In 1921 "The Handbook of Horticulture and Viticulture of Western Australia" 3rd Edition was published by the WA Department of Agriculture. Written by a Adrien d'Espeissis, a good man who had not only great practical intent in compiling the handbook, but also empathy and commitment to the endeavours of the collective populace of his adopted home; the state of Western Australia.
Duncan Harris is only one of many agriculturalist or viticulturalist who has been inspired and instructed by "The Handbook" extensivley over the years (since starting his venture into viticulture and winemaking). It was because his own 1921 version was falling apart that Duncan decided to undertake the daunting and time-consuming task of re-printing this wonderful book on behalf of others (as well as for himself!).
The limited edition hard cover reprint is $180 and the soft cover reprint is $90 incl GST, including postage. Only 50 copies are available. This is NOT an OCR reprint. There are NO typos or missing text. There are all the illustrations and index of the original on clean white pages.
The first 80 pages of the 3rd Edition and last (including the contents page) of the 633 pages plus index plus photographs (689 pages). You will see the pages are clean and there are no spelling mistakes. This is not a cheapo OCR scanned copy!
If you would like to order a Handbook download an order form.
or if you have any questions about "The Handbook of Horticulture and Viticulture of Western Australia" 3rd Edition reprint please email us.
Enquiries to : Duncan Harris, 179 Memorial Av. BASKERVILLE WA 6056.
Below is an excerpt from the 1895 first edition in regard to the wine industry.
The First Edition - 1895
Here is what Adrian Despeissis had to say in the first edition (1895) of his Handbook, some parts are still relevant to our wine industry.
CENTRAL WINERIES
Of all the plant imported into Western Australia, the one that flourishes to greater perfection under the congenial and natural circumstances of soil and climate is without any doubt the grape-vine.
The laudable efforts of the pioneer vine-growers of this colony have made it so evident that the bulk of the land of W. Australia is eminently adapted for the cultivation of the vine, that we can at present legitimately anticipate the immense development this industry is capable of in the country and predict that at no distant date the grape-vine will add largely to the wealth of its natural resources. Of all the products of the grape, those that offer wider fields for expansion and stand more important by far, are pure wine and brandy.
The cultivation of table grapes for which there is at present a very active demand, is likely to be highly remunerative for some years to come, until the colonial market is well supplied; as for raisins, the local demand is only limited and there is no hope, at ruling prices, of ever establishing a payable export market in that article of commerce.
To wine making, therefore, and the distillation of brandy we must pin faith, and foster and encourage these industries by every legitimate means in our power.
Wine making is in its infancy in this country; sooner or later it is bound to take rank among leading colonial industries; now, however, it may be said to have reached the turning point in the history of its evolution and it rests with the growers of this colony to decide whether profiting by the experience of the other provinces of Australia they will raise it from the start to the position it should occupy, or whether hey will allow it to fall into a groove where it will simply vegetate until they will be compelled to help it out to it, regretting opportunities and time wasted.
WHAT AUSRALIAN WINE SHOULD BE
What we want to aim at is to produce a wine that is absolutely pure, carefully fermented and reared, attractively got up, preserving constant and unvarying type. Having achieved this, we must combine and organise the wine trade so that the producer derives a share of the profits adequate with the hard labour, the liberal expenditure of money and the risks he has incurred. Such an organization will be a guarantee of cheap, pure sound wine for the public, of considerable distribution of work and wages, of the fostering of trades cognate with the wine industry, such as the coop-
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erage, bottling, carrying and other trades, of extensive settlement of the land of the country and of the establishment of the permanent source of wealth.
HOW BEST TO ORGANISE THE WINE TRADE
No better means in my mind, exists for the developing the wine trade than by making of vine growing and industry distinct from that of wine-making; let the producer be distinct from the manufacturer, although at the same time, link their mutual interests so that the one should be dependent on the other, and that both should have the same object at heart, and both be brought into a united body for mutual benefit.
The establishment of central wineries will pave the way for achieving that end if established on sound practical basis. A page borrowed from the history of the wine industry in the other Australian colonies will prove interesting as an instance of some of the mistakes which it is still time to avoid in Western Australia .
In Victoria we have an example of the disaster brought about by artificially stimulating vine growing by means of a state bonus of £2, payable in three years, for each acre of vines planted. The result has been an increase of 100 per cent, in the areas of land put under vines during the past four years. Victoria counts now 30,000 acres under vines, of which 20,000 is bearing a 10,000 coming forward. No steps, however, were taken at the same time for fostering and encouraging an export market for this sudden increase in the wine production of the country, chiefly brought about by speculators, who entered the field, planted vineyards everywhere and anywhere with the idea of claiming the bonus from the Government, and selling the vineyards afterwards; most of them had no knowledge of vine growing whatever, even less of wine making. Vineyard property is now a drug in the Victorian wine market; it was worth £50 an acre four years ago, and it is possible to buy a vineyard in full bearing at the present time in that colony for half the money. The price of grapes which was a few years ago £7 to £8 a ton for the good sorts, has gone down since, through want of organisation amongst the growers and the helpless state of their affairs, to £3 or £4 per ton. In N.S. Wales the tendency until lately of planting and indiscriminately too many varieties of grapes, many of which are of little value for the production of wine, has resulted in lack of a definite type and character in a good deal of the wine produced.
