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STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 692/91

Full transcript of an interview with

PERC MCGUIGAN

on 27 June 2000

by Lindsay Francis

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

OH 692/91 PERC MCGUIGAN

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

OH 692/91 TAPE 1 - SIDE A

TREADING OUT THE VINTAGE. Interview with Perc McGuigan on 27th June, 2000, at Rutherford. Interviewer: Lindsay Francis.

Thank you, Perc. Thanks for being involved in this project and giving us the opportunity to talk with you and to learn of your life in the Australian wine industry. I wonder if you might begin by telling us where you were born, and when you were born, and your early childhood life.

PM: Well, that goes right back to the 16th November, 1913. I was born at Rosebrook, and of course we are speaking here at Maitland and Rosebrook is only about eight miles away from here. I was born at Rosebrook, and at the age of two—my age of two—my parents moved. My father was a dairy farmer all his life and we moved to a place called Elderslie, and from Elderslie we moved to a place called Rothbury. And when we moved to Rothbury, of course, we had a little vineyard, only about eight or ten rows, but there was a fifteen acre vineyard some two or three miles away which my father helped the owners to work. And I went to school there at the Mistletoe Farm school, which is about two or three miles away from our house. We had no—the only transport we had in those days, of course, were horses. And I got involved with the picking of grapes. Matter of fact, I used to make cartridges and shoot birds in the years 1921 to ‘23. When I was only eight to ten years old I used to make the cartridges and shoot the birds at the HVD vineyard—the Hunter Valley distillery vineyard—at Pokolbin, which as history turned out, I was given the management of that particular vineyard in 1941.

So your whole life really’s had an association with vines and vineyards?

PM: That’s quite right. I’ve always been fascinated with the grapes of course. And being involved with them in my youth—and then later on, of course. After I

went to the Mistletoe Farm school for six years, where I was educated by a school teacher, Mrs Hickey, who educated my three elder brothers and myself. Then I went to the High School at Maitland to the Marist Brothers. And I was just about to sit for the Leaving Certificate examination in 1931 when I was offered a job at the butter factory at Branxton as a clerk. And I spent just about thirteen months there, when the Branxton butter factory was amalgamated with the big Oak company in Hexham, and I was transferred to there and I spent eight years there as—they classified me as a cream clerk, where I booked in all of the cream that came from the suppliers throughout the whole of the Hunter Valley. And while I was there I did a correspondence course in dairy chemistry and bacteriology with OA Mendelssohn and associates. I obtained my milk and cream graders certificate—butter makers certificate. And in 1941 I was offered a job to take over the managership of the Penfolds Hunter Valley vineyards, and I started with Penfolds on 22nd September 1941 after eight years at Oak factory at Hexham.

So that begins your professional life—or the rest of your working life in the wine industry?

PM: That’s quite right, yes. And then of course, I’d only been at Dalwood, which was our headquarters, for about five or six weeks when Pearl Harbor broke out—the attack on Pearl Harbor. And we had fourteen employees, and seven of those were taken. And I can assure you that the next four or five years were pretty desperate because it was difficult to get anybody to help in the vineyards. And because of the fact that a lot of people were taken from the vineyards. And it was only the fact that the people who stayed on were able to maintain those vineyards sufficiently so that when the men came back from the fighting forces we were able to continue on from there.

One of the things that happened during the War, a lot of women came into the land—women’s land army. Did the women come into the vineyards at that time?

PM: No. We didn’t need that at all. We battled through. We were able to get sufficient labour locally to—people that weren’t able to go into the army or whatever. Or elderly people. And they helped us through until such time as our own men came back.

And at that time what sort of production was going on?

PM: The vineyards—I was in charge of two vineyards, the Sparkling Vale vineyard at Kienbah of 123 acres. We had about 50 or 60 acres at Dalwood. Then in later years we started up two more vineyards. We took over the HVD vineyards in 1942, and then we bought property from a Mr Matthews and started the Penfold Vale vineyard in 1950. So I had four vineyards to look after. Our production, those days, was—I think the biggest vintage that I ever made in my time was about 65,000 gallons. Of course, that fades into insignificance in the quantities that they’re making today.

Most of the wine—the focus was on what type of wine at the time

PM: Well, in our—we were making dry whites and dry reds, of course, but the big demand of course was in the fortified wines—ports, sherries and muscat, and all of those. But we were still able to—the wines, of course, went straight on to Penfolds in Sydney after we’d made the wines. We’d prepared them for transport to Sydney. And late in the year in which they were made, with the whites, we sent them on to Sydney or to Adelaide, or Griffith, Minchinbury, wherever they were classified for. But then of course, in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the table wines really came into their own. Probably the reason why it happened so much was the people from overseas who came in who had wines as their background. Those migrants did really kick along the interest and the use of the table wines in those particular years.

