Wine

Join food journalist Lee Tran Lam to explore Australia’s foodways. Leading Australian food producers, creatives and innovators reveal the complex stories behind ingredients found in contemporary kitchens across Australia – Milk, Eel, Honey, Mushrooms, Wine and Seaweed.

Australians have been raising our glasses for a long time. Our vintages have been winning international prizes since 1822 and there's currently a $2 billion worldwide thirst for our wine. Australian innovations like the goon bag and screw-cap wines have made drinking more user friendly, though, and wine has since become a creative showcase for art and culture.

Lee Tran Lam Powerhouse acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which our museums are situated. We pay respects to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continuous connection to Country. This episode was recorded on Gadigal, Kaurna, Peramangk and Bundjalung Country.

My name is Lee Tran Lam and you're listening to season two of the Culinary Archive Podcast, a series from Powerhouse Museum.

Located in Sydney, Powerhouse is the largest museum group in Australia. It sits at the intersection of the arts, design, science and technology with over half a million objects in its collection including an 18th century Persian wine jar to photos of a champagne-shaking table and Cabernet Shiraz bottles commemorating the Sydney Opera House's 1973 opening.The collection charts our evolving connection to food.

The museum's Culinary Archive is the first nationwide project to collect the vital histories of people in the food industry, such as chefs, producers, writers and restaurant owners who've helped shape Australia's taste and appetites. Today we're talking about Wine.

Shanteh Wale South Australia has long established vines, some of the oldest Shiraz, Cabernet and Grenache vines in the entire world.

Pauly Vandenbergh Terroir just made a lot of sense to me as an Aboriginal person. It's very well documented, the importance of land and Country to Aboriginal people.

Brendan Carter I've got a lot of American friends and like, we started our winery before it was legal to drink there.

Gary Green For the last three years I actually don't drink at all anymore. It's quite funny owning a wine company and not drinking. 

LTL Australians have been raising our glasses for a long time. Our vintages have won international prizes since 1822 and there's currently a two billion dollar worldwide thirst for our wine. But in the 1970s Monty Python thought Aussie table wines were a joke, mocking them with names like Sydney Syrup and Black Stump Bordeaux. Boxed wine, a 1960s Australian invention, has similarly been called Chateau Cardboard or the goon bag, but like screw cap wines this local innovation has made drinking more user friendly. And today the wine bottle has become a creative showcase for art and culture.

SW Hi, I'm Shanteh Wale. I spent the better part of a decade working at Quay Restaurant in Sydney, I was Head Sommelier. I now am a wine journalist and host my own little podcast called Over a Glass. 

My father was a bit of an avid collector of wines and I always remember him making quite a ritual of when he would open and pour a glass. That's really the first moment where I felt important, or a bit more like an adult, when my father would ask me what kind of smells I could smell in a nice glass of red wine.

BC G'day, I'm Brendan Carter. I'm a winemaker based in the Adelaide Hills and one of the founders and main people behind Unico Zelo. My first recollection of drinking wine probably goes to being 11 years old maybe, travelling through Italy with my folks. Wine was never the naughty alcoholic drink. It was always part of food, part of culture. And it was always taught to me as such. I remember it was in a place called Greve in the Chianti Classico district, one of the OG towns. That must have been my first taste of wine.

LTL If you’ve ever wondered when wine o’clock actually is, a 2019 poll declared 6:59pm as officially the time to pour yourself a glass. We've helped ourselves to this drink for millennia: 8000 year old wine jars were discovered in Georgia in 2017. This country has one of the oldest winemaking cultures in the world and that ancient tradition of fermenting grapes in earthenware vessels called qvevris continues right to this day. The Powerhouse Collection has a ritual bronze wine vessel from China's Shang dynasty that's two to three thousand years old. In the Shang era both royalty and poorer members of society would be sent to the afterlife with their favourite wine jars.

SW I am fascinated by how we can track the distillation and fermentation of beverages throughout civilisation. It never ceases to amaze me that I can learn so much about what life was like through the lens of a bottle of wine or an earthenware jar. It just goes to show that it's an integral part of civilisation, whether it be medicinal or for drinking pleasure.

LTL Shanteh wonders, did the ancient Egyptians also develop booze goggles like we do today?