If too this we couple the fact that in the Eastern colonies, as a rule, each small vine-grower becomes besides a wine maker as well, we have the explanation of the fact why so little wine is consumed locally, so little is suitable for the export market, and so much lying unsold and decaying a great many wine-cellars instead of improving with age.
I think it is time to correct that popular fallacy which consists in ascribing all the sins, blemishes, and defects of colonial
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wine, taken as a class, to its “great youth”. We have all been given at times atrocious wine to taste, with this remark, that “the wine is all right; all it wants is age”. After five years of personal experience, however, amongst the vine-growing districts of four of the Australian colonies, I don’t think that I am far out in reckoning that a good third of every 100 gallons of wine made contracts blemishes and taints of some sort before it is properly matured, assuming it is give a chance of reaching that stage. For in the case of wine especially, age accentuates defects. Many tens of thousands of gallons of very promising young wines are at present in the Australian wine cellars, which in two years time will have been tainted and ruined through no fault of their own. Too many types, moreover, are made, as a rule, and in many a small wine-cellar casks can be seen labelled sherry, port, Chablis, Sauterne, claret, Burgundy and many other names of celebrated wines.
This it will be conceded, is not the way to establish an industry successfully.
The export market requires a definite type of good sound wine; it wants it in bulk and of a uniform character; it offers a good price for it. We have demonstrated that we can produce such wine to perfection, and yet we are not able to offer to the trade the guarantee that it asks as regards the maintenance of supply.
Probably no better parallel can be drawn than between the dairy and the wine industry of Australia . Both at the start have been handicapped, and have had to contend with difficulties of many sorts; both have since moved one step towards a greater state of perfection, and both bid fair to be prosperous and important industries, wine-growing the more so by reason of the greater scope of country eminently favourable for its expansion, as well as by its greater demand that exists for the several produces it yields.
As Australian butter is now threatening to the old established Danish staple industry in England, so it will be with Australian wine, when what has been done to improve the class of produce of Australian dairies has been done to lift the Australian wine industry out of the lethargy it now labours under.
CENTRAL WINERIES
Considering that we have here soil and climate that will react in a happy manner on the constituents of our choicer varieties of grapes and that we can reckon on a good average annual yield of a must of high quality, there is no point I feel more strongly than that of the unmistakable advantage of centralisation of the manufacturing process of that grape must into a marketable wine.
Through its agency, the winemakers would be brought into a united body for mutual benefit , the standard of Australian wine would be raised, and as a consequence the price would also be raised to a higher figure
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The state of affairs that obtains at present in many vine-growing districts of Australia is nothing short of chaos and disorganisation.
Just as the salvation of a large class of Victorian, Queensland and New South Wales farmers has been entirely achieved through co-operation in dairy-farming and sugar-making, so in the case of wine-making, I firmly believe that it is only by means of organisation and co-operation, by science and fellowship, that this country will take rank as one of the great wine-producing countries of the world.
The only districts in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia where we find vine-growing established as a prosperous industry are those in which a central winery absorbs the produce of the small vineyards of the locality, turns it into wine in properly equipped cellars, rears that wine with greater skill and economy, and markets it to the best advantage and at a remunerative price. Those wineries are mostly capitalistic, not co-operative, men of grit and enterprise have wrought the wonder and growth of wine-growing has, as a result, been steadily increasing.
The expense of erecting a properly equipped cellar is far greater than is commonly thought. In support of this statement some figures giving the exact cost of wine cellars in the south and in the south-west of France will prove instructive. Two well-known cellars in the neighbourhood of Montpellier, and typical of the better class of wineries put up in the south of France, where the commoner and more prolific sorts of grape vines are cultivated, cost, irrespective of land, £20 and £30 for each acre of vines cultivated; the vineyards measure respectively 65 and 125 acres each; the average yield is as much as 1,180 to 1,190 gallons of wine per acre, and the capital cost per gallon in buildings and plant amount 5 1/2d. and 6d., without reckoning the cost of making, rearing, and marketing the wine.
Equally reliable figures I have obtained from the Medoc district, in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux , in the SW of France, are also interesting. The district is famous for the production of high-class claret. The cellar of Chateau Malescot vineyard, which comprises 230 acres of Cabernet grapes, cost £7 for each acre of vines planted; the average yield per acre is only 155 gallons per acre, the cost of housing the wine coming up to 11d. per gallon.
In Australia , where the average yield of well cultivated vineyards may be put down at 250 gallons per acre, the cost of providing caskage and proper cellarage and manufacturing plant for securing the crop, could not, I reckon, be estimated at less than 1s. per gallon on a vineyard of 150 to 200 acres at least. This valuation is, however, very low considering caskage alone costs here 6d. per gallon, and the cost of building and providing requisite plant and machinery is much more expensive than
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in Europe; indeed I very much question whether such cellarage accommodation, as this climate demands, could be put up for a vineyard of the dimensions given above for less than 1s. 3d. pre gallon, or £15 per acre.
