Robert oatley biography

Robert Oatley, whose Rosemount Estate winery helped lead an Australian wine boom in the United States in the 1990s, died in Sydney on Jan. 10 at age 87.

Born in a Sydney suburb in 1928, the fifth-generation Australian built a successful coffee import business before he bought land in Upper Hunter Valley and started Rosemount Estate in 1969.

By 2000, the distinctive diamond label on Rosemount's moderately priced Shiraz had found its way onto enough retail shelves across America to make Rosemount the second best–selling Australian brand in the U.S., according to Impact Databank.

Oatley built Rosemount into a wine juggernaut, successful with a range of wines at $7 to $15 and with his high-end single-vineyard Roxburgh Chardonnay and a McLaren Vale red called Balmoral, labeled Syrah instead of Shiraz to signal an aim for deftness over power.

These generous fruit flavors and supple textures ushered in a big wave of similarly fashioned wines that