Gone but not forgotten
This is article is reproduced with permission from Forty°South
The morning sun is casting long shadows across the greyish loam of Jinglers Creek Vineyard. It's the height of summer in northern Tasmania, and the deeply tanned figure of Irving Fong makes his way steadily uphill on an ageing Massey-Ferguson. Now and then, he turns to watch the spray mist drift lazily across his fruit-laden rows of pinot noir.
With a month or so remaining before the onset of another vintage in the North Esk Valley, today's work schedule started just a little after 7.00am. The plan is to apply the fungicide spray before the heat of the day becomes too oppressive - hardly conditions you'd expect in a small valley 41° south. Visitors to the Relbia property, located barely 10 minutes from Launceston's CBD, often remark on the sunlight's brilliance and sheer intensity here in January and February.
Such comments put a smile on the face of the region's latest addition to its small wine-growing fraternity. When summer comes, the beads of sweat on Irving's forehead are badges of honour. To this energetic 72-year old, honest sweat is proof that his two-hectare site on the edge of suburbia enjoys near-perfect conditions for producing premium-quality wine grapes.
Irving's had a happy connection to the sun all his life. Indeed, he was born Sun: Sun Mun Fong to be more precise. Bought up in a well-to-do Cantonese household, the much-loved son of wealthy physician, he acquired the name 'Irving' after he took his father's advice to leave China before Mao Zedong's new Communist regime took power. He arrived in Australia in 1949; just 15, he had made the long journey by sea entirely on his own.
His connections to Relbia stretch back almost as far. For decades it was home to the famous Chinese market garden of Chung Gon, established in 1871. Good fortune saw it provide Irving with his first steady Job in Tasmania. Later, it allowed him to buy out its original family owners.
With Irving steering the venture from retail premises in Brisbane Street, the property grew into a profitable fruit and vegetable business that now provided for himself, his wife Jennifer and four young children.
When it came time to hang up his greengrocer's apron and head for retirement after Jennifer's death in 1996, it wasn't long before he found the call of the land too strong to ignore.
'I was in business with Chung Gon for 30-odd years,' Irving explains. 'I didn't miss the business when I finally retired, but I really did miss the people and the conversation.'
He decided to increase his involvement with Launceston-based community clubs and service organisations. He maintained his position as a founding member of the Ben Lomond Ski Patrol, and punctuated periods of inactivity at home with regular jogging and other exercise. But it wasn't enough. Barely 18 months into retirement, he checked out of his lodgings at The Manor in Kings Meadows and went back to working the generous soils of the old market garden.
In 1998 he planted 4000 grapevines of pinot noir, pinot gris and chardonnay. With his move back to the land came enrolment in a year-long course in viticulture, conducted by TAFE lecturer and former Pipers Brook Vineyard manager Mark Brewer.
'At 64 years of age, I was one of Mark's oldest students,' Irving says, expressing satisfaction at his achievement. '... And I always asked a lot of questions'.
Well grounded in the principles of cool-climate viticulture, with a sharp mind and an eye for detail, he set up a small but highly professional vineyard operation, just a stone's throw from the giant 64-hectare Glenwood Vineyard owned by former beef baron, Josef Chromy.
Irving says he had no trouble finding a name for the property. The creek that feeds a small dam on his vineyard and provides occasional nourishment to his vines has been called Jinglers Creek since colonial times. It was coined after a rogue convict escaped from Port Author almost two centuries ago. For months he terrorised residents around Relbia, Breadalbane and Evandale. Among his wily traits was a highly developed ability to steal horses.
'In England, they called horse thieves "jinglers",' Irving explains, adding that the quirky colloquialism all but died out during the twentieth century.
Now seven years into his vineyard project, he knows it to be a far different business from the one built up over decades of back-breaking market garden cultivation.
'When you grow vegetables, for example, you can grow three, four or maybe five crops in a year,' he explains. 'And if a crop fails, well, you can just start all over again. But with grapes, you only get one chance of growing a crop each year, and that's it. Once your grapes are in the ground, it's more or less for good.'
The site's initial planting of 1.3 hectares was almost immediately successful. Irving's young vines produced their first vintage in 2000 while still in their second year of development. (Three years is more or less the accepted industry standard for grape production from a green field site.)
The wine was made by industry pioneer Graham Wiltshire, and marked the high point in a friendship stretching back to 1955. Irving still chuckles at the thought of their first contact half a century ago. It resulted in the despatch of a Wiltshire-composed letter to the Department of Immigration.
'As I was not naturalised at the time, Graham wrote to them on my behalf,' he explains. 'When I next went to see him to ask what I owed him for it, he said, "A pumpkin!" We've been firm friends ever since.'
Whatever the payment this time, the outcome was beneficial to each. Jinglers Creek was back on the map once again.
In addition to the rewards of four subsequent vintages, Irving these days has a soul mate with whom he shares his wine and work. It's his second wife, Kim. They first met while studying viticulture and now spend much of their time in the vineyard and in the newly developed olive grove. Between them, they have expanded the site to its current two hectares. That will about the full extent of the vineyard's plantings, apart from the fine-tuning of its mix of grape varieties.
'We only want to make small quantities of wine from the vineyard,' Irving explains. 'It's quality, not quantity, that's important to us. We only make what we think we can sell.'
And sell it does, thanks to a cellar door tasting room they have added to their home on the hill overlooking its neat-as-a-pin vineyard. It's an operation that reflects all the love and care lavished here in recent years.
Irving Fong beams with pride when he talks of such an unlikely project being tackled so late in life.
'I don't regard anything to do with the vineyard as work,' he says of the hours still spent among his carefully tended vines. 'I find growing grapes very relaxing. It's my daily exercise. I just make sure that I don't over-extend myself here. It seems more like a hobby, really.'
Writer and photographer: Mark Smith