A MONUMENTAL ARC
Andrew Caillard, one of Australia’s most prolific Masters of Wine, recently released a wine book so colossal it had to be split into three.
Wine books tend to sit neatly into three straightforward categories: reviews, guides and stories. Reviews dominate the space and are an important wineby-wine, year-by-year yardstick that have a real impact on what wine aficionados seek out, collect and explore. Guides are next, are generally regional, and play an important role in helping wineloving travellers explore and understand the exciting diversity that our regions and winemakers offer.
Story-focused books tend to come around with less frequency, and are always an engaging “beyond the glass” focus of an individual, brand, family, or even region. More literary in tone, these are often projects of passion that afford us a micro insight into the moving parts of the wine industry.
A TRIPTYCH OF HISTORY
And then there’s The Australian Ark, which sits outside these neat silos and delivers us an epic, end-to-end timeline of the Australian wine industry, tracing its true arc in a way that goes beyond ephemera, illuminating the cultural, social and political landscape of this nation and its sprawling 236-year history through the lens of a wine bottle.
It’s a benchmark: a nigh 500,000 word, 1,700-plus page work communicating our wine history like never before, providing a unique perspective on the stories, players and inf luences that have shaped this country’s wine narrative from Botany Bay to the present day. If all that sounds impressive, it’s because it is.
Andrew Caillard MW, author, wine writer and former auctioneer (as co-founder of Langton’s and creator of Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine), has been a respected figure of the Australian and international wine world for over four decades. He’s also the author of several books, including Penfolds: The Rewards of Patience (six editions), Imagining Coonawarra, and The Essence of Dreams (a history of Mornington Peninsula’s wine ascendency), as well as co-author of educational books Australian Wine and A Taste Around the World of Wine and editor of The Wine Journal and The Vintage Journal.
In short, if anyone was qualified to tackle such a monumental undertaking, it would be Caillard.
INSPIRATION AND INITIATION
“The original idea was to do an homage to Max Lake’s Classic Wines of Australia which was published in 1966,” explains Caillard when asked of the genesis of the Ark.
“I started investigating what the great wines of Australia were and how they came about, but I was thinking as an auctioneer. I then started to think that we needed something a little more contemporary... to be honest, I sometimes get a little bored with straight wine stuff and like threading in other material.”
Indeed, the journey of the Ark is full of fascinating digressions that help paint a fuller picture of this country’s rich, contentious past, of which wine is but one facet.
“I have always loved history, and if you can bring in other elements it brings a much richer story... I’m actually more interested in the people and their ambitions, you know, rather than what a wine tastes like.”
CENTURIES IN THE MAKING
As a tome, the scope, depth and detail of the Ark is staggering, spanning centuries. It’s no surprise to learn it represents nearly two decades of work.
“I started 18 years ago,” says Caillard. “I was fiddling with it, adding bit by bit, but in terms of really getting it going it was six or seven years ago.”
It required voluminous research. “Some of the information in there is based on newspaper reports, and of course even journalists a hundred years ago were exaggerating the truth, so you have the problem of navigating what is the truth, versus what is the perceived truth,” he recalls. “This was a crucial part: the whole idea of the book was to give an idea of the spirit of the time.”
COLLABORATION AND FRUITION
To bring the Ark to life, Andrew partnered up with Angus Hughson, publisher, editor and founder of Wine Pilot with over 15 years’ experience as a wine writer, critic and marketer.
“I first met Andrew around 20 years ago when I returned from a stint in the UK,” recalls Angus. “The first time we met he told me to get a real job, and since that time he has always been a bit of a mentor and sounding board, generally without any filter.”
Hughson explains the challenges of bringing such a many-layered, multi-faceted work to reality. In addition to its word count, the publication is bursting at the seams with reproductions of historic documents, sketches, maps and portraits across Australian and European history: evidence of the global race between the great powers of the time to secure Terra Australis for themselves.
“I was literally gobsmacked when I read it for the first time, which took me a full week – it was a thoroughly refreshing take on wine literature that went far past the usual grape growing and production narrative. It is a social and political history of Australia seen through the prism of wine.”
It was immediately clear to Hughson that not only had he read a seminal piece of work that the Australian wine trade was in desperate need of, but also that it could be lost, or at the very least dumbed down if another publisher was to take it on. There was a real risk The Australian Ark could end up in a bottom drawer, never to see the light.
GETTING BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS
Caillard and Hughson forged an innovative, not-for-profit publishing model that brought together a group of patrons, industry crowd-sourcing and pre-print sales.
“This has never been done before that we know of, for a serious wine publication, so we were taking a significant risk,” explains Hughson. “We also had the support of our patrons, some of the biggest names in the Australian wine industry. They put their belief in us – it was not just our reputations that were on the line.”
UNDER THE SKIN OF HISTORY
Free from the typical commercial expectations that come with traditional publishing, Caillard and Hughson have seized the unique opportunity to publish an uncompromised account of Australian wine history without fear or favour.
The result? A landmark text in wine publishing: an intimate yet sprawling three-volume perspective of the people, events and powers that shaped the industry of today, and the wine that we drink.