Joseph Foureur was one of the pioneers of sparkling wine in Australia in the late nineteenth century, a period of intense experimentation in the production of sparkling wine and champagne. Born in 1842 in the heart of Champagne at Hautvilliers, north of Epernay, he became thoroughly familiar with champagne production in his ten years with Moet & Chandon. Moving to Paris, he worked for Gueret Frères, aerated water manufacturers and inventors and makers of syphons, who subsequently sent him to Bradford, England, to establish a new branch of the business. He later set up on his own account in Liverpool and in 1874 migrated to South Australia with his wife and their five children.
In Adelaide Foureur initially worked for Thomas Hardy at his Bankside vineyard but in January 1875 began an aerated water business ‘conducted upon a French principle’ in Glenelg, in partnership with Joseph Kritzner (SA Register, 30 January 1875, 7). He was declared insolvent in early 1876, Kritzner having left the business several months earlier, but he soon found employment with Adelaide cordial manufacturer A. M. Bickford, which employed Foureur to manage its new venture into aerated drinks; he occupied this position for 23 years.
The 1870s was a period of intense experimentation in sparkling wine in the Australian colonies, especially in Victoria where French vignerons Trouette and Blampied produced a sparkling wine in 1875 and Dr. L. L. Smith in 1879. Returning to the skills acquired at Moet & Chandon, Foureur dug a cellar 25 feet (7.6 metres) deep at his home in Brompton Park and began making champagne on a small scale. His experiment was crowned by an honourable mention at the Bordeaux Exhibition in 1882. He subsequently won a gold medal at the 1888 Melbourne Exhibition and a silver medal at the 1889 Paris Exhibition, ‘within a hair’s breadth’ of gold. According to the visiting English representative of Moet & Chandon, Foureur’s champagne was ‘by far the best sample of native sparkling wines he tasted in the colonies’, although he dismissed the idea of Australian sparkling wines ever rivalling champagne. In the ten years to 1891 Foureur made 150 dozen bottles of champagne—although he modestly called it vin mousseux, sparkling wine. In Adelaide it was available from Hardy’s wine bars, ‘five shillings per quart bottle’.
Despite the small scale of his enterprise, Foureur had high aims. He believed Australia had the grapes and the skills to produce ‘the best of champagne of an even quality’. Once the industry commenced, he argued, production would soon satisfy the demand of the Australian colonies and could eventually supply export markets, possibly replacing French champagne, the arrival of phylloxera in the Champagne region of France in the early 1880s having triggerd fears of decreased outut and increased prices. The only impediment, in his view, was lack of finance for such an enterprise. Despite his failure to interest investors in London, Foureur persisted and in 1891 requested the assistance of the South Australian Chamber of Manufactures in his search for ‘men of capital and enterprise to assist the manufacturer’. In 1892 he announced plans for the Foureur Australian Champagne Company of which he would be manager, with capital of £50,000 to be raised from the sale of ten-shilling shares. Although his initiative had the support of South Australian vignerons, with Thomas Hardy commending his ‘great pluck and enterprise’, the proposed company did not eventuate.
In the meantime, Foureur continued making sparkling wine (dry, medium and sweet varieties) at Brompton, his champagne beating Victorian entrants to win a gold medal at the 1891 Melbourne show. In 1893 he relocated to new premises in Upper Mitcham with not only much larger storage cellars (capacity 25,000 dozen bottles) but also a vineyard. This move predated Mazure’s launch of sparkling wine at Auldana. In addition to champagne, Foureur also began making olive oil and sparkling cider (calling it ‘champagne cider’ or ‘apple champagne’), which had a parallel success in wine competitions.
In the first decade on the new century Foureur’s champagne consistently took out awards at local and interstate wine shows but his attention increasingly turned to cider and champagne production ceased. By this time Mazure was also making sparkling cider, the two sharing honours in competitions. Foureur’s cider was described as ‘extraordinarily dry’ with ‘a full and delicious apple flavour’, in contrast to the ‘sweet and mawkish’ character of most bottled ciders. In 1912 he established the company J. H. Foureur with many of its shareholders being apple growers. Foureur’s skills must have been widely recognised since in 1914 he was engaged by the Tasmanian Cider Company to produce sparkling cider.
In 1916 Foureur came to the rescue of Adelaide orchardists, buying several hundred tons of second grade and windfall apples that would otherwise have been wasted and transforming them into cider and cider vinegar. By 1930 nearly 500 tons of surplus apples were being crushed. He was also making a non-alcoholic beer, Foureur’s XXX Lager.
Foureur, ‘a genial Frenchman’, died in 1935 in his 93rd year and the business passed to two of his sons who changed the company name to Foureur’s Co-operative Cider and Vinegar Ltd. The vinegar was produced until at least 1958 and the lager until 1940.
Image: photo of Joseph Foureur from the website http://www.beeradelaide.com/foureur.php, with permission.
Author: Barbara Santich, Professor Emerita, University of Adelaide, December 2024.
References
‘A New Industry’. SA Weekly Chronicler, 1885, 26 December, p. 14.
‘Death of Mr. J. H. Foureur’. Advertiser, 1935, 25 May, p. 25.
‘Mr. Foureur’s champagne cellars’. SA Register, 1899, 4 February, p. 4.
SA Register, 1875, 30 January, p. 7.
Keywords: Foureur; champagne; sparkling wine; cider; vinegar