Rebecca/Lucy Willson build Bremerton – only Australian winery run by sisters – into winner for Langhorne Creek

Sisters Rebecca and Lucy Willson took a hands-on appraoch to all aspects of Bremerton Wines, from viniculture operations to hosting tasting dinners.
Images courtesy Bremerton Wines

With Australia’s first winery run by sisters, Lucy and Rebecca Willson threw their passion into making a Bremerton Wines in South Australia’s Langhorne Creek region an award-winning brand from its modest start in the late 1980s.

In 1986, Craig Willson (one of three sons of Whyalla News newspaper founder Jock) and his wife Mignonne, with daughters Rebecca and Lucy, moved into an old home on an alfalfa farm in Langhorne Creek. A small purchase of fruit to make wine grew into a business that, from more acreage and a vineyard, was producing 35,000 cases at the end of the 1990s.

Lucy, with a degree in international wine business, and Rebecca, a degree in agriculture and viniculture, took over the business as a natural and organic transition. (Lucy married Ben Potts, a descendant of Frank Potts, the Langhorne Creek wine pioneer of the 1850s.)

Lucy (business, marketing, and sales) and Rebecca (winemaker, viticulture) became the faces of the brand. At the 2019 Royal Melbourne wine show, the sisters took home a highly coveted trophy, with Joe Czerwinski of Wine Advocate magazine the international judge. Also that year, Bremerton Wines was named producer of the year at the Langhorne Creek Wine Show.

Bremerton Wines concentrated on traditional varietals, predominantly cabernet sauvignon and shiraz, with plantings of sauvignon blanc, verdelho, vhardonnay, malbec, and petit verdot.

In 2021, it opened a new tasting room, built and partially designed by another lfamily-owned Adelaide company Kennett Builders, alongside the winery’s historic 1866 barn. The tasting room continued to house the David Dridan OAM Barrel Ends art collection, with touches from iconic local sites that tie in with Willson family heritage, including the Kadina railway gate and timber from the replica HMS Buffalo. Wine vats from Hardy’s Reynella and redgum sleepers from the local Wenzel family’s chook pen were also used in door’s lintels and sills.