The Producer

Henschke Eden Valley

The Region

Eden Valley

The Eden Valley Wine region shares a boundary with its more famous neighbor the Barossa Valley, and there is considerable overlap in the operations of the two regions. Many wineries in each of these regions have vineyards, or source grapes from, the other. But these regions themselves are quite distinct in topography, altitude, temperature, and therefore viticultural potential.The official GI classification for these two regions is that the Barossa Zone includes the Barossa Valley and the Barossa Valley regions. The GI System has some logic but it is often a little difficult to see it.As a ver...

The Eden Valley Wine region shares a boundary with its more famous neighbor the Barossa Valley, and there is considerable overlap in the operations of the two regions. Many wineries in each of these regions have vineyards, or source grapes from, the other. But these regions themselves are quite distinct in topography, altitude, temperature, and therefore viticultural potential.The official GI classification for these two regions is that the Barossa Zone includes the Barossa Valley and the Barossa Valley regions. The GI System has some logic but it is often a little difficult to see it.As a very rough generalization, the Barossa is more suited to red wines, and the Eden Valley for whites, but there are a couple of glaring exceptions as we shall see below.The word "valley" in the name is quite a misnomer when applied to the Eden Valley. It is more a series of jumbled, windswept hills and steep slopes of varied aspects giving each site a different microclimate.           Vineyards are scattered throughout the region to make the most of what nature has to offer. By contrast, the Barossa Valley is flatter allowing the landscape of rolling hills to be dominated by neat rows of vines.In some ways, the Eden Valley region has more in common with the Adelaide Hills wine region immediately to the south, than to the Barossa.Riesling is the variety of choice in this region; it rivals its more famous neighbor the Clare Valley in the production of high-quality white wines from this variety. As usual, the red wine variety profile is dominated by Shiraz and CabernetHenschke have achieved worldwide fame for their red wines headed by their iconic red wine Hill of Grace. If you have less than $500 to spend on a bottle of wine Henschke also has a range of other wines including some superb reds, Rieslings, and the more recent addition of several other alternative varieties.Yalumba's winery lies just within the boundaries of Eden Valley although they are more closely associated with the Barossa.  They have an impressive history of Introducing new varieties, most notable Viognier in the nineties and noughties, but the list below shows that they are doing much more.Another notable product of the region is Irvine's Grand Merlot, which is the flagship wine for that variety in Australia.