The table wines only came really from that time onwards?

PM: That’s right. They really came into their own then. On the other side of the ledger, of course, from that time on the fortified wines have faded away quite a bit. There’s still demand, of course, as we know for ports and muscats but not what it used to be.

And during that time, of winemaking at the time, there’d be lots of changes going on during the period you were there in terms of technique and machinery, equipment and so on

PM: Oh, very much so. Very much so. The techniques that they have today, they make it so much easier. And they’re making wine so much better. In our days, I know that for—I made wine for eight years without electricity. The electricity hadn’t been reticulated to the Dalwood area until 1949. So I made wine for eight years without electricity. It wasn’t extended to the Pokolbin area until 1955. So you might wonder how we made wine at all when we weren’t able to control the rate of fermentation. Well, we used to get eight and ten tons of ice. We used to come to Maitland and get eight or ten tons of ice, and use an old wine cooler that we had to try and drop the temperature. And of course, in those days—people are inclined to disbelieve it now but I well remember when we used to have at least eight or ten consecutive days where the temperature reached 100F—I always speak in Fahrenheit—and the nights never got below 85F, which would mean that when you went to pick the grapes the next morning they were ready to be picked but when the grapes came in they were testing 85, and there’s no way in the world that you can make a good wine—a top wine—if the temperature gets up above 90. Well, what we used to have to do if the grapes came in at that temperature— we would start, of course, at daylight but by eleven o’clock we’d probably have to get the pickers to go home and pick them up at daylight next morning, and it was hoped that during the evening a southerly change would come and it would drop the temperature. Because, even using ice, it was difficult to drop a tank of juice down—if you used two or three tons of ice, it was difficult to drop a tank of juice down any more than five or six degrees Fahrenheit. And within an

hour, it was back up to that temperature again. So we did well I think to—that we didn’t lose any wine ever because of the fact that it was overheated. But with the advent of electricity, of course, and refrigeration, we just smiled at the weather. And we liked it to get very hot, and the nights to be hot, because immediately the grapes came in we could drop the temperature down to about 50F. Let it ferment away for a fortnight or whatever it was. The juice used to ferment out in three days. If we had no way of stopping it from racing away it used to ferment out in three days. We still made fairly good wine but how we did it is quite a problem. But we did do it.

I mean, the control was quite remarkable when you consider the control that you’ve got today on temperature.

PM: Oh, yes. And particularly with the machinery that is available now, with the centrifuges where you can remove all the lees quickly from the juice and you can ferment clear juice. That means that your wines are clearer and cleaner right from the start. And that’s why the wines can be marketed so much earlier because they’re ready for market. They’re fresh, they’re delicate, and they hold all the fruit qualities that you’re looking for in the bottle of wine.

And then there are changes in—stainless steel, for example.

PM: Yes. Yes. The stainless steel—we were the first ever to use in New South Wales—we were the first ever to use Willmes press. It was used by Max Schubert at Magill for twelve months. It was the first one ever to come into Australia. And he said, ‘Well, we make our best wines in the Hunter Valley. We’re going to send that over’. So that came over to us— the Willmes press came over to Dalwood and we used it there with great results. And roundabout the 1960s, the stainless steel fermenting tanks came into place. Not instead of but in addition to the casks. And these days, of course, I think there’s very little white wine goes into casks for the duration of its life before bottling.

And the same changes in things like poly pipe and brass, and disappearance of brass -

PM: Yes, we used to have the old brass taps, and the couplings, and all the rest of it. And the big heavy hoses used to drag around. But these days, of course, with the lighter hoses—and the fact that you can see what’s happening within the hose, any rate. You couldn’t in the rubber hose.

And all the contamination that that used to bring to the wines.

PM: That’s right, yes.

Did you have many problems with that? The metal contamination, for example.

PM: No, not to my knowledge. I wasn’t in a position where I had to market the wines. We got the wines in the condition—we sent them on to their destination, wherever they were classified for, and the people from there in were the ones who had to do the bottling and the marketing. But I was never told of any problems that occurred from our use of the fittings that we used to have. Because they were the only things that were there.

That’s right. It was only in later years that we learnt that the brass contamination—or the metal contamination -

PM: The copper pick-up was the big worry, yes.

Just as there were changes in the machinery and equipment within the winery, there were also lots of changes that you would’ve seen in the vineyards themselves, in terms of production techniques.

