Zema Estate Winery: Ron enjoys some Italian hospitality in the famous Coonawarra, located in the South East region of South Australia
For lovers of a big red, it's hard to pass the Coonawarra Strip - that stretch of road about 400kilometres southeast of Adelaide - where the alchemy of sun, water and vines combine to create something special. But there are a couple of other ingredients you throw into the mix at Zema Estate - a little Italian know-how and some red gold.
Nick Zema, Zema Estate: "The Terra Rosa soil is the 'red gold'. It is obviously very high in nutrients and we have the limestone underneath which gives good drainage. The berries we produce are quite small especially the shiraz which is really what we're looking for in this vineyard. This is a dry land vineyard and it's really small intense berries which give us really good intense fruit."
On this dry land block, the vines work hard to create berries with the intensity required for a Zema Estate Shiraz. The same approach typifies the hard working ethic of the entire Zema family. Drop into the cellar door kitchen and you're likely to run into Francesca, Nick's mum. We caught up with her while she was making one of her famous Zema pizzas.
Francesca came to Australia from Calabria in 1958. A year later she was married to Demetrio. Being Italian - there would always be a connection to wine, but the Coonawarra was a very different place when Francesca and Demetrio first started their family in this strange new home.
Francesca Zema: "There were lots of cattle and sheep and lots and lots of fruit too. Lot's of fresh fruit - apricots, peaches, apples and figs."
Zema Estate is now part of the newly opened Limestone Coast Food Trail… and Francesca's pizzas are just one of the tempting delights you can experience depending on the time of year. In peak summer, the winery has gelati on sale… but in any season you can expect to taste one of Francesca's jars of marinated olives. In the late fifties and sixties, Francesca would often be out picking the grapes.
By the early eighties the family had its own little patch of the Coonawarra with vines outside the front door of their small home on the strip. For young winemaker Nick and his brother Matt, who now markets the Zema range it was a baptism of fire.
Nick Zema, Zema Estate: "I left school on the Thursday and we started picking grapes on the Saturday and that was my introduction to the wine business. I was thrown in the deep end a bit but you look back now and you think what a fantastic decision was made for me."
Today's winery is upmarket, but there's still that warm homespun quality about the Zema Estate tasting experience. You can sample award winning wines and at the right time of year you might even sample some of Francesca's home made pizza made with home grown olives of course. They're scattered all round Zema's holdings and like everything here they were planted with a very specific purpose.
As the Zema family's holdings grew to what is now 61 hectares under vines, attention turned to the need for a decent wind break. Demetrio Zema deemed that it should be something useful and what could be better than olives? So what started out as a simple idea has now become an important facet of the Zema Estate story.
Zema Estate Wines is located on the Coonawarra Strip about ten kilometres north of Penola. The cellar door is open daily. Contact 8736 3219 for details regarding tastings as part of the Limestone Coast Food Trail. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au
Zema Estate Riddoch Highway
10 kms North of Penola
Cellar door is open daily
Contact 8736 3219Published 25th April 2010
