‘Alone’ among the vines with four children
This is one way to tell the story of how Ian and Ani Lewis started the Cape Clairault winery:
They planted in 1976, made their first vintage in 1980 and in 1984, a Cape Clairault cabernet won the Canberra Times Trophy for best red wine in Australia.
Here is another way:
It is early 1977. Ian is away earning money up north as a geologist. Ani is along in the vineyard, hoeing the young vines. She is not, in the absolute sense, along for she has her four sons for company. The baby is resting in a sling on her chest, the two-year-old is asleep in a pram beside her and the four and five-year olds are playing ‘tractors’ at her feet.
The nearest house is a kilometer and a half away, and only intermittently occupied. She has eight acres of vines to care for.
To buy 164 acres of land of Pusey Road, inland from the cape after which their vineyard is named, and a tractor, the Lewises had sold a house in Subiaco. There was not a lot left. Home became a two-room weatherboard and corrugated-iron shack, stifling in summer and freezing in winter. There is no running water or toilet, and the shack had changed shape as it was moved so there was no square corners.
“When we laid linoleum we had to cut triangles to fit the floor,” Ani said.
The transition for Ani, who had grown up in the city of Capetown, South Africa, was testing.
Ian came from a farming family and was more used to the tasks like getting a recalcitrant wood stove going on a winter morning. His geology helped him understand soil and he could turn his hand to anything. He was to start the vineyard with Ani, make all the wine and build all the buildings.
To keep income flowing, Ian would be away for six weeks, back for three, away again. This went on for 11 years.
“To begin with, I worried a lot about my ability to protect my children. I suppose I had an attitude to the bush which was formed in Africa, where it can be very dangerous,” Ani said.
“Ian had promised me we wouldn’t have any animals on the place, but after a while he began to say we needed something to eat the grass, that it was getting to be a tinderbox. So the next thing we had eight Murray Grey heifers. It had been a drought year and they were miserable looking when we got them, so they didn’t cost a lot.
“Then Ian thought we should have a bull. But he had to go away again, so I had to buy it. I went to the library and read about bulls and a week later a Black Angus bull was delivered. I was terrified of it. Our neighbour had a bull as well, very black and they used to bellow at each other. One night in a storm I heard a tree go over on a fence, then what sounded like a bull passing the house. I thought I would never see this black bull in the dark. In the morning, I crept out, hoping it wouldn’t cut me off if I tried to get back into the house – then found out it was still behind its fence.
“Later, I found myself doing things like pulling calves out as they were born. A kangaroo got caught on a fence and I went to get the gun, praying it would be dead by the time I got back. It was.
“I sometimes had to leave the kids in the house while I was out among the vines. In case something happened to me, I put food on the bottom shelf of the fridge and taught Matthew, our eldest, to look after himself when he wasn’t much more than two.
“One day Ian was home working on the house with the children beside him and I was working down among the cabernet vines, I came on this huge prehistoric animal with a forked tongue and long tail and ran screaming all the way back to the house. It followed me, then when Ian came out he said it was a racehorse goanna, stamped his foot and it ran away.”
The Lewises applied a philosophy of life to the vineyard which involved causing as little disturbance to the natural environment as possible. They used little herbicide as possible, mulches of rye grass and clover, seaweed sprays instead of chemical fertilizers, seasonal analysis of soil and leaf to ascertain the needs of the vines, and guinea fowl and little quail to control pests. Plantings of New Zealand mirror bush provide a shelter for predator mites which control ‘bad’ mites through summer.
Ian believed that in the future there might be a sustainable decline in the use of urea fertilizer, because it is too readily leached out into water sources.
There first wines were made with a home-made grape crusher and a simple basket press. Ian and Ani would get one each side of the press and pull and push the old-fashioned way to get all the juice out of the fruit.
“It sounds more romantic that it was. It was just bloody hard work,” said Ian.
Asked what it takes to establish and develop a winery, Ani Lewis said: I think an advantage we had in the early years was there we were both pig stubborn. More recently, we have had to change our vision, to enlarge it. It can be a big step from being held back by what you have to realising your potential.”
