THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
25 years. He was a Geisenheim-trained winemaker (around 1883) of considerable experience, having worked in France, Germany, and Spain. He came to Australia in 1888, where he first worked for the Murray Valley Vineyards, in Albury, alongside other German immigrants to the region. After being discovered by Thomas Hardy on one of his trips to New South Wales, he was persuaded to join Thomas Hardy & Sons in Adelaide to improve wine quality, where he worked for four years. Although he returned to Russia in 1905 to visit his family, by 1917, the Russian Revolution and social foment saw that country’s destruction. By the late 1930s, all he had remaining was one sister. Seeck was a highly regarded technical winemaker and wine judge. He also worked at the same time with Hamilton Ewell in the late 1930s and with Syd Hamilton, where he introduced mechanical refrigeration using ammonia and brine tanks to winemaking. In Western Australia, Mr Ferguson of Houghton’s advertised his wines as ‘guaranteed to be bottled perfectly unadulterated from the wood, and is specially recommended for the use of invalids’. For many years, wine and brandy had been dispensed by doctors and pharmacists to improve the health of patients. Invalid ports and hospital brandy were extensively marketed around Australia to encourage consumption. Penfolds, Château Tanunda, Seppelt, Thomas Hardy & Sons, and Yalumba were also involved in the distribution of these wine types throughout Australia. In 1904, and in response to Federation and the freeing up of intercolonial duties, Penfolds moved its offices to 197 Pitt Street, Sydney, and shortly afterwards bought George Wyndham’s original Dalwood vineyards at Branxton in the Hunter Valley. Medical practitioners around Australia were particularly interested in the properties of wine as restorative or tonic for the sick. The vigneron and distinguished surgeon Dr Thomas Fiaschi (despite having been excommunicated by the church), was a strong advocate of its use in medicine. He believed that wine was a source of calcium, iron, and manganese. At a lecture to members of the Australasian Trained Nurses Association on ‘the various wines used in sickness and convalescence’ in 1906, Dr Fiaschi said that claret acted as a ‘tonic and a reconstituant’ and was ‘a valuable aid to digestion’. Although burgundy ‘favoured the development of gout’, he believed it was more to do with lifestyle, as the wine was also associated with the wealthy classes. Hocks ‘could be given in all cases of weakness and convalescence, gout or rheumatism’. Aside from its restorative powers, fortified wine was ‘a rapidly diffusible stimulant in acute diseases, such as fevers, septicaemia and pneumonia’. In 1905, one Saturday afternoon, the Bankside winery, built by Thomas Hardy, went up in flames. When the horse-drawn fire pumps arrived on the
30
Powered by FlippingBook