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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. 2 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 3 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? 4 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? 5 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 100F—I always speak in Fahrenheit—and the nights never got below 85F, 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.

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