Cyril Alfred Henschke
Cyril Alfred Henschke, born in 1924, was Paul Alfred's youngest son. One of 11 children, he was the only child driven to become a winemaker. On leaving Nuriootpa High School at 15 he went straight to work in the winery. During the Depression winemaking had taken a back seat to farming, but with Cyril's enthusiasm, it again resumed importance. In 1949 with the help of his brother Louis he added what is now the fermentation cellars, incorporating the old stable area into the winery. He was keen to meet the challenge of producing fine dry table wines and followed this leaning when he took charge of the winery, in about 1950. A year or two working at Hardy's at Siegersdorf helped cement his interest in this area, and helped consolidate the finer points of winemaking he had taught himself by trial and error. Although at home they drank unfortified wine, his father's market had been largely fortifieds, which Cyril didn't consider fully represented the quality to which the area could aspire.
At that time he had no concept of what the region could produce but he was always keen to experiment, to develop different markets. Indeed, he was responsible for pioneering varietal table wines. He was the first person to make a dry white frontignac, for example, and he made dry semillon and riesling as separate wines when 'varietals' didn't exist. He experimented with ugni blanc and sercial too. He began phasing out fortifieds in 1952, though initially he experienced some difficulty in finding a market. His 1956 production was well represented by table wines for the time, with the 30,000-gallon (135,000 litres) output comprised of two-thirds fortified and one-third dry red and dry white hock.
By the mid 1950s he was well acknowledged as one of the leading pioneers in the Australian table wine industry. He had recognised that the quality of Eden Valley fruit of certain varieties like riesling and shiraz was superior to that of the better known Barossa Valley, and he was one of the first to produce single vineyard wines, as with Hill of Grace and Mount Edelstone.
Cyril was the first Australian winemaker to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship and in 1970 undertook the study tour through many winemaking regions in Germany, California and South Africa. Another first was being one of the founding Barons of the Barossa, the wine fraternity that promotes the Barossa region.
He married Doris Elvira Klemm in 1947 and they had three children: Paul is the principal research microbiologist at The Australian Wine Research Institute, Stephen is the winemaker, and Christine is a lawyer.