Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
had them plant as many trees as they could
to keep them busy. (They obviously had a
lot of time on their hands—the 150-year old
winery is now surrounded by 2,000 palm
trees.) Then Benno had the marvelous idea
to age his fortified wine for 100 years. The
winery now has port older than Portugal's;
a bottle of its rich syrupy Para Liquer Port
sells for $1,000 a bottle. Needless to say,
this wine is not offered in the usual tasting
sessions.
The winery itself, located 1 hour from
Adelaide, is like something from Charles
Dickens's
Old Curiosity Shop.
To enter the
winery, you pass the charming family
home and over a little bridge through a
lush, tropical garden. The winery building
is something of a shock—long and box-
like, it looks like a sunken steamboat. This
is the original gravity winery, built long
before the current fad for all things New-
tonian. While modern winemakers let
gravity have its way, rather than use
machines to pump the wine from tank to
vat to barrel—they claim that pumping
“stresses” the juice—old Seppelt built his
winery with good old-fashioned practical-
ity in mind: Lacking electricity, he built the
winery atop a set of terraces, where the
grapes could go in one end and have their
juice flow through the crushers and tanks
to casks at the other end. Beyond the win-
ery is a massive warehouse with 9 million
liters (2.3 million gal.) of maturing wine,
stacked in pyramids in ancient barrels.
The winery is a living museum to how
things used to be done on an industrial
scale. A set of old steam-powered engines
sits in pristine condition, surrounded by
pulleys and chain drives. Back near the
entrance, you'll find an intriguing museum
with grape crushers that date from the
1890s. All sorts of oddities lie around the
room, including ancient sales rep kits and
well-thumbed accounts ledgers. A few
brandy pot stills remind you that in the
past the winery produced other products
besides wine, including vinegar and
sherry. Turn the corner and you'll find
another cellar with 3 million liters (800,000
gal.) of wine gently aging (watched over by
a ghost, or so the tour guides tell you).
In the tasting room, a series of rich and
concentrated ports are laid before you—a
tribute to old Seppelt's vision. As you sip
and enjoy, you can almost imagine you
hear the plaintive strains of his ghost's
violin echoing from the cellar.
Seppelt Winery,
Seppeltsfield (
&
61/8/
8568-6217;
www.seppelt.com.au).
(
Adelaide (77km/47 miles).
L
$$$
The Lodge Country House,
RSD 120, Seppeltsfield (
&
61/8/8562-
8277;
www.thelodgecountryhouse.com.
au). $$
Barossa Motor Lodge,
182 Mur-
ray St., Tanunda (
&
61/8/8563-298;
www.
barossamotorlodge.com.au).
Southern Hemisphere
361
Stonier's Winery
The Peninsula
Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia
Start the day with a bracing walk up to
Arthur's Seat, a 300m-high (980-ft.) granite
hill that provides sweeping views of Morn-
ington Peninsula and the distant Mel-
bourne skyline. Seabirds swoop down on
yacht-spangled Port Phillip Bay. The
coastal road runs before you, passing pale
sandy beaches with colorful vacation huts
and shaggy dunes leading to golf links.
Surfers ride the morning waves, and the
cool wind brushes through fruit orchards,
pine trees, and vineyards.
