Adelaide Hills abuzz with natural wine

The bearded hippies of the Adelaide Hills natural wine scene are hot right now.

Taras Ochota has a surprising picture on his smartphone. Ochota is an Adelaide Hills wine producer with his own, cultish label, Ochota Barrels. He is known as one of the leading lights of the Basket Range natural wine movement, a Hills sub-region with something special in the water.

Ochota flicks through the images on his phone by way of answering my question, which is about brand cut-through for a small, family-owned wine label in overseas markets such as Japan, from where the shaggy-haired Ochota has just returned. The picture in question is of the back of a Japanese guy’s head, into which someone has buzz-shaved the rather distinctive Ochota Barrels logo. It’s a pretty impressive bit of anti-marketing marketing.

The bearded hippies of the Basket Range natural wine scene are very hot right now around the world’s progressive wine markets. They’re exporting heaps; and they’re constantly receiving international visitors curious about the wines, where they come from, and the men and women who make them. It’s a little old Woodstock for wine in the hills around Norton Summit, Ashton, Uraidla, Summertown and Basket Range, a part of Australia that is a) very beautiful and b) ridiculously close to the city of Adelaide.

While none of these small-scale producers interested in minimal-intervention winemaking has anything as consumer-focused as a cellar door to worry about — few own vineyards; they either lease and manage plots, or buy fruit — a couple are getting involved with places to drink and eat that reflect the punk spirit of their winemaking ethos. Ochota himself, with his mate Charlie Lawrence, a graphic designer, has turned a beautiful little deconsecrated Anglican church in Uraidla into a slightly hedonistic temple of wine and excellent wood-oven pizza, Lost In a Forest. It’s far more than a place to meet, eat and drink; it’s a broad, inclusive church (excuse the pun) but focused very much on the things its owners love. I so wish we had a place like this where I live.

Then there’s the Summertown Aristologist, the name a respectful nod to Michael Symons’ Uraidla Aristologist, which operated in the 1980s. Summertown’s version is a collaboration between winemakers Anton van Klopper (Lucy Margaux) and Jasper Button (Commune of Buttons) with manager/barista/sommelier/sausage-maker Aaron Fenwick. It’s another slightly eccentric community meeting place with food and wine at its heart. They have a well-credentialled young chef, Tom Edwards; some gear for the geeks (a restored 1950s Berkel meat slicer, the 1961 Faema President espresso machine and an Austrian flour sifter for house-milled grains) and a local/DIY philosophy for just about everything edible and drinkable. I so wish we had a place like this where I live.

Let’s throw the quirky, just-reopened Uraidla Hotel into the mix; investment banker owner Ed Peter is on board with the spirit of vinous adventure and plans to convert Uraidla’s defunct squash courts into a wine shop specialising in the emerging producers of the area. For now, his whimsical reinvention of the pub has given the community another place to gather, eat and drink well without the input of big beverage companies and gambling.

We all need a place like this, wherever we live.