Showcasing South Australia

Brett Grocke is a sixth generation Barossan whos forefathers started farming vineyards in the 1840's, and his family has continued to do so through every generation.

Brett says their wine style is firmly entrenched in the vineyard and is the basis of their motto 'wines built from the dirt up'. With many years of experience in vineyard management and consulting they have fine tuned our farming practices allowing them to produce fruit of the highest quality. They follow organic and regenerative principles to create healthy living soils that have a synergistic relationship with their grapevines allowing them to produce resilient flavoursome fruit. 

As Brett discusses winemaking, he speaks o  traditional methods where the team endeavour to capture the true characters of the vineyard. Their aim is to harvest fruit that is balanced, vibrant and flavour packed requiring little or no additions. The fruit is hand sorted into small open fermenters and the whole clusters gently foot stomped. The ferments are hand plunged and/or rack and returned daily and typically stay on skins for 18-24 days before they're basket pressed into a mix of new and seasoned French oak barrels of various sizes. The wines are aged for 8-20 months (depending on the cuvee) on lees where malolactic fermentation runs its natural course. The wines are carefully hand racked and are neither fined nor filtered. Finally minimal sulpher added at bottling.

Brett was named Winemake of the Year in the 2021 Halliday Wine Companion Awards which is a most distinguished prize. As well as observing a gentle and minimal intervention winemaking approach, Brett says the winery is eco-friendly. From harnessing the thermal properties of earth and concrete to powering the cellar and vineyard irrigation system with an off grid 30kW solar system including 3 tonnes of 2 Volt gel cell batteries. Awesome.