We moved to the Barossa in 2018. Being new to a place, with no family and knowing very few people, it certainly felt lonely at times. Driven by a strong passion for wine and a desire to get involved and immerse ourselves in all things Barossa, we looked for any opportunity we could find. Some worked out for the best, and some did not!
 

For the 2019 vintage, I was lucky enough to be offered two vintage positions. One was at Penfolds. The other at what i considered a cool little winery. Midway through vintage, I was asked, “Are you going to make some wine for yourself?”

My response was, “Hell yeah, if that's OK?” I didn't even know I was allowed to!

The next step was finding some fruit. In 2019, grapes were near impossible to get. We searched high and low, but with our limited contacts, it seemed there was nothing available. A few days later, while I was on the forklift, I received a call from a new friend.

“There's a vineyard in Vine Vale and there is still a bit of fruit out there. Come and have a look if you like.”

In the end, there was indeed “just a bit of fruit out there.”

With the kids, we picked a mere 87kg of old-vine Shiraz and 320kg of Chardonnay to create our first wines.

By the following vintage, we had purchased our Flaxman Valley property and planted our new Truffière. We lined a shed with insulation, installed cooling for a barrel room and thanks largely to Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace, began assembling a little “winemaking starter kit” consisting of picking bins, stainless-steel tanks, two small basket presses, barrel racks and whatever else we could find.
 

For the 2020 vintage, we resorted to posting ads on Gumtree:

“Barossa Shiraz Wanted.” We put “Grapes Wanted” signs up in the local pub and supermarkets. We cold-called growers. We asked people in the street who we happened to strike up conversations with. Somehow, it worked.

Those methods yielded five lovely little parcels of Shiraz, which went on to create six barriques of wine.

That wine became our first release of Dero in 2020.
 

Being in a new town and starting most relationships from scratch, the feeling at times really was that of being a “Nobody.”

And the fact that I am almost always doing something on the farm and generally look pretty untidy probably didn't help.

So, I am a self-confessed Dero. And that's where Phase Three Wines began.