Victorian Wine - History

History

Some of the earliest commercial plantings in Victoria were near Yering and established by Hubert de Castella, a Swiss immigrant who came to the region in 1854. The devastation of France's vineyards by the phylloxera louse opened up an opportunity for the British wine market with traditionally heavily favored French wine. Castella was very ambitious and laid out his plans for Victoria to produce enough wine to supply all of England's needs in his treatises John Bull's vineyard. Unfortunately before Castella's grand plan could be fully realized, phylloxera made its own way to Australia and the viticultural setback was compounded with the development of a domestic temperance movement as well as economic uncertainty and labor shortages during the first World War.

Early in Victoria's wine history, most of the wine industry was settled in the cool southern coastal regions around Melbourne. At the turn of the 20th century, focus began to move to the warmer northeastern zone around Rutherglen. The region began to establish a reputation for its sweet, fortified wines made from late harvest grapes that are shriveled to near raisins and then spend several months (or years) aging in oak barrels stored inside a hot tin shed that acts like an oven. The unique nature of these Liqueur Muscat and Liqueur Tokay helped sustain this part of the Victoria wine industry till the country wide wine renaissance of the 1950-1960s.