Barossa Valley Winery Day Trip From Adelaide

Get excited everyone as we have the awesome Naomi back on the blog with a post about visiting the Barossa Valley wineries! I am yet to get to South Australia, but it’s high on my list and after reading this I am now as eager as ever! If you’ve been, make sure to comment at the bottom of the post with the wineries that we have to visit when we go.

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As you may know from my previous postsI’m all about a whirlwind trip, long weekends and little getaways such as my recent trip to Pemberton and this was another one of those trips!

My partner and I have been dating for a little while now and it was time to introduce him to my good friends in South Australia. We teamed it up to coincide with the Port Adelaide Vs Eagles game, which we enjoyed on the Saturday night.

I also wanted to make sure that we had some time to stop in at one of Adelaide’s many wine regions, all of which are located between 30 minutes to an an hour from the Adelaide CBD.

Adelaide To The Barossa Valley

I had previously visited Maclaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills, while my partner hadn’t visited any of the Adelaide winery regions, so it was fantastic when my friend said that she would be attending a 40th birthday party in the Barossa Valley on the Sunday and that we were invited. We were super keen to visit the Barossa Valley for the first time!

I was pre-warned that the drive would be longer than I was used to and that the drive to the region wasn’t quite as picturesque as the drive into the Adelaide Hills or Maclaren Vale, however, I felt very spoilt once we arrived in the Barossa.

We left Adelaide just before 10am and arrived within the wine region by 11am ready for an early lunch and the Cabernet and Curry Festival.

Here are the directions from Adelaide to the Barossa Valley.

Whistler Winery

Whistler was the reason we were in the Barossa Valley, as the venue was playing host to my friends-friends 40th birthday party. Right from the get go, you knew this was a family friendly winery, where kids were encouraged to go off and play and to explore. There was a cubby house, sand pit, swing sets and more surrounded by beautiful and large shady trees.

The cellar door is a beautiful corrugated iron building.

Wines available at Whistler Winery.

Since there was an event on, ‘Cabernet and Curry’, we were unable to do a tasting, but we did purchase a couple of bottles to share with our table. You also had to purchase your own glass, but at $5 each, it wasn’t a huge expense.

I just love the funky bottle labels – Im a real sucker for something that looks a little different.

Shock Value, the 2016 S.G.M. A blend of Shiraz (41%), Grenache (39%) and Mataro (20%). The tasting notes on the Whistler website mention that “…it has great depth of colour, dark fruited characters on the nose, and is super smooth and juicy on the palate. An easy-drinking red for any (or no) occasion. Great pizza wine, or perfect for a BBQ with mates.”

I can confirm that this red was a crowd favourite with the birthday party, perfect with mates!

Although it was a Sunday when we were consuming this number, it went down an absolute treat!

The 2017 Thank God It’s Friday Shiraz is 100% grown on at the Whistler Winery. You can read more about the wine making, the wine and the technical information on their website. 

While inside the tasting room, we took some time to check out the wares on sale and came across the Young Gun of Wine Top 50 2017 booklet, which we made sure to take a quick look at.

Inside the booklet, we quickly spotted that Whistler grapegrower and winemaker Josh Pfeiffer was a finalist for South Australia.

If you have time, pop on over to the Whistler About Us page, where you can learn all about the family history, including how Josh uses organic and biodynamic practices and a traditional Barossa method to control weeds.

It didn’t take long for the venue to fill up with people with the ‘Cabernet and Curry’ festival in full swing after 12 noon.

It was a little chilly on the day, but the staff were great, stoking up the half 44-gallon drums with wood. We made sure to get a good spot that was close by.

Another great one for little (and big) kids (alike), was this game. Follow the clues and you get to explore the grounds. This was clue number one, and there are about 10 in total.

You can also explore the grounds by going on the dam walk, the big dam walk or the xxx bloody big dam walk! We opted to just follow the clues as we knew we didn’t have a huge amount of time at the winery.

This was one of the final clue locations and also entry into the main winery area.

Along with the wine, we opted for the Kwati Nine Bean Curry which was gluten free, dairy free and vegan friendly, and they also had plenty of other meat options available.

If you’re looking to visit Whistler Wines, they’re located at 241 Seppeltsfield Road, Stone Well.

There cellar door is open 7 days, 10:30am-5pm and are closed Good Friday, Christmas Day, New Years Eve & New Years Day.

Tscharke Estate Wines

Next up was Tscharke winery. It was a 1 minute drive from Whistler Winery.

The entrance into Tscharke.

The Tscharke cellar door.

