The 13 best Clare Valley wineries

Shut the Gate is quite possibly the Clare Valley’s most upbeat small winery. The old set-up occupied a historic duck-your-head cottage by the highway; the new one is set back from the road and is a less dangerous place to be if you’re over 5’10”. 

It’s an informal, amiable cellar door experience: owners Rasa Fabian and Richard Woods are always up for a chat. Ask them to talk you through their suite of emotionally charged labels (‘For Love’, ‘For Freedom’, ‘Miss Somebody’…) then hit the on-site providore for an impromptu DIY picnic outside. 

Set amidst rolling hillsides, Skillogalee is a truly lovely corner of the planet, just far enough from the highway to garner a sense of exclusivity. At 500 metres above sea level, it’s also possibly the highest winery in South Australia, working with low-yield, dry-grown vineyards to produce gorgeous sustainable wines.

Most people come here for lunch on the famous Skillogalee veranda, wrapping itself around an 1851 stone miner's cottage, which houses the cellar door. A long, laid-back lunch here, with the summer cicadas singing or the winter mists hanging like cobwebs in the vines, is a quintessentially South Australian experience. Look forward to adventurous renderings of SA ingredients (Port Lincoln sardines, Spencer Gulf prawns, Woodside chèvre) paired with the contents of Skillogalee’s best bottles. 

When Henry Pike clambered off the boat from Dorset onto the Port Adelaide docks in 1878, it’s unlikely he would have imagined his name (and attendant fish insignia) would be emblazoned across Clare Valley wine bottles 140-something years later. Pike headed for the Adelaide Hills and started brewing beer, then soft drinks. Then in 1984, his family bought 27 hectares in the Clare Valley’s Polish Hill River subregion and planted riesling vines. Beer re-entered the fray in 2014, with the launch of Pikes Beer Company. Quite the liquid history!

These days Pikes is a Clare Valley mainstay, offering 40-minute seated tastings of riesling and four wines of your choice in the contemporary stone-and steel cellar door (10.30am to 3.30pm); and/or beers in the adjacent tap room and beer garden (10am to 4pm), serving lunch daily. Elevate your culinary experience at Slate Restaurant (noon to 3pm Thursday to Sunday), an estimable Mod Oz eatery headed up by chef Tristran Steele. Book everything ahead. Grab a magnum of ‘The Merle’ reserve riesling on your way out.

Detour 15 minutes up and over the eastern ridge of the Clare Valley and down into Mintaro. Settled in 1848, this heritage-listed town (pronounced Min-tair-oh) is a real time-traveller: the well-preserved old stone cottages here, most of which feature slabs of local Mintaro slate in one form or another, look like they’ve been lifted straight out of Country Life magazine. 

Aside from the pub, the town’s food-and-drink mainstay is Reilly's, an endearing stone cellar door that’s as well-loved for its restaurant as its wines. Plucked from four old-vine vineyards around Watervale and Leasingham, most of Reillys grapes are dry grown (irrigated only by rain) – smaller fruits that are chock-full of flavour, not water. 

Reillys wines follow suit: fulsome semillon, grenache, shiraz, riesling (and others) that don’t skimp on intensity. Sip some at the tasting counter, order a gourmet platter, or book a seat for an indulgent long lunch, featuring as much that can be sourced from Reillys’ back garden as possible. If you’d rather not move too far afterwards, Reilly's also has a few heritage B&Bs out the back.

Before the Clare Valley Wine Region came into being, there was the Sevenhill Jesuit colony. In 1851 they signed a deal for 100 local acres, named it after the seven hills of Rome, and set to work building a church, shrine, crypt and college… and planting grape vines. Sevenhill’s first wines were produced in 1858 – and the Clare Valley Wine Region has never looked back.

Today, check your piety at the historic cellar door, where you can sip your way into five of Sevenhill’s best shiraz, grenache, merlot, riesling, pinot gris and/or cab sav bottles (tastings $10 to $20, redeemable with purchase).  There’s a free self-guided history tour, too, if you fancy a stroll.

Jeanneret is a seriously underrated little operator on the end of a skinny dirt road. You’ll be rewarded with contemporary cellar door style on a down-home scale, with a sunny deck, outdoor winter fireplace and some excellent wines from the clay and sandy loam soils just northwest of Clare. Sure, the riesling is terrific – look for the ‘Purist’ range, inspired by famous modern architect Le Corbusier (real name Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) – but the Jeanneret rosé the real scene-stealer. Order a (very affordably priced) bottle and a platter of edibles and settle into your afternoon.

