From Joseph Seppelt's experiment, son Benno grows Barossa Valley winery to be the largest in Australia by 1900
The Seppelt family members – Joseph and his wife Charlotte (at left) and Benno and his wife Sophie (at right) – who built from 1851 what became Seppettsfield, Australia's largest winery, and a prime tourist attraction of South Australia's Barossa Valley into the 21st Century.
Family images courtesy Seppeltsfield
Joseph Ernest Seppelt, a tobacco, snuff and liqueur merchant, emigrated from Prussia to South Australia in 1849 with his wife (Johanna) Charlotte, children Benno, Hugo and Ottilie, 13 families from their neighbourhood and a group of young men who'd worked in the Seppelt factory.
Born in 1813 at Wustewaltersdorf, Lower Silesia, Seppelt gained a liberal education in music and the arts, before touring German regions and Italy where he learned the commercial and technical aspects of tobacco, snuff and liqueur production to head the family business. When the business declined in 1840s turmoil, he decided to emigrate to Australia.
Through a London agent, Seppelt had bought land in Adelaide but soon sold it when he found tobacco wouldn't grow there; theb moved to the early German migrant's settlement of Klemzig, north of Aelaide. Naturalised as a British citizen in 1851, Seppelt he bought 158 acres the next year near Greenock in the Barossa Valley and named it Seppeltsfield.
After another unsuccessful attempt to grow tobacco, Seppelt did produce wheat and sold it at high prices due to demand during the 1850s Victoria gold rush. Seppelt also planted corn, wheat and a small vineyard. Knowing liqueurs from his merchant days, Seppelt saw potential for wine production. Family tradition is that he made his first wine in his wife's dairy and in 1867 built the first section of a wine cellar using pisè construction.
The wine business expanded rapidly selling mostly along the River Murray where it was transported by paddle steamer. Early price lists and labels also showed his products as "J.E. Seppelt, manufacturer of cordials, liqueurs, bitters, syrups, etc." By 1967, he had a full-scale winery with entries at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition from 1866. Joseph Sepplet died suddenly of delirium tremens in 1868, with his wife following two years later.
Eldest son Oscar Benno Pedro Seppelt, at 21, inherited a 55% majority share and bought out his younger siblings. He married Sophie Schroeder iin 1970. By 1875 he had an estate of 560 acres and had enlarged the cellars. he built a new distillery largely of his own design in 1877. He had a flair for invention and his wine-testing laboratory was unusual if not unique in his day. He kept pigs, fed on grape skins, and cured bacon which fetched good prices. He also bred sheep which grazed in the vineyards in the autumn and in 1883 won a silver cup for a champion merino ram.
In 1878, when the stone Seppeltsfield port store was completed, Benno Seppelt selected a puncheon – 500-litre barrel – of his finest port wine from that vintage and laid it in the new storage maturation cellar. This barrel was to sit for a minimum 100 years in the one spot and released as Seppeltsfield 100-year-old Para Tawny Port.
In evidence to a select committee on vegetable products in 1887, he wanted a government-guaranteed company to buy up young wines, mature them and export only good quality products ensuring their continuation of their high repute on the London market. That year Seppelt grew only about one third of his 200,000 gallon (909,218 litres) output, the remainder being bought from surrounding vineyards. He won the 50-guinea prize offered by the London merchant P. B. Burgoyne at the Adelaide Jubilee Exhibition for the best claret-type wine and received a contract for 2,500 gallons (11,365 litres).
By 1900, the estate extended to 1500 acres (607 ha) and was the biggest winery in Australia, with subsidiary industries including vinegar, cordial, liqueur and perfume production.