SW Did they seem more attractive when they had a drink? Or were they just doing it to relax? Like, it just makes you ponder. It really kind of transports you into ancient times.

LTL In ancient Egypt winemaking was shown on tombs and the drink was a luxury, with some soldiers scoring wine bonuses. In 2023, 5000 year old wine jars were found west of the Nile River with grape seeds still preserved inside. The sealed drink would be somewhat different to what's at your local bottle shop, where you'll probably find French Burgundy and German Riesling.

BC The fact that wine has such a long reaching history, and also the fact that it also has a reaching history beyond Europe, that's one thing I think a lot of people do entirely miss, is that it's not just a European beverage.

LTL Wines are sometimes called Old World or New World, with European drops from France, Spain and Germany known as Old World wines, while Chinese wines are called New World, which is strange as the oldest wine on the planet originated from the country's Henan province 9000 years ago. We're considered New World in wine terms, which some people find misleading, as Aboriginal Australians have been Traditional Custodians of the land for at least 65,000 years.

BC Technically, Australia is the Old World and again, it makes it enormously difficult to communicate when we talk about Australia as a New World, because it's genuinely not. Oldest continuous living culture and oldest soil, oldest flora.

The Winemakers (1965), ABC Retro Focus In Australia, the winemakers say, ‘Most years are vintage years’, because the regular sunshine ensures a high sugar content, and so a fine wine.

GG My name is Gary Green. I'm a proud Kamilaroi Githabul man from northern New South Wales. I'm the founder of Mt Yengo Wines.

As a teenager, probably 16 years old, I remember my parents they gave me a little sip of their wine and I thought it was absolutely horrible and why would anyone want to actually drink this? It was probably my late, late 20s that I actually started to drink wine and became a bit of a wine connoisseur. For the last three years, I actually don't drink at all anymore. It's quite funny owning a wine company and not drinking, but we've got some really great winemakers and people who know wine a lot better than me who do the sampling and tasting. 

As a proud Aboriginal person, I established Mt Yengo Wines to actually break the negative stereotype around Aboriginal people and alcohol. I really wanted my own mob and my own people to feel proud that they can be a part of any business, and especially an industry where, like I said, a lot of stereotypes around Aboriginal people being drunks, alcoholics. For me as the founder, to create it and it be through my own health journey from where I did enjoy a few glasses to now I don't, I think it sends a really cool message that everyone’s in control, and it's a personal choice for me.

LTL Research shows we're drinking less, with people generally turning away from glasses and bottles for health reasons. That's the case for Gary.

GG My last drink was when I got engaged and we hadn't had a drink for like, four months. We popped a bottle of champagne and we both had, I think, maybe three glasses each. And because we hadn't drunk anything in the previous four months, the bubbles really hit us. We were like, ‘Oh my god, we both feel terrible. And this is meant to be a really special day for us’. We sort of both had a chat about it the next day and I went, ‘You know what? I'm not too keen to keep drinking’. It's just a personal choice. I don't preach to anyone not to drink; I own a wine company.

LTL As Gary points out, champagne is usually saved for special occasions, and the Powerhouse Collection reflects that. It contains a photo of a model wearing a Happy New Year 1953 hat formed from a glove-shaped hand balancing a champagne glass. It's the best party hat I've ever seen. The museum also has many objects showcasing opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, who once bathed in 152 bottles of prize-winning Australian champagne from Great Western wines. And Powerhouse also has illustrations of cider gum in its collection. For millennia the palawa people of Tasmania have used the sap to create a fermented drink called ‘way-a-linah’.

PV Hi, my name is Pauly Vandenbergh. I come from the Wirangu and Kokatha people of the far west coast of South Australia and I'm the founder of Munda Wines.

Munda Wines is elevating our old stories about certain trees across our country, particularly down in Tasmania, that naturally fermented and created a sort of 3% alcoholic beverage. It's a long process and all that, but we use those sorts of drinks for ceremonial purposes and other activities.

And there's many other examples like the Quandong tree here in South Australia. The roots of that were used. They were crushed — that formed an alcoholic sort of cider as well. So, I sort of laugh and joke that Aboriginal people are the oldest wine producers in the world, but it's also half serious. We didn't realise we're producing these sorts of drinks that would become sort of a big industry in Australia, but these were things that we were using for ceremonial purposes.