PM: Very much so. Very much so. Of course, until 1942—and I pride myself on the fact that I was the first ever to drive a tractor in a Hunter Valley vineyard. That was on the 1st September, 1942, when Penfolds—course, the point was that a lot of the vineyards were set out—a lot of the rows were only five feet apart. So horses were used. And that’s the reason they were used that way. But when the tractors did come into operation, with a lot of the older vineyards, every second row—every alternate row—was pulled out so that the tractor and

the equipment could be taken through. But to use a tractor and—of course, the first tractor we had had no hydraulics at all. It was a hand clutch. It was petrol/kero driven. You started on petrol and you threw it over to kerosene. It had no power steering. No canopy. Very little brakes. No hydraulic lift. No three point linkage. It had nothing but it still helped to get us through instead of the horses.

And the technique of things like pruning and harvesting, all changed over that period?

PM: Yes, they have. The pruning of course—it was a time when people had to wear gloves and turn their back into the westerly wind and prune for about seven or eight weeks. These days, of course, they have the machine travelling along with the hydraulically operated shears. I will admit that they’re not so intent on—and picking out the number of buds and all the rest of it as we used to be, because they have bigger areas to do, and they have to get through it pretty quickly. And it must help the people—the operators—that they haven’t to use the secateurs for seven or eight hours progressively every day for about seven or eight weeks. They go through it very quickly now.

Picking, the same?

PM: Picking of course, the big machines have come in now to do the picking of the grapes. I saw the first machine coming in to pick the grapes at Dalwood and I was appalled at the terrible mess it was making of the vines that we loved so much. It was tearing the arms off here and there. There were lots of fruit on the ground. Still fruit left on the vine. Almost all the leaves were taken off. And generally speaking, I turned my back on the machine and I thought that that will never be a success. But in the recent years I’ve inspected vineyards, I’ve inspected the machine in operation, and it would be very difficult to pick whether the grapes had been picked by hand or by machine. The only indication we have, of course, is that the stalks from the bunch are still hanging on the vine with the machine.

So you’ve seen lots of changes in technology—process—over your time and association with the wine industry?

PM: Oh, very much so. And all for the better, too. That’s the beauty of it.

Does it mean, do you think, that we produce now better wines than in the past?

PM: For sure, yes. As I said earlier, we did well to get through the way we did but now, of course, the winemakers are far more knowledgable. They’ve got the colleges, Roseworthy and Wagga, to give them a move along, and all we had to do was—the information was passed on from earlier winemakers and we took it from there. We got through but goodness knows how.

Who were some of the folk that you learnt your art, or craft, from?

PM: Well, the man who I was involved with first of all was Mr Jack Davoren— Mr John Davoren senior. I worked—while I was still going to school I worked in the holidays in the picking of grapes and the tally keeping. And I used to work in the winery when I was about fifteen/sixteen years old. Mr Davoren, and later his son, Jack, who ultimately went to South Australia—and then when I was given the position by Mr Frank Penfold Hyland of Sydney to take over the Dalwood, the first vintage—it was 1942 vintage—Harold Davoren of Griffith, son of the original Mr John Davoren, he helped me through on the first vintage for about a fortnight or three weeks. And came back over to check me over on the 1943 vintage. He stopped for three hours, and he said, ‘I think you’re okay. I’m going back to Griffith’. So that’s the big help that I had.

Penfolds organisation, were they helping within that organisation for you to learn your -

PM: Oh, yes, very much so. Very much so. Course, when I was given the job, Mr Jack Davoren, who was two years my junior, he was asked by Penfolds— he was offered the job at Minchinbury at Rooty Hill, into where they made all the champagne of course, and he was told that the job could be taken by him provided he could find somebody to take his place. Now, that’s how scarce

wine people were in those days. Mr Hyland said to him, ‘You won’t find anybody who has any wine knowledge but you may find somebody who has a background in agriculture’. And he offered me the job, and it went on from there.

Perc, I wonder if you might tell me about your appointment to Penfolds, and the correspondence involved?

PM: Yes. Jack Davoren suggested that I might be able to do the job but I’d have to go down to Sydney for appointment. And I went down to—I spoke to Mr Frank Penfold Hyland, and he said, ‘Yes, I think you’ll be okay’. So I got this particular letter that I have here, and I’ll read it for you. It’s the letter that I got from Mr Frank Penfold Hyland, who was the chief in Sydney. It was written on 9th September, 1941. And it says: ‘In connection with your conversation to us this morning, we appoint you Manager of Dalwood vineyard branch at a salary of £5.10 per week, and the use of the cottage at present occupied by Mr John Davoren. The appointment is to take place from Monday, 22nd instant, but the cottage will not be available immediately. For your appointment until that date we understand that you will find residence with your parents in Branxton. Your commencing duties will mostly be of a clerical nature and we anticipate that Mr Harold Davoren from Griffith will make most of the vintage for 1942, by which time you should be thoroughly conversant with the manufacture of wine. As mentioned, will you please get in touch with Mr John Davoren and let him know.’ And a letter sent to the Manager of the Dalwood vineyards. It says: ‘Enclosed is a copy of a letter which we have forwarded to Mr McGuigan who came in here this morning. Mr Hyland was impressed with the style of this young man and thinks that he should be conscientious and able, and that he should have reasonable prospects of advancement with the company. The wage given him is rather in excess of his present day value but we believe that he will soon be worth it.’

