Chardonnay Revisited: Origin Of A Great Love Affair

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday December 28, 2005

JOHN LEWIS

THE world still dotes on chardonnay and this is reflected in the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing that the variety accounts for 42.5 per cent of Australia's 65,891 hectares of white wine grape plantings.

It's a remarkable statistic, given that no Australian wine labelled chardonnay was made until 1971.

Even more remarkable is that although chardonnay vines were probably in Australian vineyards as far back as the 1830s, it was not until 1969 that they were positively identified as such.

I revisited the chardonnay saga when writing my May 4 column on the exceptional $29.95 McGuigan 2003 Yardstick Chardonnay, made by Peter Hall from grapes grown on what is now the McGuigan Simeon Sandy Hollow vineyard and used to be called Richmond Grove.

Brian McGuigan, while winemaker at the ill-fated Penfolds Wybong winery, in 1969 established the Sandy Hollow vineyard in partnership with the Muddle family and today is managing director of the giant wine group that now owns it.

The Sandy Hollow chardonnay has been of outstanding quality throughout 30 years of ownership upheaval and Peter Hall, McGuigan's chief Hunter winemaker, attributes that to the fact that the vines were grown from Burgundy clones that predated the scourge of phylloxera in France.

Brian McGuigan remembers that the chardonnay vine cuttings that he and the Muddles planted in the 1970s came from Mudgee and the prized Hunter Valley Distillery (HVD) vineyard, near the intersection of Broke and Hermitage roads, Pokolbin.

I find it fascinating that both sources probably trace back to the original chardonnay cuttings brought to Australia in 1831 by James Busby. Then known as white pineau or pinot blanc, the cuttings were planted in the Hunter's historic Kirkton vineyard at Belford by Busby's brother-in-law William Kelman.

In the 1830s George Wyndham was given cuttings, more than likely including chardonnay, from Busby's vines and these were planted at Wyndham's Dalwood vineyard near Branxton.

Penfolds acquired Dalwood in 1904 and it seems reasonable that chardonnay cuttings from Dalwood were used on the company's Pokolbin HVD and Sparkling Vale vineyards.

Tyrrell's bought HVD in 1983, but in 1967 it was still owned by Penfolds, whose Hunter cellarmaster was Brian McGuigan's father, Perc, now 92 and living at Rutherford.

It was then that Murray Tyrrell purloined the cuttings that he planted on his Short Flat vineyard, in 1971 producing grapes that made the inaugural Tyrrell's Vat 47 recognised as the first commercially released chardonnay in Australia and the trigger of the chardonnay boom.

Murray Tyrrell explained in 1996 that he got the idea of making chardonnay wines in the 1960s when the French white burgundies he liked drinking became too expensive.

"I decided that I wanted to experiment with chardonnay and contacted the NSW government viticulturist, Graham Gregory, who unearthed two small plantings, one on Alf Kurtz's property at Mudgee and the other at Penfolds' HVD vineyard at Pokolbin," said Murray.

According to Murray, the Kurtz chardonnay vines were intermingled with other varieties and the best prospect appeared to be the HVD chardonnay.

Penfolds, which used the chardonnay grapes with semillon to produce the Dalwood pinot riesling whites, was not keen to give HVD cuttings to a competitor.

And so, one moonlit Pokolbin night in 1967, Murray Tyrrell climbed over a fence into Penfolds' vineyard to filch some discarded vine cuttings.

"Seeing the cuttings were destined to be burnt in any case," explained Murray, "I felt my actions were honourably in order."

As for the Mudgee chardonnay cuttings that went into Sandy Hollow: I think they also track back to Busby, Kelman and Kirkton.

In his book Vineyards of Sydney, Dr Philip Norrie says that a man called Ambrose Laraghy worked at Kirkton before his son, Colin, bought the Kaluna vineyard in what is now the Sydney suburb of Smithfield.

Dr Norrie believes Ambrose Laraghy obtained chardonnay cuttings from Kirkton and Colin Laraghy planted them at Kaluna.

In the 1930s Colin regularly bought grapes from the Westcourt vineyard at Mudgee and became friendly with its owner Bill Roth.

This friendship led to Laraghy giving Kaluna chardonnay cuttings to Roth, who planted them at Westcourt. Bill Roth sold Westcourt to his brother, Jack, the owner of the Craigmoor winery, who used the chardonnay grapes in a Craigmoor white blend.

A later Craigmoor winemaker, Pieter van Gent, made a straight chardonnay in 1971 and insists that it went on the market in 1972 before the Tyrrell's 1971 Vat 47.

Alf Kurtz was an employee during the Jack Roth years at Craigmoor and he took note of the quality of the grapes produced at Westcourt from what was referred to as white pinot vines.

In the 1960s Kurtz decided to establish his own small vineyard under the Mudgee Wines banner and took some Westcourt white pinot cuttings. When these vines produced their maiden crop in 1964, Kurtz made what was almost certainly Australia's first straight chardonnay.

He labelled the wine white pineau and sold it without fanfare in small quantities that year and in succeeding vintages.

That the vines called white pinot/white pineau at Mudgee were indeed chardonnay was not confirmed until 1969 when a leading French ampelographer, Dr Denis Boubals, was brought to Australia by the CSIRO.

Two years later Murray Tyrrell and Craigmoor produced a chardonnay and Australian wine drinkers' love affair with that grape had begun.

"Seeing the cuttings were destined to be burnt in any case, I felt my actions were honourably in order." Murray Tyrrell

© 2005 Newcastle Herald

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