LTL Wine writer Max Allen [Intoxicating: Ten Drinks that Shaped Australia (2020)] says this debunks the idea that Australia was a dry continent before British settlement. He notes how First Nations people also fermented drinks from banksia flowers in Western Australia and palm tree buds in the Torres Strait. But with wine it's a different story.

GG Stereotypically, it wasn't part of Aboriginal culture. Like it was introduced when settlement came but it's something that has been part of cultures for so long. Wine is actually a talking point for people.That's one of the reasons why we did create Mt Yengo wines, to be that conversation starter.

SW So we have these incredibly diverse, really different climatic areas all throughout Australia and that means we can produce lots of different styles, even if we're just using the one grape variety. South Australia has long established vines, some of the oldest Cabernet and Shiraz vines and Grenache vines in the entire world.

LTL There are 180 year old vines in this region whose grapes are harvested solely by hand. Through Munda Wines’ bottles Pauly tells an even older story about this landscape.

PV All my wine labels acknowledge all the Traditional Owner groups. So, McLaren Vale being on Kaurna Country, that'd be nice if one day people are just naturally saying that Syrah or Shiraz comes from Kaurna Country and people know that that's McLaren Vale or the Ngadjuri and Peramangk people from Barossa.

LTL Pauly also bottles chardonnay from Wadandi Country (that’s Margaret River) and Pinot noir from Wurundjeri Country (aka Yarra Valley).

PV When the grapes come off the vines and through the machines and get spat out and then you got to plunge it, I do a lot of that heavy lifting. But the actual process, it’s all machine generated. Hopefully we're going to get to a point where it's all mostly hand harvesting, and that's really important around sustainability and everything that we believe in as Aboriginal people around climate change. This is all about having respect for the vines. We want to reduce the trauma to the plants. I think that's a really important part of hand harvesting and having care for Country. It's also a big part of employment opportunities. If you've got a machine, you don't need many people. And there are obviously going to be processes there where you're going to have to use machine technology, whether it's putting the wine into the bottles and so forth.

LTL In 1791, Australia's first winemaker Philip Schaeffer, was growing grapes on Dharug Country Western Sydney, not far from Powerhouse Parramatta. Gregory Blaxland, whose wine strainer sits in the museum's collection, had a farm on Parramatta River. He was producing wine in 1816 and won acclaim in London for his exports. So why didn't Parramatta flourish as a wine region?

SW Interesting, isn't it? Because when you look at some of the most established great wine regions of Australia, you look and think, ‘Why would you make grapes there? That doesn't make any sense.’ But think of base level needs for civilisation: things like access to water, areas where they could plant crops or that had fertile soils. So you can see how Parramatta would be abundant for resources in that river area. The climate of Parramatta is pretty humid, it's like subtropical. I think that grapes and viticulture is possible, but I imagine it was just the heat that must have been disastrous for grapes over time.

Tasmanian Wine Industry (1985), Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office The Australian wine palate has been conditioned on wines that come from warmer regions. Grapes ripen slowly in cool climates. They're fruitier and the full flavour has a chance to develop.

SW Places like the Hunter Valley, which James Busby eventually planted in the 1800s, that's a very hot area, but it also gets a lot of rainfall. I still talk to winemakers that say, ‘People thought we were mad for planting grapes up here’, that they said, ‘This is the worst spot ever’, but it is one of our most established and renowned wine regions now. I commend the people that took a risk and tried things when perhaps they were told not to.

PV How do we plant different trees near the vineyards to help with the growth of the vines or whether it's introducing or encouraging more plant life or beetle life to the vines which helps with all that. We know that if we plant certain native trees next to vineyards it saves on water. All this knowledge that we have as Aboriginal people, and they vary right across the country, I want to be able to help bridge that gap and bring more Traditional Owners to have a seat at the table. Apart from the terroir part, it actually then draws a conversation about language. It draws a conversation around employment, which is a really big focus of Munda Wines.

