Vasse; a story both sad and joyful
The name of the first commercial vineyard at Margaret River echoes a poignant historical event.
Tom Cullity, when he founded Vasse Felix in 1967, used a name already attached to the Vasse River, which arises inland from Cowaramup and runs north to Busselton – but he knew very well where the name had come from.
Thomas Timothée Vasse was a sailor on the French ship Naturaliste who was swept away from his companions in the surf on June 8, 1801. Whether he died there in a welter of sand and water, or staggered ashore to be cared for (or killed) by Aborigines, Vasse’s fate was tragic enough for an unknown hand to record in the log of a later French visit to Geographe Bay, “Unhappy Vasse!”.
Dr Cullity attuned to history but hopeful that his vineyard would enjoy a better fate, called it Vasse Felix; Happy Vasse. There were moments when he was far from sure of that, but in the end, he was triumphantly right and the hawk on the Vasse Felix label (one was employed briefly in an attempt to deter grape-pecking silvereyes) was to become known across the world.
Tom Cullity read the 1965 and 1966 reports that suggested Margaret River could grow good wine. He had already planted half an acre of cabernet sauvignon and shiraz/hermitage on a farm at Burekup, north of Bunbury, belonging to his sister and brother-in-law.
Margaret River had not had a happy history to this point. It had seen the infamous Group Settlements, in which migrants faced impossible odds, largely failed to turn forestry into dairy farms. After the World War, farmers had battled to survive. Tom Cullity said of Margaret River as it was when he began looking for vineyard land “You could fire a gun down the main street and kill nobody”.
He would get up at 3am on Saturday in Perth, drive down in his Peugeot 403 (part of the road was unsealed), start work at 8am and go all weekend, sleep in a galvanized iron shed 16m by 6m, and be home with luck by midnight on Sunday, ready for another week as a cardiologist.
He spent a year looking for land.
“I’d wander about boring holes with an auger, looking for red gravel in redgum country, with clay about 18 inches below the surface. I thought I’d found it on Harry Clew’s place but I only wanted an acre and it was right in the middle so he wouldn’t sell it, understandably. But you’ve got to face the fact that down there, you go 50 yards and the soil changes. There are six or seven different soils on Vasse Felix alone.
“With help from the Cullens, I finally found eight acres on Sussex Location 1669 on Harman’s Road South, not far from Caves Road. It cost $75 an acre. I bought 10 more acres later.”
Geoff and Sue Juniper, who were hospitable and friendly, lived nearby and could keep an eye on it.
“Much of the time, in different ways, I was on my own. I knew nothing except what I had read in books. There was no local source of basic equipment. Quite a lot of the local farmers must have thought it was a joke.
“There were people who helped. The Cullens (who had had 100 acres on the coast since 1956 but had net yet got into wine), the Pannells and the Junipers used to put me up. Some of the local people were very kind to me: the Minchins, the Merchants, Jim McCutcheon and eventually John and Eithne Lagan and others. Bill Jamieson and Jack Mann were unfailingly encouraging.”
Cullity, Kevin Cullen, Bill Pannell and both John and Eithne Lagan were all doctors (and other winemakers since then such as Dr Mike Peterkin at Pierro). What attracted them to winemaking?
In his 1967 book Vine and Scalpel, Dr Max Lake, himself a distinguished winemaker in the Hunter Valley of NSW, showed that there were medical winemakers in Rome in the second century and there has been a long history of medical winemakers in Australia, including the great names of Lindeman, Angove and Penfold. In WA in 1859, Dr John Ferguson bought a Swan Valley property which had been planed with vine by Colonel Houghton in 1833.
Dr Lake writes “the doctor has a considerable amount of winemaking science as part of his medical training. Botany, biochemistry, pharmacy and bacteriology all combine to take the physician within an ace of mastering the theory and technique of winemaking. A doctor must also learn to evaluate sensory impressions and cultivate mental discipline – two attributes which take him a step further along the road to becoming a wine connoisseur.”
Tom Cullity said “there is an ancient marriage between wine and western civilization, tradition, country life, hard work, art, solace and beauty. It has the same sort of appeal as music. Winemaking is an attractive thing to do, it’s civilized – but it’s also critical. You might the juice in the tank and then someone comes along and does just one thing wrong, gets a decimal point wrong. So perhaps there’s an affinity with what we have to do in medicine: you look at the facts, make a decision and live with the reality that you take high risks. We are not frightened by critical chemical or other decisions.
“Mind you, in the beginning we and the people who worked for us were all inexperienced. Some funny things happened, out of ignorance. You don’t just stick vines in the ground, you prepare the soil for two years before you plant, you put topsoil in the hole, you tamp it down, and you water them in. It has to be done properly. Someone decided once that a block of vines needed spraying. I don’t think they had any idea what they were spraying for; it was just something you did. By the time the order got passed on to the person who did it, they used a spray designed to treat a disease in pigs. You can imagine the effect on the vines.”
The first Vasse Felix vintage, from vines four years old in 1971, was a “disaster”. The grape bunches that did not rot were damaged by the beaks of silvereyes. But in 1972, a riesling wine a gold medal in a class for small vineyards at the Perth Royal Show and opened everyone’s eyes.
“Our red wine was reasonably well received at the ’73 Show but Moss Wood’s 1974 cabernet was the first to give any real evidence of the region’s potential.
“I was amazed at the efficiency of the Australian wine grapevine – in a sense of spreading rumour. I planted in August 1967; by April 1968 senior people from most of the big Australian wine companies had visited and gone over the place, gone away and sad nothing but kept their eye on what we were doing. Max Schubert of Penfold’s, one of the McWilliams, Ross Heinze of Seppelts, somebody from Lindeman’s, someone from Orlando, Hardy’s and I think others had inspected my humble eight acres and little cuttings with tiny green shoots. Who told them? These people had hardly been in WA before. Why did they come? And why didn’t they follow it up?
“We had a party after the 1972 vintage to open the winery. Politicians, shire councillors, friends, winery people all came and it was good fun. A great deal of tea, beer and 1972 riesling was consumed, mostly separately. Stuart Melville, a local building contractor was there and he said drinking wine was ‘like pouring racing fuel into a bulldozer’, but a good time was had by all.
“Now we knew that good fruit, generosity and softness were all characteristics of Margaret River wine, and there was also a faint herbal, eucalyptus or peppermint impressions. It isn’t difficult to recognise wines from this part of the world.”
In 1973, David Gregg came to Vasse Felix as manager. He and his wife Anne bought the vineyard from Tom Cullity in 1984 and sold it to Robert Holmes á Court in 1987.
(References: In 1993 Tom Cullity published an illustrated monograph exploring Vasse’s fate. Other details from Dr Cullity’s paper given to the WA Historical Society in 1992 and from an interview with him in 1997.)
