The 13 best Barossa Valley wineries

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of Penfolds – both as an essential Barossa cellar door, and as an iconic Australian wine producer, founded in 1844. Penfolds’ famous Grange is one of Australia’s most collectible wines, and the only Australian wine granted heritage status by the National Trust. In 2021, a bottle of Penfolds’ debut 1951 Grange vintage sold at auction for $142,131 – not your average bottle of plonk!

At Penfolds Barossa Cellar Door, sign up for a 90-minute ‘Make Your Own Blend’ tour ($85), on which you step into winemaker mode and create your own mix of shiraz, grenache and mataro (something akin to Penfolds’ popular Bin 138 blend). Win friends and influence people with your take-home bottle. Also available is a one-hour ‘Taste of Grange’ tasting experience ($150), on which you sip your way through a range of Penfolds’ drops, including one vintage of Grange. Bookings are essential for both tours and tailored group tastings.

If you’re in Adelaide, we recommend a visit to Penfolds Magill Estate where the story began. The property features a fine dining restaurant, cellar door, underground drives, Grange Cottage (the original home of the Penfolds family) and the Magill Estate Kitchen – a casual bistro offering brunch and lunch.

Arguably the best of the Barossa’s boutique producers (oh how they argue), Rockford is a marvellous collusion of heritage vibes (ramshackle 1850s farm buildings) and respect for the winemaking past. Freestone walls, warming winter fireplace, bottles with corks... it’s an endearing package. But Rockford’s wines are really why you’re here – approachable, affordable and down-to-earth. Just as earthy is winemaker Robert O’Callaghan, who brings an old-school attitude to his trade, using traditional methods and equipment.

O’Callaghan is also a writer: his annual newsletter, the Rockford Rag, is as hotly anticipated as every new vintage of his fast-selling Basket Press shiraz, sourced from specifically chosen plots of old Barossa shiraz vines. Whether or not there’ll actually be any Basket Press available for tasting when you visit is a seasonal question: autumn (April to March) is probably your best bet, with brilliant vine colours a bonus. Further improve your odds of some elbowroom inside (it’s an intimate cellar door) by arriving early or late. Tastings are free.

Magically secluded in the western Barossa backblocks, Seppeltsfield is less like a winery, more like a historic wine village. This sprawling complex of gorgeous stone buildings, founded in 1851 by recently arrived Silesian immigrant Joseph Seppelt, was Australia’s biggest wine producer in the early years of the 1900s. On-site today you’ll find regional fine-dining superstar Fino, coffee roaster/café Octeine, the Jam Factory art and design hub, Vasse Virgin luxe soap factory, a cooperage, Seppeltsfield’s cellar door, and all manner of tours and experiences. Give yourself at least an afternoon to soak it all up!

Getting here is half the fun. From Tanunda or Nuriootpa, take Seppeltsfield Rd – a meandering drive through the vines along a roadway lined with surreal colonnades of date palms, planted in the 1930s. Pay your respects at the Greek-inspired hilltop Seppelt Family Mausoleum en route, built in 1927. When you eventually roll into the cellar door, don’t miss a lick of tawny port, Seppeltsfield’s flagship product. Tastings kick off at $10, ramping-up through ‘Taste Your Birth Year’ experiences and tours of the Centennial Cellars, home to Seppeltsfield’s barrels of 100-year-old tawny. Book ahead.

Regularly finding itself on top of ‘SA’s Best Regional Dining’ lists, the restaurant at Hentley Farm is just as well known as the cellar door. On the wine front, the key to success here has been the soil. This part of the northwestern Barossa is traditional farming country, but with the aid of a 1950s geological survey map, winery founders Alison and Keith Hentschke zeroed in on some acres of deep red soil over limestone bedrock – a solid shiraz set-up – and bought the farm in 1997. The first Hentley Farm wines – shiraz, zinfandel, grenache and viognier – rolled off the (charmingly modest) production line in 2002, all grown within the estate’s boundaries.

Today, Hentley Farm is memorably high-end, but remains understated, unhurried and un-snooty. Cellar door tasting fees (redeemable with purchase) vary with quality, quantity and duration, starting at $15. But why not stay for lunch? Hentley Farm restaurant is a total knock-out, serving up chef Clare Falzon’s regional fare, all sourced from the farm, from along nearby Greenock Creek, or from local farmers’ fields and veggie gardens.

