An Ode to Elderton

Wine can be a powerful storyteller. But few spin a yarn like those from Elderton. This year marks the brand’s 45th vintage, and, as the wines will tell you, a lot has happened since Lorraine and Neil Ashmead first took a punt on the dilapidated Barossa vineyard in the early 1980s.

Although every single bottle in the Elderton range reveals an important and personal chapter in the Ashmead family's story, some, like these six, do so more explicitly than others. But all carry forward the overarching narrative of great wine from great sites, and the importance of family.

Wellington Grenache

In 1979, Lorraine’s father, Wellington Rice, was in Adelaide for a funeral when he heard the old Samuel Elderton Tolley vineyard in Nuriootpa was for sale. Despite the fact he had no ties to either South Australia or to wine – he’d made his fortune in the meat trade in Gippsland and in milk supply in Hervey Bay – and the Barossa was in the thick of the grape glut that would lead to the infamous vine pull scheme, he saw an opportunity.

“Our grandfather's way of operating was when other people are running, you should be walking and when other people are walking, it's time to run,” says Allister Ashmead.

Elderton's Nuriootpa estate. 

Neil Ashmead Grand Tourer Shiraz

Lorraine, Neil and their three young sons, Cameron, Wesley and Allister, were living in Saudi Arabia when the sale of the vineyard went through in June 1980. Wellington told the family it was theirs to live in if they wanted, although they knew nothing about grape growing, and had only ever made wine illegally, and for their own consumption, to get around Saudi Arabia’s prohibitive alcohol laws. 

The homestead itself, built by Samuel Tolley in 1918, was appealing, though, so when Neil’s then-employer, Caterpillar, offered him a transfer to Adelaide in 1981, they took it. Neil continued to work for Caterpillar for several more years, although his charisma, drive and enthusiasm meant he became the public face of Elderton, nonetheless. 

In 1997, nine years after Wesley, died of leukemia, Neil took his own life. “Dad was a remarkable human. He was always the life of the party. But I had no idea of his issues with depression,” says Al. A “natural-born salesman” and “one-man missionary, who took it upon himself to push Elderton and the Barossa as hard as he could,” Neil is remembered for the crucial role he played in the revitalisation of the region... and his love of fast cars. 

Neil and Lorraine Ashmead with the 1993 Jimmy Watson.

Command Shiraz

Initially, the Ashmeads planned to sell their fruit. But with the Barossa in the depths of the grape glut, finding buyers was tough. With neither the winemaking equipment nor the know-how, they enlisted Peter Lehmann to turn their grapes into bulk wine to sell instead, although after learning that the wine they were selling for 70 cents a litre was being on-sold for $7 or $8 a bottle, that venture didn't last long, either.

The first wine produced under the Elderton banner was made in 1982. In 1984, the family, along with Jim Irvine, who they’d hired as a contract winemaker in 1983, made a single-vineyard wine from the oldest shiraz block on the property, planted exactly a century earlier by the Scholz family. With a handful of exceptions, The Command has been made every year since, and while it didn’t win them the 1993 Jimmy Watson – that was the 1992 Barossa Cabernet Sauvignon – it is arguably the most significant wine in the Elderton portfolio. 

Ashmead Cabernet Sauvignon

“When Dad passed away, Mum came to Cameron and I and said, ‘I'm only doing this for the two of you. So, if you guys don't have any interest, we'll sell the place and move on’.” 

They were interested, but they weren’t ready. Al was in the final year of a commerce degree, and Cam was working as a corporate banker in London. But Lorraine was content to manage things, with some help from Richard Sheedy, until they were – it was nothing new for her, after all. 

“She is that very clichéd great-woman-behind-a-good-man that did more than her fair share of the work”, Al says. “She didn't do it for the accolades, of which there have been many, and like many remarkable mothers, she didn't do it for herself,” Al says. “She did it so my brother and I could enjoy a pretty remarkable life.”

Al, Cam and Lorraine Ashmead.

Not long after Al returned to Elderton officially in 2000, he asked his mum if he could name a wine – a new cabernet sauvignon made from the estate vineyard’s oldest plantings of the variety – in her honour.

“I said to her, ‘I think it's amazing what your contribution is, but nobody in the world of wine knows what you've done. Dad hasn't been here three years, and he still gets 100 per cent of the credit. I want to change the narrative’.

“She basically said, ‘over my dead body’,” Al says. The name was dropped, but fortunately the wine wasn’t. The Ashmead Cabernet Sauvignon, as it became, is today considered among the best expressions of the variety in the country, and sits alongside the Command Shiraz at the top of the Elderton tree. 

Ode to Lorraine

Cam returned to the business in 2003, and with both brothers now at the helm as co-managing directors, the decision was made: Lorraine was getting a tribute wine, whether she wanted one or not. 

They renamed the 2002 CSM (cabernet shiraz merlot blend) Ode to Lorraine, and after she’d caught wind of and shut down their plans to throw her a surprise party for her 60th in 2005, had the sommelier at three-Michelin-starred restaurant Jean-Georges, in New York City, where she’d gone to celebrate the milestone with a girlfriend, surprise her with it instead.

“Mum had ordered a chardonnay from a producer in Oregon, but the somm presented her with the first ever bottle of Ode to Lorraine and said, ‘Perhaps you'd rather drink this. Happy birthday, Lorraine.’ It was absolute laughter and tears, apparently,” Al says. 

“You can always tell if someone is an absolute Elderton lover, because all they’ll talk about pretty much is Ode to Lorraine,” he adds, “which is remarkable when you consider Command Shiraz gets all the accolades and awards. But people just absolutely fall over for it.

“And, I mean, it has pretty much the same quality of fruit and winemaking as The Command or The Ashmead Cabernet Sauvignon. But it just makes sense that it tells the story of mum, of her humbleness.”

Three generations of Ashmeads at the Elderton cellar door.

Sixfold Shiraz

Elderton has evolved significantly in the years since Cam and Al took the reins. Winemaking, done in-house since 2003, is now overseen by Cam’s wife Julie Ashmead (née Campbell), a fifth-generation winemaker of Campells of Rutherglen fame, alongside Brock Harrison. The family homestead was converted into an incredible cellar door in 2017, which Al says “totally transformed our business and visitation and people's understanding of who we are and what we want to be”. 

The estate’s footprint has expanded, too, with the acquisition of new vineyards, including Craneford in 2007 (since sold), Greenock in 2010, and Mengler Hill in late 2022. From this latter site now comes the Sixfold Shiraz, made from 1941-planted vines at 500m above sea level. First made in 2024, it’s a dedication to the third generation – Cam and Jules have three sons, and Al and his wife Rebecca have three daughters – who’ll hopefully carry Elderton’s legacy forward for many more vintages to come. 

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