Includes index.
The Viticultural Society of Victoria is an institutaion that not many people know about, even in its home town of Melbourne. This is even though it is the oldest wine organisation of its type in Australia with a record of continuous meetings dating back more than 100 years to 1905. The word 'viticulture'derives from the latin word for vine and refers to the science, production and study of grape vines. Viticulturists are professionals whose work is bound up with the cultivation and study of vines. Some of the members of the Viticultural Society are viticulturist and many former members have been. Many, however, are not. But all are keen enthusiasts and knowledgable about the vines and the products of those vines: the great wines of the world. in the modern idiom, this book is a compelling page-turner. David Dunstan's immense knowledge is presented lucidly, the copius illustrations are brilliantly inserted into the text, and the design, print face and paper quality of the highest order. Anyone with a love of fine wine or our colonial history should have this book: if your love extends to both you must have it. - James Halliday The Author David Dunstan is a historian and researcher with a special interest in Australian wine and viticulture. His father, the prominent Australian journalist and author Keith Dunstan, brought him into contact with wine, wine merchants and winemakers from an early age. David has written about wine as a journalist and as a historian and researcher. He is the author of Better than Pommard! A History of Wine in Victoria (1994) and is a contibutor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He is a graduate of Monash, Melbourne and RMIT universities and is currently Senior Lecturer at Monash University in the school of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies.