WYNN, SAMUEL

WYNN, SAMUEL (1891–1982), Australian wine merchant and communal leader. Born Shlomo Weintraub near Lodz, Wynn was educated at a local yeshivah and joined the family wine-making business. He came to Melbourne, Australia, in 1913 to escape conscription into the czarist army and opened a vineyard near Stawell, Victoria. Wynn bought his first wine-retailing shop in Melbourne in 1918 and began bottling his own vermouths and wines in the mid-1920s. In 1927 he established Australian Wines Ltd., which, by the mid-1940s, were the largest winemakers and retailers in the country. In the post-war era Wynn Estates Pty. Ltd., as it was then known, became internationally known and probably Australia's most famous brand of wines. Wynn was also closely connected with Jewish causes, twice serving as president of the Zionist Federation of Australia. His wife IDA (née Siegler, c. 1896–1948), a Canadian, was a philosopher who was a friend of martin buber , as well as a leading Australian Zionist and president of Australian WIZO. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ADB, 12, 590–91; H.L. Rubinstein, Australia I, 193–94, 559–60; A. Wynn, The Fortunes of Samuel Wynn: Winemaker, Humanist, Zionist (1948). (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)