Interview with Digby Matheson [transcript] Interviewer: Rob Linn

Digby Matheson was born on 10 December 1929 in Pomona Queensland. He was educated at Pomona, the Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane and Queensland University. He became a jackaroo then manager of the Scottish Australia Company. He owned a supermarket in Cloncurry and sold wine there. He bought an opal mine and made a lot of money. He travelled the world and became a wine collector; made more money from a mining company and invested in a winery owned by Perc McGuigan- Wyndham Estate. Brian McGuigan was employed to run it and they bought wine from Penfolds and relabelled it under their brand. Brian was offered a percentage of the turnover to increase sales. They were the first winery to provide large amounts of food and 50 buses arrived on a Saturday and they'd cook 1500 steaks. They formed a management committee and built 8 wineries under contract, including Hunter Estate. They started to put on entertainment including a concert with Marcia Hines and traffic was backed up for 7 kms. They developed Traminer Riesling in 1972 and within 10 years had 70 competitors. They renamed it TR2 in 1982. They started to export wine in 1982. They bought Douglas Lamb in Sydney to get into distribution and had depots in every state. The managing director of sales was Joe Mellis. They were the first to start wine lists in restaurants. Introduction of technology was a big turning point. Other important changes were transport by tankers and vertigation. They also had a paddleboat on the lake. They were the first to use pressure sensitive labelling and won many labelling awards. Today too much wine is produced too quickly all with the aim of profit over quality. In his own winery he is only interested in quality. In 1984/5 named the world's best winery

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