Kaesler - a century of tradition

The Kaesler Vineyards were established in 1893. The family, sprung from Silesian pioneers who came to the Barossa Valley in the 1840s, took up 96 acres in 1891. They cleared the scrub and in 1893 planted out the entire holding with Shiraz, Grenache, Mataro (Mourvedre) and White Hermitage vines.

Some of the gnarled dry-grown Shiraz still remains and provides the backbone of the intense wines produced from the sandy loam of this prime viticultural block.

Over nearly a century of hard and stoical work, the Kaeslers at times removed patches of vines to plant fruit trees - apricots, peaches and prunes - to keep the farm going. They had their own horses, stabled in the pug wall and brick building that is now the cellar door. They had some cows, too. The cow shed has become the present restaurant.

But there were always vines, most of them for red and fortified wine. More Grenache was planted in the 1930s. It grew well and had the high sugar content needed by the taste then for fortified wines. More Shiraz was planted in 1961, 1962 and in the 1970s. It could be used for fortified wine, but was also excellent for table wine as European migration helped turn Australia away from its ports and sherries. Now more than 70% of Kaesler's red wine vines are 40 or more years old - age that shows in the brilliance of the wines.

The Kaeslers had some white wine varieties, but they were not the sort of people to be taken in by the apparent fad for white wines that sadly affected so many other Barossa holdings. This fad led to the Government-sponsored "vine pulls" in the 1980s that destroyed much of the valley's stock of irreplaceable century-old Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro vines. Sadly, the struggle to survive forced three Kaesler brothers off this historic property.

The Kaeslers and later owners did not make their own wine. Traditionally, they sold their grapes to the Seppelts. The exceptional Kaesler wines now being produced had their beginning in 1997 when a young winemaker at Cellarmaster just a few hundred metres away at Dorrien noticed the power and intensity of the fruit.