I might mention here that Mr Hyland asked me what wage I was getting at the Oak company in Hexham, and I told him it was £5.8 per week, plus some overtime. And he said, ‘Well, I think we can manage that’. As a matter of fact he said, ‘We’ll do a bit better. Your wage will be £5.10’.

But not really worth it at that time. (Laughs)

PM: I wasn’t worth it, yes. (Laughs)

That’s a great piece of history.

PM: Yeah.

And when did you leave Penfolds then?

PM: Well, I was with Penfolds for twenty-seven years. In 1960—in 1959 we pulled out the last of the vines at Dalwood. The vines had been planted by the convicts in 1831. They were producing grapes for 128 years—those particular ones. They were what we call the Red Hermitage. You can’t call them Red Hermitage now, it’s black Shiraz. And they were producing a small crop in the latter years while I was there but they were very good quality. But we pulled the last ones out in 1959 and other (Blanquette variety) vines were replanted in 196[8], the year after I bought the property. My wife and I bought the property on 12th February 1968 at an auction sale at Maitland. The place was put up and sold in 1968 at the sale yards at Maitland, and the bidding started—what was on offer was 136 acres of land, a big winery, about 150 feet square—150 feet each way—six livable houses. The 136 acres were only two or three hundred yards from the Hunter Valley. And the property was put up for sale—the opening bidder started at $14,000. This was in 1968. And ultimately it was sold for $26,700. So I started then to replant. We replanted about four or five acres of vines in late ‘68. The Department of Agriculture had told Penfolds—they’d taken samples of the land and they said that the land was worn out. That it would no longer grow grapes satisfactorily. I said, ‘No, I don’t believe that. I think if we give it a little bit of a rest and replant it in a different manner that it will come

good again’. And the reply I got was that, no, it was finished, and we’re finished with it, too. So fortunately, we found that the four acres, or five acres, that we’d planted in late 1968 were in four years time producing four tons of grapes to the acre. The land—I thought to myself, knowing the land as I did—there was terrific depth of topsoil there, probably ten or fifteen feet of sandy loam. It was near the river, and as it was planted and a little bit of fertiliser put it in to help it along, the vineyard really came back.

And Penfold’s main reason for getting out of that vineyard at the time was what?

PM: Well, the production was way down because the vines were very old, but the Department of Agriculture had advised them that it would no longer be wise to keep it in production. But I wouldn’t have that. So that’s the reason that my wife and I bought it. We called it Wyndham Estate. We couldn’t use the name Dalwood in any shape or form. That had to go through the Equity Court because—I wasn’t using the name Dalwood in any shape or form but we had problems there. But ultimately it went on and I had—my wife and I owned it only for about two and a half years when it was sold to Messrs Matheson and Allen. And my son, Brian, came in as manager of the property. Hence, Wyndham Estate started, and it’s gone on and on until such time it was sold—taken over by Orlando in 1991/’92. And had I not bought that particular property on that particular day, there would never have been a Wyndham Estate. We called it Wyndham Estate, my wife and I, because of the fact that we went back to the name of the original settlers who came out from Wiltshire in England in 1828. They arrived from Wiltshire in England, set up there and they had the vineyard operating from 1831 right through to until Penfolds took it over in 1904.

And still growing grapes on that land today?

PM: Yes. It’s now owned by Orlando—Orlando Wyndham organisation—and they have replanted a lot of it. And from what I’ve seen of it just recently it’s

doing fairly well. These days, of course, they have the irrigation. While we were near the river, we never used the water —we weren’t able to—we didn’t have access to the river. Nor was it the done thing. But now with the irrigation—particularly Pokolbin, where they’re about twelve/fourteen miles from the river, they now have a line through from Whittingham, which is further north from Belford and Branxton. The line has been brought through and I understand there’s 133 kilometres of lines have been laid to the various properties. That almost every landholder in Pokolbin has access to the water from the Hunter River. They don’t have it directly piped to their cottages or whatever. They’re able to pump it into their own containers, their dams or whatever, and use it at will.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

Perc, I wonder if you might tell us about the development—or the name of Semillon that you had an interaction with Penfolds at one stage.

