BLOODLINES
On the 7th September 1940, during the Battle of Britain, Flight Lieutenant Richard ‘Dick’ Carew Reynell, a test pilot of the Hawker Hurricane and one of Winston Churchill’s ‘the few’, was killed in aerial combat above Blackheath near Greenwich. He fell to the ground on a beautiful spot looking out towards the bombed-out skyline of London. Like his father, Lt-Col Carew Reynell of the 9th Australian Light Horse Regiment, who perished at Gallipoli, his adventurous life, full of promise, came to an abrupt end. They were both under 30. At Reynella, near Adelaide, 10,000 miles away, the sap-rising vines energised by the sun’s warmth, were pregnant with budburst and the promise of new life. Yet the bloodlines of South Australia’s earliest winegrowing family were fading.
THE PRIVILEGE OF GROWING OLD BRINGS WISDOM AND PERSPECTIVE, YET WE NEVER TRULY KNOW WHAT IS AROUND THE CORNER.
At each turn of the card our hopes, aspirations and desires are altered by happenstance, appetite for risk, luck, and physical endurance. Courage in the face of adversity and weakness from lack of purpose can both end in disaster. Good leadership, in whatever form, is being able to navigate through prosperity and danger with a belief in a better future. Peter Lehmann, who died on the 28th June 2013, was a risk taker, a gambler and a wicked storyteller. He was also a fighter who believed in defending his corner and whoever was in it. Without his foresight and risk taking, admittedly sometimes at the expense of corporate owners, the Barossa would not have the reputation it has today. The exceptional generosity of spirit that pervades the community is partly inspired by Lehmann’s stubbornness to accept a fate designed by faceless and heartless bean counters. He famously established Masterson wines (named after fictional gambler Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls ) and began processing growers’ grapes for bulk wine, saving many family vineyards from bankruptcy. Yet, ultimately, Peter Lehmann lost control of his first-generation family wine business through corporate buccaneering and unlucky timing. His legacy as the quintessential Baron of the Barossa will endure for generations to come.
172 The Wine Journal – 2023
Powered by FlippingBook