Seppeltsfield Histoical Overview

The Seppeltsfield story begins with Joseph Ernst Seppelt, a snuff, tobacco and liqueur merchant, who migrated to Australia with his family in 1849 from Silesia (now Poland).

Joseph and his family settled in the Barossa Valley in 1851 and purchased the property now known as Seppeltsfield. The Seppeltsfield area is warm and dry, with only 500mm rainfall, while the soils are predominantely fertile red brown earth.

The Seppelt family vines flourished in this fertile valley and Joseph also encouraged his neighbours to plant vines. Soon, the landscape of Seppeltsfield was transformed to lush fields of green and gold vines.

Seppeltsfield's first vintage was produced in the family dairy however by 1867, Joseph had commenced construction of a full scale winery. Unfortunately he did not live to see it completed, but his enterprising and pioneering spirit lived on after him. His eldest son, Oscar Benno Seppelt, worked hard to ensure his father's dream came true. Only 21 years old when he inherited the winery in 1868, it was Benno's influence more than anything else, which earned Seppeltsfield its reputation for quality wines.

From such small beginnings, Benno continued to expand Seppeltsfield. By the turn of the 20th century, it was Australia's largest winery, producing 2 million litres annually.

No other Australian winery has such comparable stocks of old fortified wines. In 1878, when the magnificent stone Seppeltsfield port store was completed, Benno Seppelt selected a puncheon (500 Litre barrel) of his finest port wine from that vintage and laid it in the new maturation cellar. Benni gave instruction that the barrel was to remain in the cellar for 100 years, to be released as a 100 year old wine a century later. Seppeltsfield has continued this tradition every vintage, forming the foundation of the Centennial Collection - an unbroken lineage of Tawny port from 1878 to current vintage.

Whilst continuing in more than 160 years of fortified winemaking excellence, an exciting new future in the crafting of small batch table wines has begun to unfold. This has been made evident with the reccommisioning of the 1888 Gravity Flow Cellars, seeing its first vintage in 2010 after nearly 30 years laying dormant.