Growth occurs at the edge of one’s comfort zone, and it’s safe to say that Tasmanian winemaker Peter Dredge’s life has remained constantly on the precipice of comfort. While he hails from South Australia, he’s not from a wine family, and his winemaking journey hasn’t followed a conventional path. In fact, there’s nothing conventional about Dredge.
‘I was a bit of a jock. I wanted to play AFL [Australian rules football] and be a physio. Unfortunately, an errant discus got me in the head in my last year of high school,’ he says, while placing a record onto the decks at the tasting table. Rehabilitation followed, but while he (mostly) recovered his balance, the future of a sports career and the hearing in his left ear never returned.
Dredge’s setback cost him an extra year of school, following which (and a gap year) he landed a lab job at Petaluma with Brian Croser in 1997. ‘I fell in love with the wine industry,’ he says.
‘I was in a pretty low place and listening to very dark, evocative 1990s trip hop, mostly based around Massive Attack. I was making the cellar hands listen to this morose stuff. Ironically, it’s called the Headz series, and I’d just been clocked in the head.’
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Music for the tastebuds: Wines from Dr Edge
{}
{"wineId":"104837","displayCase":"standard","paywall":true}
{"wineId":"104838","displayCase":"standard","paywall":true}
{}
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