Yalumba is one of the country’s most historic wineries - first founded in 1849, and recently celebrated its 170th anniversary. At Yalumba’s heart is its winery in Angaston, shadowed by a grand clocktower. It was here that Yalumba was launched when the first land was purchased in 1852 after founder Samuel Smith returned from the goldfields. Only a year later Smith released his first wines and Yalumba was born. Today Chief Winemaker Louisa Rose continues to build on Yalumba’s reputation, which bas been carefully built over the last 170 years.
Yalumba crushes fruit for its premium section from a number of regions around South Australia. While the Barossa Valley remains its spiritual home, fruit from Eden Valley, Coonawarra and Wrattonbully are also now very much part of the Yalumba DNA.
For many years Shiraz and Cabernet have been Yalumba’s key grape varieties - and the blend of the two its key focus. The Cabernet Shiraz blend is one of Australia’s great gifts to the world of wine - the densely structured Cabernet Sauvignon blending beautifully with the more generously fruited Shiraz to create powerful wines with long aging potential. This is particularly seen in The Signature, the FDR1A and recently released icon, The Caley.
In recent times, Grenache, a long-ignored grape variety, has increasingly become a focus at Yalumba, particularly for wines drawn from its Vine Vale vineyard, only 820 vines planted in 1889. This is the source of not only a single vineyard dry red but also an extraordinary Rose - made from younger vines off the same site - illustrating the potential of old vine Rose to deliver serious quality.
