There are many wineries in Grampians but most of them are actually closed on Monday. We found one that open seven days a week, Seppelt Wines. What really interest us was that it has an underground cellar tour.
Seppelt Wines is a well-known wine producer, with generations of wine lovers enjoying their wines for over 100 years. When the estate was owned by Hans Irvine, in 1890 he hired a French Winemaker by the name of Charles Pierlot to produce the first method champenoise sparkling wines in Australia, which included the now famous, unique Sparkling Shiraz.
From cool Grampians country to the wild Henty hinterland and the famous Cambrian soils of Heathcote, Seppelt cellar door showcases the unique personalities of some of Victoria’s finest vineyards.
As we still had some time before the tour starts, we ordered some food from the Drives Cafe, which is located inside Seppelt Cellar Door.
The Underground Cellar Tour started at 1pm. Known simply as “The Drives”, this labyrinth of tunnels is the largest underground cellar in the Southern Hemisphere. The tour started with the guide giving us a lesson on Seppelt's history.
We then walked to another building, where the entrance to the underground tunnels is located.
This was our first visit to a winery, and we were amazed by all the huge wine barrels.
We then followed the guide down into the Seppelt Wines heritage-listed underground cellars.
With excavations beginning in 1868 by out of work gold miners, The Drives took more than 60 years to dig the 3 kilometres of tunnels which can hold 3 million bottles of wine.
The foundations of Seppelt were laid in 1851 when Joseph Seppelt established Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley. On the other side of the country, young Frenchman Jean Pierre Trouette followed the gold rush to Victoria and formed a partnership with Anne Marie Blampied and her brother, Emile. They established the first vines in the Grampians region with the historic St Peters vineyard in 1863. By 1867, their estate had grown to 50,000 vines.
We continued to walk through the endless tunnels to the various chambers.
By, 1900, Seppelt had become the largest wine company in Australia, with grand plans to expand into global markets.
At the start of the tour, we were up there looking down and now we were at this exact spot looking up.
Other than this underground cellar tour, visitors can also choose to experience one of Australia's most unique and atmospheric gourmet dining experiences in Seppelt's historic cellars, ‘The Drives’.
I guess these bottles (below) were probably here since more than a century ago.
The tour concludes with a tasting of Seppelt Sparkling Shiraz, first made in the Seppelt Great Western Cellars in the early 1890s.
Before we left the place, we dropped by the roadside to have a closer look at Seppelt vineyard.
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