CHAPTER 20 | 1950s – Boom Times Again
1954 MOUNT PLEASANT RICHARD HERMITAGE Hunter Valley, New South Wales
This is one of Maurice O’Shea’s greatest wines. It vies as an all-time Australian classic and bookends O’Shea’s contribution to fine winemaking in Australia. The 1954 Richard Hermitage derived from the cellars of legendary Hunter Valley winemaker Dan Tyrrell. O’Shea greatly admired Tyrrell’s attention to detail and purchased vinified parcels of wine for blending at Mount Pleasant. The source vineyard for this wine was primarily the four-acre vineyard planted by Edward Tyrell in 1879. In 1964, every second row would be pulled out to allow tractors to pass.
1954 ORLANDO CABERNET Barossa, South Australia
This cabernet is considered by many to be one of the great wines of the Barossa during the 1950s and was one of Colin Gramp’s favourite wines. According to a story related to Anthony Madigan of WBM ( Wine Business Magazine ), Colin always had a wry smile when he explained that the wine was ‘probably not all Cabernet’, as there was very little of that variety planted in the Barossa in 1954, and that it had more likely been ‘diluted more than a little with Barossa Shiraz’.
Although Maurice O’Shea’s 1952 Mount Pleasant Henry Pinot Hermitage, a blend of pinot noir and shiraz, made a splash in the small Sydney fine wine market, it was really a swan song for a dwindling variety. Much of the pinot noir in the Hunter Valley, reduced to just nine acres in 1956, was virus-affected, producing wines that were pink in colour without much concentration of flavour. Lindeman’s used it primarily to build-up yeast populations for its ferments. That said, Charles King’s 1880s plantings at Mount Pleasant were survivors, offering something more than the rest. There was also older pinot noir material in Rutherglen, presumably some of it derived from the 1908 importation by State Viticulturalist François de Castella. Despite strict quarantine rules,
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