Tasmanian Wine Industry.

Tasmanian Wine.

Recently the Tasmanian Premier announced in the Mercury [6^th March} under the heading “ Grape Expectations” that some $1.2 million was to be made available for further expansion of our viticulture industry. Given that a film of a similar name is currently being shown in local Hobart cinemas, I thought there must be a misprint. It seems extraordinary that so little research has been done to find out what is required to make our Tasmanian’s wine industry hum. This Government effectively stopped many small grape growers from marketing their product direct to the public with the introduction of new licence fees, even though they already held a perpetual licence or so they thought.

The Government needs to take a close look at how the French Government restructured the Beaujolais wine production area in the Southern Rhone villages. Like Tasmania, every farmer made their own wine with uneven results. The Government required all the villages to pool their crop into a semi-Co-op cave [winery] under their control to lift and maintain wine quality. The Beaujolais wines have never looked back.

What does this have to do with Tasmania’s wine industry? Currently we have some 120 odd growers, plus how many hobbyists’ vineyards, and over 170 different labels with a very wide range in terms of quality. Only recently a local grower sold his Riesling grapes to an interstate winemaker, he was shocked to find his fruit had been turned into a sweet wine which was fair enough, but the finished product was marketed as Tasmanian wine, hardly a good advertisement for our wine industry.

 

What does this have to do with Tasmania’s wine industry? Currently we have some 120 odd growers, plus how many hobbyists’ vineyards, and over 170 different labels with a very wide range in terms of quality. Only recently a local grower sold his Riesling grapes to an interstate winemaker, he was shocked to find his fruit had been turned into a sweet wine which was fair enough, but the finished product was marketed as Tasmanian wine, hardly a good advertisement for our wine industry

If Tasmania is serious about lifting our impact on a world market with this $1.2 million grant more research needs to be done on the best way to market and produce a quality product. Like the Beaujolais districts of France, Tasmanian needs an appellation system, were our vine growing regions are classified by soil types, yield, climate [early or late] with a controlled winery for each area. The current larger producers will throw collective arms into the air, but they are not supportive of small growers and charge two to three times to press small amounts of grapes. There are small vineyards in the Southern Rhone region of France that are only two or three acres, but produce fine wine. We need a change of attitude, large is not necessarily better. I see no reason why Government can’t play a decisive role in the establishment of regional wineries with quality control. Over the years various Ministers have told me this is not the Governments’ roll, private enterprise needs to solve their own problems. However, if we look at our Tasmanian Apple Industry when a not dissimilar system existed with every grower marketing their product under their own name. Only when Tasmanian Apples were marketed as Tasmanian product did the industry boom. If small villages in France can do it why can’t Tasmania.

Ohi Night & Ioannis Metaxas

Ohi [No]  night 28th Oct is with us again. I am always left wondering what sort of man was Ioannis Mataxas, the Greek Prime Minister who in 1940 by saying no, took Greece into the Second World War, when he refused Mussolini's demand for occupation rights to certain Greek sites. The paradox of this man revolves around his political ideology. Mataxas portrayed himself as"Saviour of the Nation" when declaring a state of emergency in 1936, while suspending parliament indefinitely, banning political parties, prohibiting strikes and censoring the press. His government was very authoritarian, he modeled his rule on the fascist regimes then current in Europe. He even held his own book burnings and re-wrote all school text books!

The question that always puzzeled me is why do Greeks today celebrate this event? When
 the man whose action in 1940 resulted in Greece's entry into the second world war and the eventual German invasion of the country in 1941. Are they monarchists, fascists or simply see Metaxas' action as restoring pride in themselves and the country. There is no question that "The National Father" was a military dictator who's constitutional claim to office was only legitimate for a few months. Yet despite this he is considered in some quarters as a national hero.

Greek politics has always been divided by extreme positions on both right and left. A divide that lead to a civil war and again to the coup of the Generals during the 70's. I only hope that our volatile Greek friends are not today eembarking on yet another installment of violent decent into anarchy. Still as I sit here with my friends in Hobart's Greek Club , eating, drinking, talking, dancing these political considerations are drowned by the sounds of  loud Greek music and the feeling of camaraderie

Armenian Memorial Day & Anzac Day

There is a certain amount of irony, that Anzac day follows Armenian Memorial Day, 24th April. A day that remembers the beginning of the Armenian genocide, or should I say night. It was on this day 24th April 1915, that the Turkish Ittihad Party, gave the order that Constantinople Armenian cultural leaders, their writers, artists,  clergymen, teachers and so on, were all to be arrested in the middle of the night. In hind sight, they should have realised that something was a foot. Thus the first 250 songbirds of Armenian culture were removed from positions of influence. Little did they realise, that they were the first of some one and half million of their countrymen earmarked for extermination.  The spiritual leader of all Sunni Muslims, Sheikh-ul-Lslam had already announced on steps of Fathi Mosque on 14th November,1914, that a jihad had been declared against all "infidels" and other "enemies of the faith". The Armenia, as the first country to adopt Christianity was an easy target. The fact that they had lived in the country, we now called Turkey, for over two and half thousand years counted for little. Not of course, all Turks subscribed to this policy,  I should mention many lost their lives due to their objection. The issue that sticks in the throat of modern day Armenians, is the fact, that Turkish governments over the last eighty five years have maintained total denial that such events ever took place.

Thus, we come to Anzac Day, and an ill fated landing in the Dardanelles, the very next day, 25th April, 1915. The day, when the first lorry load of Armenians were being removed from their homes. One of the tragic side effects of these events is that the genocide, the removal of an entire people, from their homeland would be repeated twenty four years later in Nationalist Germany. Whether the German advisers played any part at the time is hard to say. But it is not difficult to see a template for future events. This century has witness so many ethnic cleansing, Armenian, the Holocaust, Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and recently Dar fur, there seems no end. Turkey is one of the few countries who even today, refuses to admit any responsibility, as the recent out cry over the French Government's declaring that denial of the Armenian Genocide is a crime in France. I do not wish to suggest that ex-Turkish soldiers should not honor their dead war heroes, but whether they should do so in Anzac Day marches remains questionable.
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Black Armband View of History.

Julie Gough's current exhibition "The Missing" in Hobart is another journey down memories lane. Gough's obsession with her past always seems to deal with the negative. In all her shows I am yet to experience any positive feelings for a brighter future for our indigenous peoples. No one of the present  Australian generation denies past injustices , but to continually force feed the public with suggested guilt  becomes counter productive. If the Australian population is ever to move forward to a fully integrated future then we need to put this continual negativity behind us.

I feel as person of Armenian descent I could very easily have spent my life portraying the Turkish  atrocities towards the Armenian population after the First World War,events that took some one and half million lives. Events that even today require some form of acknowledgement, But life is not like that, nearly every country on this planet has experienced invasion, occupation or persecution at some point in their history. Most have had to pick themselves up and move on.

There are of course people with long memories who refuse to forgive. One only needs to look at Yugoslavia to see such hard line attitudes in action were they refuse to bury past wrongs but to what avail. Humanity for all it's faults needs to embrace each other and not spend their life reliving past grievances. Alexander the Great was right to require his troops to take foreign brides and create a new world that is were the future lies.