Robert Diletti has been part of Castle Rock Estate since its inception in 1981. He can still remember helping plant the first vines as a six year old in 1983. Since then many a school holiday and weekend has been spent helping his parents on the vineyard.

In 1995 he enrolled in the Charles Sturt University winemaking course, graduating in 1998. He spent two years full time on campus then studied externally for two years while working as a cellar hand. This was at Mount Adam winery in the Eden Valley, South Australia.

During his last year of study he won an award for most consistent taster in his Wine Evaluation class. The class was given a bracket of six wines and asked to score them out of 20. Later they were given the same wines but in a different order. Statistics proved that between the two brackets, Rob's scores were the most consistent. As a reward for this achievement he was invited to act as an associate judge at the National Wine Show in Canberra at the end of 1999. In 2007/08 Rob judged at the Perth Royal, Sydney Royal, the Canberra and Qantas WA wine shows.

After finishing his studies Rob worked at the Alkoomi winery as the Assistant Winemaker in 1999 and 2000. During this time he grasped a good understanding of how to handle the Castle Rock Estate fruit while it was being turned into wine at Alkoomi. His return to Castle Rock Estate coincided with the decision for the wine to be made on site, and he is now happily employed at "home".

Robert's philosophy of wine making is to be as unobtrusive as possible. "The wine quality is really determined in the vineyard", says Robert. "I just try to make the wine that portrays the fruit quality. There are several techniques which are important in doing this and you need to know and understand these techniques. But we're human, neither magicians nor "gods". A wine is made or not made, as the case may be, in the vineyard. That's the great thing about being part of a small family operation. I help in the vineyard with pruning etc. So I have a real sense of helping to produce the wines from 'go to whoa'".

In his "spare" (?!) time Rob likes to play social sports and go camping.