PM: Yes, what is now known as the Semillon was always called the Hunter River Riesling. We always used to put HRR—Hunter River Riesling—on the fronts of our casks or our tanks or whatever. And then of course, the Rhine Riesling—there was very little, if any, Rhine Riesling grown at that stage. But we did have some cuttings sent over and different growers in the valley were planting the Rhine Riesling. And in South Australia when they talk about the Rhine Riesling they just call it Riesling. So we had the two Rieslings over here. And I wrote a letter to Penfolds—because of this likely confusion—I wrote a letter to Penfolds early in 1965, and it was some fourteen or fifteen weeks later that I got this reply. I was very interested to get the name Semillon on a label. It had never been thought of before. We all knew it was Semillon but the word Semillon had never been used. So I wrote this letter and this is the reply on the 12th July 1965, and it says: ‘Further to our recent telephone conversation and your letter of 23rd April, 1965, regarding the use of the varietal name Semillon, I would like to thank you very much for your interesting suggestion. This has been discussed at length

with the Chief Executive Director, National Production Manager, and General Manager, and the present decision is that at this stage we will not implement your recommendation. Again I thank you for your initiative, and it is only by considering recommendations such as yours that the house of Penfolds will maintain its position as a leader in the wine industry. Look forward to seeing you in the near future.’ And that was sent to me by Mr Waddy. That word Semillon was not used by Penfolds at that stage. It is, of course, used universally now. And a similar thing would’ve happened had I suggested that the white pineau, as we called it—and we spelt it pineau because— somebody said to me once, ‘Why do you spell it pineau? It should be pinot’. I said, ‘Well, Mr Davoren, in all his years, called it pineau’. And I’ve always maintained that if somebody knows what they’re talking about, you should take notice of them. And that’s why I followed it on. But I have noted since, of course, that the word has been used in France. But we called it White Pineau or Pineau Blanc. We always knew it was Pineau Chardonnay. And that was planted in several vineyards in my time as a boy. We used to hate to pick the Pineau because the Pineau were very small bunches compared to the Hunter River Riesling or Semillon. We produced the Hunter River Riesling in big quantities but the White Pineau was in very small quantities,—Murray Tyrrell will tell you that he was the first ever to market the Pineau Chardonnay [1962]. He probably was because, in fact, he’s the first one ever to use the word Chardonnay. But it was used—a lot of vineyards had small quantities of Pineau planted even from the 1920’s. And we were making, from the 1942 vintage, the White Pineau or Pineau Blanc from the HVD vineyard. And just as a matter of interest. In 1944 was a very dry year. So in 1945— although we only had two acres of White Pineau, we always used to make 500 gallons of wine from those two acres. But in 1945, following the very dry year, we had only about 300 gallons of White Pineau from that particular two acres.

So as I always used to use a 500 gallon cask for this particular wine, I had no alternative but to fill the cask with Hunter River Riesling. And when I blended the two, of course, together, when I eventually sent the sample down, or took the sample down, to show it to Mr Hyland, with a lot of other whites of course— and he went through the wines and had a look at them, and he went back to this particular wine. There was a series of six glasses there. And he said, ‘Pineau Riesling. Why have you done that McGuigan?’ And I told him the reason. That I had no alternative but to fill it so I called it Pineau Riesling. And I remember well. He picked the glass up, and he held it up to me, and he said, ‘You keep doing that, McGuigan. That’s the best wine that’s ever come out of the Hunter Valley’. And until 1976, Penfolds still made a Pinot Riesling.

That story of the Chardonnay—the Tyrrell Chardonnay—I gather you actually took some of the cuttings from Tyrrell’s vineyard?

PM: No. No. What happened was that the—when you prune the vines, you throw the surplus into the middle of the row. And if you want cuttings from that particular variety you go through the next day, or late that same day, and while the cuttings are still quite green, you take the cuttings from there. Well, Murray must’ve known that we had pruned the White Pinot. So like a thief in the night, he came into our vineyard, took the cuttings, planted them and then in very quick time, somehow or another, he was able to produce the Chardonnay. And Murray has gone worldwide saying that he was the first ever to put the Chardonnay on the market. He probably was—as Chardonnay. But he wasn’t the first ever to use that variety.

Thanks to your cuttings.

PM: Thanks to my cuttings, yes.

I wonder if we might talk a little about the Wybong winery? When that was opened and established.

