Magisterial tome on wine is authoritative and exhaustive

Telling the tales of Australian grapes, vineyards and wineries makes the perfect gift for any true wine aficionado.

Wine expert Andrew Caillard has written a three-volume history of the Australian wine industry, The Australian Ark. Picture: Nikki Short

If there are any literate oenophiles out there working on a comprehensive history of Australian wine, I have some heartbreaking news for you. Put the cap back on your pen and find a new hobby, for the release of Andrew Caillard’s magisterial work, The Australian Ark, floats above the flood of lesser wine tracts and means we won’t be needing another such publication for the next couple of decades.

For 18 years this project has been Master of Wine Caillard’s quiet obsession, alongside his busy career in the wine industry as auctioneer, judge, writer, documentary filmmaker and all-round expert. In the spirit of openness that good wine fosters, I should declare that I’ve known the author for many years, but not so well that I had any idea he was about to publish something of such significance after so long a labour.

“It was like doing an ultra-marathon,” says Caillard of the process, “without knowing the end point.”

The end point turns out to be a three-volume set tracing the history of Australian wine, each of its volumes addressing a different part of the story.

The first is a clear and compelling history of the wine industry – but more broadly, the nation – from European settlement to the end of the 19th century, divided into easily digested chapters.

The Australian Ark floats above the flood of lesser wine tracts and means we won’t be needing another such publication for the next couple of decades. Picture: Nikki Short

The second runs from Federation to the early 1980s, while the third brings everything up to date with an incisive analysis of the modern industry by a man who has played no little part in shaping it.

But here I have a rare confession to make: after 30-odd years of occasional book reviewing, this is the first time I haven’t read every word of the work in front of me. Not because it’s too big, though almost half a million words and 1700 pages are indeed daunting; but because this is a book to savour, to dip into and treasure slowly. Reading it in one session would be like pouring half a bottle of Grange into a schooner glass and tossing it back in one gulp.

I have, however, closely read a great many of its pages, and looked at every one; and wherever your entry point you land amid a lifetime of hard-won knowledge, delivered with charm and wit, and illustrated with more than 1200 paintings, drawings, maps and photographs.

Co-publisher Angus Hughson (himself an accomplished wine writer, who for a decade wrote a column for this newspaper’s Wish magazine) confesses the reproduction rights alone cost $30,000.

The adjective “lavish” is a publishing cliche, but here it feels inadequate. Authoritative critics such as our own James Halliday (with several scholarly wine histories to his name) have been effusive in their praise for The Australian Ark. “It is a triumph,” was Halliday’s verdict. “It is remarkable, and it is beautiful.” One of the nation’s finest winemakers over the past half-century, Brian Croser, founder of Tapanappa and Petaluma, declared it simply “a masterpiece”.

The book’s presentation is magnificent, elegantly designed with clear typography and thoughtful layouts.

Wine expert Andrew Caillard. Picture: Nikki Short

The heft and luxurious feel of each individual volume recalls the grand art-publishing houses of Europe, so it’s delightful to discover it has been produced with great care in Australia by Longueville Media and The Vintage Journal, the 5000 copies printed here by Ligare Book Printers and not rushed through a Chinese print shop, as so many volumes are these days.

It reflects the uncompromising, perfectionist ambition of Caillard and his co-publishers, David Longfield and Hughson, who says the outcome is “exactly what Andrew envisaged”.

Does anyone think this kind of perfectionism comes cheap? Obviously not, but at $199 for the basic edition (there are more luxurious versions, including one bound in leather that I have my eye on) it’s the equivalent of the half-dozen thrillers you’ll cast aside on your next beach holiday, or a few of those cocktails you regret the next morning.

Hughson lauds the generosity of the many supporters from within the wine world who helped support the book’s production “because of their belief in Andrew and his ability to create something that would have a real impact”. That allowed the publishers enormous freedom. “Because we had the funding,” Caillard says, “we were able to make exactly what I had romanticised about.”

It’s a great joy to add The Australian Ark to the hundred or so wine books I already own, even though it immediately makes at least half of my collection redundant. The authors of those books, I imagine, will be mightily relieved they got into print ahead of The Australian Ark.

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For more, visit australianark.com