![Tizzana Winery on the Hawkesbury is a vintage restoration.](/content/dam/images/g/u/4/d/c/p/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gu3emx.png/1486626367913.jpg)
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Booze hacks and grape geeks like me can be so busy lauding the latest hot new winemakers we sometimes overlook the ones who have been around for ages.
This is a shame, I think, because Australia has a long and rich culture of winemaking and is home to some wonderful old cellars, dating back to the 19th century. I find it's a good idea to walk away from the cutting-edge every so often and immerse yourself in this past by visiting a heritage winery – because understanding what's gone before helps deepen your appreciation for what's happening now.
I've recharged on culture at most of Australia's old wineries over the years, from the grand scale and glamour of the Barossa Valley showpiece Seppeltsfield (established 1851) to the humble hospitality offered at the original stables and cellars of Best's Great Western (1866) in Victoria.
Last month I ticked another historic cellar off my must-visit wish list when I travelled to Tizzana Winery, established in 1887 on a bend in the Hawksbury River near Windsor, an hour or so north of Sydney.
![Vineyard workers at Tizzana 1895.](/content/dam/images/g/u/4/d/c/e/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1486023511907.jpg)
Tizzana was founded by Dr Thomas Fiaschi, a remarkable Italian polymath who arrived in the district in the 1870s. Fiaschi excelled at various exploits. He was an outstanding surgeon: the striking statue of a wild boar outside Sydney Hospital – a replica of the famous 17th-century bronze Il Porcellino in Florence – is a monument to him.
He was a war hero: he fought with the Italians in Abyssinia in the 1890s and was decorated for his bravery in the Boer War, ending his military career as an honorary brigadier-general. And he was a pioneering vigneron: he established vineyards in the Hawkesbury and Mudgee regions, was president of the Wine Producers' Association of New South Wales for many years, and imported Italian grape vines such as the muscat-like aleatico into Australia.
In its heyday, Tizzana was like a small village. The two-storey sandstone winery, built into the side of a rocky ridge among the gum trees and bellbirds and cicadas and overlooking extensive vineyards, was surrounded by living quarters, a dairy, a large fowl house and a garden where Fiaschi grew medicinal herbs. At vintage time the property was home to 100 people or more, employed to harvest grapes and as cellar hands.
Aboriginal workers
Photographs from the 1890s show a remarkably multicultural mix of vineyard workers at Tizzana. Newly arrived young Italian migrants regularly found their way to the estate, keen to work for their famous countryman alongside descendants of the Hawkesbury's first English settlers.
Fiaschi also employed people from the nearby Aboriginal mission station at Sackville Reach: his diaries record that the Aboriginal employees were more conscientious in their vineyard work than the Europeans.
The original Tizzana cellars were gutted by fire in the 1950s, leaving only the original sandstone shell of the building. This is how Peter and Carolyn Auld discovered it in the mid 1960s, when they picnicked among the ruins with friends. In 1969 the opportunity arose to buy the place, and the Aulds took it, spending the subsequent decades restoring it, rebuilding the winery and replanting some of the vineyards and olive groves.
Most recently the Aulds have opened a section of the building as a smart B&B.; This would make a good base for anyone interested in exploring this fascinating region; it's of special interest to wine history buffs, too, as the rooms are decorated with Fiaschi memorabilia, including a lovely little watercolour sketch of the bar he opened to sell Tizzana wines in Sydney's Little George Street, now long buried under skyscrapers and shopping centres.
When the Aulds replanted the vineyard they included some of the original varieties, including petit verdot, a thick-skinned red grape that Peter Auld blends with shiraz and tannat to produce an elegant, rustic, rather retro "claret" style red called Clarissa (after Thomas Fiaschi's first-born daughter). They also planted a few hundred vines of aleatico, now made into both a sweetish, very perfumed rose and – more successfully, I think – a barrel-matured fortified wine called, appropriately, St Thomas.
When you taste this aleatico – especially if you taste it in the cool sandstone cellars at Tizzana – you're transported back in time and reminded in a very visceral way of Australia's rich wine heritage.
What I'm drinking: a taste of Australian history
2016 Best's Riesling (Great Western, Victoria)
Best's celebrated its 150th birthday last year and the Thomson family, who've owned the place since 1920, celebrated by opening lots of old bottles, including stunning 30 and 40-year-old rieslings. This, the latest vintage, is utterly delectable now – vivid citrus cascades across the tongue – but should also age magnificently. $25
bestswines.com
2004 Tizzana St Thomas Aleatico (Hawkesbury, NSW)
Made in the "vin santo" style: ripe aromatic aleatico grapes are made into sweet fortified wine, matured in barrels for 10 years before bottling. The ageing process subdues the grape's boisterous perfume and results in complex golden nectar with echoes of aleatico's sweet musk and a savoury, nutty quality reminiscent of medium-dry sherry. $40 (375ml)
tizzana.com.au
Seppeltsfield Paramount Collection DP898 Aged Flor Apera (Barossa Valley, South Australia)
Yes, five hundred bucks is a lot to spend on a half-litre of booze. But this is an amazing, precious drink, drawn from a solera system of barrels that have been carefully maintained and refreshed for over half a century: incredibly tangy, impossibly complex, a cornucopia of dried orange, roasted hazelnuts, bergamot and fig. $499 (500ml)
seppeltsfield.com.au
AFR Contributor