PM: Yes, in—because of the fact that a lot of our vineyards in the Lower Hunter, they were getting old, particularly the Dalwood one. One of my men

came to me one day, and he said, ‘Have you ever had a look at the Singleton area? There’d be some good land up there for vineyards’. I said, ‘Yes, but I don’t know whether the firm wants to expand or not’. So I mentioned it to them, and they said, ‘Well, you should perhaps have a look around’. So together with Ivan Combet who was the manager of the Minchinbury vineyards, we went through the valley. The first place we went to, of course, were the estate agents to see what land they had for sale. And after about twelve or eighteen months we finished up looking at a property at Wybong. Now, Wybong is close—oh, it’s seven or eight miles from Denman. It’s about fourteen or fifteen miles from Muswellbrook. Not far from Sandy Hollow. And we had a look at this property of 723 acres. Ivan Combet said to me—we went down and inspected the place. It was a grazing property, mostly for rearing vealers. We had a look at this property of 723 acres, and he said to me, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘This is what we’re looking for’. So any rate, Penfolds bought it. We asked them to come and have a look at it. Send somebody up. Ivan Combet liked it. I liked it. It had one area, a big flat of about 130/140 acres, and it drifted away then to the foot of the mountain with the sandy loam. We thought it was ideal. So Penfolds bought the property of 723 acres for £17,500. That was in August of 1960. We proceeded to plant about nine acres of Red Hermitage (Black Shiraz) in 1960—in that year. September of that year. And that started off— within eight years—while I was there for eight years, we had cleared an area of 280 acres. We had removed the big heavy trees. We’d grubbed all the roots out of the place. We had it surveyed. We had it set out—it was the first vineyard that was ever set out on contour with straight rows. Now, that may sound different. But I said to this man, ‘We cannot have the trellis going around corners because immediately you pull the top wire the post will come in and you can’t get tractor through’. And he said, ‘We’ve never done this before but it can be done’.

So any rate the vineyard, as it got up into the hills—we didn’t need the contouring, of course, on the big flat—the big black soil flat. As it got up onto the hills—the vineyard was set out in straight rows. And of course, then you had the waterway down in between, and then you started off at another angle and had the straight rows again. So in eight years we cleared the area and planted 280 acres of vines. Most of the rootlings came from South Australia. Max Schubert was responsible for deciding on which varieties were to go in. And so it was still producing—in 1967, then the winery had been built and was opened by Harold Holt on 17th February 1967. And it was quite a big day, and we were then producing up to two or three tons of grapes to the acre. There were four tons of grapes to the acre in some—the Mataro particularly. And the following year, of course, was the year that I finished there. Unfortunately, it had an unfortunate history. I don’t know why—well, I do know why but I don’t know why it couldn’t have been corrected. But a lot of the wines that we made, they were delightful wines. I remember well. We had a special red wine that was a Hermitage, a black Shiraz, and it was Bin 21, and it was doing particularly well. But for some reason the wine developed a Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) stink in the wine that the chemists and the scientists could not get rid of. The soil was blamed for doing this. And after I had gone, after three or four years, they pulled out most of the black grapes that we planted in 1960 and ‘61. That was something that I regretted but the soil was unsuitable apparently—although it was tested. It was given the go ahead that it would be satisfactory. But it’s been replanted now. Strangely enough, they’ve planted white grapes on the black soil with very good results. So I fail to see why the problem that arose could not have been corrected by the authorities.

I gather the opening itself was quite an event with parachutists and all sorts of -

PM: Yes. Harold Holt and his wife, they were the special guests on that particular day. He opened the place officially. A lovely winery. On that particular day the parachutists were there. It was a very, very windy day as it

happened. And the parachutists from Newcastle, they were very adept in their particular work. And I remember the plane had to leave—I think it left the Scone airport. And they’d worked out that because of the strong winds, they had to jump from the plane—they had to leave the plane—I think it was about half a kilometre or a kilometre from the point where they hoped to land. And they had some pretty scary times on the way down. I think there were three or four parachutists jumped twice. They’d come down twice. And as they hit the ground, of course, the parachutists were dragged along by the wind, and one chap almost finished up in the barbed wire fence. But one thing that we did—I was asked to prepare two special plastic boxes of grapes tied by a white ribbon, and one was to be given to the head parachutist and I was to hold the other one. And if he failed to land in the right place, or whether he lost the grapes on the way down, I was to step forward with the other one. But he landed quite well, handed the grapes to Zara [Holt], and I had the other box in readiness - I had that box for many, many years later.

So the winery was well and truly opened?

PM: Yes. I think there was something like 340 guests there on that particular day.

Over that long association you’ve had with the wine industry, climatic impact, in terms of frost and droughts and floods, can you reflect upon some of those?

