Some wine tours can be an utter mess. The stock standard package is to be crammed on a bus with 20 strangers where your driver drops you off at a host of Cellar Doors and goes to have a smoko until the allocated time for tasting is done. Crammed around a solitary server to try, you can barely ask what is being poured without bumping elbows with someone. You may as well just take a punt at a bottle shop, go home and open a half dozen unknown bottles amongst your friends.
When you paid your deposit, what you were really aching for was for a driver who could whisk you away to intimate tastings on an itinerary tailored towards your tastes. Walking you through a great blend of styles and unique local producers, you get not only a taste of their wines but a strong sense of place, can share in the maker’s sense of purpose and chat to them openly about the simple pleasures in your glass.
The world’s oldest vines, 173 years young at Langmeil Winery.
The underground well transformed into a tasting room by Langmeil Winery.
But we can save you the trouble of both of those, and point you in the direction of a tour which take you as a first stop to an underground water tower converted into a tasting room where you try a red made from the oldest vines in the world, right in the heart of the Barossa. And that wasn’t even the highlight. That was our ‘Barossa Berocca’ to wake up with.
Completely off the grid, the Izway Cellar Door is a family affair.
Small Batch Wine Tours is the brainchild of Matthew Kurko, a man with a passion for the people behind wine as much as the wine itself. By knowing the people, you get to know the people in each region who are pushing the boundaries, challenging the paradigm of production methods and flavour profiles; the people who are willing to experiment in search of a truly new experience. They share stories about the region, its history and their experiences, always relating it back to what you try in the tasting room.
It’s an experience that can genuinely capture your imagination. An experience that informs you of just how lucky we are to live in the greatest wine region in the world.
But it’s not pretentious. Matthew is a personable and knowledgeable host and most important earnest in his intent. He loves the wine regions of Adelaide, loves the people he has met in this industry and wants the people who have paid him good money to show them around to share in his passion. It’s an infectious trait which leads you along a journey of boutique producers and iconic personalities where you’ll scarcely believe at times that wine can actually be so interesting.
The beautiful Izway Cellar Door.
The Incredible Setting at Fino, Seppeltsfield.
Unexpected surprises are a standard part of the tour. They’re the currency that keeps you talking about where you visited for weeks, the moments that make you recommend the tour to your friends and take an extra moment to seek out the wines you discovered one your next trip to the bottle shop, so you can relive all that your learned and saw in a simple glass of wine.
This looks like an ordinary back yard shed…
…but opens to reveal the most incredible wine cellar and tasting room owned by the Riesling Freak.
The afternoon sets in at Rusden Winery.
Rusden Winery’s furriest resident, Frankie.
Small Batch Wine Tours are operating in the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Adelaide Hills. Our article is based upon the Barossa Tour. For more information and to tailor a package to suit your tastes, visit their website.
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