CHAPTER 20 | 1950s – Boom Times Again
and Cabernet’ label. These wines would inspire a new generation of winemakers to plant in the area some years later. Although the low-yielding and physically demanding vineyard would prove to be uneconomic, the wines were well received. Previously, the winery had been selling its wines in bulk, either through export sales, cellar doors, or direct-to- consumer sales. Licensing laws in Victoria required that customers buy a minimum of two gallons of wine from wineries. Brown Brothers had developed a trade with home bottlers, and John C Brown designed ‘a light wooden crate which could hold two-gallon bottles, ideal for handling by the railways’. But by 1953, Brown Brothers had begun to sell directly to wine merchants, including Jimmy Watson, Dan Murphy, and WJ Seabrook in Melbourne. Further afield, wine merchant Douglas Lamb assisted John C Brown in selling his wines in Sydney. Although he had graduated with an MA in law at Cambridge University, UK, and was destined to become a lawyer (he was admitted to the bar in Sydney on the same day as Gough Whitlam), Douglas Lamb established his own wine and spirit business in 1951. Well connected and eloquent, he had also been invited to join the board at Penfolds. His support for Australian fine wine ambitions proved to be important. Sydney merchant JK ‘Johnnie’ Walker was also an early supporter; at first, he bought King Valley bulk wine from Milawa through David Sutherland Smith of All Saints Vineyard (who would keep the wine in cask for around two years), but by 1958, he was purchasing directly from Brown Brothers. The wine was typically bottled in Sydney and sold under the Rhine Castle brand.
Pam Brown with children Ross and Roger in the family’s Milawa vineyard, Victoria, Vintage 1957. [Brown Brothers Collection]
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