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
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| Family Tomb note Palm Trees |
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| 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
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| Original homestead |
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| 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
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| Finishing tasting! |
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| 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
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| Old Spirit barrels |
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| 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.
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| Old Seppelt Winery |
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| 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
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| Our lunch |
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| 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
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| Tasting |
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| 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
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| VIP Tasting room |
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| 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
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| 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.
