split in half, with one portion of 52 hectares sold to Penfolds in 1904. Jack Davoren’s father, John, a legendary Hunter winemaker, became manager. As mentioned, it was his 1930 Hunter River cabernet, bottled for the UK market, that inspired Max Lake, a great supporter and collector of Penfolds, to establish Lake’s Folly, one of Australia’s earliest boutique wineries in 1963. Jack Davoren started making wine at Penfolds Dalwood during the 1930s and worked at Penfolds Griffith alongside his ‘much older’ brother, Harold, the winery manager, where Jack handled fortified wine production and distillation. Soon afterwards, he was appointed manager of the now-defunct Penfolds Minchinbury Vineyards at Rooty Hill in Sydney, specialising in sparkling wine production. He enlisted with the RAAF in 1942 and spent the rest of the Pacific War ‘flying typewriters’ in New Guinea. After a brief stint managing the newly purchased Kalimna Vineyard in the Barossa Valley, he was appointed manager of Penfolds Auldana Cellars in 1947. The revival and development of St Henri Claret mirrored the story of Grange, except that Davoren deliberately looked at the heritage of Auldana Cellars and his own family winemaking traditions for inspiration. Jack Davoren was keen to establish a wine based on the original work of Leon Edmund Mazure. His objective was to make what he called a genuine claret-style wine that could be compared favourably with the greatest grand cru classé wines of Bordeaux. The initial experimental bottlings were labelled with the cast-off St Henri labels found lying in the storage loft at Auldana. The first experimental Penfolds St Henri vintage was made in 1953, on the 100th anniversary of Auldana Cellars. Whilst the 1957 vintage is generally recognised as the first commercial release, Davoren was still calling the early St Henri vintages ‘trials’ up until 1960. The wines were regularly shown to visitors and are regularly mentioned by wine writers and observers. He considered the 1958 St Henri as one of his best early vintages. . . .
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