Turkey Flat Vineyards: What to Know Before You Visit

TL;DR: Turkey Flat is a Tanunda cellar door built around shiraz vines planted in 1847 that still produce fruit today. Tastings are $10 for five current release wines, the platter menu runs daily until 4pm, and the cellar door is open 11am to 5pm every day at 67 Bethany Road.

The shiraz vines at Turkey Flat went into the ground in 1847. They’re still there, and they’re still picked.

That’s not a marketing line about heritage. It’s a fact about a specific block of dirt in Tanunda that has been growing the same vines through two world wars, a depression, a government scheme that paid growers to rip old vineyards out, and a century and a half of people deciding what Australian wine should taste like. The wine made from those vines is called Ancestor Shiraz, and you can taste the range that sits underneath it for ten dollars.

Here’s what to know before you visit.

The history behind the vines

Johann Frederick August Fiedler planted the first vines on the property in 1847, part of the early German settlement of the Barossa around Bethany and Tanunda.

The Schulz family took over in the 1860s and ran the site as a mixed operation for more than a century, growing grapes and selling meat from a butcher’s shop on the same block. For most of that time the fruit went to other winemakers rather than into a Turkey Flat label.

The property survived the vine pull scheme of the 1980s, when growers across South Australia were paid to remove old vineyards that were considered commercially obsolete. A lot of old-vine Barossa shiraz disappeared in those years. Turkey Flat’s didn’t. The first vintage released under the Turkey Flat name came in 1990, which makes the brand younger than most of the vines it’s made from.

What the cellar door experience involves

The cellar door is in the restored bluestone building that was the Schulz family butcher shop. It’s small, cool, and set among the vineyards rather than out on the main road.

The standard tasting is a Wine Flight: five current release wines, guided, for $10 per person. It runs about 45 minutes, though nobody will move you along if you want to sit longer.

It’s an unusually relaxed cellar door for the Barossa. There are lawn games outside, kids are welcome, and well-behaved dogs on leads are fine. If you’ve spent the morning at more formal tasting rooms, this is a good place to slow the pace down.

For groups of nine or more, bookings are essential.

Food at the cellar door

Turkey Flat serves a platter-style menu designed for sharing, available daily until 4pm. It’s built to go with a glass rather than to be a sit-down lunch, so think of local produce, cheese and charcuterie rather than a full restaurant service.

One thing to know: no BYO food or alcohol. If you were planning to bring a picnic and buy a bottle, that won’t work here.

The wines worth trying

• Ancestor Shiraz, the flagship, made from the original 1847 plantings. Not always available, and priced accordingly.
• Turkey Flat Shiraz, the estate shiraz, and the clearest expression of what the site does.
• Grenache, old-vine Barossa grenache, lighter and more perfumed than the shiraz, and increasingly the reason people make the trip.
• Rosé, the wine Turkey Flat is arguably best known for outside the Barossa. Dry, savoury, and a long way from sweet pink wine.

Practical visiting info

Fitting it into a Barossa day

The part that catches people out doing this solo isn’t finding Turkey Flat. It’s everything around it.

Tasting rooms close at 4pm or 5pm. The food service at most of them stops earlier than that. You’ve got four or five cellar doors you want to see, they’re 15 to 25 minutes apart, and someone in the car has to stay sober. Work backwards from a 5pm close and the maths gets tight fast, which is how people end up rushing the last two stops or skipping lunch.

Turkey Flat is a scheduled stop on our Wine and Food Lover’s Barossa Valley Tour, sequenced against the other cellar doors and the lunch stop so the day actually works. Everyone in the group gets to taste, and nobody’s watching the clock.

Frequently Asked Questions