On a beautiful sunny autumn day we visited the
Barossa Valley, home to 13,256 hectares of vines,
mainly planted out to Shiraz but also to grenache,
cabinet sauvignon, mataro, merlot, riesling and semillon.
One of our favourite wines is Rockford's
Basket Press Shiraz, so Rockford's was definitely on the itinerary.
Owner and winemaker, Robert O'Callaghan, comes from a long
line of grape growers and winemakers and bought the Krondorf
stone settler's cottage and 5 acres of land in 1971.
Of the wines on offer we particularly liked the 2011 Local Growers
Semillon, the 2012 Rod and Spur (65% Shiraz and 35% Cabernet),
2011 Basket Press Shiraz and our favourite of the day,
2012 Rifle Range Cabernet Sauvignon. 2012 was a great year
in the Barossa.
We came away with a dozen of the Rifle Range and a bottle of
PS Marion Tawny Port - delicious.
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| The Bagshaw Crusher |
Robert believes in marrying traditional wine making techniques
and tools with the modern. He and his team still make a lot of
wine by hand using 19th century machinery.
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| The hand crush basket press |
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| Modern hydraulic basket press |
Jo Evans has worked at Rockford's for 30 years, managing
the vineyards, and was on hand to take us on a private tour.
He was a wealth of information and very generous with his time.
I'm going to do most of the posts on the Barossa this week,
there are so many stories to tell.
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