McLaren Vale wines
Why you should put McLaren Vale on your list
Scratch the surface of South Australia’s McLaren Vale wine region and you’ll just want to keep digging. This gorgeous area located on the Fleurieu Peninsula 45 minutes’ drive south of Adelaide is home to not only some of the country’s best wines, 85-plus cellar doors and 170 vineyards, but a swag of unique immersive experiences. From the glass-sided D’Arenburg Cube and its Salvador Dali exhibition, to a wine-fuelled vineyard tour by golf buggy and the striking hilltop Wonder Room Cellar Door at Dandelion Vineyards, McLaren Vale keeps visitors entertained for days. Even the accommodation pool’s newest addition, Divine Domes is something out-of-the-box, comprising four luxurious geodesic domes for two complete with designer wallpaper, furnishings, and private outdoor clawfoot baths overlooking panoramic views. Enjoy the best of both worlds too, McLaren Vale’s bucolic setting just 15 minutes or so from stunning beaches and coastal hamlets. As for wines, visitors are spoiled for choice. McLaren Vale is renowned for shiraz, premium grenache, exceptional cabernet and Sangiovese, as well as top-quality chardonnay, vermentino and Fiano.
So how to tackle McLaren Vale? In a multi-day visit, not just a weekend. We crammed all the major McLaren Vale major highlights listed below into two- and half-days and ended up exhausted. Or visit during a special event like the upcoming SummerVines Festival Summer Vines Festival | McLaren Vale Wine Region | Summer Vines | Jan… . Running from January 17-27, 2025, Summer Vines is one of two annual festivals designed to showcase McLaren Vale’s standout wine and food experiences, warm local hospitality and storied history as South Australia’s oldest wine region.
MUST-SEE IN MCLAREN VALE
Below are some of McLaren Vale’s leading must-see winery and food experiences including those being showcased during this January’s SummerVines Festival.
Oliver’s Taranga Terroir Tour
Don your plastic booties, grab a wine glass, and climb aboard Ollie the six-seater golf cart for an informative ramble through this historic vineyard. The award-winning tour sees guests tasting the various tipples of each block within one of McLaren Vale’s oldest and most important vineyards. Taranga’s 85 hectares of A-grade fruit is presided over by winemaker and sixth generation family member Corrinna Wright and her uncle, Don Oliver. Their grapes are of such high-quality as to be sought after by South Australia’s leading premium producers for prestigious bottlings like Eileen Hardy Shiraz, d’Arenberg ‘Dead Arm’, Wirra Wirra ‘Angelus’, Penfolds ‘St. Henri’, Penfolds ‘407’, Penfolds ‘389’ and many more. (Hence the booties to prevent any bugs on visitor’s shoes contaminating what is essentially the cream of McLaren Vale’s crop.) Afterwards, enjoy the stylish architect-designed cellar doors where a large shaded outdoor area is the perfect place to catch a cool breeze while tucking into a platter of the freshest baked bread, olive oils and delectable cheese. Highly recommended. Summer Vines Festival | McLaren Vale Wine Region
Sunset Dinner at The D’Arenberg Cube
It’s fair to say there is nothing quite like The Cube – an unmissable five-level geometric structure of gleaming tempered glass rising out of a rural landscape. Resembling a Rubik’s cube on the outside, inside dazzles both the eyes and mind via interactive displays and contemporary art installations. Touch and smell the objet d’art in the sensory room, immerse yourself in a 360-degree video room, blend your own wine, and marvel at an impressive display of Salvador Dali artworks on loan from Switzerland. For the Summer Vines festival the Cube’s Singapore Circus restaurant, usually only open for lunch, will host a sunset dinner on Saturday January 25, allowing guests to watch the sun sink behind the hills from its elevated position, before a decadent three course banquet dinner. Summer Vines Festival | McLaren Vale Wine Region
Summer Vines Yangarra x Hickinbotham Tasting Experience
Yangarra Estate’s ultra-modern cellar door is one of the most elegant places to sample McLaren Vale wines. The organic and biodynamic single-vineyard winery has won multiple awards as well as clinched the number two spot in the Halliday Wine Companion’s list of Top 100 Wineries 2023. Newly built, the cellar door’s perfect aspect sees visitors at late afternoon tastings bathed in the setting sun’s golden rays filtering through the floor to ceiling windows while they sink into soft couches and sip rare Rhône-inspired whites and powerhouse reds. Find out more about this blissful hour-long experience here Summer Vines Festival | McLaren Vale Wine Region
More McLaren Vale Must Do’s
- High among most beautiful and interesting wineries in McLaren Vale is the multi-award winning Gemtree Wines Cellar door, not only for its valley vistas but its range of experiences including a walk along the Gemtree Ecotrail that concludes with a decadent picnic lunch prepared by renown McLaren Vale restaurant The Salopian Inn served by a picture-perfect shady billabong. The tutored wine tasting at Gemtree’s Cellar Door is a boon for wine buffs like ourselves; we were in heaven sipping Gemtree’s premium grenache, shiraz and many more.
