Max Schubert

"All winemakers should possess a good fertile imagination if they are to be successful in their craft." Max Schubert

Max Schubert was one of the wine industry's greatest innovators. He believed that wine is a living thing - that it develops and ages in the bottle, but that it also has a life cycle like any living creature.

He provides a glimpse into the reasons for his success with the following statement of his philosophy: "It's so essential that a winemaker give some of his personality to his wine. His personality is part and parcel of the wine itself. The greatest wines have implanted in them the ideas of the winemaker as to what they should be. His character is part of the wine".

Penfolds' Grange Hermitage was Max Schubert's everlasting contribution to the Australian wine industry. His experiments also resulted in most of the premium Penfolds red wines: Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz, Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz, Bin 389 Cabernet.

He joined Penfolds in the early 1930s as a messenger boy and his big break came with the opportunity to learn about wine chemistry. He was Penfolds chief winemaker from 1948 - 1975, then became a consultant to the company.

Leading Australian wine critic, Huon Hooke wrote: "Max was a sensitive and highly intelligent, but formally untrained man who learned by trial and error, by keen observation, by the seat of his pants. Hence he had his own explanations for some things and they may seem unorthodox."

While other less-known winemakers have made more technical contributions to wine, Max helped to put Australian wine firmly on the international map. He created a whole family of wines, headed by Grange, which has become a national symbol.

Max first crafted Grange when he returned from a trip to Bordeaux in 1950. He began using new, unseasoned small oak barrels to finish the fermentation and mature the red wine. People thought he was crazy. They considered the new wine undrinkable and his bosses at Penfolds disowned it and ordered production to stop.

It was fortunate that Max had enough confidence in Grange to persevere. Other Schubert innovations such as the use of plastics, refrigeration, pH control and cold stabilisation of white wines have also had effect on the wider winemaking community.

In his lifetime, Max received many awards, including Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and the inaugural Maurice O'Shea Award for his contribution to the Australian wine industry. He was also named 1988 Man of the Year by London's Decanter Magazine.

Wineries other than Penfolds have also been influenced by Max's skill as many winemakers who trained under his watchful eye now work for other companies.

Max Schubert was a rare person indeed. James Halliday, Australian wine writer noted of him: "He was no more perfect than any of us, but he went as close to creating perfection in wine as anyone is ever likely to do."

View biographies:: Max Schubert; Don Ditter; John Duval; Steve Lienert; Oliver Crawford; Peter Gago