WineLine – The Hamilton Story

A dramatized documentary film that highlights surprising human relationships and coincidences that underpinned the success of the family’s wine ventures – and the unheralded benefits they brought to the Australian wine industry.

Runtime : 50 mins
Released : 2013

WineLine Film Synopsis:
The film takes viewers on a creative journey through the history, life and times of early SA settlers – the Hamilton Family – one of whom arrived on the first ship to reach the new colony in 1836.  The family became founders of Hamilton’s Wines.

The documentary started as a corporate video production for Dr Richard Hamilton’s Leconfield Wines business – but as the family history was unearthed by a film-maker researcher, the project grew rapidly to a feature film reflecting six generations of a significant South Australia family. Dr Richard Hamilton is the great-great-grandson of the original founder Richard Hamilton.

Dr Hamilton said: “The film has merits, it has engagements and links to the history of the state. I think if people are interested in history and a good story then this is a genuine and a unique story of the Hamiltons and their troubles and difficulties and their technical achievements, like the refrigeration of wine fermentation that was actually the beginning of the table wine revolution in Australia.

” Leconfield Wines PTY LTD is a family wine business owned by Dr Richard Hamilton and his wife Jette. It encompasses two of SA’s leading wine labels, both attributable to descendants of the Hamilton family – Leconfield at Coonawarra and Richard Hamilton Wines at McLaren Vale.  With a strong wine industry heritage dating from 1837, the family developed a distinguished international reputation for elegant fine wines.

The film shows dramatically and with a sense of fun how the Hamilton family has grown with South Australia to being a leader in wine technology, particularly through the two brothers Sydney and Eric Hamilton – one the self taught wine technologist and hands-on winery builder – and the other a marketing guru who travelled the world selling the company’s products. It has beautiful old family movie footage and is cleverly entwined with the dramatic re-enactments at the old family home at Marion and various wineries around South Australia.

Watch the Film:

The Filmmaker: Rick Cavaggion
Writer: Martin Gordon
Presenter: Charles Mayer

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