Fine dining aficionados will find what they are looking for at the award winning Maxwell Restaurant while Maxwell Wines Cellar door has a range of experiences and the Maxwell Maze.
Make sure to book into authentic Italian trattoria Vigna Bottin Osteria for an unforgettable meal. Pre-dinner drinks are served in an idyllic garden before some of the best Italian homestyle cooking found anywhere is served up in the rustic “shed” overlooking the vineyard. Vigna Bottin Cellar Door & Osteria
Chalk Hill Collective
This impressive hilltop restaurant, bar and winery complex combines three must-visit destinations in one – Chalk Hill’s family-owned winery (now in its sixth generation) Chalk Hill Wines; Never Never Distilling Co Never Never serving premium award-winning gin, incredible cocktails and tasting experiences; and Cucina Di Strada Cucina Di Strada covering the food angle with lavish antipasto platters and truly delectable freshly-made pinsa, the ‘cloud-like’ style of pizza that’s crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Wander the expansive lawns, drink in the views, and sit in the sculptural chairs.
Make sure to put Dandelion Vineyard and its much lauded WonderRoom on your list of must-sees. The stunning, newly opened Wonder Room is a grand white amphitheatre-style structure housing the restaurant, tasting facility and event space with expansive views to the sea across McLaren Vale. So spectacular, it drew the highest of local and international accolades this year, taking out the 2025 Best of Wine Tourism Award for Architecture and Landscape in early October, and just weeks later, the 2025 Global Best of Wine Tourism Awards in Verona, Italy. (The Best of Wine Tourism Awards, part of the prestigious Great Wine Capitals Global Network, celebrate excellence in wine tourism across some of the world’s most iconic wine regions, including Bordeaux, Napa Valley, and Rioja.) Dandelion Vineyards has four tasting experiences to choose from, including the Lawn Picnic experience that provides visitors with a basket of homemade farm-fresh gourmet goodies and wines to match.
Impressive Wirra Wirra is one of McLaren Vale’s most historic wineries whose founder the late Greg Trott played a critical role in the region’s current success. It’s well worth taking the hour-long “Trott’s Tour” through the winery to hear the inspiring story of how, after Penfolds withdrew from the region in the early 1960s, Trott expanded his interests from farming to helping local growers and eventually transforming a derelict winery himself into what is now Wirra Wirra. Trott’s Tour is one of half a dozen experiences at Wirra Wirra, and there is a chance to refuel at Harry’s Deli.
Free wheeling through the vineyards is one of the most enjoyable ways to tour McLaren Vale and the outfit to make it happen is Deluxe EBike Tours . Choose from three different bookable experiences – two different winery and vineyard tours and a third that takes you biking along stunning nearby beaches – or day hire for a self-guided roam. There’s also bike sales should you be as taken with this outfit’s custom-made e-bikes as actor Jason Moama who bought one of the custom-made e-bikes a few years ago while filming a movie in Australia.
