wine words

2018 MARKS 20 years since South Africanborn John Geber laid eyes on Chateau Tanunda in the Barossa. Back then the building may have been grand in scale and sporting an imposing 18.5m tower, but with windows broken and its roof open to the skies, realising its potential wasn’t for the fainthearted. To Geber, a highly successful marketer (he created the “Tetley All-Rounder” tea bag) but with winemaking in his blood, its purchase was another step forward in his career in the wine game. Wine was an industry he had returned to in 1991, the year he founded the Australian Food & Beverage Group and became a negociant, selling outstanding value, quality Australian wines to supermarkets in Europe. Two decades on and the building, along with the Chateau Tanunda business, is in stellar shape and apparently improving with age.