Dennis and Carolyn Rohrlach, along with their son Matthew, grow our Rohrlach Vineyard Shiraz at Williamstown, Barossa Valley.
Dennis: I'm second-generation here. This particular area didn't have any vines on it at all, it was just an apple and pear orchard. When my dad bought the place in 1972, they mostly ran sheep here and had the orchard. We kept that going for five to eight years, something like that.
I left school at the age of 15. I wasn't bright at school – I was doing OK but maths gave me the shits. So I thought I'd just go and work at home like a couple of me other brothers did.
It was when I was in partnership with one of me brothers that we boomed ahead with planting and different varieties. We had 20 acres of old Shiraz on an adjoining property we bought, which we kept going for quite a while until the red grapes weren't wanted no more.
They were paying us peanuts for it, so we said: ‘We can't make a living like that, so out with them.’ Later that very same year, Penfolds said: 'We'd like to take all your old Shiraz.' Ahh ... they were still in a heap, not burnt yet. Had we known, we certainly wouldn't have pulled them out. They would have been 100 years old or more.
That first year Dad bought the place, in 1972, we planted the first block of Shiraz [which goes to CRFT Wines]. We call that the Shearing Shed Block and it’s the oldest vines on the place.
And then we kept planting what we could as the years went on. It wasn't cheap to set up a vineyard each year. Well, it still isn't. I did take casual work on to help me. I had to run bees too, so I was a bit flat out. The kids had to come out in the vineyard with me, little tackers, with their coats on.
Matthew: I just remember being cold during the wintertime.
D: I never did any sports or nothing, it was always just work. That's probably why we are where we are. We didn't do a lot outside of work.
We’ve got about 20 hectares under vineyard now. The soil varies a lot. We’ve got a lot of red clay, there’s slate in some areas. The vines seem to do quite well in that, it holds moisture more. The roots can get down in the cracks of the slate, underneath the topsoil.
And there's a whole lot of mica through the place. There's a couple stones on the back lawn that I've brought in, they're completely covered with little mica specs – fool's gold. Gold and copper have been found in this area. There is an old copper mine on the place, very close to the boundary.
Water supply’s not real brilliant and you've got to stretch it pretty well. We only supplement irrigate here. We have a bore here but it's not great in terms of the amount of water that comes out. I don't want to deplete the bore completely and have nothing down the track.
But these days, I’m only a workman here. Matthew’s taking it over and I just give him a hand. It’s a two-man job sometimes.
M: I did my apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic and then I worked away for a lot of years in the mine and gas fields. I've got young kids so I wanted something closer to home that I could live off, so this is ideal. We live just down the road.
I’ve probably been out here three years full-time. I only knew bits and pieces from growing up with it. I used to do a lot of tractor driving when I was a kid, harvesting at 3 o'clock in the morning and going to school the next day.
There's a lot of information to take in and it's only through experience that you get it – I have to ask Dad for advice all the time. I’m lucky to have him for that.