The Barossa Cellar set to open in July

By James Halliwell

The Barossa Grape and Wine Association will move into The Barossa Cellar building in South Australia at the end of July.

The AUS $4.5 million project has been driven by the Barons of Barossa, a group of wine industry personalities who bought the three-hectare greenfield site between Tanunda and Angaston in 2016.

The Barons of Barossa formed in 1975 and its 3000-bottle collection includes wines more than 20 years old from iconic Barossa wineries such as Henschke, Penfolds, Rockford, Yalumba, Greenock Creek, Peter Lehmann and Grant Burge.

The collection will be displayed in the wine vault on shelves made from American Oak donated by AP John Coopers. A second, larger cellar, will store up 36,000 bottles of the commercial wine the Barons sell to fund their operations.

“One of the initiating factors for this project was that the Barons of the Barossa have got this great collection of wines but we didn’t have anywhere to store it,” said Barossa Cellar committee chairman and Barossa Baron James Wark. “We originally said we’ll just build a cellar but then we decided that it was just crazy to have a storage cellar and not use it for something.”

One of the main fundraising strategies for the project is to sell 1800 Shiraz vines that will be planted at the site in October. About 450 of the vines have been sold so far for $1000 each.

The vines have been propagated at Yalumba’s nursery and come from cuttings donated from 30 of the region’s top Shiraz vineyards.

The Barons will also start selling one of their Shiraz wines through online retailer Vinomofo later in the year.

“We’ve taken on a fair bit of debt with this project and this is one of the ways we are repaying it and also raising money to pay for the upkeep of the property,” said Wark.

“The money we’ve borrowed for the project – about $1.5 million – we are hoping to repay in the next five years or so.”

Events at The Barossa Cellar will include training workshops, vertical tastings for international wine dignitaries and industry group meetings, with the Barossa Wine Show judging in early September set to be one of the first major events held at the cellar.

“Having a purpose built facility to showcase the Barossa wine and grape story to the world will be huge,” said BGWA chief executive James March. “There are other buildings that do share similarities in Spain and Italy but this is something where the Barossa is leading from the front in Australia as far as we’re aware.

“It adds enormous value to brand Barossa and I think the real value is in the perception, the impression and the representation of the whole region.”