Willows Vineyard - the Barossa’s Best Kept Secret

If you like rich, full-flavoured Shiraz – this one’s for you!

“After decades of selling his grapes to other Barossa winemakers, Peter Scholz is now making his own wine, with exciting results.”         Andrew Catchpole (Daily Telegraph)

In the eastern part of the Barossa Valley, there is a tiny hamlet called Light Pass (Population 30, it proudly boasts on the sign announcing that you have arrived there). This is where you will find the Barossa Valley’s most under-rated winery: The Willows Vineyard.

Here Peter Scholz quietly plies his trade, producing top quality wines and selling them for extremely reasonable prices that seem over-generous given the prices asked for often inferior wines from the region.

The Scholz family’s estate is steeped in history, dating back to 1845, when Johann Scholz, a bonesetter by trade, set up a small hospital on the site. In 1936, Herbert Scholz planted the vines that still grow in the vineyard. For decades the Scholz family sold their grapes to some of the bigger companies, notably Peter Lehmann.

The move to producing their own wine came when sixth generation Peter Scholz enrolled in the famous winemaking course at Roseworthy Agricultural College, near Adelaide, that has produced so many of Australia’s top winemakers. After graduating, he worked at Peter Lehmann, moving up through the ranks to eventually become Assistant Winemaker.

But Peter had a vision for The Willows Vineyard: he was well aware that much of the grapes they produced tended to find their way into the Barossa’s flagship wines. So, in 1989, he began to set some of the fruit aside to produce wine under the Willows banner.

The wines of Willows Vineyard rapidly came to the attention of wine-lovers and critics alike. Show successes followed, including the International WINE Challenge’s first-ever Semillon Trophy, with his 1993 Semillon, but it was the Willows Shiraz that really swept the board with medal after medal including two successive Gold Medals in the International WINE Challenge.

With such success and praise you might have thought that Willows Shiraz would have joined in the Barossa goldrush of the late 1990s when many of the wineries sharply increased prices on the back of high ratings (and high prices achieved) in the US. Indeed, Peter once showed me a clipping from an American wine magazine – he had sold 20 cases to an American importer, who then put a stupendous margin on the wine so that it was priced at over US$40 per bottle. The wine received a high rating and was thought to be “good value” by the magazine.

Peter dismissed it all as hype (actually, he used another word!) and bid the US farewell. He is happier that his Shiraz is considered to be one of the Barossa’s best value wines.