Old Vine Expressions
Barossa is home to some of the oldest vines in the world and Château Tanunda, established in 1890, is the site of some of the first vines planted in the Barossa in the 1840s. Old vine wines are the epitome of the Barossa, a concentrate of pure local flavour and authenticity that can’t be imitated. Old vines have survived world depressions, droughts, the vine pull schemes of the 1980s and their consistent outstanding fruit quality have meant they have been kept and maintained by the workers of their land. They produce wines of complexity with flavour length and unique texture, displaying the authentic character and true taste of the Barossa Valley. Our Old Vine Expressions range is an ode to the Barossa, it aims to capture the essence of the old vines in the finished wine and showcase the significant history, quality and character in the bottle.
150 Year Old Vines
The biblical Arc of Australian viticulture. These vineyards date back older than 1867, back to pioneering beginnings of the Australian wine industry. They mark the very beginning of the Barossa valley when the first vines were being planted on the flats below Chateau Tanunda. Trial-and-error was used to find out which of the many varieties and cuttings brought from Europe would suit the new environment. There are less than 30 hectares of these Ancestor vines in the Barossa. The best vineyards from this time provided the genetic clones of varieties, which would go on to form the Australian vineyards of the future. The surviving vineyards from this time are peerless throughout the world, sites which have proven over time to be amongst the best in the world.
100 Year Old Vines
Dating back pre-1917, these vines were planted around the time of the establishment of Chateau Tanunda itself. They are from a time before the two world wars, before the Great Depression, and many planted as a response to worldwide demand after the Phylloxera outbreak in France. This was a pre-mechanized and pre-irrigation era where the site selection was everything. The vines are dry-grown as bush vines with only the best soils, vine material and sites surviving the first years, and only the absolute pinnacle surviving the 100 years thereafter. They are survivors that produce tiny yields of high-quality fruit, grown with minimal vineyard intervention and peerless in most of the wine world.
50 Year Old Vines
These vines reach back to planting pre-1970. It was a thrilling post-war era of great ingenuity in Australian winemaking with irrigation only just coming into use. Vineyards planted in this era were developed with wider rows for machine access, and some with trellising for more control in canopy management and vine training. The vineyards were planted on original roots with less variation in grape varieties and using clones which had already proven to suit the Australian environment and produce healthy fruit. With little irrigation, site selection played a large role in the health of the vines, with great care taken to plant sites with ideal water access and soil types and microclimates.
