When invited to a luncheon sponsored by a wine company, one might expect a predictable event – a variety of wine samples and an extended commercial for the company’s product.
Last week, a travel agent friend invited me to a 75th anniversary tribute to an Australian winemaker. The sample tasting was pretty straightforward. But when it came time for the guest of honour to be interviewed in front of the guests, a stout gentleman in a dazzling bow tie leapt onto the podium.
Simultaneously, someone at the back of the dining room cracked a joke about the man’s diminutive height. The vintner immediately stood on his chair and came back with a crack of his own.
“I used to be this tall,” he said, “but the wine industry cut me down to size.”
From his entrance, right down the very last mouthful of his wine samples over the meal, Australian winemaker Wolfgang Blass made it clear that this would be no ordinary luncheon. And he would leave no ordinary impression. I attended the Toronto stop of a cross-Canada promotional event – celebrating his 75th birthday and his nearly half-century as the namesake for Wolf Blass wines, formally established in 1966 at his vineyards in South Australia. The man, I learned, is a wine-industry icon.
In fact, when Wolf Blass finally sat down to be interviewed by Globe and Mail wine critic, Beppi Crosariol, it became clear just how much the man is responsible for putting Australian wines on the tables of the world – selling up to 65 million bottles of his “Bilyara,” or “Eaglehawk,” label produce annually. And he has been applauded constantly: the International Winemaker of the Year trophy (1992), the Maurice O’Shea Award (2000), three Jimmy Watson trophies, and the Order of Australia (2001), for service to the development of the Australian wine industry.
We learned during the podium conversation, however, that Blass began his career, selling product from the boot of his Volkswagen bug. At that time he was marketing a rather modest wine known as “Pineapple Pearl,” or as critic Crosariol was quick to point out, “the Australian equivalent of Baby Duck.”
Above and beyond his wine-making prowess, I thought, were some noteworthy observations from a seasoned entrepreneur. Among other things he has learned about his industry – and I didn’t know this – is that the table-wine business did not exist until he and others targeted women. When he chose the label colour yellow and focused on women as consumers, his cabernet sauvignons became nearly a staple with dinner.
In a biography of the celebrated man, Blass has also talked about the problems winemakers, and all modern businesses face, particularly in the marketing of product. He couldn’t understand why so many of the young marketers – even in his enterprize – are so adverse to getting out of the office to meet customers, clients and distributors.
“Even my young sales staff have their hands so attached to computers or their heads so buried in their cell phones, that they’ve failed to recognize the most basic form of selling – face-to-face,” he said.
He even cited a specific example of the need to reach out to his consumer. He recalled a time in the company’s past, when some suggested that his product had a short shelf life, in other words, that his wines didn’t maintain their quality if left unopened for a long time. Blass said the critics’ comment shook his company to its roots, until he personally invited a cross-section of the wine world’s most respected reviewers, consumers and even competitors to prove that the opposite was true.
“Face-to-face contact,” he repeated, “did the trick.”
As I said, the man and his life’s work are recognized around the world today – his wines have racked up over 3,000 international awards. But one of those at the luncheon asked which award meant the most to him. I was fascinated with his answer. Blass said his father’s generation was populated by academics, but during the Second World War in Germany there was no school; consequently, Blass never earned a degree.
“That’s why the Honorary Doctorate of Applied Science [from Charles Sturt University] was so important to me,’ he said. “My father would have been proud.”
Awards mean a great deal to anybody investing one’s life in the creation of something unique, sure. But I was most impressed by so much contemporary understanding coming from someone with such a long history in business. He’s proof that a master entrepreneur is one who knows his product, his buyer, his own sales force and how to deal with adversity.
Experience is his ultimate taste test.