Peter Lehmann's heroic rescue of Barossa Valley vine growers in late 1970s leads to his successful wine label
Peter Lehmann with wife Margaret who supported his efforts to back Barossa Valley vine growers, leading to Peter Lehmann Wines being started.
Image courtesy good food
Peter Lehmann followed his heroic rescue of Barossa Valley vine growers in the late 1970s by starting his own wine brand that championed the South Australian region across Australia and internationally.
Born in Angaston in 1930, Lehmann’s father was Lutheran pastor Franz, who died when Peter was 14. Unsettled, Lehmann changed from Immanuel College to Nurioopta High School to Scotch College before joining Yalumba Winery in the Barossa Valley where he learned wine making from legendary Rudi Kronberger.
After 13 years, Lehmann left to become chief winemaker at smaller Saltram Winery. At Saltram’s cellar room, Lehmann met his second Margaret, from an Adelaide family of teachers, but with a love of wine and classical music, shared by Lehmann. They married in 1970. Lehmann had three children, Doug, Bruce and Libby, with first wife Annie, and David and Philip with Margaret.
The defining moment for Peter Lehmann came in the late 1970s when he defied Saltram winery's multinational owner Dalgety that insisted, with a red-grapes glut, that Lehmann reneg on buying grapes from the local growers he knew well. The Lehmanns raised money to buy the growers’ grapes with $180,000 from family and friends, including $100,000 from Margaret Lehmann’s sister in law. Saltram’s board let the grapes be processed at the winery and sold to other wineries, including Lineman’s, in bulk. The Masterson winery (named after Damon Runyon's gambler Sky Masterson, from the musical Guys and Dolls) was set up to handle this new business and run by Margaret Lehmann.
On a holiday in England, the Lehmann nearly succeeded, with little funds, in buying Saltram but returned to Australia to find Dalgety had sold it to giant drinks group Seagram. When the new owner wouldn't allow the Lehmanns to use the winery to process growers' fruit, they decided to set up their own winery to sell bulk wine.
The business investors came up with the idea of putting the Peter Lehmann name on bottles for the new business. The 1980s were difficult for the Barossa winemakers’ traditional reds but Lehmann, with winemaker Andrew Wigan, who’d been with him since Saltram days, won Australia's most prestigious red wine trophy, the Jimmy Watson, with 1989 Stonewell shiraz. This led to a demand surge for the winery's reds and Barossa shiraz and for the next two decades. Wigan also led the Peter Lehmann team to produce world-class whites.
The industry continued to struggle with having too much wine, with the federal government offering growers money to pull out their vines. None of the growers who sold only to Lehmann were forced to pull up vines. The legend grew of Peter Lehmann sitting up on his weighbridge, measuring grapes, sharing a glass of wine and good German sausage with the growers who came to sell their grapes. About 180 growers were part of the extended family.
Peter and Margaret Lehmann only owned 20% of the initial Peter Lehmann Wines. When an original partner sold out, its stake went to Adelaide company MS McLeod that ran into financial trouble. When McLeod wanted to sell its 92% stake to French-owned Orlando, the Lehmanns instead decided they could buy it. Banks investors and brokers turned them down before friend Joe Fassina offered to loan them $4 million.
Lehmann cashed in his super and the company was floated on the stock exchange in 1993 as a smashing success. The aim to raise $8 million was topped by enough requests to raise $13 million, and it took $9 million.
The Lehmanns also worked hard to ward off another takeover in 2003 from a multinational called Allied Domecq. In the end, the Lehmanns sold to a company compatible with their view of life: a fourth-generation family-owned Swiss group called Hess. The deal was sealed over that jarrah table in the Lehmanns' kitchen. Hess ended up with 86% of Lehmann, with the family retaining just more than 10%.