CHAPTER 20 | 1950s – Boom Times Again
about a change from fortified wine to table wine after World War II. Rada targeted women with an emphasis on consumption at home. Penfolds’ frequent ads in the Australian Women’s Weekly referenced significant women from history, including Florence Nightingale and Emily Pankhurst. Traditional advertisements continued to prevail as wineries attempted to cover every market opportunity. Penfolds even ran an advertisement proclaiming: ‘Penfolds Wine – Health of 6,000,000 Australians’, which covered the entire adult drinking domestic market. Rada Penfold Russell was renowned for her ‘Wine Talk’ column in the Sydney Morning Herald and was nicknamed by Max Schubert as ‘the Dorothy Dix of the wine mix’. Sometimes her creative flair was ill-fated. The launch of Blue Rhapsody, a sparkling wine tinted with California blueberry, was a huge flop. Around this time, wine consumption in Australia rapidly increased, with improved working wages, brand advertising, and generic promotion. Mains power, too, began to arrive in wine regions, especially those proximate to city centres. The rollout had been slow under private ownership, and in 1946, the South Australian government initiated the Electricity Trust of South Australia Act, in which all electric power was acquired by the state. In 1952, a program of power expansion was implemented. Mains electricity became available in the Clare Valley, Barossa, Adelaide Hills, and McLaren Vale over the succeeding years, forever changing the landscape and encouraging new entrants to invest in the wine business. State- owned power would last until 1999 when the grid would be privatised. . . . In 1956, French couple Jean François and Cecilia Augusta Miguet planted La Provence Vineyard in the Piper’s River area. Jean had arrived in Tasmania as a welder from Citra Fougerolle, a French engineering company contracted to build the Trevallyn power station and dam for Tasmania’s Hydro-Electric Commission. It is previously said that he brought in vines illegally from his home region of Provence, in France, although there is also conjecture that the cuttings were, in fact, sourced legally through a nearby nursery. The cuttings included pinot noir, chasselas, chardonnay, and grenache and were planted out in three rows near the property perimeter. Cecilia played a vital role in La Provence, cleaning and rolling barrels up and down the winery’s concrete path whilst Jean François was working on the hydro-electric scheme. A resistance to change by the local population, driven by the parochial mindset of the times, included the poisoning of windbreaks, vines, and even Miguet’s goat. The liquor licensing laws of the time precluded sales directly to the customer, further stymying the Miguets’ ambitions. In hindsight, this was not an auspicious start to Tasmania’s wine revival, but over the forthcoming decades, viticulture and winemaking would become an important facet of the state’s agricultural economy. Although the Miguets never realised their
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