HUNTER VALLEY winemaker, Neil McGuigan is having to come to grips with explaining to everyone from freight forwarders to government departments and even The Press, about problems he’s having with newly-won Dildo orders he’s got coming in from Newfoundland in Canada.
“Because they’re not dildo orders,” he tells us. “They’re Dildo orders. And I have to keep spelling this out to people when I tell them about my new export business.”
And he lays blame for his Dildo dilemma squarely at the feet of a bloke named David Lunn, McGuigan Wines’ Export Sales Manager for the USA and Canada, and active local distributor in Newfoundland, Patt Rouble. For amongst folk over there that David and Patt now have enthusiastically quaffing McGuigan wines, are those across the island of Newfoundland, including an idyllic little fishing village of just 1200 people with the somewhat odd name of Dildo.
How it scored the name no one seems to quite know – theories ranging from its possibility as an archaic word once applied to cylindrical glass objects, to Captain Cook bestowing it upon a newly-created settlement as a form of whimsy (and which he was known to do) while living and exploring in Newfoundland in the 1760s.
And don’t dare suggest to today’s locals that they change it, for the last bloke who tried that in 1990 found himself the brunt of wrathful Dildoians indignant at his slur against their cherished name.
Which brings us back to winemaker Neil, whose diversity of reds and whites now make up nearly ten per cent of all Aussie labels sold in Newfoundland, and interestingly Australian wines overall now the third largest in imports right across Canada after vinos from the United States and Italy.
David Ellis
HUNTER Valley winemaker Neil McGuigan with his highly successfully local distributor in Newfoundland, Patt Rouble who has helped put McGuigan wines amongst the fore in consumption of Aussie reds and whites in the Canadian Province.
Written by : David Ellis
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