LTL Ever since grapevines were taken aboard the First Fleet the fate of Australian wine has gone up and down. Early on it won overseas acclaim and in the 1930s Australia was exporting more wine to England than France. In the 1970s though, Monty Python satirised our wines, calling them Chateau Chunder and Perth Pink. The funny thing is, at the time there actually were Aussie wines called Chateau Down Under, Bondi Bleach and Kanga Rouge.

SW It was when economic growth started to get better in Australia and the world that we saw a bit of change in Australian wine, and that's where the fruit driven sunshine-in-a-glass table wines became very important.

Summer Wine television commercial (1982) [Sung]

Just give me the taste of summer.

If sippin’ gin just ain’t your thing,

So give me the taste of Summer Wine,

Everybody loves Summer Wine,

All together, Summer Wine.

SW But then we also have those things like Chateau Chunder, which just cracks me up. The reputation of Australian wine has changed significantly over time. We were some of the first to embrace natural wines. We are leaps and bounds ahead.

LTL We were also innovative with boxed wine. Also known as cask wine, Chateau Cardboard, Cardbordeaux, vino collapso or the goon bag, we've seen bag-in-a-box wine become popular, go out of style and also make an eco-conscious comeback.

SW Oh, I love it. It is such a part of our Australian wine culture and something that I'm so thrilled to see. The good old goon bag is absolutely topical at the moment and it should be part of the celebration of Australian wine. I think before the goon bag was invented the popularity of transporting or taking home wine was often in a flagon, which was two litres. It was Thomas Angove in 1965 that invented that plastic bag inside the box and that was inspired by that wineskin. Remember long time ago, if you see people in those old-fashioned movies out riding a horse around, they'd have those wineskins.

LTL According to Tom Angove's son John, Greek shepherds and the way they carried wine in goat skins inspired this Aussie invention.

SW I simply love it because it made wine accessible. Wine is meant to be for everybody, and I think the cask wine allowed everybody to enjoy wine. Today we have some really iconic, very trendy people making wonderful, sustainable goon bags. I suppose the question for a lot of people is, it's made from plastic. But the ratio to volume of content and the manufacturing process and breakdown is significantly less than glass.

LTL Up to 70% of a winery's carbon footprint can come from just making and transporting the glass bottles, so boxed wine could be a more sustainable answer. Some producers today are branching out with ‘bagnums’ and even incorporating goon bags into purses and backpacks.

SW I think one of the first wines in a box in a restaurant I saw was at the Dolphin Hotel from James Hird when he was doing Owen Latta’s wines, but we've got now Brothers in a Box, Gonzo Vino, Hey Tomorrow, Wine Smiths. There's lots of people looking into casks. Also, we're seeing a huge rise in terms of aluminum tins for wine as well. We are getting people that are saying yes to all kinds of different expressions of how we drink wine and that's only a really positive thing for the industry. I didn't serve a cask, I'm sad to say, while I was at Quay. I did serve a tinnie tableside and crack a beer, which I think horrified some people. But for me, that sound of that beer cracking is one of the most delicious sounds in the world.

LTL For more about tinnies, pints and schooners, check out our Beer episode from season one. Let's return to boxed wine, which for Gary is connected to a painful but pivotal memory.

GG I was actually at a barbecue with some friends. My dad's Aboriginal, my mum's of Danish Irish heritage, so a bit of an undercover brother when it comes to the skin colour, but very proud of my heritage. A man walked out with a cask of wine and said something very derogatory, and I pulled this guy up and said, ‘The language that you just used then is not acceptable’. And he apologised and everything like that. But I was in a setting of about probably 50 people and I saw the power that day of stopping and educating and turning a negative situation into a positive one. These 50 people understood a bit more about Aboriginal culture. So, I actually went home that night, and I said, ‘I'm going to open an alcohol company’.

LTL Murrin Bridge Wines launched in the 90s as Australia's first Indigenous winery, but sadly closed prior to Gary starting his business. And more recently Wirangu and Kokatha man Pauly Vandenbergh has spearheaded Munda Wines.

