The Linfield Road Story

‘All day planting vines, very slow work’. E.M. Wilson July 28^th, 1860.

The Linfield Road story begins with a fine Sunday on the 15^th of July 1860, when Edmund Major Wilson walked to his newly acquired property on the outskirts of Williamstown, in the fledgling Barossa Valley, to begin a new life. Within a week he had begun the task of establishing the first Linfield Road vineyards, though perhaps at a more sedate pace than he had originally hoped for.

Since Edmund’s first plantings in 1860, five generations of the Wilson family have been growing vines on the southern edge of Williamstown, with 87 year old Arnold still out in the vineyard every day, in addition to running his early morning kitchen during vintage and opening up the ‘bar’ after a hard day’s work.

‘Picked Mataro grapes off hill in the morning, carted to cellar, crushed them and just finished as the rain came in…’ E.M. Wilson 25^th April, 1865

Nestled just outside the small town of Williamstown in the Southern Barossa, our vineyards are grown on a mixture of soils ideal for elegant, structured wines including red clay, slate and sandy loam mixed with creek stones. The property has an elevation of 310 metres, higher than the Barossa Valley floor, leading to cooler nights and later ripening periods, producing wines with elegant characteristics that are uniquely specific to our location at the southern edge of the Barossa Valley.

Since those first plantings in 1860 our family has been lucky enough to develop a viticulture tradition that now spans five generations, one hundred and forty nine vintages, five tractors, at least seven unpatented inventions, hundreds of kitchen table meetings, thousands of winter stews, and a whole lot of red wine. The handcrafted single vineyard wines we have been producing as Linfield Road are the extension of that tradition.