THE ETHOS
Growing up in my father’s winery on Krondorf Road gave me a rare insight into the wine business, watching one man’s dream of creating a traditionally handcrafted winery in a time when the Australian wine industry was driven by technological advancement and mass production. His dream seemed to be a near-impossible task at the time, to the point that people thought him quite the mad man. What people underestimated was Dad’s passion, tenacity and belief in the diversity of the vineyards and the uniqueness of the Barossan culture.
The Barossa is broken up into two main sub-regions, Eden Valley and The Barossa Valley Floor. These two main areas are very different in many ways. The floor is a lot warmer and dryer, the soils are deep and rich, from the dark alluvial soils in the south, the sandy loam in the centre and the rich red high iron soils to the north.
The Eden Valley climate tends to be cooler and wetter. In the northern end around Moculta and Keyneton the soils have rich red brown top soils over gravel ironstone and limestone clay. The central to southern parts of the Eden Valley, particularly around the towns of Angaston, Eden Valley and Springton are comprised of weathered schist and decomposed granite over yellow clay. Then follows the High Eden, Flaxman Valley area which is made up of decomposed granite over bedrock with the odd out crop of rose quartz.
I have a very strong belief in keeping all the parcels of fruit separate, from fruit to wine and on to bottle. This belief was ingrained in me at a young age because one day a year my dad would pull samples from all the individual vineyards and invite his growers, staff and friends to sample them all. He would lay the wines out for all invited to see.
This, by far, was always my favourite day of the year. I got great joy out of seeing the growers work their way through the runway of bottles comparing their own vineyards to the vineyards across the fence, down the road or from their third cousin's block at the other end of the region. Most importantly was the education in diversity I unknowingly received.
Growing up in this environment was the norm for me, I just thought all wineries did this. It wasn’t until I ventured out and started working for other wineries that I realised that this wasn’t so. Most people I met boxed Barossa as one single entity - oh, how wrong they were! This unique education is the driving force behind my wines. All are single vineyards, hand-chosen by me to highlight the sub-regional diversity that makes the Barossa one of the truly great wine regions of the world!
'Working with nature, not against, hand to foot'
Travis Earth O’Callaghan
Winemaker ¦ Proprietor