Clare Valley Brewing Co is based at Jeanneret, too – a spirited, crafty producer. Taste the full range via a beer paddle on the deck. 

In the back streets of Watervale, a cute little stone village in the middle of the Clare Valley, Crabtree elevates the art of viticulture to obsessive heights. Terroir is a block-by-block consideration; the soils here shift from slightly alkaline red loam over limestone (good for riesling), to red loam over sandstone and ironstone (shiraz), to ‘Bay of Biscay’ clay (cabernet and grenache). Dry-grown and hand-picked, the resultant wines are true labours of love.

Crabtree’s riesling is a Clare Valley classic, and – unlike a lot of Australia’s drink-me-at-the-barbie-this-arvo whites – can be stashed away for a decade and emerge on the other side with grace and maturity. The challenge is to wait that long…

A visit to this architecturally appealing winery is almost mandatory, given that the town of Clare itself is a little thin on street appeal. The old stone building is actually a former distillery; check out the amazing old copper still near Mr Mick Kitchen, a tapas-style restaurant that’s hard to beat for lunch. Order up a bunch of plates to share (confit duck salad; spinach-stuffed mushrooms; braised beef brisket with corn, jalapeño and lime) and a bottle of tempranillo, or hand over the decision-making to the kitchen and let the chef feed you (great value at $44/64 without/with pared wines). 

Most Clare Valley wineries are cloistered within the valley itself, with snug, protected outlooks – but Pauletts serves up a sweeping vista northeast over the hillsides. 

Inside, look forward to some excellent whites, including Neil Paulett’s outstanding riesling, which also comes in sparkling and sticky disguises. After sipping a few, head into the Bush DeVine restaurant next door (see ‘view’, above) and settle in for a long lunch from super-chef Thomas Erkelenz ($70 for a five-course degustation; $44 for a ‘let us feed you’ three-plate meal). The emphasis here is on local native ingredients, many of which are plucked from the adjacent bush-tucker garden. 

Sizeable O’Leary Walker has the confidence of a long-established winery, and one would suspect that the stone-and-glass cellar door here is the result of decades of toil. But David O'Leary and Nick Walker only joined forces in 2000, and their cellar door is barely a decade old; they’ve come a long way in the blink of a vintage. 

Clare Valley shiraz and riesling are Dave and Nick’s mainstays, grown in their Watervale and Leasingham vineyards – although they also venture into the Adelaide Hills to source cool-climate sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir. Afterwards, order a gourmet grazing or cheese platter and cast an eye across sweeping vineyard views, or head into the restaurant for a lazy lunch.

Across eight vineyards – each with its own soil, altitude, rainfall, aspect and diurnal temperature range – Kilikanoon paints a broad picture of what Clare Valley wines are all about. Playful experimentation is the name of the game – an attitude best expressed in Kilikanoon’s small-batch ‘Kx’ wines, which dare to be different (the montepulciano is a knockout).

But if you’re going to experiment, you should probably start with a stable, predictable base. Kilikanoon has spent the last quarter-century establishing this base – a cellar full of versatile and affordable riseling, shiraz, grenache and rosé bottles. If your wallet can handle the heat, keep an eye out for excellent ‘museum release’ bottles of shiraz and grenache – dark and broody offerings from decades past.

Claymore puts a rock ‘n’ roll spin on the local wine scene, which at times can seem a little fusty and quaint. Looking down the wine list here is like flipping through a classic-rock record collection: Dark Side of the Moon shiraz; Bittersweet Symphony cabernet sauvignon; Voodoo Child chardonnay; Whole Lotta Love rosé; Joshua Tree riesling…

Not being one to let traditions and formalities get in the way of expressing his passions, owner Anura Nitchingham's lifelong adoration of the Liverpool Football Club is also front and centre here, with his dedicated ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ range of reds and whites, referencing Liverpool’s tear-jerking anthem.

Not far north of Auburn’s heritage main street, with its rambling flower gardens and honey-coloured stone cottages, Taylors is one of the Clare Valley’s biggest operators. But in Taylors’ case, big volume and big distribution haven’t translated into any tailing-off in wine quality. If you can excuse the questionable castle-style architecture, the cellar door experience here is down-to-earth and personable. The range of wines produced here is impressive, from splash-it-around backyard barbecue blends to exquisite hand-crafted reds that nudge $300 per bottle.