Welcome to the April Newsletter!
As we wrap up another fantastic season, our vintage casuals have finished up all their hard work, and the 2025 vintage is officially complete. It’s been a season of exceptional quality, and we can’t wait for you to experience the fruits of our labor with our future releases. One of the benefits of an early start to vintage is that for the first time in a long time our winery team will be able to enjoy the Easter break with their families and have a long break.
April is a lively month here in the Barossa. The Barossa Vintage Festival (April 23-27) will be in full swing, bringing together locals and visitors to celebrate our region’s rich wine and food culture. And if you’re an AFL fan, you wouldn’t have missed the recent Gather Round matches at Barossa Park, Lyndoch. It was great to see so many footy fans in the region.
As the season shifts, and we see the vines change to their autumnal colours, we’re gearing up for a busy couple of months ahead, and we hope to see you soon at the upcoming Good Food and Wine Shows around the country.
IN THE WINERY
As the winery now enjoys a thorough clean, the final presses are done, and wines are now being moved into barrel. Most of our international vintage crew have finished up and moved on to other opportunities, but a handful will stay on for a few more weeks to help with post-vintage jobs. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our vintage cellar hands for their hard work this year.
2025 will be remembered as a very dry season with an early start as we harvested our first grapes on Valentine’s Day. Despite the challenging weather conditions the grapes were of good quality, with healthy fruit, moderate sugars and complex flavours. These conditions contributed to wines of beautiful balance, fragrance and varietal typicity. The wines are anticipated to exhibit excellent quality, reflecting the resilience of the growers and expertise of our winemaking team.
IN CELLAR DOOR
Easter & ANZAC Weekend Hours
Our cellar door team can’t wait to welcome you over the upcoming public holidays. We are open 11-5, 7 days a week, except for Good Friday on the 18th of April when we are closed. With limited walk-in availability during this peak trading time, we highly recommend making a booking to secure your spot and avoid disappointment. If you find your preferred time unavailable online, please feel free to reach out to us directly via phone on 0885687900 or email, and we’ll be happy to assist you!
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Barossa Vintage Festival
Dates: 23 April 2025 to 27 April 2025
Where tradition meets a seriously good time! The Barossa Vintage Festival is where the best of Barossa comes out to play! It’s a celebration of what we do best, think one-of-a-kind wine and food events, grape stomping competitions, over-flowing markets, and live music in a vineyard ambience. With a program of 85+ events on sale now, visit the official website for all the event details!
Vintage Festival Scarecrows
Nothing heralds in the Vintage Festival quite like scarecrows, popping up in the weeks leading up to the festival, watching over vineyards and gardens alike. They have long been a tradition of the festival since 1995 and have evolved into a wonderful community art project. With over 150 entries into this years Scarecrow competition we highly recommend you take a drive and discover these creative marvels.
At Two Hands Wines, we have embraced our creative side with our “Scare-cow”… We’ve chosen to honour our Holy Grail vineyard’s beloved bull, introducing Brutus 2. A playful nod to our Scottish Highlanders, the Two Hands spirit animal! Shout out to the Cellar Door team, Rachel, Tash, Ariel & Abbey for putting this beauty together.
You can vote for Two Hands by clicking on the QR Code next to him on Neldner Road next to our Cellar Door. You can grab yourself a map at the Barossa Visitor Centre or The Barossa Co-Op.
IN THE VINEYARD
Harvest might be done for another year, but the work never truly stops in the vineyard. Post-vintage Lara and Alex are rolling out straw under the vines in preparation for the (hopefully) wetter winter months. We do this each year in the Holy Grail vineyard to help lock in moisture and provide thermal protection to the vines in the cold months.
Our Scottish Highlanders will also be getting some upgrades to their enclosure as we install a new irrigation system to allow us to plant more trees and grow green crops to provide more shade and feed for them.
EVENTS
MAY
25th Anniversary Melbourne Wine Club Dinner
29th of May – 6:30pm
A private dinner at Meat and Wine Co Southbank. This dinner will include wines themed around 25 years of Two Hands Wines, hosted by Luke and Morgan.
1 TICKET LEFT!
[Book the last seat here]
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Melbourne Good Food & Wine Show
30th May – 1st June 2025
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Melbourne, the Good Food & Wine Show is back!
Find us at stand BV21 with Hentley Farm | Murray Street Vineyards | Elderton | Soul Growers | Chateau Tanunda | Brothers at War | Gibson | Tomfoolery and many more..
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JUNE
25th Anniversary Sydney Wine Club Dinner
19th June – 6:30pm
A private dinner celebrating 25 years of Two Hands at the highly esteemed Manly Pavilion Bistro, hosted by Luke and Morgan.
[BOOK TICKETS HERE]
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Sydney Good Food & Wine Show
20th-22nd June 2025
Sydney International Convention Centre
We will have a limited number of complimentary tickets available; more details to be announced soon.
