::: TASMANIA'S NATIVES


The grapes
of success

PART II | Septuagenarian Irving Fong spent 50 years as a market gardener before “unretiring” to his Jingler’s Creek vineyard in Relbia, just south of Launceston.

At 15 years of age, in 1949 and in the final years of Mao’s Chinese insurgency, Irving travelled from Canton to Australia. He arrived in Western Australia and spent six years making his way to Launceston, where he spent the next half-century as a market gardener.

Along the way he was naturalised, became a highly respected member of various local business, sporting and community organizations, married and put his four children through private schools and Sydney University.

But, what do you do in your late-sixties, after a lifetime’s hard work, the kids off your hands, the loss of your wife and you’re living in a retirement village surrounded by Alzheimers and wheelchairs?

“I thought grapes were like vegetables,” he laughingly admits. “The more you got, the better.”

You unretire and plant a 2ha vineyard of course. And, with his green thumbs to help him, Irving harvested his first vintage in 2000 only 18 months after planting and, in 2001, a massive crop of 15.5 tonnes.

“I thought grapes were like vegetables,” he laughingly admits. “The more you got, the better.”

Today, yields are lower, the wines are better, he’s remarried, there’s a cellar door and Irving’s still going as strong as ever.

In 1974, on his mixed vegetable farm in Santa Cruz, California, Tony Scherer contemplated his crop of beans half-ruined by an infestation of blue mould.

“Just think how bad it would have been if you hadn’t sprayed,” said the chemical salesman alongside him.

“Those beans, the blue mould and the salesman’s comments were the start of it,” he says. “Today, I’m totally organic.”

Thirty years later, in one of Tasmania’s most difficult, under-ripe and disease-effected grape vintages ever, Scherer harvested 50 tonnes of perfectly healthy, fully ripened, coloured and flavoured fruit – without having used a droplet of chemical spray, or any other chemicals at all in his Frogmore Creek vineyard near Richmond.

“Those beans, the blue mould and the salesman’s comments were the start of it,” he says. “Today, I’m totally organic.”

His vineyard ‘insecticide’ is a flock of guinea fowls. His ‘fungicide’ is liquid compost tea, his fertilizer a compound of compost and seaweed kelp.

“I aim to create a habitat in the vineyard where disease can’t flourish and to take care of the plants so they can take care of themselves,” he says. “Soil biology is what should feed the plant — not us.”

Tony came to Western Australia in 1989 to rescue a citrus and vegetable venture he and Californian friends had invested in.

He decided he liked the country, stayed, became a citizen in 1995 and caught the wine bug, as it were, doing horticultural consultancy work for some of the leading vineyards in that state’s premium Margaret River region.

After searching for suitable vineyard sites around the mainland and in New Zealand, he and a business partner have progressively planted what will eventually be a 65-80 ha vineyard, one of the largest in the Coal River Valley.

Tony then bought and greatly expanded Hood Wines, Tasmania’s leading contract winemaking business.

“I want very much to be part of Tasmania’s clean and green future and to make great wine. Not simply any wine, but great wine … ”

He plans a cellar door/restaurant on the Frogmore Creek property and to begin planting a large olive grove and a specialist organic garden complex to feed into the restaurant and as a model tourist attraction.

“I want very much to be part of Tasmania’s clean and green future and to make great wine. Not simply any wine, but great wine,” he says.

And he got that ambition off to a flying start when his first vintage wine, the 2002 Frogmore Creek Reserve Pinot Noir, beat almost 400 others to take out the trophy for the best wine at 2004 Tasmanian Wine Show. ¶

PART I | PART II