On Pieter’s first day in the Scheyville Migrant Camp he took the train from Windsor to Tempe and found Penfold Wines. After a talk with the Managing Director and the wine chemist,Don Ditter Pieter was offered a job as Cellar Hand, hosing out casks in the table wine section.

   Dr. Rawson Penfold

After some 3 months Don Ditter asked Pieter to do one job in the laboratory, then two and three. Not long after that he put a white coat over Pieter’s shoulders and said “You better help me in the laboratory from now on.” A long side Don, Pieter was able to develop his palate, learn how to blend wines and learn the necessary laboratory work. I had knowledge of 6 languages, but nothing of chemistry.
 

Max Schubert sent Pieter to do a vintage at Dalwood (Hunter Valley) with Perc and Brian McGuigan and later to Nuriootpa (central laboratory) with Ray Beckwith.

Pieter helped prepare wines for the various National Shows and from 1961 to 1969 was to spend each year at the Royal Easter Show tasting wines with famous wine judges such as George Fairbrother, Bryce Rankin, Dr. Ray Healey and Len Evans.

In Pieter’s early years at Penfolds, Tempe, most of the bottling was fortified wines, brandy and later whiskey. The early skills with these products served Pieter well as later fortified wine would become his hall mark in Mudgee.

With the retirement of Ivan Combet in 1967, his son Todd became the Manager of Penfolds Minchinbury Cellars in Rooty Hill, NSW and Pieter was appointed Assistant Winemaker Manager. His first task was to build a small laboratory. Behind the cellar was a vineyard producing Traminer and Chasselar, so they made that into wine, but the main production was the making of champagne and sparkling burgundy. The wines for these would come from the Hunter Valley, Griffith and South Australia.

For two years, Pieter refined his knowledge of champagne and vermouth making. Late in 1969 he went back to Europe for a two month study tour of French and German winemaking practices. Pieter spent another year with Penfolds at Tempe and was then approached by the owners of Craigmoor, in Mudgee to become winemaker and manager of the oldest vineyard and winery in the area.