“Our association with the liquor industry goes back to about 1937, and we’ve been in the liquor industry ever since,” Don Phillips says.
Phillip Cellars and Regional Wine Centre on Corio St, led today by Don’s son Paul Phillips, is built on a foundation of family history encompassing three generations.
The story begins with the late Tom Phillips, a World War I veteran of the 13th Light Horse Battalion, who arrived in Shepparton looking for a fresh start after surviving conflict in Egypt and France.
Don recalls Tom, his father, operated the billiard room on Shepparton's High St for a number of years, before purchasing the Pine Lodge Hotel in 1937 and later the Hotel Australia in 1944.
“We were there for 35 years,” Don says of the establishment known affectionately as The Aussie.
Don worked for Caltex Oil for a while after school, but soon found himself helping out at his father’s pub hotel.
He recalls the way World War II impacted liquor manufacturing and supply chains during the war and in the years that followed.
“For about 10 years after the war there was a big shortage - you just couldn’t get beer,” he says.
The Phillips family still owns a copy of a letter written to the government in the post-war era, asking for extra beer during the fruit season, when Shepparton’s population would almost double with the influx of fruit pickers from up north.
The Hotel Australia received beer in cement bags with straw wrapped around each bottle, and only the best customers could buy more than one 750ml bottle - the equivalent of two stubbies.
“We used to ration them to good customers, if they came in they might get two, and they would take them home and save them for Christmas,” Don says.
In 1977 the Phillips family bought Goulburn Valley Winery for $83,000 at auction, after it had sat dormant on Vaughan St for eight years.
The sale included machinery and barrels, and so it was that the Phillips family began producing wine, as well as operating a bottle shop at the same location.
Don says it’s a learning curve to appreciate wines, and his son Paul is blessed with a good palate.
Over time the business evolved, eventually ceasing wine production in 1990, to focus on its core passion of sourcing the best drops from wineries in the region.
Phillips Cellars relocated Corio St in 2012, taking a three-tonne jarrah wood wine barrel with it as a token of the past.
The liquor store still offers its own range of wine, ports, sherries and the like sold under the family label, with Paul at the helm.
Paul makes it his business to taste every wine in stock, fully immersed in the industry that has been second nature to him since he was a child and The Aussie was his playground.
“We have a strong customer base from Shepparton, which would be the majority, but we also have others from the district coming here because they know they can buy local wines from us,” he says.
“And they know they can get a good opinion about the wines from us because we know the wines - and that’s what they value.”
