Sorting out the Gelly family has proved a challenge. Because of the number of Gellys who were involved in winegrowing, they are probably the nearest the French have so far come to establishing a wine dynasty in Australia . But their reign was short-lived and, not surprisingly, the Gelly name is virtually forgotten today.

The most important of them, Charles Joseph Gelly, was born in Herault , France , in 1855 and studied at L'Ecole Nationale d'Agriculture in Montpellier . He arrived in Australia in 1882 and worked for a while at St Hubert 's, the showcase cellars of Hubert de Castella at Lilydale in Victoria , before moving to South Australia in 1884. Here he became winemaker at the Beaumont Cellars of Samuel Davenport, parliamentarian and promoter of South Australian industry. That year his mother, brother and four sisters all followed him to South Australia ; the father, Pierre Simon, had emigrated earlier. All of the family were vignerons except the mother, who was a cook. At the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, 10 Davenport wines were listed for sale, ranging in price from six shillings a dozen bottles of “Vin Ordinaire” to 125 shillings a dozen for 1883 Crème d'Alicante, a sweet red liqueur.

One of Gelly's wines exhibited under Davenport 's name in Adelaide 's wine show for 1887 was in the champagne class. The judges, although conceding that the wine was a considerable improvement on the champagne entries submitted in previous shows, could not award it a first prize. It was not champagne, they argued, but an aerated wine. Gelly believed the wine to be “of good quality”, even if it were “too strong in body and flavour”. Unusually, he made the wine from verdelho grapes, but foresaw that the “pineau” grape grown in a climate cooler than the Adelaide plains would make a much better sparkling wine.

Gelly's answers to a questionnaire sent to 28 South Australian winegrowers in1890 are revealing. Some of the questions sought opinions about the best vines for white and red wines, the most suitable vines for different soil types, and the best aspects for vines. Of white varieties he considered “pineau blanc” and “reisling” among the best for light character, and for full-bodied, “sauvignon blanc, verdeilho, [and] frontignac muscatel”. For “claret” his recommendations included “carbinet”, malbec, verdot, and “pineau noir”, and for port character, grenache, shiraz , [and] “black Portugal ”. By this time Gelly had been at Beaumont for six years, and possibly grew all these varieties and more.

Beaumont Cellars were owned by G. F. Cleland and Co, who also had winegrowing interests in the Barossa at what became Chateau Tanunda. Gelly moved to Chateau Tanunda as manager in 1892 - the building with its imposing tower had been completed in 1890. In a report published in The Australian Vigneron and Fruit-Growers' Journal in June 1893 on the 1893 vintage at Chateau Tanunda, Gelly noted that the wines promised to be “of exceptionally good quality”. A visitor from Bordeaux was “surprised at their superior quality”. When these wines were matured, he enthused, “they will be real vin d'elite, and will hold their own against any superior make of Bordeaux or Burgundy ”. Gelly had learned from experience: in an address in Adelaide in 1888 he had offered some firm opinions about what was wrong with winegrowing in the Barossa. Grapes were picked too ripe, he said, and colonial clarets were too alcoholic “‘because they are fermented with an excess of saccharine… the fermentation elements have not enough power to transform all the sugar into alcohol”.

Not exactly immodest, Gelly had a high opinion of his 1893 “chablis and reislings”, which were “already clear and brilliant, and promise to become better wines than ever produced in the district”. Much of this juice was distilled for brandy: “our three year old brandy is as good as any genuine cognac, the public… drink it in preference to the imported decoctions.”

Ten years later the journalist Ernest Whitington visited Chateau Tanunda. “Brandy has been a specialty… ever since Mr. Jelly [sic] made such a splendid article,” he wrote. “It is a lovely brandy even now, and it is maturing in French oak.” The fate of some of this brandy is especially interesting: “A quarter will represent full-bodied Burgundies for the export trade, and [a] quarter will be sweet wines for the interstate trade.” As he left, Whitington was given a glass of “the seductive 1893 brandy, which is a credit to the Company and to the State generally”. By then its maker, Charles Joseph Gelly, was dead.

Although Gelly shared some of his extensive knowledge and experience through newspaper and magazine articles, he was apparently less approachable in person. Edward Salter, a fellow Barossa vigneron, wrote that he was “not very communicative”, an unusual trait among winegrowers.

Gelly's last years are a bit of a mystery. We know he was a judge at the Adelaide Wine Show in October 1893. I have not been able to discover when he died but it was possibly late in 1896, when he was about 41; Claudine Gelly was described as his widow when she died in January 1897.

Gelly's brother, Jean Louis Florentin Gelly, became winemaker at Chateau Tanunda in 1894. His oldest sister, Marie Andrea, married a winemaker, Pierre Mari Joseph Mazouan, in France before they both came to Australia . Mazouan, later known as Peter Mazou, was the first manager from 1889 to 1901 of Chateau Mildura, which much later became Mildara Wines. Keeping it in the family, in 1901 he was succeeded by Florentine Louie Gelly, who may in fact be Jean Louis Florentin. Another sister, Philomene Henriette, married the influential winemaker Edmond Mazure (about whom we'll hear more) in 1885.