I having been writing about the various club trophies for some years now. I thought one such trophy would be easy, as it was called EMU. I assumed it would be about the works DB3S racers and simple to research. So, it was much to my surprise to find EMU to be an Antipodean tipple. No, not the bird, or Rod Hull…who famously had his arm up a puppet’s neck and had British talk show host Michael Parkinson on the floor grappling with it!
EMU was, in fact, one of the oldest Australian wine producers. It all began in 1862 when an emigre Scot, Patrick Auld, started to sell wines from his vineyard in Maghill just outside Adelaide, and so started The EMU Wine Company.
By the 1920s, EMU brands became dominant in the export market to the U.K. and Canada. They produced fortified wines, as did one of their famous competitors, ’Penfolds’. These days, Penfolds are better known for their Shiraz reds, than Port and Sherry
You will see from the advert (below) in the 1964 Summer Edition of AM, that EMU wines were clearly well respected as they had earned a Royal Warrant. So, if it’s good enough for the Queen then certainly as a member of the unwashed in Lancashire, it should be ok for me!
In 1976, EMU was bought out by Thomas Hardy, well known for its sherry and an established importer of Australian wines. Hardy’s rebranded EMU’s best-selling wine as EMU999. Presumably after drinking a bottle, you would need to ring the British emergency number of 999! I guess it was handy to have it on the label if, in a drunken stupor, one should forget the number to dial!
The EMU trophy was awarded to a scratch race winner in a 6-cylinder Aston Martin at The Oulton Park race meeting. Obviously, EMU appreciated that all the sherry and port drinkers are in the North… Oulton being the most Northerly English race circuit!.