Before we get into the history, we acknowledge the Peramangk and Ngadjuri as the Traditional Owners of the land we farm, who cared for this place long before a vine was planted.
In the early 1800s the Barossa Valley was divided into numbered sections for settlers, released and labelled sequentially from 1 into the thousands. Vinya Vella sits on section 57, one of the earliest allocated. Vines were among the first crops planted in the district, and among the longest-lived of anything introduced at the time.
Land titles trace section 57 to a grant on 9 June 1854, from Governor Edward Henry Fox to George Friedrich Schmidt. Archival records we built up with the help of a historian show the site was under viticulture from 1860, making it one of the earliest vineyards planted in the district. George's son, Carl Samuel Schmidt, was born in 1853 and is listed in period records as a "Viticulturist," almost certainly following his father into the trade.
That settlement and viticultural history is well documented. The age of the vines currently standing is a separate question. In my expert opinion, and with a genuine interest in old vines from my PhD research, the existing vines are most consistent with an early-1900s planting, so until further archival work sharpens that estimate, I refer to them as circa 1900, or early 1900s, in the context of commercial vineyards that don't commonly live past 30 years, its still old.
What's not in question: there are only 23ha of Grenache vines older than 125 years left in Australia, all in the Barossa Valley. At Vinya Vella we have a old vines that under our care can grow older towards this milestone.
Vine Vale's deep, easily worked sand, flat topography, and proximity to both town and water made it productive land from the start and the concentration of old vine material here today is the evidence. Some blocks survived the industry's swing away from fortified wine toward table wine simply because grubbing them out was never worth the cost. Grenache, adaptable enough to suit both styles, is a large part of why it stayed in the ground.
*Figure 3. The Hundred of Moorooroo, 1875, with Vinya Vella highlighted. Inset: section 1, with an arrow to section 57.*
Grenache is a Jewel. Old Vine is a Rare Jewel.
Yalumba's Tricentenary vines, Cirillo, Small Fry, and Peter Schell's Dominion vineyard all sit within a few hundred metres of Vinya Vella in Vine Vale. That density of old vineyards in one small pocket says the site has held up through nearly 200 years of economic cycles, environmental pressure, and changing varietal fashion.
Grenache covers around 600ha of the Barossa Valley today, against roughly 7,700ha of Shiraz. That's most of why you've heard far more about one than the other.
Why Vine Age Matters
The short version of a much longer PhD thesis: as vines age, they get bigger. That larger woody structure acts as a buffer against stress and a reservoir for growth. Older vines have had more time to explore soil volume and settle into their site. A vineyard that survives 60 or 100 years has outlasted the influence of any one grower, what's left standing reflects site, variety, and time working together, not just management.
Vines can't move. Unlike animals, they can't relocate to escape stress, so they've evolved other ways to cope. One is plasticity which is the capacity to adjust behaviour beyond what's fixed in their genetics. A vine exposed to a stress once "remembers" it, and responds less severely the next time it's exposed to the same stress. This epigenetic adaptation is likely a key reason older vines, once they reach a certain age, weather seasonal variation and keep producing expressive, high-quality fruit when they're well managed.