PM: Yes, the Hunter Valley is a strange place. It’s very unpredictable. I’ve been keeping rainfall since 1941. Dalwood was the sixth oldest in Australia with uninterrupted rainfall results. But when you look at the pattern, there’s no—when you look at the rainfalls and the records, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern that it follows at all. So much so that you have no idea what’s coming next. There’s nothing regular about it. Matter of fact, when I worked for Mr Davoren, when I was going to school, I said to him one day, ‘Mr Davoren, what is the rainfall here?’ And he said, ‘It’s recognised as 32 inches’. Once again, I don’t deal in millimetres. Nobody did then, of course. And so it started in 1863 when the records were kept. And it

so happened that 100 years later, I was there in 1963, and I thought Mr Davoren said that 32 inches—that’s the average rainfall. So I added up—we had no adding machines in those days. I added up the rainfall over the 100 years. Now, this will tell you how varied it is. In 1944, the rainfall was 1519 points, but in 1950, it was 6185 points. So it went from 15 inches to 61 inches within about six years. That was the lowest and highest in the 100 years. But the average rainfall over the 100 years was 32.01. So he was right on the dot saying 32 inches. On top of that we had our problems with drought. As I said, we had no irrigation. And the vines were pruned accordingly. You would not put a lot of wood on the vines—wood meaning the prospect of amount of grapes that you’d get. If you overloaded a vine and were going to run into a dry season, you were going to decrease your crop because the vines could not carry it. You weren’t able to give them any drink of water because of the fact that you didn’t have any irrigation. So we pruned them to get about two tons of grapes to the acre. But in the years when we had a lot of rain, and 1955 was the one that mattered—I just said that 1950 was the wettest year we ever had. It was, but the big flood came in 1955 when the river—the Hunter River—which was right in front of our winery, rose so rapidly when they’d had two or three days of non stop rain. It rose so rapidly that it reached the highest point that’s ever been known in the Hunter Valley. So much so that the river was about 1580 feet wide in front of our winery. It was three feet deep in our winery. And on the 25th February 1955, when it reached its top—and on that particular day we had 3,000 gallons of one of our late pickings of our White Shiraz, as we used to call it—the Trebbiano. We had two or three tanks of juice just starting to ferment. And believe it or not, the level of the flood waters rose above the level of the juice in the vats but it was within about eighteen inches of the top of the tanks. At four o’clock in the morning—our high tension wires had been swept away. Our phone had gone. We had no electric light for—I think it was seven or

eight, ten weeks. We had no phone for six weeks. But I had one of my employees, Jim Melehan by name, who was pumping away on an old semi rotary pump with the water up around his knees, and he was pumping to get the juice away into some tanks. We were trying to save it. So when it came up around his thighs, I said, ‘Leave it go, Jimmy. We’ll just have to take pot luck’. But fortunately, the water did not come over the level of the tank and we saved all of the Trebbiano that particular day. I was telling some visitors there some six months later—and I was telling them this story and he looked quite glum, and he said, ‘You didn’t lose any wine?’ And I said, ‘No, we didn’t’. And one wag in the crowd said, ‘Did you make any extra?’ (Laughter) So you have droughts, you have heavy rain—that’s one of the big problems on the land, of course. You have to be there to sort of counteract it and get out of it the best way you can.

Hail’s been a problem from time to time?

PM: Yes, we did. In my time we had two years on which—on one vineyard, on the HVD vineyard, we lost our crop completely. The storm formed above the mountain. It came in from the west with heavy wind from the west. It cut the whole of the western side of the vines. Cut all the fruit off. It went about a mile towards the south and it struck a southerly, and the southerly brought it back and it cut the other side of the vines. And not only did we lose the whole of that crop but we lost our good pruning wood for the next couple of years. But it has come back. Just by careful attention it’s come back and it’s still as good as ever.

It must be very difficult in that situation because there’s nothing you can do about it.

PM: Not a thing. Not a thing. But these days, of course—well, in those days, they did try the shooting of the explosives up into the clouds. We didn’t do it but I think it was done—it didn’t disperse the ice, it just softened it. As it fell, it

fell more as soft hail rather than hard hail that cuts them to pieces. So that’s the glory of the vineyard.

Working with nature.

PM: Yes.

Working with people is also part of the industry, isn’t it? You’ve mentioned people like Davorens and Penfold Hyland. Who are some of the other people you’ve worked with over those years?

PM: Well, I’ve had a great lot of men working with me. The men at the top— I’ve mentioned Frank Penfold Hyland. People that I was involved with in our yearly tastings were Max Schubert—Max Schubert is very well known, of course, for his Grange Hermitage from Magill. Ray Beckwith. Ray was the top scientist, or chemist, who checked all our wines. He was from Nuriootpa. Jack Davoren, of course, who was a native of Dalwood but went to South Australia. Then there was Ivan Combet, the manager of the Minchinbury vineyards. And all of the great Hunter River men—Morris O’Shea, the Tyrrell family. Dan Tyrrell was the man that I knew. He was the uncle of Murray. The Phillips, the De Beyers, the Draytons, McWilliams, Lindemans—all of those people. And I’ve known the managers of all those people over the years. Because, as I said, I’ve been involved since 1941, and that’s quite a long time ago.

And is there a camaraderie amongst the, you know, winemakers—wine growers?

