Sevenhill Cellars celebrates 175 years
News
Clare Valley’s first winery celebrates 175 years this month with its annual long lunch and the release of the 2021 Brother John May Reserve Shiraz, a wine that embodies craftsmanship and the Jesuit winemaker who inspired it.
Clare Valley’s first winery celebrates 175 years this month with its annual long lunch and the release of the 2021 Brother John May Reserve Shiraz, a wine that embodies craftsmanship and the Jesuit winemaker who inspired it.
When St Aloysius Church bell rings it reminds the nearby Sevenhill Cellars winemaking team of the Jesuit history that shaped. Every new vintage is blessed annually, a tradition that grew in popularity during the time of late Jesuit winemaker Br John May SJ AM.
Br John was the seventh Jesuit Winemaker at Sevenhill, a position he held from 1972 until his retirement from full-time work in 2003.
Sevenhill was founded by Fr Alois Kranewitter SJ, who arrived in South Australia in 1848 as chaplain to the Weikert group of Silesian migrants fleeing religious persecution in Europe.
“From the very beginning, this place has been shaped by courage, patience and hope,” said Superior of the Sevenhill Jesuit Mission Fr Brendan Kelly SJ. “Those were the words Fr Alois Kranewitter carried with him as he walked the valley in the early days of the mission, and they continue to guide us as we look to the future and the generations still to come.”
Sevenhill was named after the Seven Hills of Rome, intended as a centre of Catholic faith in the newly established colony. Over time, the Sevenhill mission expanded to include Saint Aloysius Church and Crypt and Aloysius College, which operated at various times as a boarding school, seminary, Jesuit novitiate and scholasticate, and Jesuit residence.
The first vines sourced from Bungaree Station, 20 kilometres north of Sevenhill, and collected in a wheelbarrow pushed by Br Joannes Schreiner SJ, who was the first of seven Jesuit Brother winemakers.
It was a time of vinous innovation. The original winery was designed as gravity-fed, with underground cellars to keep the precious liquid safe. Slate fermentation vats constructed using stone was quarried at nearby Mintaro; they are still in use today.
Initially, the wine production was sacramental wine for Catholic communities across South Australia. This too, is still made today and distributed globally. Sevenhill gradually expanded into table wine as demand and the vineyards grew.
Sevenhill continues as a working not-for-profit winery and a living Jesuit site, with Jesuit priests living and working on the property. They are the custodians of the Clare Valley’s oldest vineyard, a pre-1860 Shiraz vineyard that still produces quality fruit.
Brother John May SJ AM died on August 18 aged 92.
When Sevenhill’s Annual Long Lunch is held on Saturday 10 October, new chief winemaker Ben Marx will pair Sevenhill wines with a carefully curated menu by the region’s Watervale Hotel. Local artists will provide live background music.
“Every day at 10am the team gathers for ‘smoko’ (morning tea),” Ben says. “It’s a tradition John started and one we continue.”