You may notice that there is a distinctively German look about the cellar door, and you would be right. There were three different German manufacturers engaged for the building materials

1. Timber
2. Double glazed doors and windows
3. Roof tiles and pavers.

There were a total of 3 x 40’ shipping containers arrived with the majority of the building materials.

Some of the interesting artwork that you will find around Tscharkes Place.

Inside you will find Tscharke estate grown and crafted wines and Tscharke Barossa Pottery.

The Tscharke Barossa Pottery can be seen the photo above; the water glasses and spittoons, all of which were available for sale at the cellar door. The pottery is all made by Eva Tscharke.

If you take the time to read the about Tscharke wine page on the Tscharke website you will see how “Damien and Eva Tscharke have created a unique space that’s sustainable, a reflection of their family origin and is a welcoming and enjoyable place to be in.”

The cellar door took 2 years of planning and 14 months to complete.

Darko, (pictured above cleaning a wine glass), was super helpful during our wine tasting experience. Darko was very patient, taking us through each of the wines and answering all of our questions about the wine, the venue and their winery processes. We ended up staying at Tscharke longer than anticipated, purely because of his service. Bravo!

We were presented with a range of wines including Mediterranean varieties and Barossa regional classics.

The full list of wines to taste.

Each of the emerging wines had a fabulous family story, which Darko kindly took us through. If you would like to find out their meanings, you will just have to visit the cellar door, where they will be more than happy to tell you.

Something that you may note from the image above are the prices – they’re very reasonably priced. Check out their FAQs page to see why they keep their prices so low. 

We first tried the 2018 Girl Talk, Savagnin from the Emerging Wines list.

We absolutely loved this Rosé, that we made sure to take a bottle home with us. It didn’t last long!

While at the cellar door, you can sign up to their mailing list. We loved how so many elements from the winery are used within the cellar door.

An old vine has been used as a prop in the cellar door.

Another winery inspired light fitting. If you’re something that is a little smaller, you could always make a light fitting similar to the Travelling Corkscrew.

Some more wine bottle inspired artwork. This time a wreath with wine bottle light fittings.

If the weather was a little nicer, I would have happily of bought a bottle and spent some time out in the little courtyard, which was full of some amazing artwork. Can you spot all of the pieces?

If you’re looking to visit Tscharke Wines, they’re located 76 Seppeltsfield Road, Marananga.

Open from 10am to 5pm, Monday to Sunday. Closed Good Friday, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

It was then onto the next and final winery…

Seppeltsfield Winery

But first, it was as much about the drive to our next winery, as it was about the destination.

We drove through the Avenue of Palms – a five kilometre trail of Canary Island Date Palms, planted by Seppeltsfield workers during the Great Depression. There are over 2,000 palms!

Image source: Seppeltsfield Vineyard Cottage

I’m going to start this section by saying that this venue is MASSIVE! We first missed the entrance, since there were so many buildings, and what looked like potential entrances. It didn’t help that Google Maps was telling us that the entrance was further down the road.

This is how big it is, you can even take a Segway tour!

Have you even taken a Segway tour of a winery before? Although we didn’t, it was the first time I had seen this offered by a winery.

Walking into the cellar door we first spotted this beautiful car.

Attached to the cellar door is Fino, a contemporary and informal restaurant, providing visitors an opportunity to sample the best of South Australian food. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to stop into the restaurant, however, even at 2pm, the restaurant was quite full and had a distinct separation from the cellar door area with the fireplace.

The wine list, available for tastings. You can visit as an individual or they also accept tour buses.

The reason why we stopped in was because of their stickys or also known as their fortified wines and this is why.

Wikipedia states “In 1878, to celebrate the completion of the cellar, Benno selected a puncheon (500 litre barrel) of his finest wine and declared that the barrel would be allowed to mature for 100 years. Thus was the idea of the “Seppelt Para 100 year old Tawny Port” born. Every year since 1878, the winery has set aside more of its finest wine for 100 years of barrel maturation. Seppeltsfield is the only winery to have notable amounts of wine set aside in consecutive vintages for over 100 years, and nowhere else in the world does a winery annually release a commercially available wine a century old.

Some of the wines on offer.

The staff even offered a glass of a red fire engine (grenadine and lemonade) for my friends daughter.

A final group photo before departing for the airport and back to Western Australia.

Planning on a trip to the Barossa? Visit the Barossa Website to see what wineries are in the region, whats on and for one-of-a-kind experiences.

If unlike us, and you don’t have a driver for the day but want to visit the Barossa Valley, Maclaren Vale or the Adelaide Hills, why not opt for a wine tour such as the hop on, hop off tour from Trailhopper. Depending on the destination, you can choose to jump on the bus in Adelaide or within the region and you get to choose which wineries you want to visit and those ones that you’re willing to pass on.