PM: Very much so. Very much so. I mentioned about the Willmes press that we had back in the 1960s. Perhaps ‘58, I think it might’ve come in. When anybody in the valley, and there was only about nine wineries in the valley at that stage—I believe there’s the best part of a hundred now. And when somebody got a new implement, a new vineyard implement, a tractor, something in the winery, the other people heard about it or were told about it and were invited to come and have a look. And we did that right through. And it was a wonderful—I always found—particularly with the Tullochs, the Draytons, Tyrrells, and most of the growers in that time. It was then—it still is.

There’s competition, sure. But people do combine very much. They’ve got their own organisation—their vineyard organisation. And that’s why the Hunter has done so well.

One of the other changes that has taken place has been from the smaller wineries—the big wineries to start with. Then all the—the whole growth of boutique wineries.

PM: That’s right.

And you’ve seen that happen?

PM: Yes. They’re all doing particularly well I think. Some people have planted grapes on land that, to me, is not suitable. Whether they’re going to survive or not, I don’t know. But a lot of the small wineries are doing quite well. And people love to go to the smaller wineries. A lot of people love to go there because they get perhaps more personal treatment. But overall, I think the Hunter Valley’s doing particularly well.

(Interruption)

Perc, I understand that when you started Wyndhams, having bought the property from Penfolds, there was some tension between Penfolds and yourself at that time?

PM: Yes, there was an agreement in the sale whereby the name Dalwood could not be used in any shape or form.

OH 692/91 TAPE 2 - SIDE A

TREADING OUT THE VINTAGE. Interview with Perc McGuigan on 27th June, 2000, at Rutherford. Interviewer: Lindsay Francis.

Just as the tape finished, Perc, we’d begun to talk about the tension between Penfolds and yourself as you began the Wyndham Estate.

PM: Yes, there was an agreement—when I bought the property there was an agreement that the name Dalwood could not be used in any shape or form. The district, of course, was called Dalwood. And it so happened that I never intended to use Dalwood. My wife and I—my wife, Sylvia, and I—called it Wyndham Estate because of the fact that we went back to the name of the original settlers. I took a list of suggested names down to a friend of mine, Allan Whitsed, who was the manager for New South Wales, and he agreed with me that we should go back to the original name. Which we did. We called it Wyndham Estate. I didn’t ask any permission from any Wyndhams because I didn’t know of any of them still about. But it so happened that in latter years, when Brian took over, there was a Dr Wright from Armidale, who was a descendant of the Wyndham family, he knew a lot of the Wyndham descendants and he contacted them. And in 1972/’73 they arrived at Dalwood and they had a luncheon there. And I believe there were about 265 descendants of the Wyndham family who came back there and were delighted to know that we had perpetuated the name Wyndham. I didn’t ask permission. As I said, I didn’t think that there were many Wyndhams about. But that’s amazing. But that name, of course, has carried on and Orlando—and it’s Orlando Wyndham now. But Penfolds did object—or tried to object—to me growing grapes and making wine on the property. Unfortunately, we had to go to the Equity Court, and the Judge ruled in favour of the fact that I was quite in order of going ahead and planting grapes provided I didn’t use the name Dalwood in any shape or form.

So you came out on top of -

PM: Well, yes. And then we went ahead and the Wyndham Estate thrived from that date on.

And since you’ve finished, Perc—when did you actually retire?

PM: I retired from Penfolds in late ‘68, and then Brian took over and I stayed with Brian for another five years. More as salesman, behind the counter, out

on the road to the respective outlets. And then when my son, Neil—youngest son, Neil—I have four sons. Brian is the eldest and Neil is the youngest. When Neil went to Roseworthy College in South Australia in 1975, my wife and I moved on to Nelson Bay, I was only down there a little while and I got employment in a real estate agency, and I was a real estate salesman for nine years on the peninsula down there. I enjoyed that very much. We stayed there until 1984, then came back to live at Rutherford—I’m still living in the same spot but unfortunately my wife, Sylvia, passed away in 1992. And I’m now only slightly involved, not directly with the winery but I do enjoy going out and seeing the new wines. Seeing the actual vintages going through and seeing the new wines before they’re put into bottle.

And I gather that you do quite a lot of speaking about the wine industry?

PM: Yes, I have done that. I have done that since 1943. I’ve spoken at clubs from as far north as Merriwa and Muswellbrook, and Murrurundi, right through to as far south as Gosford. I’ve been doing that for fifty-seven years, and I abandoned the idea about three months ago because of the fact that I thought it was time to call it a day..

Well, thank you. I’m glad that you’re continuing to talk to us though, Perc. Thank you for this morning. We’ve enjoyed what we’ve got down on tape.

PM: That’s my pleasure. Thank you.