Every culture has its heroes. Some are heroes of the moment; the reputation of others persists even beyond the grave. In Sydney a few weeks back, heads of the wine industry gathered, in memory of Maurice O’Shea (1897–1956), to pay tribute to the living hero, Max Schubert.
Schubert, of course, is the man who created Grange Hermitage, later deriving from it all those wonderful Penfolds private bin reds. Although Grange got off to a shaky start back in the 1950s, its reputation was solid by the mid sixties, entrenched in the sSeventies, and internationally acclaimed in the 1980s.
Hence, recognition of Schubert’s genius has come in his lifetime. But nothing seems to have moved 75-year-old Max Schubert more than his being awarded the inaugural Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Award.
On receiving the award, presented in Sydney on June 22 by Don McWilliam, chairman of Mount Pleasant Wines, an emotional Schubert paid homage to O’Shea: ‘Maurice O’Shea did so much to convince us who followed him, that it was possible to make an internationally competitive Australian table wine and a lasting one at that.
‘Although I was never given the opportunity of knowing or speaking to Maurice O’Shea in person, the wines he left behind have spoken to me on many occasions and made me feel humble in their presence, not only for their all-round excellence but for their amazing longevity’.
Indeed, three O’Shea wines spoke to us at the Award dinner. Mount Pleasant Bin 10 Claret 1953, Mount Pleasant Richard Hermitage 1954, and Mount Pleasant Sauternes 1946/1966, all legendary wines, and all amazingly drinkable, despite their venerable ages. The reds, and in particular the 1954 Richard Hermitage, were quite spectacularly good, and could only have been made by an exceptional winemaker.
Few red wines drink so well at 36 years of age. Grange Hermitages of the early and mid 1950s do, and I would not be surprised if David Wynn’s famous Coonawarra Michael Hermitage is still kicking on. But there would be precious little else made in Australia at that time still showing a pulse.
O’Shea made his great table wines when beer and cheap fortifieds were all the go in Australia. Still, he surrounded himself with a coterie of followers which grew with his reputation.
According to O’Shea’s friend, wine merchant Harry Brown, most of his early wines went straight from the Hunter Valley to Melbourne’s wealthy wool-broking and French communities, Sydneysiders not caring at all for good table wines.
O’Shea’s widowed French mother bought the Hunter Valley property in 1921. By then Maurice had completed his education in France at Montpelier University and National Gronomique Paris Grignon.
Presumably this formal education in wine backed up his more general exposure to it years earlier in his late father’s wine and spirit merchant business.
O’Shea named the property Mount Pleasant, and worked there from 1921 until his death in 1956. McWilliams bought a share in Mount Pleasant in 1932 and acquired full ownership in 1941, leaving O’Shea totally in control of winemaking.
The Mount Pleasant name will be a familiar one to many readers of The Canberra Times. For decades, the name has been appended to two of Australia’s biggest selling bottled wines: McWilliams Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Riesling [made from semillon] and McWilliams Mount Pleasant Philip Hermitage [a common Australian synonym for shiraz at the time].
O’Shea not only named the vineyard, he instigated the practice of naming wines after friends and royalty, flatly refusing to apply European names on his wines.
While it would be fair to say the quality of the Mount Pleasant wines declined in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s have seen a dramatic turnaround.
The return to quality coincided with a shift of fashion which saw chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon shoved into the limelight and the major varieties of Mount Pleasant, semillon and shiraz (Hermitage), becoming distinctly unfashionable. For followers of quality, that has been nothing but good news as it has kept prices depressed.
The 1981, 1982, and 1983 Mount Pleasant Elizabeth’s (made from semillon) are all multiple gold medal winners. Typically, these wines fare poorly at wine shows when young, then scoop the pool as age brings out the distinctive delicate, honied aromas and flavours that made Hunter semillon famous. The 1981 won six gold medals; the 1982 two trophies and eight golds; and the currently available 1983 has won two gold medals so far.
In their own way, the reds are as good as the whites, though are removed from the bright fruit and sweet oak flavours that currently seduce the palates of Australia’s wine judges.
Philip Hermitage is a far earthier beast, but with a lovely depth of fruit. The current release is the 1984 vintage. That alone gives it a huge advantage over its competitors, most of which are raw and immature young reds from the 1987 and 1988 vintages.
First published in The Canberra Times 8 July 1990
Copyright © Chris Shanahan 1990 and 2026