Toasting success of unique vineyard

SYDNEY - At the tiny New South Wales settlement of Murrin Bridge, the only vineyard operated by an Aboriginal community is doing brisk business.

The 10ha enterprise began on the banks of the Lachlan River in 1999 but has only recently become commercially viable.

With a long hot summer predicted for Australia, this season's harvest is expected to be a bumper crop.

Around 60 tonnes will be picked by hand - enough for an estimated 4000 cases of wine.

The 150 Aborigines of Murrin Bridge ran a market garden for several years but it was a local horticulturist who suggested they try growing grapes.

"We thought he was joking to begin with," said Craig Cromelin, an Aboriginal former cotton picker who now manages the vineyard. "Growing veges was one thing, but going into wine was something completely new."

Aborigines have had an unhappy relationship with alcohol ever since rum was introduced by British soldiers and convicts when Sydney was founded as a penal settlement in 1788.

It has had a devastating effect on indigenous people, leading to domestic violence, ill health and crime.

But Cromelin resolved to make the venture a success after overhearing a conversation at a local rugby match.

"These blokes were talking about the vineyard and one of them said, 'It's not going to work. The Aborigines will drink all the wine themselves'. I said to my lot, 'Let's prove these people wrong'."

Only small batches were produced at first, but a deal with a local winery called Bidgeebong, in the town of Wagga Wagga, has given the scheme much-needed technical expertise and financial backing. Another 3ha of shiraz has just been planted.

The wine is sold for A$15 a bottle in Sydney and a few regional towns under the label Murrin Bridge, decorated with images of snakes, kangaroos and emus designed by a local Aboriginal artist. It is served in the NSW state Parliament.

The success of the winery has given a fillip to the people of Murrin Bridge, who are descended from the Nygampaa, Paakantiji and Wiradjuri tribes.

The community was established in 1947 as a dumping ground for Aborigines who had been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and resettled in ex-military barracks surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.

"It's made people around here proud to be Aboriginal again," Cromelin said. "We've also had a very good reaction from white Australians."

The chardonnay recently won a bronze medal at a regional wine festival. "I've tasted the chardonnay and it was very good," said Stuart McGrath-Kerr, executive officer of the NSW Wine Industry Association.

The next step is to start exporting the wine overseas, trading on its novelty value as coming from the only Aboriginal-run winery in the world.