STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 692/13 Full transcript of an interview with LITA BRADY on 28 August 2002 by Rob Linn 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 692/13 LITA BRADY 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 692/13 TAPE 1 - SIDE A NATIONAL WINE CENTRE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT. Interview with Lita Brady at Wendouree Cellars on 28th August, 2002. Interviewer: Rob Linn. Lita, where and when were you born? LB: I was born in Adelaide in 1949. And who were your parents, Lita? LB: Max and Alegra Liberman So, Lita, your father was a developer. LB: Yes. And did some very interesting things that I know about. LB: Yes, in South Australia. 3 So when you were young growing up, was there wine on the table in your house? LB: No. Did your parents drink any alcohol at all at that time? LB: They would have drunk socially for the custom of the day. The odd spirit that people were drinking. Very moderate. Conventional. For the time. LB: For the time, yes. How did you come to be mixed up with the wine industry? LB: Well, Tony and I had been travelling and we’d returned and settled in Adelaide and we wanted to live in the country. And Dad heard about this property for sale and mentioned it to Tony, who had a friend who’d moved here not long before that. So he knew of the property and what it was like. They came up to have a look at it together. Dad bought the property and we moved here and ran it for him. What year would that be? LB: ‘74. 4 Was Roly still around then? LB: Roly worked with us for about eight years. So he directed the first two vintages. This is Roly Birks. Can you tell me a bit about Roly, Lita? LB: Well, he was seventy-five when I first met him, and he was sort of a traditional person in terms of values. He’d been born in South Australia—born here actually in the house. He hadn’t actually done any tractor work, he’d done a lot of the various tasks but he was basically the winemaker. And he and I used to do jobs together in those days. You know, a girl and a seventy-five year old man did about the same thing. (Laughter) He taught me quite a bit. He taught me to prune, and a balanced view of life I guess. And we learnt his method of handling wine and making wine. I later went to study winemaking. Was that at Roseworthy? LB: No, at Charles Sturt. Wagga? LB: Yes. So when would you have gone over there, Lita? 5 LB: I started in ‘83. Was Tony Jordan still there then? No, he’d gone. LB: Yes, just left. Can you tell me a bit about Roly’s view of winemaking? LB: Well, he was very traditional. I’d say non experimental. His sort of creativity showed up whenever there was something to be done, in the way he would design a method to do something out of the ordinary. For instance, when we first got here the wood was all empty—the barrels were all empty—and had been for a year I think, or six months. Just the method that he proposed to get the wood up. He said that we should get a boiler built and—they had ways of doing absolutely everything. Old fashioned thing basically. Can you describe to me how Wendouree was when you first saw it? LB: Yes. There was a dirt floor here. This is in the winery section? LB: Yes. On both sides. On the other side in the fermenting cellar, where we’ve got the stainless steel now, were a row of large oak barrels—old oak barrels. They used to use old oak. We talk in gallons, so there were 300’s, 500’s. We just used the equipment that was here. There were several methods that we discontinued 6 because they were no longer worth it. They used to process skins to get more alcohol out of it and these sort of things. Actually crush the skins? LB: They’d soak them in water and then re-ferment them to get extra sugar out of them. The white skins, because the white skins don’t go into a ferment. So they would make alcohol out of the sugar in the skins. So was he looking at natural ferments at that time? LB: No. We used to go to what was called the Stanley Wine Company and they would give us a drum of fermenting wine and we would use that to start the first ferments, and then we would seed from ferments that were going. That to my understanding is not a natural yeast. I don’t know where theirs would have come from but it wouldn’t have been just started up by leaving grapes to the air. But you were bringing in, in effect, an external yeast to trigger the ferment. LB: Yes. Now were all the grapes sourced off the property here at that time? LB: There was a grower that Roly had an agreement with, and we used to make wine for him. That vineyard was later sold to Petaluma. That’s up on the back 7 range. That continued for a few years. Lots of wineries used to do that sort of thing just as extra income. What were the varieties of grapes on the place when you came? LB: Very much the same as today, except for Riesling, which we’ve pulled out. So there was Shiraz, Cabernet, Malbec, Mataro. That’s it I think. And the Riesling. LB: And the Riesling. Oh, actually there was Grenache. No Crouchen at all? LB: Yes, Crouchen as well. There were other little patches of things that used to be used for fortifieds. There was a patch of Chenin Blanc that we called Albillo. Did you call it Albillo, did you? LB: Yes, we did. We only found out that it was Chenin Blanc in the late 70’s when a French viticulturist came to visit. That’s interesting. Albillo was a Spanish sherry grape I think from memory. 8 LB: Yes, and that was used in sherry here. But in the wine industry there have been a lot of names that sort of confused along the way, and if you look up an ampelography book you’ll find that most grape varieties have got several names. Yes. LB: And so confusion comes from that. What type of wine was Roly mainly making when you first came? LB: Dry reds and fortifieds. He had been making a lot of dry white base. Oh, there was Pedro as well—Pedro Ximenez. He’d been making white wine base for sparkling wine production, but the market disappeared in that and so we pulled the vines out. So he wasn’t doing his own sparkling here? LB: No. He’d send that off. LB: Yes. He’d sell that to someone else just as a wine. Yes, to Romalo or somewhere. LB: Yes, it was Romalo. 9 Thought it was. I remember Norm Walker telling me that. So can you tell me a bit about the characteristics of the fortifieds? My memory of them is that they were very big wines. LB: Yes, they were. I think you’d probably call them sweet red really because they were too red for a tawny style. There were tawnys made, and we made the first Vintage Port in 1975, so there hadn’t been a vintage before then. But to get a tawny out of that big dark red material takes a long time so Roly used to achieve more a dark red Port that wasn’t a Vintage Port. Did you have much Port stored down? LB: No. What was the market for the dry reds like? LB: It was quite small really. People didn’t really appreciate them on the whole in South Australia. We used to sell a bit in Victoria. But before we came Roly used to sell the red in bulk to other wineries on the whole, and he used to just bottle a few dozen cases. Lita, did you actually like the wine when you first tasted it? LB: I didn’t personally like the wine, no. I remember it was good because of the reaction of the other winemakers. When we had difficulties and it was hard to 10 keep going, I just used to remember their reaction to tasting the wine and I could see that it was something special.