about

Since 1979, family owned Maxwell Wines, with its forty acre estate vineyard, has built a reputation for producing hand made, rich and robust reds that combine exquisite fruit quality with structure and finesse.   The signature Lime Cave Cabernet and Ellen Street Shiraz reds are acclaimed for their cellaring potential and purity of expression.   The white wines achieve freshness and superb varietal character via slow, cool ferments that capture the delicacies of the grapes.   At Maxwell's, we believe "Life's too short to drink bad wine".

The family is also famous for its range of Maxwell Meads, being the most significant producer in the southern hemisphere of this time-honoured, delicious and golden fermented honey.   As mead is one of the oldest fermented drinks known to mankind, the late Ken Maxwell was inspired to research and produce what are now highly acclaimed as the benchmark of meads in the world.   The Maxwell Meads’ purity of flavour is testament to almost 50 years of family research and development.

There has always been a love of wine and the vine in the Maxwell lineage.   William James Maxwell, a noted Scottish sculptor, came to Australia in 1875 to do some artistic work on a building in Melbourne, Victoria.   However, the cold damp climate of this city played on his health, so he moved three years later to the much more temperate climate of Adelaide, South Australia.   A few miles south of the city at Edwardstown, he built a mock castle called "Woodlands Park", and with the vines on the property made some very acceptable reds that he accumulated in the cellars of his unique home.  His son John, with the thought of farming in his mind, acquired a property in the rich valley of McLaren Vale, 40 kilometres south of Adelaide.   Here he and his sons ran a mixed farm of fruit, dairy, and of course, vines.

After the war ended in 1945, John’s youngest son Ken took over the management of the family property.   His interest in winemaking also led to a period of employment with Hardys at the historic Tintara Winery in the heart of McLaren Vale.   His passion for food and wine further led to the involvement in a revolutionary restaurant, called The Barn, of which he was the first manager.

In 1970, Ken Maxwell started a small self-contained winery on the eastern edge of his property, and named it Daringa Cellars.   Here he and wife Margaret made and sold very high quality red and white wine.   In addition, they began to sell an ancient drink, Mead, made from fermented honey.   In 1979, Ken sold Daringa to the Dennis family and with Margaret and son Mark, started a new venture, an 80 tonne winery called, appropriately, Maxwell Wines.   Within 3 years, Mark took over the day-to-day management and winemaking of the business, with the sound advice from Ken ever present.

the winery

As the popularity of Maxwell Wines and Meads grew through the 1990’s, Mark Maxwell realised that more space was needed.   He then undertook the mammoth task of relocating the family winery to a site amongst vineyards he had owned since the early 1980s.   Situated in the original heart of McLaren Vale, just north of the main street on gently rolling hills, this was the perfect place for a new winery to be built into the south-facing limestone hill, overlooking the township.

Spanning three main levels, the winery was designed to take advantage of gravity flow throughout the winemaking process, contributing to the outstanding quality of the wines.   Constructed from limestone and old solid timber, the design also allows visitors the opportunity to view a ‘working winery’ while sampling the wines and taking in the magnificent views from the cellar door.

Indeed from the cellar door one can see the five unique open fermenters that Mark’s father Ken built.   Used for fermenting red grapes, the idea behind the construction of these was to recreate the gentle hand-plunging methods of years gone by.   Taking a relatively long seven to ten days to ferment a parcel of fruit to dryness, these fermenters provide a soft method of extraction of colour, tannin and flavour from the skins and seeds to the fermenting juice.   Holding only two tonnes of fruit each, it allows the winemakers the chance to focus on premium small-batch vinification techniques, and treat each parcel of fruit that enters the winery during vintage individually.

Importantly, a special barrel cellar was also designed into the new winery.   Hidden away at one end of the winery, the cellar was cut into solid limestone.   With a natural earthen floor and impressive limestone walls, the cellar creates an ideal environment of constant temperature and humidity, providing a perfect place to mature some of Maxwell’s best wines in barrel.

With this stunning new facility, the annual crush of grapes was steadily increased to around 400 tonnes.   Mark also expanded the range of wines to include a Verdelho and, as it came into bearing, some Viognier.   Outside of the busy vintage time, the Maxwell Mead continued to be made, with the family now recognised as the most significant (and largest) producer of this rare beverage in the southern hemisphere.   Hence the winery actually has the dual function of being a meadery as well!

the vineyards

Our estate vineyards are some of the most favourably positioned in the McLaren Vale district.  They are positioned on the southern slope and crest of Lumb’s Hill, amongst gently rolling hills just one mile north of the McLaren Vale township’s Main Street.   Situated on solid limestone, and in such proximity to the moderating effects of the Gulf of St Vincent, the conditions in the vineyards are ideal and somewhat blessed for producing small quantities of intensely flavoured grapes.

The oldest vines on the property were planted in 1953, directly below where the Winery now stands.   Known within the Winery as the “Max flat block”, these Shiraz vines always produce some of the best fruit on the estate, providing the base for the Ellen Street Shiraz.   This block consists of alluvial red-brown clay over limestone, and is typically one of the earliest ripening Shiraz blocks in the region.

One notable vineyard on the estate sits above and behind the Winery atop the crest of Lumb’s Hill.   Identified as a 1972 planting of the “Reynella Selection Cabernet”, it originates from vines brought into South Australia by noted wine industry pioneer John Reynell over 150 years ago.   Back in the mid-1800s, John Reynell was planting some of the earliest vineyards in South Australia, in an area just north of McLaren Vale.   Having collected vine cuttings in South Africa on his way from England, he found that particular vines on his property kept producing noticeably more flavoursome berries, so he undertook a process of selection to create a vineyard of cuttings from only those vines that bore superior fruit.   Naturally these Cabernet vines became known as the “Reynella Selection”, and have quite simply been shown to be perfectly suited to the McLaren Vale climate for well over a century.   Our cuttings were taken directly from this Reynella vineyard, and planted over 3 decades ago in the shallow topsoil over solid limestone at the crest of the Maxwell estate.   It is this fruit that makes the Maxwell Lime Cave Cabernet acclaimed worldwide.

For more information on the world-renowned McLaren Vale wine region, please visit www.mclarenvale.info.