The Face of the Festival
Mr Wolf Blass AM
Background
The choice of Mr Wolf Blass will provide the festival with an entertaining history of a German immigrant generally regarded as “larger than life” who has spent most of his working life in front of the media.
Wolf Blass is considered to be one of the most influential figures of our modern wine industry. Wolf both tapped into and led public tastes across four decades, building an immensely successful brand.
Canberra and Mr Wolf Blass
Mr Wolf Blass has been a regular visitor, and had a very strong connection with the business and cultural community within the Canberra region since the early 1970’s, including:
- Functions – Hosted, promoted or sponsored many dinners and other speciality events throughout the Canberra region, thereby becoming friends with and supporting many local businesses
- National Press Club – Luncheon Addresses since 1992
- Canberra International Riesling Challenge - Joint founder and chairman of judges for the inaugural six years, introduced the Wolf Blass Award, became a major sponsor, member of the Committee and is now the International Ambassador for the Challenge
A Brief History – Mr Wolf Blass AM
Wolfgang Franz Otto Blass ... He was born into a wealthy German family in 1934, spent an adventurous, at times dangerous boyhood under the Third Reich in Stadtilm, Thuringia; and lived under American, British, French and Russian occupation after the war before settling and training as a winemaker in West Germany.
At age 22 he became cellarmaster for Karl Finkenauer at Bad Kreuznach; moved to England as wine chemist in 1957; and in 1961 emigrated to Australia to become sparkling wines manager at the Kaiser Stuhl Co-operative in the Barossa Valley.
He registered ‘Bilyara’ as a business name in 1966 and made small quantities of wine under this brand, while working full time at Tollana, the wine arm of United Distillers. In 1973 he started Wolf Blass Wines International in a Barossa Calley tin shed;floated the hugely successful business in 1984 and merged it with Mildara to form Mildara Blass in 1991.
Wolf Blass became Australia’s number one wine brand by value and volume in 2003. Today it one the jewels in the Treasury Estate (formerly Foster’s) portfolio with production in excess of 70 million bottles a year.
Fosters bought Mildara Blass in 1996 but retained Wolf as brand ambassador, a role he plays very actively today – travelling, promoting and educating all over the world. At 77 years Wolf Blass remains the man behind the brand.
Fosters wine division was floated into a new listed company in April 2011 – Treasury Wine Estates.
Biography – Mr Wolf Blass
In 2009 the release of Wolf Blass’ biography, Wolf Blass: Behind the Bow Tie, by Liz Johnston, provides an entertaining history of the German immigrant generally regarded as “larger than life”. The book also offers some very interesting insights into the Australian wine industry and Blass’ very important contribution to its development.
Some of the most interesting and confronting parts of his life cover his childhood in wartime Germany. Some of it’s boys-own adventures like pilfering food from German supply trains between runs by British Spitfire squadrons. But other memories continue to disturb Wolf today – for example, as a child he witnessed the beginning of the death marches from Buchenwald prison, located near his home.
The biography provides details of Wolf seeing prisoners shot and the corpses left on the roads – and being told that the victims were criminals and deserved their fate. It was years before Wolf realised what he’d witnessed as an eleven year old.
The toughness of the war years and the period of shortages that followed, though, helped shape a determined and resourceful Wolf Blass.
Recognitions
In 2001, Wolf was appointed as a Member in the Order of Australia for "service to the development of the Australian Wine Industry and to the promotion of excellence in winemaking, viticulture, marketing and research."
In 2006, Wolf was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit (Das Bundesverdienstkreuz) by the Federal Republic of Germany (one of the German government's most prestigious honours) for "nurturing positive relationships and partnerships between the German and Australian peoples, cultures and countries."
