Sunday August 9, 2009
Wolf among the vines
By CHIN MUI YOON
When he was five years old, he had to live on the streets of war-torn Germany, stealing food to survive. Now 75, the winemaker who revolutionised Australia’s winemaking industry reflects on a life well lived.
A SINGLE decision can sometimes set the course for the rest of your life. For Wolf Blass, it was a choice he made in 1961 to accept a job in Australia instead of Venezuela. For it was in Australia that Blass became a legendary winemaker whose name graces 65 million bottles of wines produced each year and sold in 70 countries.
“I suppose my luckiest moment was in migrating to Australia. From starting out on a salary like anyone else and finishing with 65 million bottles annually today … that’s an astronomical achievement to me. What’s happened to me is something that happens once in a million lives!” reflects Blass, during an exclusive interview on his recent visit to Kuala Lumpur.
Have trusty Volks, will travel: Wolf Blass travelled around Australia in the 1960s, building up his reputation as a wine consultant. – Photos from Wolf Blass International Features Blass has more reason to celebrate this year, as he turns 75 next month.
“The company thinks it’s a bloody big celebration; I’ve had 25 chocolate cakes already! But, well, I feel good and yet humble about it. I don’t make too much fuss. I can be speaking to our Prime Minister and the next minute I am having a drink with any man on the street.
“Money has never been a motivation or played a big role for me. I am a self made man. I do things the hard way and I never got anything for nothing.”
A self-made success
"If you work hard, are focused, and benchmark yourself in anything you do, you’ll be rewarded in life, emotionally or financially"- WOLF BLASS Blass’ journey to success was a long, difficult one requiring determination, confidence, and sheer hard work.
The eldest of three boys, Wolfgang Franz Otto Blass was born in 1934 into a wealthy family living in the village of Stadtilm in Germany. His father was a doctor in law and economics while his mother’s family owned the Otto Sahn bottling factory complex, named after his maternal grandfather.
Blass was only five when World War II’s European theatre hostilities began but, with the family broken up and scattered, he had to learn to live on the streets and steal food to survive.
“I never had a family life. As a kid in a war zone, you become a street fighter. The survival instinct is built into you,” Blass says, pausing in thoughtful silence as he remembered those difficult days.
When he was 16, Blass’ father got him his first job as an apprentice labourer on a farm – the toughest time of his life, he says. He worked 11-hour days even during the sweltering summer, weeding and spreading manure by hand in vineyards set on steep hillslopes.
After a year, Blass moved to one of Germany’s leading wine regions in the Rhineland-Palatinate area to work as an apprentice, thus planting the seed of his winemaking career.
In 1952, at 18, Blass received his all-important Certificate of Viticulture and joined Hans Schneider and Co in Frankfurt, Germany. It was here that Blass learned the blending skills that would eventually win him countless awards and change the style of Australian wine.
After obtaining his diploma at the Wurzburg Wine University in 1954, Blass was appointed kellermeister (cellar master) for the Karl Finkenauer wine company, the youngest in Germany at age 20.
The label has symbolic elements of the two countries that shaped Blass, Germany and Australia. “I finished my learning experience and had an offer to go to Venezuela or Australia. I was a bachelor so I was keen on Venezuela but then a revolution broke out there. So I headed for Australia.”
After a 36-hour flight, the 27-year-old Blass arrived in Adelaide in South Australia.
“I thought I had arrived in hell,” he recalls with a laugh. “It was hillbilly country. It was a man’s country then. It was a time when immigration started with people arriving from different parts of the world.
“Wine drinking was non-existent; Australia was then a beer-drinking nation. It was all a cultural shock to me after having worked in London and Frankfurt.”
Blass started as a sparkling wine manager at the Kaiser Stuhl Nuriootpa factory where he helped create the first of many innovative wines throughout his colourful career: the Pineapple Pearl in its pineapple-shaped bottle.
After his three-year contract ended, Blass travelled thousands of kilometers in his trusty little blue Volkswagen as a freelance technical wine consultant, earning A$2.50 an hour.
Blass’ legendary winemaking skills and promotional talents were evident even then. In his first year as a freelance winemaker for Normans, the company picked up the Best Red Wine awards for both the Claret and Burgundy at the Royal Adelaide Wine Show. It was the first of over 3,000 trophies and awards Blass would win.
In 1966, Blass launched his own label, Bilyara, which in Aboriginal language means “eaglehawk”. The eagle is featured in Germany’s national crest and was symbolic of Blass’ German and Australian connections. It was the perfect logo for his new brand of wines.
