Macclesfield · Adelaide Hills
The vineyard
Named for an ox-bow bend in the Angas River, planted by John and Margaret Struik in 1997. Estate fruit only. Always.
The place
A cool bend in the Angas.
Forty minutes from Adelaide, at about 500 metres. Cool-climate Adelaide Hills, with a pocket of microclimates along the river valley that make this site its own.
The Angas cuts through the middle of the property. Cabernet Sauvignon on one bank, Shiraz on the other. From the hilltops the view runs south toward the ocean, Lakes Albert and Alexandrina, and the Coorong.
Wild blackberry, raspberry and gorse still fringe the boundary, a reminder this was always rough, fertile country before it was vineyard again.
A bit of history
One of Australia’s earliest wine districts, then dairy, then vines again.
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1840
Macclesfield settled
Sir Samuel Davenport surveys the district. Within a few years the Hills are in the business of wine.
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1842-44
First vines & a pub
Davenport plants the district’s first vineyard and opens The Three Brothers Arms (still standing). By 1844 fortified ports are leaving for Queen Victoria’s court, Macclesfield claims a place among Australia’s earliest wine areas.
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1904
Vines give way
Roughly 500 acres of plantings are largely pulled. Dairy herds and orchards take over, milk and fruit, not wine.
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1996-97
Replanting returns
The soil and microclimate are recognised again. John and Margaret Struik plant Bendbrook in 1997 on the ox-bow bend that gives the estate its name, at the same moment neighbouring Longview goes into the ground across the road.
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Today
Estate only
Small production. Hand-picked fruit. French oak where it belongs. Floods every four or five years still make life interesting when the Angas rises through the middle of the block.
Terroir
Granite, schist, quartzite, and a river that won’t stay quiet.
Macclesfield’s soils are granitic micaceous schist with quartzite: well-drained sandy loams of moderate fertility. Ideal for keeping Shiraz vigour in check and building pepper, spice and fine-grained tannin.
Premium Bendbrook reds run deep cardinal in the glass, mulberry, blackberry, earthy chocolate, controlled oak. Goat Track Shiraz takes its name from a steep, rock-infested slope that really does look like a goat track.
Homestead
The old postmaster’s house, part of the Bendbrook story.
Bendbrook’s homestead began as the postmaster’s residence. Restored in classic early Australian farmhouse style, it remains the Struik family homestead.
From the cellar
Can the Adelaide Hills produce world-class reds?
Goat Track and the Cabernet parcels, small yields, estate fruit only, have been Bendbrook’s answer, from Macclesfield tables to restaurants interstate.