Revolutionary Barossa winemaker named SA ‘Legend of the Vine’
One of South Australia’s most recognisable wine names has been awarded a top honour by the state’s industry leaders, though the future of his label remains uncertain.
South Australian winemaker Wolf Blass has been named the 2026 SA ‘Legend of the Vine’ – a top honour recognising an individual who has made an “outstanding” contribution to the industry.
Blass founded his eponymous wine label in 1966 in the Barossa Valley and he went on to revolutionise how Australians think about wine with his label best known for its fruit-driven red blends.
A colour-coded tiered labelling system made wine more accessible to drinkers. It made it easier for consumers to understand what quality of wine they were buying with red signalling an everyday drinking, entry-level wine and climbing to platinum as the highest-tier in the hierarchy featuring single-vineyard wines.
Blass was born in Germany, where he studied viticulture, winemaking and oenology – receiving his Master of Wine at the age of 20 – before moving to Australia in 1961 and settling in the Barossa to take a three-year contract with Kaiser Stuhl Wines, where he developed sparkling wines.
The Barossa is where he built a business that now has a global reputation and has won more than 10,000 awards.
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This includes an unprecedented three consecutive Jimmy Watson Trophies from 1974 to 1976, and again in 1999. No other producer has won the award – Australia’s most prestigious wine award – four times.
“There is one spot left on the walls of my gallery and museum, so I know exactly where this certificate is going,” Blass said at the Royal Adelaide Wine Awards on Friday when accepting his Legend of the Vine honour from Wine Communicators of Australia.
Blass has previously been recognised as a Baron of the Barossa, a prestigious invitation-only association of heavyweight Barossa wine personalities, as a Member of the Order of Australia, a Senior Australian of the Year finalist, and received the Australian Export Hero Award.
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He joins a star-studded list of recipients of the Legend of the Vine Award, including last year’s winner Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago.
Other recipients include Henschke custodian Prue Henshcke, wine writer Tony Love, the late d’Arenberg winemaker d’Arry Osborne and Croser founder Brian Croser.
For Blass, the honour comes as the current owner of Wolf Blass, Treasury Wine Estates, considers selling the label.
In June, Treasury Wine announced it would cut its wine brand offering to 30, down from 70, across multiple markets while emphasising its top 10 “power” brands.
The power segment, which includes Penfolds, California brand Daou and New Zealand heavyweight Matua, contributes 72 per cent of gross profit on 25 per cent of the listed company’s wine volume.
The other labels in the portfolio – including Wolf Blass – face an uncertain and unclear future, with TWE yet to make any decisions.
The announcement came ahead of TWE announcing it fell into the red in the 2025/26 financial year, with a huge bottom-line net loss of $1.1 billion. The year prior, it made a profit of $437 million.
In 2024, TWE attempted to sell Wolf Blass and other labels as part of a restructuring to focus on premium wines.
This sale was abandoned about six months later after the company determined that offers put forward for the portfolio of labels did “not represent compelling value”.
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