Plenty of Barossa wineries trade on their history, their estimable family lineage, their historic architecture, their snappy steel-and-glass cellar doors… Which is all very appealing. But St Hallett takes a different approach; namely, producing an excellent and affordable range of blends and pure varietal wines, using only Barossa grapes, and delivered without a whiff of pomp or pretence. You could even say that St Hallett is a humble outfit – which they needn’t be, given that the winery was founded by the Lindner family in 1944, one of the original Barossa wine families, who emigrated from Silesia in 1838. But history isn’t the main focus here: St Hallett is all about characterful wines, unpretentious service and good bang for your buck.

Cellar door tastings (book ahead) start at $15 for six wines, including a dry rosé and St Hallett’s flagship Blackwell Shiraz. Generous cheese platters, hampers, picnic baskets and chocolate-and-wine tasting flights are also available.

Actually, St Hugo is more than good enough. And you don’t have to be a hot-blooded Formula 1 driver to enjoy yourself here (…you might even get a taste of the Ricciardo-branded vino ‘DR3 x St Hugo’, available in high-speed 2014 shiraz or fast-cornering 2015 cab sav).

But beyond savvy marketing collabs, St Hugo remains an essential Barossa winery, offering a slick, contemporary cellar door experience grounded in Barossa bloodlines. St Hugo is named after Hugo Gramp, grandson of Barossa pioneer Johann Gramp, who planted his first vines in 1847 and went on to found Gramp & Sons winery. Hugo was running the family biz by 25, but died in a plane crash in Victoria in 1938, aged just 43.

These days, St Hugo continues grandpa Gramp’s traditions. Tasting experiences start at $15 (non-redeemable), elevating to $225 for a lunch-and-wine extravaganza prepared by executive chef Nik Tucker in St Hugo’s lofty glass-and-timber diving space. Book ahead.

Nuriootpa is a pragmatic service town, Tanunda is touristy, Lyndoch and Greenock are outliers… Zero-in on little Angaston (population 2,100) instead, our favourite Barossa town, with lovely old architecture and great cafés and pubs along its bendy main street. A few kilometres to the west is Saltram, a property established not long after William Salter jumped off the boat from Devonshire in 1844. Shiraz has been Saltram’s focus since day one, but at a tasting session here today you might get a look at an adventurous shiraz-tempranillo blend or a tawny. Or you can sign up for a vertical tasting flight, sampling single-vineyard shiraz from three different Saltram blocks ($60 per person, including a take-home bottle of wine per couple).

The glass-fronted restaurant here, Salters Kitchen, is a mod addition to the historic stone estate and is usually buzzing, serving generous wood-oven pizzas (try the lamb, olive, goat’s cheese and rosemary edition), plus shared platters and steaks. Book ahead for everything.

The shining star of the Eden Valley sub-region, just over the hill from Angaston in the eastern Barossa, is Henschke. The vineyards here have been producing grapes for more than 150 years – plenty of time for the Henschkes to figure out how to make a great red. And indeed, their Hill of Grace Shiraz – big, booming and velvety – is second only to Penfolds Grange on most people’s lists of vin rouge must-dos.

The Hill of Grace Experience ($150) is your chance to slip some across your lips, with tastings, a winery tour, and a look around the namesake Hill of Grace vineyard, with its chunky vines and cute stone chapel. Or book a visit to Henschke’s cellar door for a suite of less wallet-threatening tasting experiences, starting at $10 (waived if you buy a bottle). The cellar door itself is an old-meets-new fusion of stone, steel and stylin’ stools. And if you’re in Adelaide, don’t miss a top-flight meal at the Hill of Grace restaurant at the Adelaide Oval.

When Peter Lehmann passed away in 2013, the Australian wine world went into collective mourning. Lehmann was a fifth-generation Barossa winemaker – a much-loved figure across the valley, and across the nation. He’s often credited with saving the Barossa wine industry in the 1970s, when a grape glut was sending many growers to the wall. In a fit of altruism, Lehmann bought up the excess grapes, built a winery, made some wine and sold it, funnelling the profits back to the grateful growers.

