Kellermeister is owned and operated by the Pearce family. While continuing to do small things well and have fun along the way, winemaker / owner Mark Pearce has firmly established considerable pedigree, particularly around the winery's Shiraz and Grenache based wines in recent years. Under Mark's leadership the winery achieved significant success on the world's biggest stage, the International Wine Challenge, in London in 2012 being awarded the World's Best Shiraz, Australia's Best Shiraz and the Barossa's Best Shiraz and then followed up in 2013 being awarded the Barossa's Best Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro. Today the winery is rated in the top 7% of Australian producers by Australia’s most authoritative and acclaimed wine critic, James Halliday. Kellermeister was originally founded by Ralph Jones in 1976 and named in honour of his German mother, who died when he was a young boy and whose maiden name he recalled as being 'Keller' before being anglicized. Ralph's ambition in establishing Kellermeister was to “play the Curtain Raiser” in the Barossa Valley, hand making, hand bottling and hand selling small batch wines of true character. With his beloved wife Val beside him he would purchase a century old Shiraz vineyard (known as Kellermeister's Black Sash vineyard today) on a hill near the sleepy southern Barossa town of Lyndoch, and later build the now famous yet still humble mud brick cellar from the scorched red earth of that unique and gloriously located site.