Barossa Valley
Some of the oldest producing vines on earth grow here, planted by Silesian settlers in the 1840s and never reached by phylloxera. 11,156 hectares, more than any South Australian region but the Riverland, and Shiraz is what the name means to most people.
Known for
- Shiraz
- Grenache
- Mataro
- Cabernet Sauvignon
Why Barossa Valley tastes the way it does
Warm, dry and low-lying, with old dry-grown Shiraz giving dense, sweet-fruited wine and soft tannin. Grenache and Mataro from the same old plantings are increasingly bottled in their own right. Barossa Shiraz is the style most of the world pictures when it thinks of Australian red.
January averages 22.8°C here and the growing season adds up to 1,948 heat units, which is warm, and it shows in riper, fuller wine.
A short history
Settled from 1842 by Lutheran families from Silesia escaping religious persecution, who planted vines almost immediately. Phylloxera never reached South Australia, so some of those plantings survive on their own roots and are among the oldest producing vines anywhere. A government vine-pull scheme in the mid-1980s removed a great deal of old vineyard before anyone understood what it was worth.
Barossa Valley was registered as a protected wine name in 1997, which makes the boundary a legal definition rather than a marketing one.
What your house does to a bottle from Barossa Valley
A bottle from Barossa Valley ages at the rate its temperature sets, not at the rate the vintage chart says. Barello's model is the physical one: every 10°C above 13°C roughly doubles the rate, and at 25°C or more you are not ageing it, you are cooking it. Pick where you live and where the bottle actually sits.
Choose a city and a spot, and this line will tell you how much faster the bottle is ageing than it would in a cellar.
This is the same model that dates every bottle in Barello. Open the app to run it against your own wine. Or read how to store wine without a cellar, or the wine temperature chart.
Barossa Valley in numbers
| Planted vineyard | 11,156 ha | number 4 of 64 in Australia |
|---|---|---|
| Region area | 578 km² | 19.30% of it under vine |
| Grapes crushed | 55,806 t a year | 5.0 tonnes a hectare |
| January average | 22.8°C | number 43 coolest of 64 |
| Heat units | 1,948 | warmth added up over the growing season |
| Land in the GI rises | 112 to 596 m | the boundary, not where the vines are |
| Registered | 1997 | as a protected name |
Nearby
- Eden Valley18 km south east, 0.9°C cooler
- Adelaide Hills53 km south, 1.7°C cooler
- Clare Valley75 km north, known for Riesling instead
Distances are between the registered centres of each region, so they are as the crow flies rather than as the road goes.
Where these numbers come from
Boundaries and figures: Wine Australia Geographical Indications register, used under CC BY 4.0. Climate figures are the register's own long-run averages, measured in the vineyard. The history and the tasting notes above are Barello's own.