Approximately half of our vineyards are in the rolling hills of Blewitt Springs, an elevated area on the eastern boundary of McLaren Vale which grades into the base of the Adelaide hills. It has deep sandy soils, a high rainfall and summer temperatures that are lower than those in the floor of the Vale. We grow Chardonnay, Viognier and Pinot Gris and the red varieties Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache on this premium site. These wines carry the designation Possums Vineyard.

Vineyards at Blewitt Springs		Vineyard at Willunga

Our Willunga vineyards are located on the coastal plain where the soils are heavy textured brown earths and the vines are exposed to strong maritime influences. The Shiraz here ripens some two weeks early. Our two vineyards have quite different soil, rainfall, aspect and elevation which give rise to differing wine styles.

Having had formal training in the sciences and having spent many years as a research worker it was inevitable that the guiding philosophy adopted in our vineyards is science based. None-the-less the grape vine is a crop that has been utilized by man for thousands of years and around which much traditional knowledge has been accumulated. Twenty first century vineyard activities must therefore be based on a judicious blend of new research findings combined with well established traditional practices. Also it is essential to bear in mind that the grapevine is a long lived perennial plant that requires to be grown in a sustainable environment.

In the high labour cost environment of Australia it is essential to mechanise as many vineyard operations as possible to contain costs and tp produce quality grapes. At Possums we mechanically harvest our grape vines and picking at night enables us to bring the grapes into the winery in a pre-chilled condition.  Many of the preliminary steps of pruning are now mechanised using trimming and hedging machines. We plant annual crops such as oats and rye in the vine rows to improve the organic matter status of our vineyard soils, and use side- throw mowing machines to both cut up the vine-prunings and the foliage from the annual crops.  We mainly use the traditional fungicides of sulphur and copper to control fungal diseases and these are all applied with specialised spraying vineyard machines .

Trimming Machine	Picking Machine	Spraying Machine

Our wine making philosophy is based on producing  Estate Wines as  all our wines are produced from grapes grown on own vineyards. Because we grow a number of different grape varieties and have a range of microclimates with in our vineyards we are able to produce a range of different and interesting wines.

Our winemaking approach is based on the adage “that the wine cannot be better than the grape”. Wine quality is affected by many factors but perhaps the most important is picking time. We carefully monitor all our blocks to determine grape maturity measuring sugar and acid levels but also tasting the berries for flavour maturity.    

We have a senior experienced winemaker and a winery with sufficient fermentation and storage capacity to enable us to process the annual grape production of  our vineyards. Our wine making  facilities also include lots of refrigeration to pre-cool the musts and ferments plus an air-conditioned bottle and barrel store that enables us to closely control of the quality of our wines. We believe we are able to express in the wines the inherent qualities of our range of Mclaren Vale grown grapes .

Possums Winery