With an epic redgum tasting bar, the cellar door here occupies an 1880s stone structure nooked into the banks of the North Para River. Book yourself in for a 30-minute group tasting ($10) or a one-hour premium session ($50). Afterwards, kick back on the rolling lawns, which regularly host ageing musos (Simple Minds, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Barnes et al) as part of the Day on the Green concert series. If Rod ain’t rockin’ (or even if he is), a bottle of Stonewell shiraz and a cheeseboard will do nicely.

The son of Barossa winemaking legend Peter Lehmann, David had some big shoes to fill, and he’s done so by doing things a little differently. The rustic cellar door at his winery, not far from the old man’s estate alongside the nearby North Para River, is a quirky, ramshackle affair – all wonky old timbers, corrugated iron and stone – with a little terrace studded with umbrellas and wine-barrel tasting tables. Sit and sip as your eyes tumble over the vine views, and you much into a tasting platter of good regional things (nuts, smallgoods, cheeses, breads, olives, oils and vinegars). You see? You don’t have to be a big, brassy Barossa Baron to nail this cellar door gig.

On the wine front, David casts his net beyond the Barossa proper, into the Eden Valley (semillon and riesling) and as far as the Adelaide Hills (chardonnay) – but shiraz is why everybody’s here (some things you just shouldn’t do differently). An excellent sticky (botrytis semillon) and an old tawny will round off your tasting afternoon.

On the outskirts of Angaston, Yalumba is Australia's oldest family-owned winery, harking back to 1849 when Brit brewer Sam Smith planted his first vines here. Smith took off to the Victorian gold rush in 1852, returning to Yalumba with a princely £300 in his pocket. Most of this bounty went towards building Yalumba’s amazing old stone buildings (including a vertically challenged chimney), which make the detour off the main road all the more rewarding.

As any Australian alive in the 1980s will tell you, Yalumba is a brand synonymous with the humble wine cask. Yalumba may have built a modern fortune at the budget end of the wine spectrum, but at the cellar door here you can broaden your understanding of their offerings with some exceptional Barossa reds. Tastings range from $10 to $100, the latter granting you a sniff at five vintages of the Caley, Yalumba’s top drop. Book ahead, or walk-ins are welcome. Winery tours range from one to four hours.

Whoa, this place is big! The turreted, château-like main building is a Barossa architectural icon, built in 1880 from bluestone quarried at nearby Bethany. It was South Australia’s second-largest building at the time (after a Port Adelaide wool store), and by 1892 was pumping out 200,000 gallons of vino a year. The Seppelt family (local wine royalty) bought the winery during WWI, but by 1998 it had become a crumbling ruin. Cue wandering South African winemaker John Geber, who happened to be cycling past and bought the place on spec.

But enough history. A couple of decades (and many millions) later, Château Tanunda is back in the game, bottling up affordable wines that deliver boundless Barossa single-vineyard authenticity. At the top of the tree, hundred-year-old vines (some of them 150!) contribute to the ‘Everest’ range of fine semillon, shiraz and grenache. Tours and tasting are predictably numerous: start your visit with an 'Old Vine Expressions Tasting Experience’ ($50), then head for the croquet lawns.

Similar to some of the other big-ticket Barossa wineries, the cellar door at Jacob’s Creek, one of Australia’s leading wine exporters, is less of a tasting booth, more of a lifestyle – the kind of place where you come to sip some wines, then stay all day.

If you’re in leisure mode (this is you, right?), have a coffee and a platter lunch in the café, sniff out some herbs in the kitchen garden, or spread a blanket by the vines and launch into a picnic hamper (you can keep the blanket!). Feeling more active? Send down a few aces on the tennis court, play table tennis, explore the bike tracks and native gardens, or wander along the banks of slow-flowing Jacob’s Creek itself.

Distractions and attractions are certainly myriad, but wine remains the main game here. Tastings are democratic and affordable, starting as low as $5 (non-redeemable). If you want to grab a bottle or two to go, ask about Jacob’s Creek’s adventurous ‘Limited Release’ range, featuring the likes of vermentino, gewürztraminer and fumé blanc, plus organic and biodynamic wines.