THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
Roger Warren is regarded as having been one of Australia’s most important winemakers during the 1950s, mentioned along with Maurice O’Shea, Colin Preece, and Max Schubert as a pivotal figure of the modern Australian wine industry. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that Roger Warren was ‘well known for his excellent palate and memory for wine, and his appropriately large nose’. He was best noted for his table wine blends, especially Thomas Hardy Cabinet Claret, a multi-regional blend based on South Australian and Hunter Valley fruit. He also made St Thomas Burgundy and Old Castle Riesling. All of these wines played a key role in changing consumer patterns. Roger Warren’s regular travels to the Hunter Valley and Northern Victoria illustrate how important and influential these areas were to the fine wines of Australia. Ray Beckwith, who would become Penfolds’ highly influential oenologist, worked as Roger Warren’s assistant at Hardy’s Mile End Winery in Adelaide between 1933 and 1934. By the mid-1950s, McLaren Vale was generating half of Australia’s dry red table wines. Much of this was produced by Hardy’s, Kay’s, Tatachilla, Reynella, and Osborn’s. It was the beginning of a new direction for the region. The introduction of half-gallon glass flagons of inexpensive table wines became hugely popular after 1958, propelling sales of domestic wine, and would eventually capture 40% of the market by 1971. Even so, many of the red wines were still stored in 6,000-gallon jarrah vats prior to bottling. Meanwhile, in the Barossa Valley, Cyril Henschke was enjoying commercial success for his 1956 Mount Edelstone Claret (shiraz) which had received several accolades in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. In 1958, perhaps encouraged by these events and a sense of history, he began making and bottling wine from an isolated patch of vines near Parrot Hill at Kyneton, in the Eden Valley. Located in front of Gnadenberg Church, it would become Australia’s most famous single- vineyard wine. Cyril Henschke had left school at age 15, yet he possessed a highly intuitive and brilliant mind. (In later life, he won a prestigious Churchill Scholarship, the first vigneron ever to be awarded this honour.) After taking over winemaking around 1950, in his mid-twenties, he established Henschke winery as one of South Australia’s leading boutique producers. Cyril Henschke became a leading light and bon vivant in the emerging fine wine scene. Meanwhile, his brother Louis developed and improved the family’s vineyard practices. The launch of the 1958 Hill of Grace label marked the beginning of an important family collaboration and Australia’s most famous single-vineyard wine. During the 1960s, Italian restaurants Beppi’s, Florentino’s, and La Cantina would become original supporters of Cyril Henschke’s bottlings of Hill of Grace Shiraz.
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