A Wartime Wedding, A Ring Made From A Crashed Bomber And The Family Story Behind Marjorie Blanc De Blancs
Some wines come with tasting notes. But ‘Marjorie Blanc De Blancs’ comes with a love story, a wartime wedding and a ring made from a crashed bomber.
More than 80 years after Marjorie Alice Payze’s rather extraordinary wedding day, her story lives on through Marjorie Blanc de Blancs, the sparkling wine bearing her name.
Golding Wines has released its 2022 Marjorie Blanc de Blancs, the first new release from the Adelaide Hills winery since the Cudlee Creek bushfire tore through its Lobethal property in December 2019.
But to understand why Marjorie has a wine named after her in the first place, we need to go back to Alice Springs in 1943.
Long before her name appeared on a bottle of premium sparkling wine, Marjorie Alice Todd was a young army nurse who had travelled to central Australia during World War II.
Her fiancé, Sergeant Allen Payze, was also serving and sent word that he and his men would be passing through Alice Springs on their way to Melbourne.
The couple were already engaged and, with Allen passing through, decided there was no time like the present. Within 24 hours, they would be married.
A Wedding In 24 Hours
Permission had to be sought from Canberra because the South Australian couple were marrying interstate, and while that was being sorted, the people around Marjorie got busy.
Her patients made confetti. Friends and colleagues donated their precious Christmas cakes and sparkling wine rations.
As for the wedding ring, the workshop boys took care of that, machining one from the fuselage of a crashed Lockheed bomber.
The unusual ring stayed with Marjorie for years before the soft duralumin eventually broke. Lucy still has the crescent-shaped piece that remains, while Allen later replaced it with a white gold wedding band to match Marjorie’s engagement ring.
On January 14, 1943, Marjorie and Allen were married, far from home and their families, but surrounded by the people who had helped pull the whole thing together.
For one day, in the middle of a war, they had something wonderful to celebrate.
The Woman Behind Marjorie Blanc de Blancs
Decades later, granddaughter Lucy Golding and husband Darren named their Blanc de Blancs after Marjorie, with artist Owen Foley creating a “portrait of symbols” for the label to honour Marjorie and Allen’s wartime wedding.
But for Lucy, the woman behind the wine was simply her much-loved grandma.
“She was a lovely, kind woman. She was also very social and community minded,” Lucy said.
“I loved to help her cook and we would chat away in the kitchen for hours. She was always very interested in what all of her grandchildren were up to and, as I got older, she often offered me great advice.”
Marjorie was practical, but never lost the adventurous streak that had taken her to Alice Springs as a young army nurse. After Allen died, she travelled overseas with some of the nursing friends she had made during the war.
“She maintained her adventurous spirit right up until the end,” Lucy said.
Marjorie died just three months before Lucy met Darren, something Lucy still wishes had happened differently.
“I think they would have got along very well,” she said.
“I think she would be so happy, and maybe a little amused, that part of her life story became the story behind our premium sparkling. She was a very humble person.”
The first Marjorie Blanc de Blancs was released in 2009, with the 2016 vintage later winning Best Sparkling Wine in Show at the 2022 Royal Adelaide Wine Show, along with a silver and a bronze across Australian wine shows.
Rebuilding After The Cudlee Creek Fire
On December 20, 2019, the Cudlee Creek bushfire tore through Golding’s Lobethal property, destroying 95 per cent of its 26-hectare vineyard.
The family’s homes, cellar door and main buildings were actively protected and survived, but 30 years of work in the vineyard, along with machinery and farm infrastructure, was wiped out in a day.
What followed was years of replanting and waiting, with the final six hectares of replacement vines going into the ground in late 2023.
Six years after the fire, Golding Wines has released the 2022 Marjorie Blanc de Blancs.
“After years of patient work, she’s finally back,” Lucy wrote when introducing the new vintage.
She describes the wine as being made in Marjorie’s spirit of “celebration, spontaneity and making the most of every occasion.”
For Lucy, though, having Marjorie’s name back on a bottle means something a little more personal.
“I love the fact that her story is kept alive by this wine. It is very special to me.”
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