South Australia Archives - Young Gun of Wine

Tomich Wines Vineyard

The Tomich Family’s Woodside Vineyard’s story is one of remarkable resilience, innovation, and incremental improvement. Having lost around half of the vineyard in the 2019 Cudlee Creek bushfire, the Tomichs have since rebuilt – using the opportunity to update viticultural practices with the aim of growing ever-more precise expressions of the site’s unique micro-terroirs. The vineyard has also been the testing ground for the Tomichs’ own invention, the Vibrosoiler – a deep-ripping cultivator designed to minimise impact on established root systems. The sixty-four hectare vineyard grows pinot noir, pinot gris, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, grüner veltliner and gewürztraminer for the Tomichs’ own wine label, as well as Jack Tomich’s Cloudbreak label.

Two Hands – Holy Grail Vineyard

The name of this vineyard tells its story: Two Hands’ ambition is for their Holy Grail Vineyard, located on Seppeltsfield’s iconic ‘Avenue of Hopes and Dreams’, to become nothing less than one of the Barossa’s all-time greatest. Planted to a combination of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, grenache and mataro, with an impressive diversity of heirloom shiraz clones, this twenty-eight hectare vineyard is subdivided into twenty-two separate blocks – each with its own unique and considered combination of micro-climate, variety/clone, planting density, trellising system, and row orientation. Lead by viticulture manager Peter Raymond, the Two Hands team tends to Holy Grail with a combination of cutting-edge technology and meticulous planning in order to produce fruit for a diverse range of wine styles and price points – including one of the label’s crown jewels, the ‘Invenienda’ Shiraz Sur Échalas from Holy Grail’s Clos Block.

Hoffmann Family – Hundred of Belvedere Vineyard, Barossa Valley

The Hoffmann family are amongst the leading lights of Barossa winegrowing, with fruit from their vineyards going to a wide range of producers – from the cutting-edge ‘new wave’ (Sami-Odi, Agricola, Sigurd), to icons of the Parker Point era (Torbreck, Thorn-Clarke, Two Hands), through to the resolutely old-school (Rockford, Travis Earth). And while their vineyard holdings are scattered across twenty separate blocks in the northern reaches of the Barossa Valley, near Ebenezer, the spiritual core for the Hoffmanns is the seventy-two-hectare Hundred of Belvedere Vineyard – home not only to the ancient vines of the Dallwitz Block, but also the exciting young vines of the Mickan Block, as well as nine other parcels of vines. Each of these blocks is dialled in to produce fruit that suits the specific needs of the winemakers the Hoffmanns work with – an intricate dance between sites, grower, and makers.

Upper Tintara Vineyard, McLaren Vale

Few vineyards in Australia have the historical resonance of the Upper Tintara Vineyard. First planted in the 1860s by Australian winemaking pioneer A. C. Kelly, and acquired by the legendary Thomas Hardy in the 1870s, Tintara grew to become a household name in England in the late 1800s, expanding to encompass 283 hectares of vineyard land and housing a workforce of 360 people. While the trials and tribulations of history have contracted that original, ‘upper’ vineyard area – to distinguish it from the later-planted, lower half of the property – to 33 hectares of productive vines, the property has not left the Hardy family’s ownership. Current custodian Andrew Hardy, with the assistance of viticulturist Stuart Miller, now oversees the vineyard, which features shiraz vines planted in 1891, cinsault and cabernet sauvignon from 1947, and later plantings of cabernet franc, sauvignon blanc, shiraz, fiano, and grenache.

Treasury Wine Estates – Woodbury Vineyard, High Eden

First planted in 1969, the Woodbury Vineyard has been forward-thinking since its inception – at the time, it was Australia’s largest contoured vineyard, designed specifically to mitigate soil erosion and moisture loss. That forward-thinking impulse continues to this day, with Woodbury now home to trials for autonomous spraying units, innovative machine-harvesting applications, initiatives to restore connection to country amongst Peramangk people, and a vine retraining system seeking to undo the damage wrought by traditional trellising practices. This seventy-eight hectare vineyard, managed by Angus Davidson, is planted to shiraz, riesling, cabernet sauvignon and gewürztraminer, with fruit from the vineyard forming the basis of key Treasury wines including Penfolds’ ‘Bin 51’ Riesling, Leo Buring’s iconic ‘Leonay’ Riesling, and Pepperjack’s Sparkling Shiraz.

Sawyer Wines – Peacock Vineyard, Adelaide Hills

Peacock Vineyard is a 10-acre (approximately 4 hectare) property at Oakbank in the Adelaide Hills, growing chardonnay, pinot meunier, sauvignon blanc and nebbiolo on clay soils over rock. Managed by Michael Sawyer – a winemaker with more than 20 years of experience across the Rhône Valley, the Willamette Valley, McLaren Vale and the Riverland – and his partner Zoe, the vineyard has been progressively transitioned toward regenerative farming principles since the couple founded Sawyer Wine Co. in 2018. The fruit feeds their own small-batch label – Sawyer Chardonnay, Sawyer Pinot Meunier, Sawyer Rosé and Sawyer Fumé Blanc – as well as a growing number of respected local producers who seek it out for its quality and, particularly, for its pinot meunier: one of the few vineyards in Australia where approximately half the meunier crop is picked specifically to make a still red wine.

Rohrlach Vineyard, Barossa Valley

Since taking over the reins at his family’s vineyard in 2023, Paul Rohrlach has been on a voyage of discovery, continually seeking more environmentally friendly viticultural management methods, new varieties that might anticipate changes in consumer demand, and the best possible expression of the terroir of Barossa Valley’s Vine Vale subregion. Plantings across this thirty-two hectare block include the region’s stalwarts of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and grenache – but are filled out with an exciting roster of alternative varieties, including montepulciano, grenache blanc and gris, clairette, graciano, touriga nacional, malbec, aglianico, saperavi, counoise, cinsault, carignan, fiano, and antão vaz. Thanks to its forward-thinking approach to viticulture and variety, this vineyard’s fruit goes into wines from producers looking for alternative expressions of the Barossa, including Vanguardist, Yelland & Papps, Tim Smith Wines, and Gibson’s ‘Discovery Road’ range.

Henschke – Mount Edelstone Vineyard, Eden Valley

Planted in 1912 by Ronald Angas – a descendant of one of South Australia’s founding fathers – the Mount Edelstone Vineyard is home to 113-year-old centenarian shiraz vines that are, by any measure, among the most significant in the country. Situated in the southern Mount Lofty Ranges at 400 to 600 metres elevation, the 16.76-hectare Eden Valley site produces a single wine: Mount Edelstone Shiraz, one of the longest consecutively produced single-vineyard wines in Australia, with 2026 marking its 70th vintage. At its heart is a grape-growing philosophy built on organic and biodynamic principles, guided for the past four decades by viticulturist and botanist Prue Henschke. Working with deep, mineral-rich red clay soils and the site’s naturally high-vigour old vines, Henschke has steadily transformed the vineyard’s health and fruit quality through a layered program of regenerative farming, native biodiversity, and meticulous vine selection – all in service of a wine whose character is inseparable from the ground it grows in.

Tomich Wines Vineyard Randal Tomich, Jack Tomich, and Adrian Tennant