What started as a weekend escape on the banks of the mighty Murray has grown into one of Australia’s largest family owned wineries.
“A lot has changed since dad drove past the vineyard in 1980 and bought it as an excuse to escape from the city,” owner Andrew Peace says.
In 1996 the family produced its first vintage, crushing 1,700 tonnes of grapes that year. Over 20 years later that figure has risen to 30,000 tonnes.
Export market
Until recently the company has served the export market, which is one of the reasons Andrew Peace has introduced so many innovations.
“Because we’ve always exported we’d never paid much attention to the way things were done domestically,” he says.
This led Andrew to try things that domestic producers wouldn’t have, from subsurface irrigation methods to innovative marketing.
The company recently bought into an online wine sales portal to acquire a larger slice of the local market. As one of only a few Australian brands to sell more than a million cases of its wine, this may only push that figure higher.