Title of Project a Social and Cultural Investigation Of
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Title of project A social and cultural investigation of women in the wine industry of South Australia Project Number TOL 01/01 Julie Holbrook Tolley Submitted December 2004 Abstract Women have made a significant contribution to wine production in South Australia, and their important role has been neglected by much of the community, including the media. Gradually their achievements are being recognised. In my research, interviews and a textual analysis of primary sources provided extensive and continuing evidence of women’s contribution in the wine industry from colonial days in the Barossa Valley to recent times on Kangaroo Island. Documentary evidence and the interviews indicate that women have been expected to work in various tasks outside the home, as well as managing the house and rearing children. The interviews I conducted with 25 women in the Barossa Valley, the Riverland and Kangaroo Island, over a wide range of occupations in the wine industry, indicate that they combined their work in the vineyards and wineries with their household tasks. The rural woman’s domain included the home paddock, the equivalent of the suburban backyard. Because of economic necessity the home paddock was extended to include seasonal work in the vineyard. Within families there was a variety of tasks carried out by all members, including children. Women such as Ann Jacob from the Barossa Valley took an essential part in establishing the wine industry. In the Riverland, women worked in Village Settlements in the late 1890s, and during World War I and World War II, they established vineyards as part of the Returned Soldiers Settlement Schemes. The Australian Women’s Land Army was an essential work unit during World War II and women picked grapes and vines in the Riverland. After World War II an increase in migration saw European settlers arrive in South Australia. On Kangaroo Island where grapes were first grown in 1836, several women now own and manage vineyards. South Australia has a long history of wine- making and although women have made an essential contribution to its establishment and continued development, much of their work has been overlooked, by the public and within the industry. It is anticipated that this research will give appropriate recognition to these women. DISCLAIMER To the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. FULL NAME Julie Holbrook Tolley SIGNATURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was supported by Australia’s grape-growers and winemakers through their investment body, the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation, with matching funds from the Federal Government. I would also like to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of Anita and David, who encouraged me in my very early days. Table of contents page no Abstract i Disclaimer ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Chapter 1 Introduction 1 2 Literature Review 8 3 Methodology 18 4 Home Paddock 26 5 Barossa Valley 65 6 Riverland 87 7 Kangaroo Island 122 8 Interviews 135 Conclusion 177 Appendix A Freundt family New Residence 179 B Waikerie settlers 180 C Birks property Murtho 181 D Gramp family 182 E Seppelt’s vineyard Nuriootpa 183 F Hueppauff vineyard Bethany 184 G Orlando vineyard Rowland Flat 185 H Food advertisement, Australian Women’s Weekly 186 I Tram conductor, Australian Women’s Weekly 187 J WAAAF, Australian Women’s Weekly 188 Bibliography 189 Chapter 1 Introduction This thesis investigates the history of women in the South Australian wine industry, and will redress the imbalance that exists in the literature related to the work women have done and continue to do. An historical, examination of the Barossa Valley, the Riverland and Kangaroo Island wine-making areas, puts the collected data and information into a chronological time frame from 1836 to 2004. The use of primary sources from the 1830s to the early 1900s enables a comprehensive detailed account of women’s activities to be presented. In the interviews I conducted, my intentions resonate with the methodology employed by Barbara Pini (2003) in her study of the Australian sugar industry (Pini, pp. 418-433). Both projects are concerned with horticulture, a part of the rural sector that has, as yet, received little attention from social scientists and social historians, and both studies have focused on women’s participation in a rural industry. My interviews with twenty-five women reveal much about the gendered division of labour in viticulture and combined with the primary sources, establish that there is a long historical tradition of women in vineyards. The thesis is divided into nine chapters: chapter 1, the introduction, describes the background of the colonial wine industry; chapter 2 reviews the previous work and research and the relationship with this project; chapter 3 describes the method of approach; chapter 4 analyses the gendered division of labour; chapter 