Robert Hill Smith takes Yalumba family wine firm onto world stage with education and environmental vision
Yalumba’s Robert Hill Smith (right) and his Maurice O’Shea trophy, with Jeff McWilliam of award sponsors McMillan Wine Group.
Images courtesy McMillan Wine Group
Robert Hill Smith of Yalumba, Australia’s most historic family-owned winery started in Angaston, South Australia, in 1849, was the 2019 winner of the Maurice O’Shea Award for significant contributions to Australian wine.
In the fifth generation of its founding family, Robert Hill Smith became Yalumba’s managing director in 1985, on the board in 1988 and chairman in 2015, steering global and Australian success.
He’s been acknowledged for his part in the world-renowned Working with Wine Fellowship; protecting and enhancing the natural environment; developing wine exports; regional and community development; and setting up the industry-leading Yalumba Nursery to help diversify vine clones and varieties.
Hill Smith has served on many industry bodies including the Winemakers Federation of Australia (now Australian Grape and Wine Incorporated) and as a foundation member of Australia’s First Families of Wine. He also won the Gourmet Traveller Wine Len Evans Award 2008 and the Rabobank Leadership Award 2019 for contributing to Australasia’s food, beverage and agribusiness industries. An international outlook has been Hill Smith’s hallmark.
From St Peter’s College, he missed out on studying oenology at Roseworthy College because of priority for agricultural science students but he did a vintage at Davis campus of California University. After a business management course at the University of South Australia, Hill Smith again missed out on doing Brian Croser’s wine science course at Wagga because of the need to learn Yalumba’s new IBM computer system.
His great wine learning chance came in 1978 when he travelled extensively with cousin Michael Hill Smith around Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Germany as well as getting a valuable insight to the UK wine trade and meeting key wine writers in London. It helped him understand Australia’s role in international wine. Hill Smith made Yalumba a deeper part of that roleby founding the Necogiants International export/import division and developing Nautilus Estate in New Zealand and Voss Vineyards in California’s Napa Valley. With Brian Walsh, Hill Smith also made a bold foray into La Porcii in the south of France – to bring Australian “discipline and creativity” – but pulled out because of French bureaucracy.
