The Wine Maker

Peter Hill

Peter grew up in Adelaide, where he was surrounded by some of the country’s greatest wine regions. He first began making wine and ginger beer for his parents as a young teenager and remembers getting a home brew kit for his 14th birthday!

Peter’s parallel interest in food and nutrition led him to gain a Bachelor of Science Degree and a Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics Degree from Flinders University, South Australia. Peter pursued a career in nutrition and later whilst living in Bristol, England he decided to improve his understanding of international wine by studying the Higher Certificate in Wines and Spirits through the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, UK.

Through a fellow student an opportunity presented itself and following a job interview over a bottle of Rioja he became a winemaker’s assistant in Romania in 1994 making wine for the British market.

When the winemaker he was working with in Romania unexpectedly left early for a vintage in England, Peter found himself the sole winemaker in the middle of vintage. It was where he began to develop his skills at an instinctive level and call on his early experiments with wine and beer making as a teenager.

Engaged by this experience and starting to fall in love with the winemaking process, Peter then took on a role in the laboratory, cellar and bottling line in Leiwen, near the Mosel River in Germany, followed by another Romanian vintage making wine for the River Route label.

Peter was soon offered work as a flying winemaker in his own right consulting and making wine internationally and he went on to work in the in the foothills of the Andes in Cafayate, Argentina and later in Bordeaux, France.

Leaving his career as a flying winemaker on hold, Peter attained a post-graduate degree in winemaking from the Waite Campus of Adelaide University, whilst working at the Adelaide Hills winery, Hillstowe.

Peter has been making Adelaide Hills wines for the last 10 years and has developed an understanding of how best to express the unique characteristics of this cool climate region just outside of Charleston.