This figure, it must be borne in mind, comprises, besides building, crushing, pressing and pumping plant, sufficient casks to store one vintage’s wine, but supposing the wine is not sold the first year, then more casks would be required for storing it in and make room for the coming vintage, and similarly if the wine is kept on hand for three years, caskage accommodation for the yield of three crops for each acre of vineyard would have to be provided for at an extra expenditure in casks alone of £5 to £6 per acre over and above the sum quoted already and for each extra year the wine remains in the cellar. Roughly speaking it is safe to say that after a few years time, each acre of vines would have cost besides the sums spent in buying and clearing land, planting and cultivating, and establishing the vineyard £20 in round figures for cellarage accommodation. This heavy outlay is quite irrespective of heavy annual expenditure paid in cellarman’s wages, cooperage, cartage and freight, shrinkage or loss of evaporation or racking or the separation of the lees and cream of tartar from the wine, without reckoning on the cost of advertising, commission, bad debts, and the most serious loss of all is however the heavy percentage of wine that often goes wrong and gets tainted in the hands of inexperienced wine makers., and is either unmarketable or if it can be sold, at all, lowers very considerably the average price fetched by the bulk of the wine in the cellar, this loss is fully equivalent in some cases to as much as the value of one-fifth to one-fourth of total vintage. My best advice to intending vine-growers or those who have already vines bearing, is to discard the idea of putting up a cellar and becoming wine-makers themselves, if they can possibly combine and erect a central winery. Of course, the erection and equipment of such an establishment, will cost a certain amount of money, and this is where the State can help the winegrowers and add to the public revenue. The wine industry requires simply to be helped at the start as there is sufficient buoyancy in it, if properly directed to establish itself as one of the most flourishing industries of the colony, without any gratuitous state assistance and artificial spoon-feeding. The Government, in this instance could wisely imitate the action of the Queensland Government which three years ago passed a most useful “Act to authorise the making of advances, by way of guaranteed loans, for the establishment of sugar works, and to provide for the repayment thereof, and for other purposes connected therewith”. An Act of kindred nature placed on the statute book of this colony, could not fail in accomplishing a result that would be mutually satisfactory to a large and increasing section of the community, and to the advancement of an industry that is fated to become and important and flourish-
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ing one, and will add in no small measure to the natural wealth of the colony.
SOME OF THE ADVANTAGES
It is a generally accepted fact that the principal profit results from the manufactured article and the subsequent handling of it before it reaches the consume; the fact that the producer is not able to undertake the erection or the management of the necessary manufacturing appliances, and the marketing to best advantage, debars him of an important percentage of the profit.
I would suggest to the vine-growers of this colony some sort of scheme such as the following – That whenever a sufficiently important acreage of vines of the choicer wine-producing varieties – say 200 acres – are planted in a district, the Government be approached and requested to erect at some convenient and central spot, preferable alongside a railway line and close to a junction, a winery that would answer the present requirements and cold easily be extended as required. The vine-growers supplying the site and guaranteeing interest, computed at a low rate, on the money advanced; interest and capital could be repaid by yearly instalments spreading over fifteen or twenty years, the State in the meantime retaining a security on the land, buildings, and stock of wine in the cellar.
The producers would organise themselves into a limited liability company, retaining for themselves a fair proportion of shares and placing the rest in the open market. Their shares, they would pay for partly in cash and partly in produce.
The company would be governed by a board of directors in which the producers would predominate and who would regulate annually the price to be paid for the grapes according to a sliding scale based on varieties supplied and a standard richness of the must which would be tested at the winery.
By combining and controlling the output, the marker would never been allowed to be glutted more especially by inferior wine, only the quantity of wine that can be absorbed by the local as well as by the export market would be offered up for sale at a price that would ensure a fair profit.
A material profit would be derived in handling great quantities of grapes from bye-products that now go to waste, such as spirit form the stalks and skins, vinegar cream of tartar, etc. The cost of working one central winery is, it stands to reason proportionately less than that of working a number of smaller cellars, one cellar-man doing the work of twenty, with the assistance of a few ordinary labourers and the use of steam tackle and machinery ; more efficient and economical appliances can be used which do the work with greater saving of time and efficiency and the cost of production can be cut down to a much lower figure, while the produce is of a more constant and uniform type, better fermented, and its market value consequently correspondingly increased.
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However low the prices offered in London for Australian wines seem to be when compared with prices that can be obtained locally, still these prices may be considered as very satisfactory, and insure at least interest at the rate of 10 per cent, on the original as well as the working cost of the vineyard, provided the wine was sold in parcels of 1,000 to 10,000 gallons or upwards in the one transaction.
These prices, low as they seem to be, could I confidently say, could be cut down further if instead of being handled in small parcels, they were treated by the tens of thousands of gallons in central wineries, when they would be treated with greater economy, less waste, more uniformity, and where all the by-products of the grape vine – brandy, fusel oil, cream of tartar, vinegar, concentrated must – would all be saved, extracted, manufactured, and converted into money, in the shortest time, at the cheapest rate possible, with the minimum of risk, and to the best advantage of the grower, the producer and of the State.