Seven years ago today, we stood on what was essentially a big patch of dirt in Lyndoch and broke ground on what would become the Kies Family Wines winery.
Looking at that photo today, it's almost hard to believe.
There were no stainless steel tanks. No enormous K I E S letters. No winery events. No vintage happening around us.
Just dirt, a few pipes sticking out of the ground and a fairly enormous plan for what we hoped would one day stand there.
And that plan had largely come from my younger brother, Bronson Kies.
A winery designed by the sixth generation
Bronson finished his winemaking studies in 2018, and during university he had already begun planning the winery he hoped our family would one day build.
By 2019, that idea was becoming a reality.
We broke ground with one fairly important deadline looming: the winery needed to be operational in time for vintage 2020.
When Bronson planned the new Kies winery, there were three things at the heart of it:
Safety. Functionality, hygiene and wine quality. And marketing.
Seven years later, those three decisions still shape almost everything that happens inside the building.
1. Building a safer winery
Safety was one of Bronson's biggest considerations when choosing the equipment for the new winery, and there's some fairly confronting Kies family history behind that.
After red wine has finished fermentation, the grape skins left inside the fermenter need to be removed.
Traditionally, that can involve someone physically entering the tank to dig the skins out.
The danger is that carbon dioxide (CO₂) can build up inside wine tanks, creating a potentially dangerous environment for anyone entering them.
It's something our family understands all too well.
Our Dad, Michael, still tells the story of his own father being overcome by gas inside a wine tank.
Dad found himself holding his father's lifeless body as he hung inside the tank.
Thankfully, Grandpa survived.
But it's a story our family has never forgotten.
So when Bronson was selecting the red fermenters for our new winery, he chose fermenters with conical bottoms.
The design makes it possible for the grape skins to be dug out from the bottom, without someone having to enter the tank.
For Bronson, the principle was pretty simple:
If there was a safer way to make wine, that's how he wanted to do it.
2. Functionality, hygiene and wine quality
Of course, the winery also had to do its most important job exceptionally well.
Make wine.
Bronson wanted a winery that was functional during the craziness of Barossa vintage, easy to keep incredibly clean and gave our winemaking team as much control as possible over every ferment.
Each tank has its own cooling jacket, allowing the team to carefully control temperature and keep our ferments low and slow.
Each tank also has its own pump for pump-overs.
Stainless steel is used extensively throughout the winery because it can be thoroughly cleaned and sanitised, helping us minimise unwanted bacteria and protect the quality of the wine.
Even the floor was carefully considered.
It has a gentle slope towards the centre of the winery, where a drain runs straight down the middle, allowing water to drain away easily while the winery is being washed down.
They're probably not the things you'd notice when you first walk through the doors.
But during vintage, those little details make an enormous difference.
3. Designing a winery for people, too
And then there was Bronson's slightly more unusual idea.
Marketing.
One of the most expensive parts of constructing the winery was the catwalk system that allows our winemaking team to access the tops of the tanks.
The cheapest and simplest option would have been fairly obvious: tanks down either side of the building with one catwalk running through the middle.
But Bronson had another vision.
He wanted to leave a huge open space in the middle of the winery.
Not because he needed it to make wine.
Because he imagined filling it with people.
Even before the winery existed, Bronson could see us clearing the winery floor and holding events right there amongst the tanks.
At the time, we're not sure any of us realised quite how important that decision would become.
From a patch of dirt to one of our favourite places at Kies
Fast forward seven years and that open winery floor has become an incredibly special part of Kies Family Wines.
It's been home to our 40th Birthday celebrations, Deer Stalker launches and some of the biggest events we've ever held.
Thousands of glasses have been raised in that room.
There has been live music, food, laughter and an awful lot of Kies wine enjoyed underneath the very tanks where that wine was made.
And I genuinely nearly cry sometimes when the winery is full of people and I look up and see those enormous K I E S letters stretching across the tanks.
Because I remember when it looked like the photo above.
Just dirt.
Seven years later...
Bronson finished university in 2018.
We broke ground on the winery in 2019.
It was completed just in time for vintage 2020.
Today, it's a working Barossa winery, an event space and, most importantly, the place where our Kies wines are made by Bronson Kies, sixth generation of the Kies family.
But none of this happens without your support.
We are so incredibly grateful to each and every one of you.
Whether you visited us recently, ordered a Father's Day gift, joined our Wine Club, came along to one of our events, or you've been buying Kies wines for 30 years, you are part of this story too.
Every bottle ordered, every visit, every event ticket and every recommendation to a friend has helped our little family winery become what it is today.
So from all of us, thank you. So, so much. ❤️🍷
Jesse & the Kies family x
Thank You
The Kies family story in South Australia dates back to 1857, and we genuinely never take your support for granted.
When you order wine from us, you are supporting:
🍇 Local vineyard and winery jobs
🍷 Australian manufacturing
❤️ A real family business in Lyndoch
👧 The 7th generation of the Kies family
Every order genuinely means something to us.
So from the bottom of our hearts… thank you for continuing to support our little family winery.
Cheers,
Jesse Kies
Kies Family Wines
----------------------
