Chateau Chunder revisited

"It used to be double tequilas that could prise off the pants of sheilas but now they won't give it away, no way!, for less than a large chardonnay."

In retrospect, the 2000s and early 2010s were a mini golden age for the documentary. I’m not talking about massive Ken Burns or flash Adam Curtis-type affairs. No, it’s the sort of understated things that used to appear on BBC 4 like Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies and the subject of today’s post, Chateau Chunder.

These kinds of unflashy, straight-to-the-point programmes don’t exist anymore. Documentaries now are full of presenters pretending to discover things, like the recent almost unwatchable BBC documentary on whisky cask fraud: a timely and potentially explosive story ruined by the conventions of the genre.

Which is why Chateau Chunder, which came out as recently as 2012, looks much older than it is. It’s very no-nonsense. Yes, there’s some Terry Gilliam-esque animation and some slightly unnecessary dramatised bits, but largely it sticks to the story. And what a good story it is: how the British threw off their uptight inhibitions and fell in love with Australian wine in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sir Les Patterson

It was written and directed by Stephen Oliver, an Australian filmmaker, and features a star-studded (for wine) cast such as Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Jilly Goolden and, never short of an opinion or two, Robert Joseph. Everyone looks that bit younger than they do now, especially a hirsute Richard Hemming.

There’s a good version on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s a brief précis. It begins with how Australia became a wine-drinking country, thanks in part to an influx of Greek, Italian and other Mediterranean immigrants after the Second World War. What isn’t explained is how Australia already had a sizeable wine industry at the time, even if most of the country preferred beer. One for another story.

Then, thanks to the efforts of, ironically, a few Poms: writer Len Evans, Hazel Murphy from the Australian Wine Bureau, and TV presenters Oz Clarke and Jilly Goolden, the British fell in love with Australian wine. Previously it had been something of a joke, with brands like Kanga Rouge (actually quite good, according to Oz) and Chateau Chunder from Monty Python: “A fine wine, which really opens up the sluices at both ends.” By the 1990s, Australia was outselling France thanks to sunny chardonnay and burly shiraz, which were easier to understand and pronounce than Pernand-Vergelesses or Grignan-Les-Adhémar.

The documentary credits the Australians with inventing varietal labelling, though that was really pioneered earlier in the US by Frank Schoonmaker. There are other holes in the story: no Steve Daniel from Oddbins, a chain which was so instrumental in bringing in Australian wines that it was known as Ozbins. No supermarket buyers at all. But one can pick holes all day. I often do.

What’s most important is that Oliver tells the story with wit and efficiency. Can you imagine how they would make Chateau Chunder nowadays? It would be celebrity-led, probably someone who knows nothing about wine or Australia going on a journey with lots of waffling about Bridget Jones. There would be Caitlin Moran and Jo Whiley chortling away. It would be awful.