SCORES & REVIEWS
The Vintage Journal: SA Wine Guide 2025
Two Hands Holy Grail Single Vineyard
96 Points
Shiraz 2022
From a single vineyard in the Seppeltsfield sub-region of the Barossa. A vibrant purple hue here, this is still tight and restrained, but what a future it offers. We have aromas of black fruits, mocha, axle grease, cloves, liquorice, and dark chocolate. This is still very young and would benefit from a further five or six years in the cellar, before drinking it over the next 10 to 15 years.
Released June 2025
Read this and more Barossa reviews in the 2025 guide written by Ken Gargett, Andrew Caillard MW, Tony Love, and Andrea Pritzker MW
www.vintagejournal.co
Two Hands Gnarly Dudes
95 points
Shiraz 2023
“A hugely popular Barossa Shiraz, which is cracking value, the wine is named after a nod to a film that surely appears amongst everyone’s favourites, The Big Lebowski. A dark maroon hue, the nose exhibits a wonderful array of aromatics – mocha, mud cake, soy, lavender, plums, beef stock, leather, black fruits and dark chocolate. A rich and richly flavoured Shiraz, generously structured and approachable, it offers a supple texture and very fine, sleek tannins. There is a lingering finish over which the intensity in this wine is maintained for the full journey. A 10-year proposition, this really is great buying. Drink now–2034”
WINE CLUB
2023 SINGLE VINEYARD SERIES
Reminder to existing Single Vineyard Series members that your wines are released this April!
This year, we’re making some noteworthy changes to the lineup. Dave’s Block, a cherished part of the collection since 2014, will be absent from our current wine club pack. In 2023, we had some exceptional parcels of fruit from our estate vineyards. The decision was then made to focus on these parcels that truly shined in that year.
In place of Dave’s Block, we are thrilled to welcome back the ‘Kraehe House Block’ Shiraz—a wine sourced from the 20-year-old vineyard adjacent to our Cellar Door in Marananga. Last produced in 2013, this wine makes its long-awaited return after years of dedicated vineyard management to elevate the fruit to Single Vineyard Series quality. Thanks to the hard work and persistence of our team, this site has reclaimed its place in the collection, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.
Wines that are included in your pack:
- 2023 Waterfall Block Burnside Adelaide Shiraz
- 2023 Yacca Block Mengler’s Hill Eden Valley Shiraz
- 2023 Secret Block Moppa Hills Barossa Valley Shiraz
- 2023 Coach House Block Greenock Barossa Valley Shiraz
- 2023 Holy Grail Seppeltsfield Barossa Valley Shiraz
- 2023 Kraehe House Block Marananga Barossa Valley Shriaz
Want to join our Wine Club to gain access to events, discounts, exclusive access to the Two Hands museum collection, and pre-releases? Contact us below to join the 2023 Single Vineyard Series.
JOIN WINE CLUB CONTACT US
Anthony grew up in Adelaide. His career in logistics started in Dampier and then Melbourne working in the Maritime industry. A passion for food and wine led Anthony and his family to the Barossa in 2011 where he has worked in wine production and logistics ever since, being with Kaesler for 10 years before joining team Two Hands. He’s a keen gardener growing most of the vegetables that his family eats. He also loves the challenge of cooking the perfect steak on the BBQ, pairing it with bruschetta made from his tomatoes and a Barossa red!
Q&A
What made you want to join the wine industry?
After a career in logistics in NW Western Australia and Melbourne the time came to make the move back home to SA. To be honest working in logistics had been ok but the people just weren’t that much fun. I’d been to enough wineries to know the wine game was full of interesting people that knew how to have a good time. After spending many weekends in the Barossa my wife and I rolled the dice and choose to move to Seppeltsfield to live on our return to SA. I just kept saying “we’ll be right, the wine has to move somehow”. Things fell into place, and I got a job taking care of logistics for another Barossa winery. They then offered me the opportunity to have a go at production and away we went. After 10 years at there it was time for something new and luckily for me the chance to join Two Hands came up. The one thing that hasn’t changed was knowing that the best part of being involved in the wine industry is the people.
Favourite thing about the Barossa?
There are a lot of awesome things about living in the Barossa that everyone that has visited knows about. My favourite thing is the pace of the place and watching the seasons change. The vines being vibrant green in summer when everywhere else is dry and dusty, into autumn when they go orange after a hectic vintage, then my favourite time of the year, winter. The vines are bare so you can see the perfect straight lines of the rows. Now the reds start flowing around the fire pit. Into spring when everything comes back to life with bud burst and before you know it the Barossa is green again.
Favorite Barossa restaurant?
I’m going to have to say Vintners Bar and Grill. Scallops for entrée and steak for main. Otherwise Fino, for when we don’t want to drive and can walk home after that extra glass of red.
Favourite Two Hands label?
I’m really into the Picture Series labels. If I had to pick one, I’d go Sexy Beast. How many other labels do you see that portray a good smooch!
Favourite Two Hands Wine?
This seems like a trick question. For me, its Gnarly Dudes. In winter around the fire when you want a “real red” your mind is getting you ready just by the name. You are not let down, this is a cracker.
The Garden is in Bloom
Something new is coming to a familiar favourite next month 2.5.25
