EVERY wine bottle carries a fancy back label these days with extravagant descriptions of the contents running from the florid to the faintly obscene. Winemaking legend and Barossa Baron, Peter Lehmann, who died on Friday morning warrants a back label the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica flowing with poetry, sung to music. South Australia has lost a legend, the nation has lost a champion, grape growers and winemakers have lost a hero, his wife, Margaret, has lost a soul-mate and thousands of others who may have only known Peter through his label have lost a provider of great wines at reasonable prices. I have lost a great mate. Many, many readers of The Advertiser may recall The Adelaide Vines project our attempt in the late '80s to help homeowners usefully get rid of their surplus backyard grapes which would otherwise feed the birds or just rot and possibly spread vine diseases. The 'Tiser floated the idea and the response was overwhelming. Nobody had any idea how many grapes were grown in Adelaide but there were tonnes. Everyone wanted to donate theirs to the Vines and that's when I first met the Lehmanns. Someone would have to try and make wine from these mongrel varieties and we're talking about grapes that had never been seen in Australia before, bunches grown from cuttings smuggled in from someone's original homeland in granny's knickers. That someone was Peter, who put his hand up and took giant skips up to his Tanunda winery across his weighbridge and to the crushers watched by thousands of readers who had followed the caravan in their cars. Nearly a year later, the first vintage was released and sold. Ok, it wasn't knock-your-socks off, but it was quaffable and it raised more than $50,000 which was donated to charity. A charity that looked after people with drinking problems. The time, the effort, the skill, the hospitality that Peter and Margaret put in was typical and it was nothing to them. Peter had already made his name for the stand he took during the vintages of 1978 and 1979 when his employer, Saltram's (then controlled by the multinational Dalgetty's) told its long-term growers that it had enough grapes and would not take their fruit. The decision could have meant disaster for the dozens of families of small grape growers. With no money behind him, he offered to crush their fruit and pay them for the grapes from the proceeds of the sale of the young bulk wine. The name of the company he set up for this purpose was Masterson, named for the Damon Runyon character Sky Masterson, who wagered his soul in a craps game with the tambourine-shaking Salvation Army missionary Miss Sarah Brown. Mr Lehmann's labels have included the gamblers' card, the Queen of Clubs. Peter lost a kidney a year after our Adelaide Vines project and in recent years was undergoing twice-weekly dialysis. He knew he held life's bad cards in his hand but he played them to the end. An end that deserved to be perfumed with rich Barossa earth and a deep dark shiraz. Piers Akerman is a former editor of The Advertiser and a well-known columnist