Home | The House of Seppelt | Deep in the Drives

The Voyage of Discovery required a Journey to the centre of the Earth.

"The Drives" beneath the Great Western winery are the legacy of the pioneering Australian gold-miners. Excavated in the 1800's from de-composed granite, this 3 km underground labyrinth of tunnels houses an impressive collection of wines for the House of Seppelt. It is here in the vaults beneath the winery that our award winning sparkling wines rest and develop.

Back at the end of the 1800s, a revolutionary thing happened in the middle of Victoria….and it wasn't the Eureka Stockade. It was the invention of the sparkling red and it happened at Great Western. Like the freestyle swimming stroke or the invention of Velcro, it all seems fairly obvious afterwards. But imagine describing Velcro to someone who'd never seen it or Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz to someone who'd never tasted it.  Earlier this century you wouldn't have had to describe it. It was popular. But 100 years after its invention, sparkling red had fallen out of favour and was all but extinct. Legends about the mythical wine abounded, but getting a bottle was impossible.

One day Seppelt's chief winemaker at Great Western, Ian (Macka) Mackenzie, was wandering through the tunnels tasting the old treasures. He came upon some examples of old Seppelt Show Sparkling reds and popped the corks. These particular bottles, by all accounts, tasted impossibly wonderful.

Inspired, Macka "borrowed" some of the finest Great Western Shiraz he could get his hands on and the Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz was reborn. Now it is no longer threatened with extinction, and numerous fizzy reds aspire to be as good as Seppelt Original Sparkling Shiraz. None, as yet, come close. 

back to The House of Seppelt  | back to top