The sleek look of the Wolf Blass wines today. The Platinum Label wines have won several awards. Blass used Langhorne Creek grapes to create a softer style of wine to introduce Australian women to red wines, establishing his winning formula of 70% Cabernet-30% Shiraz with Langhorne Creek grapes.
The first wobbly steps
At that time, Blass bought grapes from various growers and used his clients’ processing equipment. It was only in 1973 that he bought a little over 1ha of land that had nothing on it but an old army tin shed; living in the shed, which became blazing hot in summer and freezing in winter, he and a friend, Bob Cundy, spent months digging out roads and preparing the land for the grapes they planned on growing on it.
With an A$2,000 overdraft, little Bilyara became Wolf Blass Wines International later that year.
By the mid-1970s, Blass was exporting his wines to Fiji, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore. Wolf Blass Wines grew in leaps and bounds to become a public listed company in 1984 with a market capitalisation of A$15mil.
In the first year of his operations, in 1974, Blass won the Australian wine industry’s most coveted honour, the Jimmy Watson Trophy that is awarded annually for the best year-old red wine. Blass won it three times in a row, a record that remains unprecedented.
In his acceptance speech for that first time, Blass uttered a line that brought him lots of free publicity: “My wines are sexy; they make weak men strong and strong women weak”.
Blass cleverly courted press publicity to compete against bigger and more established winemakers. In 1979, he organised Australia’s largest wine tasting, completely exposing himself to the mercy of wine writers and judges who could make or break his fledgling reputation. He was labelled “Australia’s cockiest winemaker” – and the legend was born.
Paying the piper
Success has its price, though. Blass has had two divorces and physically broke down from total exhaustion in 1973. It was not unusual for him to consume 12 cigars daily back then, and he had high blood pressure and dangerously high cholesterol levels.
“I was hospitalised for a week in September,” he recalls. “My doctor, who was a very smart Malaysian doctor, showed me a false x-ray and told me that my lungs were badly affected due to heavy smoking. I was terrified. I have not touched a cigarette since! And I’m 75 now and still going strong!”
Blass’ marriages to Raelene Kemp and Martine Barrie failed. In 1996 he married Shirley Nyberg and had three sons and four grandchildren with her. He has three daughters from his previous marriages.
Says Nyberg about her husband: “Wolf really has to get sick to relax!”
In 1996, Aussie beer giant, Foster’s, acquired Blass’ company for A$560mil. This freed him to do more as the brand’s ambassador, and he still travels around the world today touting Wolf Blass Wines’ wonders to a receptive market.
Blass was a natural in creating and managing his own publicity. One of his successes was in adopting a bow tie, which became his signature. But it was purely for practical reasons, he explains with a laugh, because long ties were cumbersome when he was tasting wines from barrels.
In 1996, Blass was awarded an honourary doctorate in Applied Science by Charles Sturt University in Australia in recognition of his contribution to wine export development and his innovative skills that have revolutionised wine marketing and packaging.
“While my father was an academic, his three sons never went to university. When I received this honour, I looked up at the sky and thought, ‘Old man, I think you would be proud of one of your sons achieving what you wanted for us’,” reminisces Blass.
An even greater honour followed in 2001 when Blass was appointed the Order of Australia for “service to the development of the Australian wine industry”. In 2006, Germany also presented him with an award, the Cross of the Order of Merit, its highest civilian award.
Today, when Blass makes purchases at duty free shops where he has to present his passport, shop staff would often excitedly bring out Wolf Blass wine bottles for him to sign. And that happens in most airports of the world because his wines are everywhere today.
“I suppose if you work hard, are focused, and benchmark yourself in anything you do, you’ll be rewarded in life, emotionally or financially,” he says.
“I believe if you want to make a fast dollar, you are not going to be around long. If you are not hands-on working, you are going to fail. If you have people without integrity working for you, fire them. If there is one rotten apple in your tree, clear it out sooner than later.
“And if you want to borrow money make sure you can return it.
“Also, I’ve always believed that if you go into any partnership, make sure you have 51% control. I’ve trusted people, and it has sometimes set me back.”
If money was not a motivator, what has compelled Blass to keep pushing the envelope all these years?
“Success,” he replies. “I am a bad loser. I am very competitive. It has to do with my upbringing during the war years, not being with a family. I had to stand on my two feet from a very young age.
“I am probably a hard man as a family man. I have been an isolated character, looking at things differently. But, emotionally, I never reached a breaking point.”
But no more aiming for achievements for him, he says.
Nowadays, Blass spends a great deal of time enjoying travels to promote his wines in overseas markets. And he continues to indulge in his hobby of downhill skiing.
“I am a happy guy, I am celebrating all the time!” says Blass. “I am taking every opportunity to just enjoy life after so much labour.” And who would begrudge this grand old man that?
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