Barossa Small Winemakers Centre - Tanunda
Direct Phone Number : (08) 8563 3888
Direct Email Enquiry Form
Return to Tanunda
The Barossa Small Winemakers Centre is a showcase for wines of the Barossa's small independent winemakers. Rare and distinctive wines are sold here and give visitors to the Chateau access to wines that are rarely found elsewhere.
The centre is housed in the cellar door sales area at historic Chateau Tanunda, just a few minutes walk from Tanunda, in the heart of the Barossa Valley - one of the World's premier wine regions.
It currently features over 90 wines made by 34 small producers in the valley. These are mostly handmade wines, produced in very small quantities. They come from growers with small parcels of some of the finest fruit in the Barossa. These people are the heart and soul of the Barossa, and are producing wines that are difficult, if not impossible to find. Many of these wines are made by fifth generation vignerons or master winemakers, employed elsewhere, who produce their own vintage.
The relationship between the Chateau and local growers and winemakers harks back to the very origins of Chateau Tanunda which was built by a group of prominent Adelaide businessmen including GF Cleland, Johan Basedow and Sir Samuel Davenport who approached the farmers of the Barossa with a plan to capitalize on the demand for wine in Europe after the phylloxera epidemic wiped out European vintages.
The Barossa had 560 very good growers of grapes with an undisputed wine culture. These businessmen built the biggest wine making building in the Southern Hemisphere to process the grapes of 560 growers. They financed the venture, shipped the wine on their boats to England and France and maximised on the shortage in Europe. The farmers benefited from this arrangement year after year. The only proviso was that they contracted all their grapes to the Chateau for a minimum of 10 years. A company was formed called the Adelaide Wine Co. later to be called Chateau Tanunda Pty Ltd and the Chateau was built in 1890.
Today, the Chateau maintains its links with the growers via the Barossa Small Winemakers Centre carrying on a century old partnership.