Conditions were not fair on Thursday, October 17. My vineyard manager, Angelo Cutuli, remarked that it was a bad day for a fire. The buffeting wind threw young shoots around and tender vine leaves wilted in bone-dry air. We trickled water into the vineyard.

At about one o’clock an ominous column of smoke arose down the valley, from around Ballandean, I judged. We later learnt that a power pole on Neil Mungall’s property had blown down sparking the fire, which immediately leapt eastwards in tinderbox conditions.

In minutes the fire raced through treetops to the New England Highway and leapt over it into thick bush on the other side. A septuagenarian friend at Glen Aplin, Harry Ireland, who is a double for Walter Matthau, saw the possibilities of making the next firemen’s calendar and raced to help a female friend in Horan’s Gorge Road. 
 

The pain was immediate and acute

With dusk the hot wind did not, as usual, abate. Instead, it continued to howl and we learnt from friends that in Limberlost Road, three houses had earlier been lost to fire and a 41 year old woman and mother of four, Sharon Paton, lost her life.

Having helped others during the day and finally evacuated her children, she made a last, desperate attempt to retrieve family photos as the flames reached her house. She did not get out. 

The fire raced north and east along the mountainous eastern slopes of the valley. It travelled as much as 40 kilometres in a matter of hours. I realised that Harry, now back home, and Otto and Ann Haag of Felsberg, on the edge of the escarpment, had no electricity and may need assistance. It was dark now and a powerful red glow silhouetted all ridges to the east and south as high again as the mountains themselves. I heaved a petrol-fuelled fire-fighter pump into the back of the utility and headed south.

Flames were huge and close

Coming down the highway near Townsend Road the flames – incredibly big– were just behind the ridge and about to leap it. An Ergon Electricity crew was isolating power circuits on a pole at the end of the road.

Turning into Townsend Road, by this time hesitant about what I might encounter, a vehicle hailed me. They were St John’s Ambulance volunteers. Also there was Glen Ireland, Harry’s wife, and Sophie, their dog.

“You must turn back,” the volunteers told me. “The police are evacuating residents and closing the road now.”  Glen was hysterical. Harry had apparently headed off again to the top of the road where danger was greatest, to help another friend (is this what he dreamt of at his partner’s desk for all those years?)

Knowing that Otto Haag and, possibly, Tony Comino, were at Felsberg, now just 100 metres or so from the advancing flames, I was reluctant to turn back without at least delivering the pump but eventually I saw the sense in doing so. With the others I retreated to a local service station.

Otto, Tony and one other were at Felsberg, I later learnt, back-burning and using puny vineyard knapsacks and a tractor sprayer to try to save the vineyards and the magnificent winery on its mountainous eyrie. Unbelievably, they succeeded but what they went through for a couple of hours up there on the mountain is unimaginable.

“How big were the flames?” I later asked Otto. His eyes were hollow and he simply shook his head. It must have been terrifying. They lost their Merlot patch.

By next day the wind had abated and turned the fire on to 

Harry’s brilliant career 

Townsend Road was evacuated again as the fire turned around. When police knocked on Harry’s door he protested that he had to stay. This produced a withering look: “We’ve heard about you, Mr Ireland. Leave now or we will arrest you.” Thus ended a brilliant second career.

We put out spot fires that day. There was excitement but little danger in the evening when three fire tenders, hoses magnificently drenching the slope under Felsberg, back-burned the last of the forest to finally protect Otto’s and Ann’s smoke-shrouded Bavarian schloss.

The last thing any of us needed by then was a wine festival. However, that was what was scheduled for the next day, Saturday and, as they say, the show must go on.

With cancellations depleting our Saturday lunchtime “Guitar-pickers BBQ”, a young bloke with a Glasweigan accent rocked up with three friends who confided that Keith Urquhart, as he was named, had a guitar in his car. We persuaded him to fetch it at roughly the same time that Denice took a call from the classical guitarist we had booked that night for our “La Guitarra Banquet”, saying his car was playing up and he would not be able to make it.

Keith, an engineer by trade, turned out to be sensational. With his own arrangements and others he tripped easily through numbers that would make Tommy Emmanuel hesitate.

“How would you like a gig tonight?” 

So it is and was. Keith was brilliant, much applauded by a packed house and if he and his friends will come again we’ll do it over.

There we have it. Slightly singed, somewhat wiser and barely fitter we emerge from budburst 2002 to officially begin what will eventually be the 2003 vintage, unless the French purloin the word “vintage” in the meantime.

The vines are green, bountiful in fact. Life, as always, is interesting.

John Arlidge

If Australia’s food regulators have their way, come December 20 when you visit the bottle shop there may be something fishy about the wine you buy.

Food Act amendments passed by state governments make it compulsory after that date to declare on food and wine labels any ingredients derived from eggs, fish, milk or nuts.

As it happens, winemakers use small amounts of substances derived from these for clarifying or “fining” wine.

For example, egg whites are added to some wine to remove tannins before it is filtered and bottled. The egg protein attracts tannins, which are electrically opposed. Together they settle as lees on the bottom of the barrel and the good stuff is tapped from the top.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand, which drafted the regulations, says the intention is to help people with allergies identify food they should avoid, which sounds eminently sensible.

What has winemakers scratching their heads is the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation’s advice about what they should write on wine labels. “This wine may contain traces of fish,” is AWBC director Steve Guy’s suggestion.

“It would be prudent to declare this,” Guy wrote in a recent newsletter, “if you believe your wine could contain such residues.”

Winemakers are bemused by what the public is likely to make of such a declaration.

“I think there could be buyer resistance to wine that appears to be made of fish,” said Whiskey Gully Wines winemaker Rod Macpherson.

The fish product is isinglass. Macpherson describes it as “a very gentle fining agent” that binds to undesirable tannins and colouring agents (phenolics), and removes them from harm’s way.

Needless to say, apart from the fact that isinglass is a perfectly respectable chemical, it is not the winemaker’s intention for it to end up in the wine. However, as Guy notes, lawyers say that because bottles could contain minute traces of it, anyone who does not comply will do so at their legal peril.

Beside egg whites and isinglass, other allegedly offending items are milk, used for fining, and chestnuts, used in some red wines (usually cheaper ones), to add tannins.

The wine industry has yet to officially respond to the new laws but smart betting is on winemakers abandoning perfectly good fining agents for alternatives that have a more acceptable consumer ring to them.

Consumers may be interested to know that to date none of Whiskey Gully Wines’ products contain even the most remote trace of fish but some do go rather well with fish and chips.

Preserve us from additives

Another exciter of consumer sentiment is the addition of preservatives.

They are used in tiny quantities in wine, typically less than 100 parts of preservative per million parts of wine (or < 0.01%). 

They are used to prevent unwanted fermentation and oxidisation once wine is in the bottle. Both need to be controlled to ensure that wine tastes good. 
Some preservatives have an antioxidant role (they prevent oxidisation) and others have anti-microbial action (they prevent yeast or bacterial growth). Some do both of these things.

Australia’s food regulator assigns code numbers to preservatives. The main ones used in wine production are set out in the table below.