Perfect 10: Barossa showcases best South Australian food and wine
South Australian food and wine is at its finest in the beautiful Barossa Valley.
South Australian food and wine is at its finest in the beautiful Barossa Valley.
1. VINTAGE CHARM: Seppeltsfield is a very special wine estate, a village of handsome 19th-century buildings housing an incomparable wine collection, a barrel of tawny (port) from every year since 1878, and it’s the only winery in the world to release a century-old, single vintage wine annually. The cellar door has been brilliantly revitalised under Warren Randall to include an elegant tasting room, while the old barrel hall is now home to Fino, one of Australia’s best regional restaurants. Co-owners, chef David Swain and ace sommelier Sharon Romeo, deliver a small menu of fantastic seasonal fare coupled with a brilliant wine list. Grab a table on the terrace; later book a tour in the Centennial Cellar and taste your birth year vintage straight from the barrel.
More: fino.net.au.
2. ITALIAN TOUCH: The Barossa is famous for its German-Silesian food traditions but on the main street of Angaston you’ll find a little outpost of Italy where Parma native Matteo Carboni and his Australian wife Fiona operate a cooking school and small enoteca and wine bar. Cooking classes take place every Saturday at Casa Carboni and include lunch with wine. Matteo spent five years teaching at the Academia Barilla in Parma; Fiona’s annual pilgrimage to Europe allows them to offer drops you won’t find anywhere else. Lunch Thursday-Sunday.
More: casacarboni.com.au.
3. PICK OF THE CROP: The Barossa Farmers Market is no hipster construct but the real deal where hands-in-the-dirt, fifth and sixth-generation farmers work alongside de rigueur foodies including Saskia Beer. Arrive early to nab a loaf of Eleni’s sourdough then join the queue in the shed for a bacon and egg roll. You never know who you might bump into, including chefs such as Tetsuya Wakuda or Barossa doyenne Maggie Beer singing with a choir. Bring a basket and pick up fruit and veg, preserves, olive oils, pastries, local milk, free-range duck eggs or Michael Wohlstadt’s milk-fed Berkshire pork (try the snags) and amazing farm butter. Open Saturdays 7.30am to 11.30am, Vintners Sheds.
More: barossafarmersmarket.com.au.
4. SOUND OF MUSIC: Wine and food may well be synonymous with the Barossa but 170 years ago the backbone of this tight-knit community was church and music. Today you’ll find a picturesque church in even the smallest town, and almost as many pipe organs. The grand-daddy of all is located in the Tanunda Soldiers Memorial Hall, an 1877 Hill & Son Grand Organ, painstakingly restored over 20 years by a dedicated Barossa team. This spectacular instrument stars in the new Barossa Baroque & Beyond “micro music” festival, brainchild of long-time valley music patron Margaret Lehmann and held every October long weekend. If you can’t make the festival, every Wednesday at 11.30am there’s a demonstration of the Hill & Son in the memorial hall.
More: barossabaroqueandbeyond.com.au.
5. CREATIVE JUICES: Flex your “tasting” knowhow at Penfolds HQ in Nuriootpa by signing up for the Make Your Own Blend tour (twice daily; $65). It’s on with the white coat and out with the glass beakers in the Winemaker’s Lab to blend your own version of a Bin 138. Classes can prove surprisingly competitive but are always great fun and you get to take your blend home. Bookings essential.
More: penfolds.com.
6. TAKE YOUR TIME: The long lunch has never gone out of style in the Barossa; just ask any winemaker. For a slow immersion in a new take on valley food, book a table at Hentley Farm, set in a beautifully restored stone stable overlooking Greenock Creek. The kitchen’s team executes elegant degustation meals under the direction of talented Barossa-raised Lachlan Colwill. Expect best local produce and plenty of theatre: herb-infused fogs, ice cream popsicles sprouting from logs and, served with coffee, teeny-weeny, cream-filled Kitchener buns.
More: hentleyfarm.com.au.
7. ROLL OUT THE BARREL: Yalumba is Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, an impressive chateau set in beautifully landscaped grounds outside Angaston and one of only a handful of wineries worldwide with its own cooperage. Visitors are welcome to drop by this atmospheric workshop where flaming braziers light the dark and young coopers hammer the imported staves into shape to form barrels before “toasting” the oak, an important process that contributes to the aroma of the wine. Just watching this alchemy builds a thirst, so why not pop next door to the tasting room for a tipple or two?
More: yalumba.com.
8. SMALL PLEASURES: The Barossa claims an estimated 80 cellar doors but twice as many wineries, some too small to operate their own shopfront, but at Artisans of Barossa, a tasting room and restaurant affording long views across the valley, you can sample the wares of six off-the-grid winemakers including John Duval (chief winemaker at Penfolds for 16 years). The Harvest Kitchen focuses on shared dishes and local produce: house-made labneh, Moroccan spiced lamb from nearby Hutton Vale and fried Barossa free-range chicken.
More: artisansofbarossa.com.
9. GO BUSH: A little light exercise never goes astray when wine touring, whether donning hiking boots to explore popular bushwalking trails snaking through the pretty Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park, high in the Barossa Ranges, or pausing to smell the roses at the Barossa Chateau’s 9ha rose garden near Lyndoch. Spring is the best time to visit when the air is perfumed with the scent of 30,000 rose bushes and about four million flowers.
More: barossachateau.com.
10. SWEET DREAMS: No one has done more to celebrate the Barossa’s food heritage, but in rescuing a century-old orchard, Maggie Beer has also created the perfect place to stay. The property’s farmhouse has been beautifully restored and includes two ensuite bedrooms and a chef’s kitchen. Orchard House is an easy walk from Maggie’s Farm Shop and lies next door to her first home in the Barossa; it was tasting a sun-ripened peach here decades ago that switched Maggie on to the Barossa’s unique food heritage. Sit on the lavender-lapped verandah with a glass of Pheasant Farm wine or take a stroll down the lane to the Farm Shop for a coffee overlooking the lake.
More: orchardhouse.com.au.
Adelaide-based senior contributing editor Christine McCabe is fifth-generation Barossa.
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