Barossa History
The Barossa Valley is widely recognized as Australia’s premier wine region. The picturesque town of Tanunda, located 70 kilometres north of Adelaide is the recognized heart of the Barossa Valley and its principal tourism town. Château Tanunda is located some 500 metres from the main commercial street of Tanunda. The Château (as it is known by Barossans) is situated on the highest point of the valley floor and affords panoramic views of the Barossa Valley to the Barossa Ranges, providing an attractive, picturesque setting, definitive of the charming character and ambience of the Barossa.
Since the mid 1850’s the Barossa had been planting vines. However, viticulture was carried out on a small commercial scale on a subsistence basis. With the demands created by the impact of the phyloxera epidemic in Europe in the 1870’s, Australia was suddenly thrust into the world market with huge demand for wine at very good prices.
At this time a group of prominent Adelaide businessmen including GF Cleland, Johan Basedow, Sir Samuel Davenport and four other shareholders approached the farmers of the Barossa with a plan to capitalise on this opportunity.
They understood the Barossa had 560 very good growers of grapes with an undisputed wine culture. These businessmen built the biggest wine making building in the Southern Hemisphere to process the grapes of these 560 growers. They financed the venture, shipped the wine on their boats to England and France and maximised on the shortage in Europe. The farmers benefited from this arrangement year after year. The only proviso was that they contracted all their grapes to the Château for a minimum of 10 years.
A company was formed, called the Adelaide Wine Co. later to be called Château Tanunda Pty Ltd and the Château was built in 2 years 1888-1890.
The granite came from Bethany Quarry, where Bethany Wines are today and the bricks were hand made on site. It was at the time the largest building in South Australia larger even than Parliament and the largest winery in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Château was styled on the huge Bavarian households and grand buildings of Hamburg of the 1850’s to 1870’s, which in turn, had borrowed their architecture from France – forming a hybrid French Château inspiration.
The building is 86 metres long, 40 metres wide with a distinctive 21 metre tower. On the lower floor, the cellar is some 7 metres high. With walls 2-3 feet thick, the Château was cut 8 metres into the side of the hill so that the south facing cellars would be perfectly positioned for ideal temperature control. For its time, the building of the Château was a massive undertaking.
It has a storage capacity of 5 million litres – 7,000 barrels in the downstairs cellar, 3,000 upstairs and over 14,000 in the Bond Store. It was the largest winery in the Southern hemisphere and had the largest brandy storage under Bond.
The whole estate was driven by steam boiler until 1958 and the famous Château whistle was the call to start or stop work across the valley.
There are still some 300 growers in the valley. By far most of these are descendants of the original 560 growers who had a direct link with the Château.