PV I felt it was a really low representation of Indigenous people in the wine industry. I thought, ‘Well, I'm busy enough as it is, but why not have a crack?’ It was that industry that I was really fascinated with. And then as I started delving in, this term ‘terroir’ kept coming up: the French concept of land and soil and the vines. And terroir just made a lot of sense to me as an Aboriginal person. It's very well documented on the importance of land and Country to Aboriginal people and our connection to Country. And you know, in terms of the pecking order of life for Aboriginal people, it's land first, plants and animals second, and then people sort of third. So that just really resonated with me.

My Wirangu Kokatha word for Country or land is ‘munda’. Munda for me just gives me a platform to be able to speak about many mundas. And maybe one day, you know, we don't use the term terroir in Australia. Maybe we'll use the word munda.

LTL Munda’s wine labels usually show a bird’s-eye view of the Countries the grapes are from, spanning eucalyptus greens to seaside colours, while Mt Yengo has showcased strong Indigenous women, composed of objects from their traditional Country.

Powerhouse has a range of wine labels in its collection, and sure, they can tell you about the bottle's vineyard, varietal or vintage, but let's face it, a well-designed wine label can be a lifeline in a bottle shop when you're overwhelmed by indecision or confusion.

BC We have a wine called Fresh AF — big, bright, bold colours on it. I'm pretty confident they're going to know what's in it. They're not going to have a big, warm hug of a wine.

LTL The bright, youthful labels instantly communicate what Brendan and his winemaking wife Laura Carter's aims with Unico Zelo are. They began their winemaking careers with bottles that had a uni student-friendly price tag, because they were uni students themselves.

BC I was 22, I think, or 21. Laura was about 20. I've got a lot of American friends and like, we started our winery before it was legal to drink there.

LTL Climate change also shaped Unico Zelo’s direction. Instead of selling market-friendly Shiraz, they wanted something more suited to their hot, dry home in South Australia's Riverland region, where they fought bushfires on their doorstep. They looked for grapes that suit dry farming, something that was more prevalent centuries ago, before the existence of modern irrigation. They found Fiano.

BC It originates in Campania, specifically around the area of Avellino. It was referenced by the Romans way, way, way back. And so, it was largely sort of lost and forgotten. And it was only really after World War II where an individual, Mr Mastroberardino in Italy, decided to revive a lot of these native Italian grape varieties as a way to rally culture, rally people. Fiano can grow in South Australian climates without all of the additions to either the soil to get it to work, or water, or to the vine. Nero D'avola is another extreme. This is a Sicilian grape variety, actually from the southern part of Sicily as well. It's like a cacti. It's an incredible plant. I'm yet to see Nero D'avola struggle due to drought.

LTL Brendan wants to prove how valuable these grapes are, as he knows of growers who've replaced these climate-resilient crops with cabbages because it's more profitable to do so. Some undervalued grapes like Zibibbo have been perceived as cheap varieties only meant for cask wine. So, what does Brendan think of boxed wine? And is it something he'd consider embracing for Unico Zelo?

BC Kind of funny because I grew up in Queensland my experience with box wine was my parents would have one in the fridge, and once they'd finish it, they'd blow them up and tie them to our pawpaw trees to prevent the fruit bats, because the fruit bats would freak out. So, like, my experience of box wine was like, that's a really great low cost way to prevent our favourite breakfast fruit from being gnawed at overnight.

We don't use casks for a myriad of different reasons. The big part of the reason is that the actual cask itself goes to landfill. Now there is coming at the moment a 100% either biodegradable or compostable or recyclable-through-conventional-recyclable-means — which is really important because it's not all recycling is created equal — cask liner. It's that silvery part of the cask that can't be recycled. But there's new ones coming. I think it's part of the answer.

LTL You can find Yalumba Cask Wine in the Powerhouse Collection, which connects us to another South Australian wine innovation: the screw top or Stelvin cap. Yalumba's production director Peter Wall helped engineer screw cap wine in the 1960s and today the majority of Australian wines are sealed with these enclosures.

SW Australia played a huge part in bringing the screw cap revolution to the world. There are still producers in France and in Germany that refuse to accept it, which is fine. But we do see, unfortunately, a lot of wines under cork these days where we're still seeing cork taint. And when you're spending a couple of thousand dollars on a wine and you open it with your friends on a special occasion and it's got cork taint, you have to tip it down the sink, you are furious.

LTL Not everyone is sold on screw caps though.

