My instincts led me back home to the Barossa. Initially working as a cellar hand, I found being behind the scenes in wineries felt right - like a sixth sense when I worked with grapes.
A winemaking friend noticed this and encouraged me to start my own label. With this push I bought grapes from my parents and Schwarz Wine Co. was born in 2001.
Since then, I have developed a close network of growers from various pockets across the Barossa region. Their individual microclimates and soils deliver different characters in the wine. I love nothing more than walking the rows with the growers through the seasons, kicking the dirt and tasting the fruit.
My aim is simple, to have a strong connection with my growers and their grapes, understand the seasons and the soils and to create a collection of vibrant hand-crafted wines representing the vineyard and the vintage they came from without the influence of a winemaker’s “textbook” or technology interfering with the grapes’ authentic flavour.
I began with classic styles, but my intuition pushed me to become creative, finding synergies in the grapes’ flavours to create unique wines and use innovative yet natural methods, such as working with whole bunches. My aim is to produce wines that reflect the Barossa’s soils and seasons.
Wines that aren’t restrained by any winemaking rules or science but are intuitively balanced and blended. Quite simply, the wines I make are wines I love to drink and share with those closest to me.
The result is our small-batch wines are curated from an intuitive approach, creating unexpected and lighter style wines that are interesting, creative and sophisticated and tell a story through the glass of the Barossa, its seasons and its soils.
I came to winemaking via a circuitous path. While I grew up surrounded by vines at my parent’s property in Bethany, I initially studied wine marketing at the University of Adelaide.On completion of my studies I headed overseas visiting Bordeaux, Burgundy, and The Napa, working in Stellenbosch and Zell, Germany. It was during my travels that I realised that my calling was winemaking rather than marketing and on my return to the Barossa in 1998 I began working in local wineries.
I came to winemaking via a circuitous path. While I grew up surrounded by vines at my parent’s property in Bethany, I initially studied wine marketing at the University of Adelaide.On completion of my studies I headed overseas visiting Bordeaux, Burgundy, and The Napa, working in Stellenbosch and Zell, Germany. It was during my travels that I realised that my calling was winemaking rather than marketing and on my return to the Barossa in 1998 I began working in local wineries.
I came to winemaking via a circuitous path. While I grew up surrounded by vines at my parent’s property in Bethany, I initially studied wine marketing at the University of Adelaide.On completion of my studies I headed overseas visiting Bordeaux, Burgundy, and The Napa, working in Stellenbosch and Zell, Germany. It was during my travels that I realised that my calling was winemaking rather than marketing and on my return to the Barossa in 1998 I began working in local wineries.
I came to winemaking via a circuitous path. While I grew up surrounded by vines at my parent’s property in Bethany, I initially studied wine marketing at the University of Adelaide.On completion of my studies I headed overseas visiting Bordeaux, Burgundy, and The Napa, working in Stellenbosch and Zell, Germany. It was during my travels that I realised that my calling was winemaking rather than marketing and on my return to the Barossa in 1998 I began working in local wineries.
Our growers are the backbone of our business and their hard work and dedication to their craft enable us to purchase luscious fruit year after year.
Formed in 2005, Artisans of Barossa is a group of seven wineries who share a like-minded approach to winemaking and wine enjoying. The collaboration of Hobbs of Barossa Ranges, Lienert Vineyards, Schwarz Wine Company, John Duval Wines, Purple Hands Wines, Sons of Eden and Spinifex Wines represents a determined and heart felt commitment to work together to encourage and promote the art of small batch, sub-regional Barossa winemaking.
