DAN'S WINE BLOG- MEMORIES

Friday, October 21, 2022

I recently saw this item about Wickham Hill Winery, in WBM Online – “THE WEEK THAT

WAS” (TWTW), and it brought a stack of memories flooding back.

“If you've always dreamed of owning a farm of tanks, rather than sheep and goats, you will

be happy to know that Wickham Hill Winery in Griffith is now on the market. The winery has

about 20,000 tonnes of processing capacity and 18.5 million litres of beautiful big stainless

steel tanks. Wickham Hill was established in the 1960s and was operated by Orlando until

2010. Colliers Agribusiness has been appointed by Tim Mableson and Ryan Eagle of KPMG,

receiver managers of the Wickham Group, to offer the property for sale.”

In 2012, Wine Assist (me), was hired by this then new company, owned by a Sydney based

Chinese businessman, to assist in the recommissioning of this, the old Orlando Wines 20,000

ton, Wickham Hill winery. It had laid idle for several years including having had a mouse

plague go through it which had chewed through many cables and left little deposits

everywhere.

I soon got accustomed to the weekly commute of driving over on Monday, working long days

Tuesday through to Thursday and then driving home on Friday. When I first arrived there, the

company had one employee – the caretaker. Shortly afterwards they appointed the chief

winemaker/general manager, Rodney Morrish, a great bloke that I had worked with in my

Yaldara/Simeon days.

The size of the task was quite daunting as in seven months the site had to be completely

rejuvenated and prepared for vintage 2013. Everything there had to be repaired, refurbished

or replaced – starting with the 1,000,000 litre anaerobic waste water treatment plant, as the

winery is located in the middle of the town of Griffith and therefore could not have the

“normal” waste water pond/tank. Instead, the waste water (after treatment) goes directly into

the city’s sewer system (fully monitored by the council). The monitoring station was coincidentally

directly under the Atco hut that I worked in. There was only one company in the

country that could replace the rubber liner and re-initialize the bacteria culture in the tank – a

very big job!

Overall it was a gigantic task as we had to organise everything from computers, laboratory

equipment, site vehicle, mouse repairs, even down to getting the 1920’s “Bundy Clock”

(clocking on/off machine) serviced – it turned out that there was only one company in

Australia which could still do that.

Along the way we discovered that the weighbridge and receival areas were totally inadequate,

as Orlando had bizarrely only used 2.5 tonne grape bins and the new setup needed to be able

to handle full semi-trailers of grapes. So a new weighbridge had to be built, along with

significant modifications to the grape receival areas to accommodate the change in

operations.

It took a monumental effort, but the winery was up and running in time for vintage 2013. To

put it into perspective – a week before Christmas the winery had a staff of four (Winery

Manager, Lab technician, Maintenance Manager & caretaker) plus me as a consultant, and by

mid-February 2013 it had a staff of around 80 people and had crushed 19,280 tonnes of

grapes. Other than the three winemakers they employed, I did all the initial interviews on the

staff employed plus hundreds of other people that had applied for the jobs, then the respective

manager/supervisor did the selection from my “short list”.

I became a “jack of all trades” from organising the repair of a phone dropped onto concrete

from the top of a 30,000 litre tank, negotiating with various suppliers, liaising with an ultraconservative

weary Council through to organising cleaners for the offices/lab.

It was quite an experience from what seems like half a lifetime ago, and memories of this

time came flooding back upon seeing the item in WBM.

Well there goes another week, please stay safe, #chooseaustralianwine and when possible

drink #emergingvarieties wines. Cheers, Dan T.