The Barossa is Australia's richest and best known viticultural and winemaking region. Comprising the historic Barossa Valley and Eden Valley it is located in the ranges north of the city of Adelaide (approx 1 hours drive) in the State of South Australia.

The Barossa's special appeal is that it is much more than Australia's best known wine region.

It is a richly textured, multi-layered cultural icon based on years of tradition, creative energy and community pride.

Ian and Suzanne Mader of VineCrest Fine Barossa Wine invite you to share in the abundant generosity of the region.

We hope that you will visit us soon and enjoy our award winning wines.

THE BEGINNINGS

HISTORY AND HERITAGE

The history of the Barossa reflects the philosophical dream of South Australia as a haven of 19th century free enterprise and religious and political freedom.

Unlike the eastern Australian convict colonies of New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria, South Australia was a planned free settlement, designed by London's philanthropists who saw an opportunity for honest, hard-working men and women of the English yeoman classes to establish a new life in the Antipodes.

Soon after the colony was proclaimed in 1836, George Fife Angas, the founder and chairman of the South Australian Company, instructed German mineralogist Johann Menge to survey the ranges north of the infant city of Adelaide. Menge's glowing report: "I am quite certain that we shall see ....... vineyards and orchards and immense fields of corn throughout all of the New Silesia, which is matchless in this colony" encouraged Angas to select land encompassing the valleys, hills and open rangeland.

The region was named by the colony's Surveyor-General Colonel William Light, Barrossa after the site of a victory by the English over the French in the Spanish Peninsular War. The word means mountain of roses but misspelling on later maps gave it the unique Australian name Barossa.

Even before Light had named the Barossa a dissenting Lutheran pastor from Prussia, August Kavel had met with Angas in London to find a place of refuge for his congregation. Kavel's "Old Lutherans" refused to acknowledge the revised Lutheran service ordered by King Frederick William III and rather than face arrest he arranged for them to migrate to Australia.

Arriving in 1838 the dissident Lutherans made the journey to the Barossa where they developed a typical agrarian Prussian village named Bethany in 1842. Subsequent waves of German speaking settlers started other villages such as Langmeil, Lyndoch and Light's Pass while English free settlers tended to settle in the town of Angaston (named after the region's founder) and the Barossa Ranges.

This combined influence - of hard-working German peasant farmers and artisans and the middle class English settlers who aspired to a "country gentleman's lifestyle" created an interwoven Barossa culture which remains unique amongst Australian settlements.

True to the South Australian dream the free Barossa community grew, establishing its own traditions. Self sufficiency was important and as a result the peasant experience of smoking meats, preserving fruits and making cheeses flourished. Fine music was an integral part of Lutheran worship and the English culture, so choirs and orchestras were established. Artistic pursuits were valued and encouraged. Above all wine became a basic staff of life for the Lutheran settlers and grapegrowing developed as a fundamental agricultural activity.

The wealth of the English gentry sponsored the development of a commercial wine industry in the 1850s and 1860s but the real growth took place from the 1880s onwards. Entrepreneurial English and Lutheran settlers built wineries and commenced selling their wine to the vast market place of wine consumers in London through their Imperial connections.

The Barossa wine industry developed along a different route from the traditional European practice of grower-winemakers. Although some growers did make wine for their own use, the majority sold grapes to the established wineries.

The Barossa's strength and success has come from this specialisation. Its pool of 2000 expert vignerons have blended their 150 year knowledge of the land and its climate with modern viticultural practice, creating a partnership with more than 50 large and small wineries whose specialist skills make the most of this superb fruit.

The Barossa is unlike any other wine region in Australia or the world.

With 150 years of tradition and culture, fuelled by centuries of European experience it is not a New World wine region in the mode of Chile or United States. Yet its Australian energy and innovation, untrammelled by Old World restrictions has enabled it to chart a unique identity.

The name is simply Barossa - a word which symbolises quality and cultural complexity and guarantees integrity.

Acknowledgments:
Reproduced with the kind permission of Barossa Valley Wine and Tourism Association Inc.