Interview with Gordon Colquist [transcript] Interviewer: Rob Linn

Gordon Colquist was born at Greenock in 1922. His father was Swedish and his mother a Scot. His father did the boiler work for Seppelts and had a small vineyard on the Freeling Road. Gordon recalled the close knit Greenock community and the bartering which enabled families to live on the low wages. In 1928, Penfolds asked his father to take over the boilers at Magill and the family transferred to a cottage on the Penfold estate. Gordon remembers the underground champagne cellars, all dug out by hand with a horse and dray to take out the dirt. At harvest time, the growers lined up in their horse and drays to deliver the grapes. A characteristic of Penfold employees were the number of families with more than one member of the family working there, even though many were laid off at Christmas time, especially during the Great Depression. After attending Magill Primary School and Norwood Technical High School, Gordon started work at Penfolds in 1938. His general duties included walking Leslie Penfold Hyland's dogs as well as vineyard work. The grapes came from Modbury and the Riverland as well as Penfold Estate. Gordon Colquist enlisted in the air force in 1941 and saw service in Canada, England and Sierra Leone. He returned to Penfolds in 1946, to the bottling department and the cellars. This was when Penfolds was exporting wine to Canada and people like Gordon often worked from 'five in the morning until eleven o'clock at night.' Gordon was there when Max Schubert developed Grange and he gives a vivid personal account of the early vicissitudes with Grange. Like other interviewees, Gordon attributes much of the success of Grange to Ray Beckwith's work with yeasts. At this time, Gordon was in the laboratory learning to test red wines. Penfolds went for profitability, first with red and then white wines. Gordon appreciated working for a family firm and noticed the changes when it became a public company. He worked at Penfolds for fifty years. In conclusion, Gordon provided a thoughtful wide-ranging analysis of the changes he saw during his working life. These included changing from wood to stainless steel tanks, open to closed fermentation, emphasis on profit, higher education, extension of vineyards, specialist winemakers, using tankers to transport the wine

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