SA wineries use family stories to sell top drops
Smaller SA wineries are using their family stories to market their labels on the world stage.
AN increasing number of independent wineries are focusing on their family stories as they target a market keen to learn more about the origins of premium drops.
This includes Jim Barry Wines, drawing on its generational links in naming a new Clare Valley wine, and Elderton Wines opening the family homestead as a cellar door in the Barossa Valley.
At Jim Barry, little Annabelle Lucy Rose Barry will have to wait 16 years to taste the wine her family is naming in her honour — but managing director Peter Barry believes it’s worth the wait.
“As a proud grandfather, it’s my honour to name the site (a new vineyard) and wine after my first grandchild, Annabelle,” he said.
“The wine celebrates the next generation of the family, the changing of the guards and the future of Jim Barry Wines.”
It’s another bold marketing move for family-owned Jim Barry Wines as it maintains its loyal customer base by highlighting its fourth-generation links with the Clare Valley rose.
Mr Barry believed the winery stayed competitive by telling its story during the past 40 years about being a smaller, high-quality, family-owned business in an increasingly corporate and global market.
“Competition is fierce; people have great choice but if you focus on quality it will keep working for us,” said Mr Barry, whose winery produces about a million bottles of wine a year.
Two-year-old Annabelle is Peter and Sue Barry’s first grandchild and the daughter of family winemaker, Tom.
Meanwhile, second-generation owners of Elderton Wines, brothers Cameron and Allister Ashmead, are opening the Barossa Valley family homestead as a new cellar door to showcase its heritage and history.
The cellar door would also give Elderton Wine Club members exclusive use of the private dining facilities, pool and tennis court.
Cameron and Allister grew up in the house with their parents, Elderton Wines founders Neil and Lorraine Ashmead, and Cameron describes it as “one of Australia’s grandest examples of Gentleman’s Bungalow architecture from the first world war period”.