Pastoral, Agricultural & Horticultural Society Medals

Lot 3463    Session 13 (2.30pm Thursday 24 November) Leslie J Carlisle C    Pastoral, Agricultural & Horticultural Society Medals

Estimate $300
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $350

ROYAL AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, undated (1918), in silver (69mm), by J.S.& A.B.Wyon, edge inscribed 'Awarded To E.Mazure for Red Wine of a Claret Type. 1918.' Minor edge nicks and some scuff marks on reverse, otherwise good very fine.

Leon Edmond Mazure, was born in October 1860 at Villeneuve, Coulommiers, Seine et Marne, France, son of Alphonse Mazure, and educated at the Christian Brothers' College, Nogent, Burgundy. He learnt winemaking from his father and uncle who were both vignerons and had experience in winemaking under other vignerons in Spain. While on a youthful adventure of exploration the boat he was on was shipwrecked on the coast of New Ireland. While he was waiting in Sydney for a vessel for his return trip to France, he learned of a job opportunity for a vigneron at Beaumont, South Australia, and secured the position, arriving about 1884. He stayed for eighteen months, then took charge of C.B.Young's Kanmantoo vineyard for a similar period and while there he was naturalized in 1885 and also married Philomine Henriette, sister of winemaker, Joseph Gelly.

At the Jubilee Exhibition in Adelaide in 1888, Mazure was in charge of the cellars and had to classify about 1,000 different kinds of Australian and European wines for the jury. He was later hired as manager of the Auldana vineyard and in 1899 he was taken into partnership until it was incorporated in 1903 with him as managing director. In May 1900 he was appointed honorary commissioner to enquire into the European wine industry, visiting Spain, Portugal and every wine district of France. Then in 1909 he returned to Europe for the Franco-British Exhibition in London.

Edmond Mazure was among the first vignerons in South Australia to make champagne on a large scale (in 1896), to preserve olives and to introduce levures into the making of wine. He also made the first sparkling shiraz that he christened 'Sparkling Burgundy' in March 1893.

From 1887-1912, while at Auldana, he was awarded a multitude of prizes. He was also a councillor of the South Australian Vignerons' Association, became a wine and pruning judge, initiated a pruning competition for boys under 18, and took out several patents for ideas including the Mazure corkscrew, a corking machine and a windmill bird scarer.

In 1909 Mazure bought part of Home Park, and called it La Perouse. Between 1914 and 1921 he won a further fifteen first prizes and ten seconds at the Adelaide wine shows, under his own or his wife's favoured name of Henriette. Mazure created the original St Henri claret, followed by the St George and the St Henri special. Edmond Mazure died on 29 April 1939 at Albert Park and was buried in the Cheltenham Cemetery, Adelaide. His full history by Merrily Hallsworth is available in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, (MUP), 2005

See also lots 3461, 3462 and 3464-3466 to Mazure family.