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South Australia

Introduction

Choose Region:   Select Option Adelaide Hills Adelaide Plains Barossa Valley Clare Valley Coonawarra Currency Creek Eden Valley Kangaroo Island Langhorne Creek McLaren Vale Mount Benson Mount Gambier Other Wineries of SA Padthaway Riverland Southern Eyre Peninsula Warehouse (SA) Wrattonbully

Choose winery:   Select Option Fox Gordon Wines

Introduction

South Australia has been the centre of wine production in Australia for so long that it is difficult to comprehend that it was ever otherwise. It was not until this century that it achieved the dominance it now enjoys.

Victoria's early prosperity was paid for by gold, and in no small measure it was ended by the twin impact of phylloxera and federation. It is an interesting academic question to consider what would have eventuated if phylloxera had not intervened.

The answer is almost certainly that South Australia would still be the major producer, albeit with a distinctly smaller share. For its climate and soils are (and were) ideally suited to the production of the full-bodied table wine and, with increasing importance after 1900, of sherry and tawny port. Here the Riverland region of South Australia was the key in the heady years following the First World War, and has remained equally important in the subsequent shift of the production base from fortified to table wine.

But of course the engine-room of the ship is a lot less obvious, and less glamorous, than the bridge, and traditionally South Australian winemaking was equated with that of the Barossa Valley. Needless to say, not only is there the engine-room of the Riverland, but the State has substantially more premium areas than just the Barossa: as the wine regions chart on the facing page shows, Coonawarra and Padthaway, McLaren Vale, and the ClareValley all make major contributions. That of the Adelaide Hills is growing day by day.

In the fashion of New South Wales, the first vines were planted in what is now metropolitan Adelaide. John Reynell, Richard Hamilton, Walter Duffield and John White have all laid claim to making the first wine, Duffield receiving particular support from The South Australian Register of 25 June 1845. The newspaper reported that he had made six hogsheads of wine (210 dozen bottles) and congratulated him on being the first to produce wine on a commercial scale. Duffield capitalised (so he thought) on the publicity by sending Queen Victoria a case of 1844 white wine made from grapes grown in the Adelaide Hills, and was promptly prosecuted for making wine without the requisite licence.

The first vineyards were established in McLaren Vale by John Reynell and Dr A C Kelly between 1838 and 1840; the Clare Valley by John Horrocks in 1842; at Magill by Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold in 1844; at Langhorne Creek by Frank Potts in the early 1840s; at Pewsey Vale by Joseph Gilbert in 1847 and at Rowland Flat in the Barossa Valley by Johann Gramp in the same year; followed by Samuel Smith at Angaston in 1851, and J E Seppelt and William Jacob in 1854.

Until the 1890s the Barossa Valley provided most of South Australia's wine; the major expansion of the Clare Valley, McLaren Vale and the establishment of first Coonawarra and then the Riverland followed and ultimately resulted in the production mix as we know it today.

Indeed, the only new region of significance established between 1890 and 1980 was Padthaway (in the 1960s). The Adelaide Hills then started to come on-stream, providing another style and quality dimension to the State's wine production, but neither then nor in the future is likely to make much impact on production figures. (Protection of Adelaide's much-maligned water catchment resources, and the topography of the hills, militates against any large-scale development.) Indeed, lack of water in McLaren Vale and at Coonawarra/Padthaway made it difficult to see where any major expansion within the State would come from.

Now it is much easier to discern. First, the Langhorne Creek region (for over a century regarded as an obscure and rather quaint appendage of McLaren Vale) has literally exploded, and continues to grow at a remarkable rate as Orlando Wyndham continues to source most of its Jacobs Creek red wine from it.

Second, the Limestone Coast Zone has seen vineyard developments spread either side of Coonawarra and Padthaway to Bordertown northeast of Padthaway, to the Naracoorte Ranges, and to Mount Benson and Robe west of Coonawarra. Here water restrictions presently pose less of a problem, and significant future growth seems certain.