Our Winemaking
Château Tanunda crafts superb wines that are sourced from the finest quality Barossa fruit. We handcraft our wines by combining traditional methods and modern technology. Our limited release wines are hand-picked, destemmed but not crushed, basket pressed and are neither fined nor filtered. We believe in minimal intervention to allow the true character of the grapes to express themselves.
“Clean, pure, unpretentious and exquisitely made, these are must-buys for a true taste of the Barossa” The Wine Advocate
Each year vintage runs from February until April/May, with white varieties picked before reds, and typically the vineyards in the warmer Barossa Valley floor picked before the cooler Eden Valley. Each parcel brought into the winery is individually graded twice before blending.
The state of the art winery is powered by 218 solar and designed for hand-crafted winemaking with small open fermenters and basket presses a feature. Grapes for the award-winning wines come from over 350 acres of estate-owned vineyards as well as from 40 growers across the Barossa. The combination of traditional methods with the best technology creates a unique character in the wines. Barrel aging and master blending is our skill and art form.
"The vineyards are our soul; the basket press winery is our heart; the wines are our passion; everything is finely tuned to produce delicious, distinctive and elegant wines." John Geber
Senior Winemaker, Neville Rowe, showcases his decades of fine winemaking experience supported by a team of experienced international winemakers, driving a clear focus on only the finest craftsmanship in their winemaking. We employ minimal fruit handling techniques. The style of the wine is both elegant and expressive, without being over-extracted or aggressive. That is our commitment to our House Style – the “Châteauness”.
The specially imported winemaking equipment from France is considered the Rolls Royce of Winemaking. Delicate pressing occurs in cycles of up to 24-hours results in a clarity of style and fruit not achievable by any other modern press.
“An outstanding winery regularly producing wines of exemplary quality and typicity.” James Halliday
Barrel Maturation
From there the barrel selection for each wine is stringent and the selection depends on the vision for each individual parcel. This leads to the choice of American vs French oak, barrel size (Barrique 225L, Hogshead 300L, Puncheon 500L) and the age of those barrels, whether seasoned or new barrels and the duration of maturation in barrel. Château Tanunda winery and barrel storage have over 2000 barrels of maturing wine at any given time, all being monitored in their development and flavours with regular sampling and analysis.
After maturation is complete, the wines are blended and assembled in preparation for bottling. Many wines are held back for further bottle maturation of between 6 months and up to 24 months for the Everest wines before release.