BC The cork is great and it's simpler. The screw cap, that's also very, very good. It is still lined with petrochemical plastic underneath it. One individual cork is almost enough to offset the vast majority of carbon in the bottle of wine itself. Agglomerated corks are very good these days. Like Diam corks is a big one that we use. We use a myriad of different variants of that, which is a treated cork. They're very efficient. They actually have fixed a lot of the issues with corks.

Tasmanian Wine Industry (1985), Tasmanian Archives Fine table wines are not meant for quaffing. Their true purpose is to accompany fine foods and to compliment delicate flavours through the course of a meal. It seems silly to skimp on the wine when you take a lot of time and trouble to prepare a fine meal or spend a lot of money buying one.

LTL From egg-shaped flasks to fancy crystal glasses, the Powerhouse Collection includes many ways to serve wine. For anyone who's nervous about pouring their Burgundy or champagne into the wrong thing, does the kind of glassware you use really matter?

SW It can have a massive impact on how you drink them, but in saying that, so can your mood, and so can the music you're listening to. And whether you're standing in the sun or the shade or you're wearing an itchy jumper. I like to use Riedel glassware. I think they do an amazing job of varietal-specific glassware. But in saying that, I'm quite happy to drink out of a mason jar if I'm having a picnic, or a sake cup. I probably get in trouble a little bit from my husband for all the different vessels of glassware and earthenware that I have.

GG I definitely think a good red should breathe to allow it to, I guess, reach its full potential. But I think it comes down to the people that you're with, the environment that you're with. I think if you're at an amazing event and the event knocked it out of the park and you had all these memories, I don't think you'd be telling people, ‘Gee whiz, I think we drunk out of the wrong glass’.

LTL The Powerhouse Collection also includes Roman amphora from the 5th to 7th century, used for storing white wine. It's similar to the ancient clay qvevris used in Georgia both 8000 years ago and in modern times.

SW Amphora is an incredible vessel. I'm not surprised that it's still used today because of its unique capabilities with wine. It's made from clay; clay’s porous, so the vessel allows oxygen exposure as the wines age, but very minimally it helps soften tannins and flavours. It's an excellent thermal conductor, so it releases heat from when the ferment is happening. And in places like Georgia and also in Sicily, they actually bury them underground to make them even cooler. When wine is aged in there, because it's not using something like oak, which is imparting flavour, you have a real natural flavour of the grape. So it's a wonderful vessel for experimentation and also for producing really beautiful, pure wines. I'm a huge fan.

PV How long do you want to leave the wine sitting in the barrels? We use sort of American oak, French oak as the wood. We've got aspirations as well to see if there's an oak or a tree here in Australia that we could use as part of the barreling process. And it might actually bring a different flavour to the wine itself.

LTL A Persian wine beaker in the Powerhouse Collection is engraved with the words of 14th century poet Hafez, who was known for celebrating Shiraz wine. It's funny that we generally think of Old World wines as being from Europe when Iran literally has a place called Shiraz, as well as 7000 year old wine jars found in the country's mountains. But a lot has changed since then. While working at Sydney restaurant Sixpenny, sommelier Bridget Raffal inspired others to showcase gender equality on their wine lists. And in bars and restaurants today, you can order much more than wine: from Green Ant Gin by Larrakia man Daniel Motlop to Korean makgeolli, a lightly sparkling rice wine that looks like milk.

PV I think that's the beauty of this industry. There are many opportunities I feel we can just sort of experiment, whether it's with our own native trees, native ingredients into our wines, potentially. But I don't know if many people realise that alcohol was a form of payment from non-Aboriginal people to Aboriginal people for work. That's how the alcohol got into our communities. I think it's an important story to tell. I have family members that want to support Munda Wines but have asked if I would produce a non-alcoholic wine. I'm really, really excited for some of the things that we're starting to look into.

Non-Alcoholic Wine (1970), ABC Retro Focus Its makers claim that for bouquet and character, it can hold its own in any company, but it is non-alcoholic. It reads on the label here, ‘For all who wish to abstain from alcohol, it offers the enjoyment of wine without its intoxicating aftereffects.’ Of course, whether or not it turns out to be popular in a big way with Australian drinkers remains to be seen. Personally, I think it's rather nice.