Historic Fairfield Estate at Rutherglen for sale

Home at one time to the largest winery in Australia, Fairfield’s guests in its heyday ranged from vice-regal visitors to future members of the Kelly Gang.

Heady history: Fairfield at Rutherglen was once described as Australia’s biggest vineyard and winery complex.

IF ONLY walls could talk, the grand Italianate mansion on Fairfield Estate, one of Rutherglen’s original vineyards, couldn’t possibly stay quiet about what they’d seen.

Home at one time to the largest winery in Australia — perhaps even the southern hemisphere — Fairfield’s guests in its heyday ranged from vice-regal visitors to future members of the Kelly Gang.

Located 11km from Rutherglen in Victoria’s Murray Valley, the property is being offered either as a whole or in five separate parcels (some non-contiguous), plus the high security water allocation.

Fairfield at Rutherglen.

RUTHERGLEN

FAIRFIELD ESTATE

PROPERTY: viticulture, mixed farming, tourism

SIZE: 851.5ha

SALE: expressions of interest closing November 7

PRICE: above $11,000 per hectare, plus water

CONJUNCTIONAL AGENTS: Landmark Harcourts and RT Edgar

CONTACT: Billy Jones, 0438 454 950, Brian Liston, 0428 931 894, or Phil Rourke, 0418

667 659 (Landmark Harcourts)/Warwick Anderson (RT Edgar), 0418 320 873

Fairfield Estate at Rutherglen for sale

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Those are Fairfield (397ha), McGarrigles (39ha), Mills (194ha), Popes (102ha) and Homeleigh (120ha).

Soil types range from rich floodplain grey/brown clay loams to soft free-draining red loams with water supplied by two bores reticulating to troughs, plus numerous dams.

There’s also a high-security water entitlement of 99Ml and Wild Duck Creek crosses part of the property, with a pump supplying water for domestic purposes.

Fairfield was settled in 1859 by English migrant George Francis Morris, flush with profit from the Beechworth goldfields.

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Fairfield at Rutherglen

Morris quickly put in some vines and, over the following decades, sent his full-bodied red wines to England by the shipload.

His vineyards and fortune flourished: by the 1890s, he was said to own the southern hemisphere’s largest winery.

The homestead was built in 1889 using cement-rendered bricks, reportedly made with clay from what is now a large dam behind the creeper-covered cellar.

By 1904, Fairfield was being described as the country’s largest vineyard and winery complex, with 700 acres (283ha) of vines, extensive cellars and infrastructure and a staff of more than 100.

Sherrill Parker, one of Fairfield’s three vendors, said the property had been owned since 1973 by her late mother, Melba Morris-Slamen, great-granddaughter of Morris.

“G.F. Morris died in 1910 and the property went out of the family the following year, but Mum bought it back,” Ms Parker said.

“George’s son, Charles, actually had Ned and Dan Kelly, plus Steve Hart, working for him during their younger days.

GF Morris (second from right) with workers.

“By the 1970s, the mansion was derelict — every window smashed, sheep camped in the downstairs rooms and vandals had caused damage — but by 1976 Mum had finished the restoration.

“The vines had all gone, but we planted more in multiple traditional varieties and were making award-winning wine again by the late eighties.”

The home’s grandeur was trumpeted with features such as its four double-potted chimneys, ornate lacework, 21 rooms and imposing ballroom (added around 1896), built over the courtyard when Victorian Governor Baron (later Earl) Brassey and Lady Brassey made a state visit to the area.

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There are extensive underground cellars on either side of the ballroom, but these were superseded by the cavernous brick structure behind the house which was once described as holding 750,000 gallons of wine with a capacity of a million gallons.

Original equipment includes the fermentation building and its fittings, a weighbridge, steam-powered crusher, two basket-crushers, the old still and bond store and stables for the draught horses which had red gum bricks to protect the horses’ hoofs.

There are no grapes grown these days at Fairfield — a share farmer grows crops of wheat and canola while another producer agists sheep.