OLD PLAINS AND LONGHOP went head long into the family market garden Old Plains is a partnership between Tim business. Freeland & Domenic Torzi who have located They came together in the olive oil business, small parcels of old vine grenache, shiraz and Freeland establishing a grove adjacent the cabernet sauvignon in the Adelaide Plains Torzi family block in Kudla, south of Gawler. region of South Australia. Freeland became part of the landscape, The wines are made with minimal interven- learning the ways of olive growing and back tion. Open fermented and basket pressed. No yard wine making, along the way teaching the fining or filtration is used prior to bottling. elderly Italian farmers a thing or two about The Old Plains Wine Co. produces consis- modern olive harvesting. A fine mix indeed. tently high-quality wines, sold under the Old The next progression came in the year 2002, Plains and Longhop labels. Torzi knew the plains produced great wines, he remembered as a kid the old people telling OUR STORY him about the power and purity of Adelaide Its hard to believe, as you gaze across the 30 Plains grapes and how they could make it acre paddock brimming with a bumper crop into the best wines the country had to offer. of carrots, that once in place of market garden They conceived the plan to save as many of cash crops stood 30 acres of dry grown the old vines as they could. shiraz vines. They scoured the ‘Plains for these remnant Such was the reality during the late 1980s. vineyard plantings, family connections Dryland, aged shiraz was steadily uprooted helped, then convinced the growers, most of and grubbed out, unprofitable in what was a them now aged in their 70s to prune their old dire time for the Australian wine industry, vines, bring them back to life, in doing so vine pull was in full swing. But as the wine industry ground down, local they have slowly gained the confidence of Ironically, most of the people uprooting the growers were forced to choose, they had their post war, Italian settler growers and vines were the very people who planted them agricultural land returning nothing from since the 2003 vintage have produced a 20 plus years prior. grapes, in many cases the vines lost, range of shiraz, grenache and cabernet that This scene unfolded on the rich red soils of replaced out of necessity by cash crops. oozes dark fruit flavour. the Adelaide Plains, a short stroll from the Not all were destroyed, growers knew the Growers with names like Noto, Trombetta, township of Angle Vale, it’s also where the quality of the grapes and nearly always kept Gagliardi, now work hand in hand with Old Plains and Longhop wine story begins. an acre or two of the original plantings, Freeland and Torzi producing wines that dont The Adelaide Plains has a rich Italian history, tucked away in corners, hidden amongst scrimp on flavour and richness. with migrant families flooding onto the olive groves, nearby the now profitable Its important for the families too, these vines ‘Plains during the 50s and 60s post war era vegetable crops, these remaining vines went represent the roots of what they’ve put down, from Italian regions such as Abruzzi, Apulia unkept for years, some were merely harvested Joe Noto knows it like no other. Arriving from and Calabria. Establishing market gardens, to make enough juice for the family wine. Reggio Calabria in 1955, he hand planted his vineyards, olive groves in what was little Italy, This is where Old Plains wines comes into 30 acres of shiraz at Angle Vale in 1960. It prosperous and flourishing for those being, it was two former Gawler high school was Joe and son Mario that were left with no prepared for hard work. mates, Tim Freeland and Domenic Torzi that choice but to tear out the vines in the 80s. Vineyards and winemaking were part of the saw the need to reinvigorate, not only the What remains is two rows of gnarly shiraz, patchwork, heady days saw the planting of remnant vineyard plantings but also the defiant, somewhat pampered, they receive close to 500 plus acres of vines, the growers who planted the original vineyards. visitors who gaze from the two rows onto the establishment of the Angle Vale winery which The Adelaide Plains was their stomping adjacent 30 acres, they represent history, has coloured the hands of Australian wine ground during school, Freeland pursued boom and bust, near 50 years of change. Old making greats, Rob O’Callaghan, Charlie publishing interests after an apprenticeship Plains tells their story, Old Plains wants these Melton and Doug Lehmann to name a few. at the local Gawler newspaper, whilst Torzi vines to see another 50 years and more.