Day 132

Day 132 Tanunda

Well we did not rush out of bed this morning but we were ready for our wine tour. I had booked the

Family Tomb note Palm Trees

Old workers house

tour from Tour Barossa and we booked for a mini bus and it rolled up on time and John was our driver. Turns out no one else wanted to do it today, yesterday was full, today, just us. So mini bus all to ourselves. John was fantastic and was well known at all the stops we went to. What we wanted was a tour where we could see the town, get a bit of history and do a bit of tasting. He said no worries and delivered exactly what we wanted. The town was originally settled by Silesian Lutherans way back in the 1840’s, they were

Original homestead

SStartinng our tasting

apart of Germany, well Prussia to be exact, it is now part of Poland, but back then it was strongly Lutheran and the king decided to do kingly things and meddle with the church service and some priests said no and he turned on them and persecuted them. A land developer over here by the name of Angus, who owned the 32,000 acres that he had paid 1 pound and acre, needed settlers who were upright citizens who were hard workers and who better than Lutherans who were already farmers.

They were approached and they said yes. Angus then sold them land at 20 pounds an acre and made a

Finishing tasting!

Tasting room

killing. One of the early groups came out on a ship and when they arrived, the captain, a guy named Hahn went ashore and organised the details for everyone and got land and ownership as well as transport and led the way inland. In response to this, the settlers named the town after him Hahndorf. The Seppelt’s came a little later and the family sold up its assets in Silesia and convinced 13 of his workers to bring their families with them to Australia. They came out and established a large land holding of over 200 acres

Old Spirit barrels

100 year old vines

and first tried growing tobacco as that was what they had grown back home, but it failed. They had brought some grapes with him as they all did and noticed that they were doing well, well at least some. He had brought a wide selection of grape types and most failed but some thrived and he was off. With his workers, he granted them all an acre each on which they could build homes and raise families and some of these workers houses are still there.

Old Seppelt Winery

Maureen shopping at Maggie Beer's

As the grew and prospered, the Seppelt wines and spirits became famous. They had a few issues on the way along such as the depression when no one was able to buy alcohol so to keep his workers, he decided to plant date palms and over those years he paid his workers half pay as well as food and lodging and they planted palms and built buildings, such as the family Mausoleum. I think he planned to corner the market with dates as he planted many thousands of palms, but he picked the wrong one for here as the dates fell of before they ripened! Took many years to work it out but he did keep his workers employed. Carlton United eventually bought the business in the 80’s and got the rights to all

Our lunch

Chateau Tanunda

the Seppelt brands such as Great Western and Chateau Tanunda and then stopped producing from here and let all these great buildings just rot. One of their managers saw an opportunity and bought Seppelt Fields and restored the buildings and started producing under the brand name Seppelt Fields. They cannot sell in the big markets, just local sales. The place is spectacular with thousands of palm trees lining miles of road and the buildings are a real window into the past.

We started her and we tasted at least 10 wines and ports and I tell you now, we barely made it out the

Tasting

Still tasting

door, it was just as well John was there to guide us out. So by 11 we had already had a glass and a half of spirits and we were feeling no pain. Back on the tour and we went to Maggie Beer’s shop. We were too early for lunch and too late for another winery. Maggies is a great place and although she was not there and our guide said she usually was, it was busy. We did some tasting here too and headed off to lunch at another winery (you’ve got to remember I am doing thish after a day of tasting, my recollection is a bit hazy) where we had a great tasting platter lunch. From there we went to Chateau Tanunda, another one bought back of Carlton United. I remember we used to call it Chateau To Chunder. We again lined up the glasses and had another half dozen wines and ports and then there was another winery

VIP Tasting room

Recognition at last

there showing off its bubbles so we had a few of them as well. We went into the VIP tasting room and it is an old wine storage room that is lined in wax like they used to do to seperate the cement from the wine. John poured us back into the bus and we headed back down from Angustown (named after the guy Angus) and in Tanunda and a winery called Dorrien’s, thank god Maureen is sitting with me to remember it. They do Ports and Mead and we tasted them all! Mead is made with honey and is just glorious. They

Dorriens winry

also do a white port, again lovely to taste. They also have an eclectic collections of memorabilia from around the town. Not wine stuff, home stuff. Old radios, rooms from the 60’s and all sorts of stuff. Back on the bus and home to the park.

John was great and made the ay perfect for us and took a heap of pictures of us. He had a good knowledge of the histories and knew which wineries to visit. He has 75 to pick from and he left us with some directions to some other local sites as well as some wineries to see if we wanted more. Cannot say more in support of the tour. We got back about 5 and felt happy with our day.