20 | T H E B A R O SSA MA G
Like the wines that bear his name,
Adrian Hoffmann has matured into
a super-premium Barossa product.
Considered one of the region’s
most highly regarded vignerons,
selling to 27 wine companies,
Adrian’s watershed moment
came 20 years ago when he was
crowned the inaugural Barossa
Young Ambassador.
An ingenuous 23-year-old at the
time, the experience crystallised
his understanding of the wine
landscape and what it meant to
be custodian of the Barossa’s wine
heritage as a sixth generation
landholder at Ebenezer.
“The programme turned me from
someone who just grew grapes into
someone who was involved in the
wine tourism industry – it showed
me the tapestry of the Barossa,”
Adrian says.
“Until then I didn’t know much
about what happened behind the
scenes – it was a learning curve in
how our food culture, wine culture
and tourism are intertwined.
“I hadn’t looked at it from that
perspective before.”
At the time, the transition from
the much-loved Vintage Queen
tradition to the Young Ambassador
initiative was seen by some as
controversial, but Adrian says it
brought “substance” to the Barossa
Vintage Festival programme.
And while it was the making
of Adrian, he also brought
something unique to the table
with his unabashed – and often
unapologetic – beliefs.
“I’m definitely not handy with
penmanship but I have a bit of the
gift of the gab, and that does take
you a long way,” he laughs.
“I can be a bit rough and a bit
brash, but what you see is what
you get.
rest of the world, and New
World versus Old World,” he says.
“The authenticity of what I was
delivering – I think that’s what
they fell in love with.
"I talked about what I do every day,
living and breathing this industry,
and I genuinely believe we are the
luckiest people in the world to live
where we do.
“I’ve had opportunity and
travelled the world, but there
really is no place like home.”
Adrian’s prize, which included a
ticket to the London Wine Trade
Fair, revealed to him that the
Barossa wine industry was in fact
“much larger than the Barossa”.
“I realised it wasn’t McLaren Vale
versus the Barossa, or SA versus
Victoria; it’s Australia versus the
“It changed my perspective of
what the industry should be and
I saw there were so many more
opportunities out there than the
ones I had been seeking.
“I was speaking the language a
lot of growers speak now – I was
10 to 15 years ahead of my time
because of the opportunities the
programme gave me.”
On the back of the experience,
Adrian set about reinventing
his family’s sixth generation
enterprise, which has been
continuously farmed since 1857.
He expanded the Dimchurch
Vineyard landholdings to 135
hectares and grew his customer
base from four wine companies
in 1999 to over 30 in 2017.
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8563 3973
Shop 3/56 Murray Street, Tanunda