5 examines the history of wine making in the Barossa Valley; chapter 6 is concerned with the establishment of the wine industry in the Riverland; chapter 7 deals with the industry in Kangaroo Island; chapter 8 presents an analysis of the interviews; chapter 9 concludes the study. Historiographical neglect Women have made a significant contribution to wine production in South Australia, as they have to other rural industries. Their participation has been essential, as family members or casual workers, in such tasks as picking and pruning. But only rarely, through their individual enterprise or the absence of the males in their family, have women been able to take up management roles. Even now women’s achievements are only slowly being recognised in the wine industry as in other rural sectors. The important role of women in the wine-making industry of South Australia has been neglected by historians. Published accounts of the history of wine making in South Australia have been written largely from the male perspective and as a result, the significant contribution of women to the wine industry in the Barossa Valley has been ignored by a succession of wine writers (Beeston 1993; Bradley 1982; Evans 1973; Faith 2002; Gent 2003; Halliday 1994; James 1952; Munchenberg, Prove, Ross, Hausler, Saegenschnitter, Ioannou and Teusner 1992; Simon 1966; Ward 1862). Male bias seems evident in some common assumptions of the times about women in relation to wine. In 1952 the influential wine writer Walter James claimed, ‘Women are not worthy of the custody of wine’ (James 1952, p. 9). In 1966 André Simon declared that, ‘A vintner is a wine man; a man who makes or buys wine to sell’ (Simon 1966, p. 55). Historians of the Australian wine industry from early writers such as Ebenezer Ward, whose treatise was published in 1862, to recent authors such as Charles Gent, published in 2003, have shared Simon’s assumption that those who plant the vines, grow the grapes, and make, judge and sell the wine, will be men. On the other hand, recent writers such as Annely Aeuckens (1998) and Jeni Port (2000) have undertaken some limited discussion of the participation of women in the history of the wine industry, though their accounts are by no means complete. Wine making as a career for women Wine making is a non-traditional occupation for women and it is still dominated by men. Successful commercial wine making demands intuitive skills informed by experience and regulated by a methodology of systematic experimentation and meticulous record- keeping that is felt to be akin to scientific investigation. The required mix of the wine maker’s skills is suggested in an account of the birth of the best known and most prestigious of South Australian wine, Penfolds Grange: The concept of Grange was Schubert’s alone. His ideas, including then-radical fermentation-control techniques and the use of small new oak, are now standard throughout the Australian wine industry. But they confounded the conventional wisdom of the day. Although he was inspired by the Cabernet Sauvignon-based, French oak-matured wines of Bordeaux, Schubert used Australian Shiraz and American oak, intuitively recognising the potential of this particular combination. (Rewards, 1994, pp. 28-29) It should be explained that by tradition, French wines are identified by the regions in which the grapes are grown, which may be better suited to the growing of one grape variety rather than another. At first, Australian wine makers appropriated the names of French regional wines such as Burgundy and Champagne. In the last few decades, in contrast, Australian wine has been identified by the grape variety used and by the company producing the wine. Again, by tradition, Australian wine was given characteristic nuances of aroma and flavour by the use of French oak barrels for storage during production. This oak character is particularly important as a constituent of a wine produced from the Shiraz variety, sometimes known as Hermitage. This wine, when made in the Barossa Valley, tends to have a notably ‘big’, ‘earthy’ and ‘peppery’ quality. One of Max Schubert’s innovations was the use of American oak for his Grange wine. The Penfold narrative continues with an emphasis on scientific methods: ‘Grange finally achieved recognition in 1962 after a decade of experiments’ (Rewards, p. 29). European settlement in South Australia The South Australian Act 1834 was intended to facilitate the establishment of the colony, which was based on a theory of colonisation developed and propounded by an Englishman, Edward Gibbon Wakefield. In essence, his proposal entailed the sale of land in the colony to wealthy settlers, and the utilisation of the proceeds to assist working class immigrants who would become labourers and servants for the landowners. Eric Richards (1986) maintains that Wakefield’s great achievement was to popularise the notion of planned colonisation, founded on ordered and subsidised immigration without the labour of transported convicts (Richards, p.