Old Vine Expressions
The Barossa is home to some of the oldest vines in the world. Our Old Vine Expressions wines are crafted from some of the rarest vines still grown on original roots that provide genuine varietal flavour and fruit in its most pure form. The yield from these ancient vines is extremely low and every drop of juice is precious.
Old vine wines are the Barossa, an authenticity that cannot be imitated. The true essence of the Barossa.
150 Year Old Vines
The biblical Arc of Australian viticulture. These vineyards date back older than 1867, back to pioneering beginnings of the Australian wine industry. They mark the very beginning of the Barossa valley when the first vines were being planted on the flats below Chateau Tanunda. Trial-and-error was used to find out which of the many varieties and cuttings brought from Europe would suit the new environment. There are less than 30 hectares of these Ancestor vines in the Barossa. The best vineyards from this time provided the genetic clones of varieties, which would go on to form the Australian vineyards of the future. The surviving vineyards from this time are peerless throughout the world, sites which have proven over time to be amongst the best in the world.
100 Year Old Vines
Dating back pre-1917, these vines were planted around the time of the establishment of Chateau Tanunda itself. They are from a time before the two world wars, before the Great Depression, and many planted as a response to worldwide demand after the Phylloxera outbreak in France. This was a pre-mechanized and pre-irrigation era where the site selection was everything. The vines are dry-grown as bush vines with only the best soils, vine material and sites surviving the first years, and only the absolute pinnacle surviving the 100 years thereafter. They are survivors that produce tiny yields of high-quality fruit, grown with minimal vineyard intervention and peerless in most of the wine world.
50 Year Old Vines
These vines reach back to planting pre-1970. It was a thrilling post-war era of great ingenuity in Australian winemaking with irrigation only just coming into use. Vineyards planted in this era were developed with wider rows for machine access, and some with trellising for more control in canopy management and vine training. The vineyards were planted on original roots with less variation in grape varieties and using clones which had already proven to suit the Australian environment and produce healthy fruit. With little irrigation, site selection played a large role in the health of the vines, with great care taken to plant sites with ideal water access and soil types and microclimates.
