I was not sure what to expect for this around-the-world birthday celebration, which was part PR for Wolf Blass Winery, and part lead-up to the launch of Blass’ new book. We tasted wine and ate appetizers for nearly an hour before he and his travelling partner George Samios, from Fosters Wine Estates, hit the stage. In a thick Aussie accent, George introduced him as “Wolfy,” and I quickly understood that this was a man who liked to have fun, make great wine, and knew how to sell it in every way.

Born and trained in winemaking and viticulture in what was then East Germany in 1934, Blass immigrated to Australia’s Barossa Valley in 1960 with only 100 pounds in his pocket. There, he worked as a sparkling wines manager for Kaiser Stuhl Co-operative. Initially, he had wanted to go to Venezuela because of what he referred to with a wink as more “Cha, cha, cha,” but there was a civil war on, so he shifted plans and wound up in Australia. I suspect that things may have been very different in the wine industry had Blass made it to his original destination. After 10 or so years as a technical advisor to many different wineries, he decided to make his own wine, and in 1973 created Wolf Blass Wines International. Wolf said the atmosphere for drinking and understanding wine in Australia was rather rudimentary-after all, this was beer country; thus, wine would have to be positioned and marketed very differently.

First, Blass identified a target group whom he could most easily persuade to drink wine. Wolf recognized that Australian women were typically not included in social drinking, and decided that “bubbly” would convince them otherwise. He then looked around at what was popular at the time, and as he put it, “Australians are mad gamblers and they love their racing and football.” He noticed these popular sports featured a bold colour aesthetic on jerseys worn by the athletes. One very popular football team had a bright yellow jersey he particularly favoured, and believed yellow was a colour that the target audience would relate to. So, his now world-famous first line of wines was named Yellow Label and as he stated, “It just took off, and from then on it was going to be colours and not varietals.” Inspired by Johnny Walker whiskey and its coloured label approach, Blass’ colour choice for the second label in his line was adapted to green for the product’s launch in Ireland. Blass’ colour-coded system was easy for people to remember, as they could ask for it by Yellow Label first, and varietal second. The system has been so successful, in fact, it is now being used by the French for Cognacs and Bordeaux wines. Hell, the Scottish are even using it for the selling of fine whiskey!

When Blass started, there was very little money for advertising and he needed to think about how to maximize his limited funds. Back then, the football fields were not ringed with end-to-end billboards as they are today. When football matches were being televised, there was only one camera filming the games. Wolf would hand-paint advertisements on bed sheets, and hang them over the fence at the far end of the field. He worked out a side deal with the camera man to exchange a bottle of wine for each frame-up on the branded sheet. Quite often as the action was happening at the other end of the field, the camera would be fixed on Blass’ banner, to the puzzlement of viewers. Those were the early days of guerilla marketing; Guy Kawasaki would be proud.

From clear and easy to remember packaging systems, to low-fi guerilla tactics involving homemade bed sheets and cases of wine for cameramen, Wolf Blass has made a huge impact on how the world thinks about wine. Not only did he become a master vintner, but unlike so many artists, he knew how to sell it to people that didn’t even know they wanted it.