We live, work and play on our certified organic ‘Arranmore’ property, on Kaurna and Peramangk Country here at Carey Gully. The 12-acre property has a rich history, with the original stone cottage we live in dating back to 1859.

The property was a lush market garden throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, and we often find relics from that era. Our Tasting Room and winery was once a 1900s shearing shed and stables — if you know where to look, you can still see marks where horses chewed the beams.

The first Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes were planted here in 1994. Today, five acres are under vineyard – we now grow Grüner Veltliner in addition to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Since 2019, the entire Arranmore property, including our vineyards and winery, have been fully NASAA Certified Organic.

We experience a ‘triple-whammy’ with cold here at Arranmore. Because of our Adelaide Hills altitude, Carey Gully is among the coldest and wettest places in SA. Our east-facing slope only gets morning to early afternoon sun, making it colder still.

And then we get a constant breeze draining from the Mount Lofty ranges through our property on its way to Onkaparinga. It’s like turning on the air conditioning — at night. At times, Arranmore can be 7 to 10 degrees colder here than in nearby Adelaide. Brrr.

Our soil is pretty special, too, being largely clay. It holds water well, but is dense and oxygen-poor, which means the vines struggle. This promotes lower yields of high-quality.

All that makes for prime grape-growing country, especially for Chardonnay and Grüner Veltliner. The cold nights and warm days of summer extend our ripening period, slowing it all down and allowing time for flavours to develop and intensify, while retaining high levels of natural acidity.

A detailed look at Arranmore’s history

A big thanks to former Arranmore owner John Venus for his work researching the property’s history, which informs the information below.

indigenous history

Our property is situated on the traditional lands of the Kaurna and Peramangk people, who cared for this country for thousands of years prior to white colonisation. Sadly, we know very little about their life here in the Adelaide Hills, as the Peramangk people almost entirely disappeared after European colonisation in the mid-1800s.

the naming of carey gully

Carey Gully is named after Paddy Carey, a timber splitter who lived in the area in the early 1800s, in a makeshift hut constructed of “sheets of bark propped in tent-shaped fashion against the bending stem of a sapling” (Adelaide Register, March 1893).

Once considered a ‘waste land’…

In May 1851, Richard Cook purchased this land for 56 pounds, 1 shilling — it was then 56 acres in size and was listed as “waste land”. Cook was an English labourer, who came to Adelaide by ship in 1849, along with his wife and two children.

Then a market garden…

Some 25 years later, in 1876, a portion of the original block was sold to Robert Jarrett (senior), a gardener who had also emigrated to Adelaide from England. Jarrett worked the land with his sons, William and Albert.

After Jarrett’s death, Albert Jarrett sold the property in 1913 to three relatives — brothers Eric Frank Jarrett, Robert Hector Ross Jarrett and Ross Murray Jarret, as tenants in common. These three brothers found a bountiful harvest at Arranmore, farming acres of vegetables, rhubarb, cherries, plums and other fruit.

We still occasionally find giant Clydesdale horseshoes on the property, likely from this era. And, if you know where to look in our Tasting Room, you can see marks where the horses chewed the beams back when it was still a stable.

the historic homestead

What is today our home began as a two-room stone hut and garden, built some time around 1859. That section of the house has no specific foundations, but is built of stones likely gleaned from the land as it was worked. Original handmade glass panes remain in the two casement windows.

In the early 1900s, the Jarrett brothers added a further two rooms on the northern side of the original dwelling, and another room along the full length of the western wall.

Arranmore briefly fell into disrepair

When the Jarrett brothers retired, a 12-acre portion of the land was sold to Austin and Meredith Gibson in June 1971. This is the block that represents ‘Arranmore’ today.

A decade later, in 1982, Allan Hudson bought Arranmore. Unfortunately, the property languished and largely fell into disrepair, as an essay by John Venus shows:

“The house garden, once extensive, was non-existent. Sheep grazed to the doors of the house. On one occasion, charging its reflection in the glass, a ram actually found itself in the sitting room, to the great surprise of Mr Husdon, who was sleeping there.”

Vines, cottage gardens & a new future

Since the 1980s, Arranmore has had several more owners. We’re especially grateful to John Venus, who planted the first Pinot Noir (D5V12 clone) and Chardonnay vineyards in 1994. And to Meredith Venus, who planted the extensive cottage gardens that still flourish today.

It was John who changed the property’s original ‘Arran’ name to ‘Arranmore’. We think it fits perfectly.

We began renting the property in December 2014, before purchasing Arranmore in March 2016. We immediately began conversion to organic farming, and achieved full NASAA Certified Organic status in February 2019.

We removed the blackberry-riddled cattle yards where our Tasting Room terrace now sits, and gave the historic old stables a major facelift to create a winery and tasting room, which opened in August 2017.

Our intention at Arranmore has always been to provide a ‘vine to glass’ experience — allowing you to visit the vineyard and see how our grapes are grown, peek through the window into our working winery, then step into our Tasting Room (which doubles as a barrel hall!) to taste the end product.

Experience the taste of Arranmore

All CRFT Arranmore label wines produced from the 2019 vintage onwards are fully NASAA Certified Organic (look for the logo on our labels), while the 2016, 2017 and 2018 vintages were made while our property was in conversion to organics.