Under the radar winemaker: Dr Edge

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.’

After a 12-year tenure at Petaluma, he leapt to the cooler climes of Tasmania and joined Bay of Fires, staying there for the next five years. ‘We worked with 13 growers around Tasmania,’ he says. ‘I pitched the idea for a bit of sub-regional differentiation between the Bay of Fires Pinot and Rieslings, but that wasn’t the direction they wanted to take.’

Thankfully, they didn’t. ‘When I started Dr Edge, that’s where the north-, the east- and the south-style wines started to eventuate.’

Hitting the right notes

The common thread that runs through Dredge’s entire winemaking journey has been music. ‘To the chagrin of the corporate marketers, I said, “We don’t have stuck ferments if we have hip hop playing.” So I used to have concert speakers set up and would pump it through the winery.’

Dredge has been making wine under the Dr Edge name since 2015. His labels speak to the cultural zeitgeist and the deep connection between music and wine.

‘While playing those tunes in my early days, I thought if I ever started my own label, I’d try to get a similar picture [to those on the Headz album covers]. Lots of the contributing artists on the [Headz albums] were experimental [visual] artists, including Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja. I managed to acquire a couple of art pieces from Bristol 15 years ago, and since then we’ve had a very amiable exchange of wine sent to the recording studio in Bristol for artwork or rights to use all the artworks on the labels.’

Del Naja’s philanthropy and generosity inspired Dredge to set up his charity magnum programme, whereby the retail value of all Dr Edge magnums is donated to the Hobart City Mission.

Initially, the wines were made at Moorilla on Hobart’s Berriedale peninsula, so it’s fitting that this 10-year retrospective tasting of 48 Dr Edge wines took place at Mona, the Museum of Old and New Art, which forms part of Moorilla Estate.

Dredge also makes wine for many of the state’s smaller producers and was instrumental in opening a new custom crush facility in Cambridge, on the outskirts of Hobart. The facility is set to close in early 2026, and Dredge will be shifting his winemaking to a nearby winery in the interim.

‘I used to have music speakers set up and would pump hip hop through the winery.’

Peter Dredge

A sparkling future

Tracing the Dr Edge wines’ evolution, it becomes clear that regardless of vintage or site selection, there’s a clear stylistic through line. They all exhibit an expressiveness and innate delicacy, in part thanks to a measured, Old World approach to Riesling and a restrained relationship with oak, leaning towards amphora, tank, used oak barrel and foudre.

Recent vintages have shifted from single-site expressions to blends that capture a broader expression of Tasmania. And on my recent visit to the winery, the tunes set the pace for the disgorgement line.

‘It took me five years of Dr Edge before I could start investing in a sparkling wine program, and I’m continuing down that line,’ Dredge says. ‘With the Croser and Bollinger background [the Champagne house was a founding partner in Tapanappa, Croser’s new project after the sale of Petaluma] I grew up with in Adelaide Hills, then House of Arras here, it would be remiss of me not to make it. Probably 40% of our growth has been sparkling. I’ve always made it for my clients.’

If Dr Edge’s current sparkling releases are anything to go by, the pace is perfectly timed.

Music for the tastebuds: Wines from Dr Edge

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