David Obst

David Obst was born in 1938 at Eudunda and lived in Bower and Greenock. He went to school at Greenock and Nuriootpa High. His father was Ed Obst who worked at Seppeltsfield and had a small family vineyard which he worked by hand. The children drank wine at home. David studied accountancy at the School of Mines, then later management accountancy and became a chartered accountant. He worked in the public service, four years in Education and four years in the Public Trusteee office. Then he went back to the Barossa to the South Australian Coop Winery as a cost accountant in 1964. He worked at Kaiser Stuhl; the winery was rebuilt from 1964 to the early 1970s; the coop had started in the 1930s; Harry Palmer was the export manager; the Loans and Producers Act enabled them to borrow for capital expenditure; Kaiser Stuhl was taken over by Penfolds Tooth; moved away from fortified wines to table wines which were called the Ribbon range; talks about Ossie Semmler, Peter Lehmann, Ray Beckwith; impact of the 1984 excise tax on fortified wine which was lifted in 1985. The industry has been able to grow because of investment from the public, and family companies being restructured into public companies; the management team at Kaiser Stuhl did not want to sell, the Board and shareholders decided to sell; after the sale David moved to Tarac in 1983 as the comapany secretary in charge of finance administration; Tarac started in 1929 as a service company to the wine industry; talks about its history; they started doing research work in 1996; biggest change has been the demise of the coops which have merged into companies; two or three companies own 90% of the industry; another big change is the success of exports and the improvement in technology; he retired in 2000 as CEO of Tarac Australia