Family legacy

GROCKE is a sixth-generation Barossan vigneron/winemaker – and quietly but deeply proud of that fact. “Our family has owned and farmed vineyards here in every generation since the 1840s, and I look forward to adding another chapter to our story,” Brett says. There is a special attachment to the Krondorf district that is central to the future, more of which anon. Many of the first arrivals in the Barossa were fleeing religious persecution in their native Silesia, and the Lutheran faith is part of their DNA. It’s trite but true to say they had to work from dawn to dusk six days a week without complaint, face internment in WWI and the renaming of Kaiser Stuhl to Mount Kitchener, and learned the hard way that state government programs, such as the Vine Pull Scheme of the late 1980s, are likely to cause more harm than help. Brett’s father sold his substantial vineyard holdings (some in Krondorf ) in the early ’90s, but Brett was too young to intercede. He subsequently undertook a Bachelor of Applied Science

(Exercise and Sport Science) from the University of South Australia, graduating in 1996, and excelled in golf and hockey. But by 2000, Brett had added a Graduate Diploma in Viticulture from the University of Adelaide.

There was no holding him back after that. He quickly became a successful consulting viticulturist, managing 14 substantial vineyards in the Barossa Valley, and advising vignerons from all parts of the state. He had long since adopted sustainability as a core value, and in 2005 founded Eperosa. “It has evolved from my interest in unique vineyards and great wine,” Brett says. “My desire is to create wine from a soil-up perspective and stay true to the premise that exceptional wine is borne from great fruit.”

For the next eight years, Brett made his wines in a shed in Tanunda; whole-bunch fermented, foot-stomped, basket-pressed and moved by gravity. Eperosa had one owner and no employees. The quantity slowly rose from 400 dozen bottles to 800 dozen, the quality exemplary from the word go: of the 50 wines in my database, two-thirds have rated 95 points or more.

It may seem obvious, possibly too much so, but Barossan vines more than 100 years old are frail; the apparent thickness of the trunk an illusion, much of it dead and hollowed out. Nourishment comes through thin veins, themselves no protection from disease such as eutypa (in common language, die-back) and so-called plough disease, a grim joke about a glancing blow from a tractor that might end the life of the vine then and there. Thus gaps in the rows of old vines are common, but the remaining vines far outnumber the gaps. They bear witness to the quality of the soil in which they grow; the quality of the grapes superb, justifying the vine-by-vine care bestowed on them. The return to the current generation of custodians is not simply economic, pride tantamount to love equally important.

Brett was uniquely positioned to source small amounts of fruit from old vines, and continues to buy them, the Stonegarden 1858 Grenache one obvious example (see notes, far right). But he wanted to buy a small vineyard on which he could bring his experience to bear, knowing that for one or more of many reasons, a given handshake agreement for grape supply might end.

It was an eight-year search, with particular focus on the Krondorf district, but he didn’t hesitate when he found the Magnolia Vineyard in 2013, in the highly regarded Vine Vale district (where the first vines had been planted in the Barossa Valley). The property had been owned and farmed by the Yates family since the 1850s, but didn’t plant vines until 1896 with shiraz, followed by grenache in 1900, semillon in 1941, ’71 and ’75, and more shiraz in 1965,

’66 and 2010.

The vineyard sits at the base of Mengler’s Hill, where three gullies and winter streams converge, protected from the glaring heat of

the westerly sun by a small gum-lined hill, and cold-air drainage leads to rapid cooling from sunset to sunrise. The vineyard soils are alluvial sands many metres in depth, derived from the granitic rock of the surrounding hills. If there is one thing common to all good soils, it is the need for free drainage, directly or indirectly coupled with moisture-retention capacity.

Ironically, but happily, two months later, a 6.2-hectare property on Krondorf Road was quietly put on the market (with 4.1ha of grenache planted in 1903). Brett guessed that Rocky (Robert) O’Callaghan would be interested in acquiring it, so decided to have a chat with him. My guess is that Rocky knew Brett would be a first-class custodian of the property, and the upshot was a 50/50 partnership of the land, with a loan agreement sufficient to also build Brett’s first (and only) winery.

“The vineyard is at the foothills of Kaiser Stuhl and strongly influenced by the local gully winds, which rapidly cool the landscape and keep disease at bay,” Brett says. “Another dominant feature of the site is the terra rossa-like soil consisting of sandy loam over heavy red clay with calcareous material at depth. The ability of the soil to store large amounts of moisture and hold it tightly in its matrix allows the vines to produce fruit that delivers powerful and complex wines.”

It is simple but functional, harnessing the thermal property of earth and concrete, stabilising temperature and humidity, ideal for wine maturation in barrel. It is run by an off-grid solar system including three tonnes of two-volt gel cell batteries. The LED lighting technology, the latest low-emission gas forklifts, manual labour and gravity make this a very low-impact winery. Two underground concrete rainwater tanks are an appropriately pure but delicious water source for the winery.

“It’s harder to make wine at 13.5 per cent than 15.5 per cent,” Brett says. “If I made wines using my head, not my heart, I would buy grapes from 100-year-old vines ripened to the point where the consequent alcohol is 15.5 per cent and make much more money.” He and I have such an aversion to raisins we pick them out of our breakfast muesli.