Hard to fathom, but a wine entrepreneur is actually being prevented from establishing a vineyard and tourism development in Adelaide. So Andrew Garrett, frustrated by Adelaide’s greenies, has also set up shop in Victoria, where he reckons people find it easier to get things done. Having purchased the historic 600 acres Springwood Park property at Mount Osmond, just five minutes from Adelaide’s CBD which it overlooks, Garrett is presently unable to develop his planned 167 acres of vineyard and revegetate the remaining area with 5,000 trees. A stumbling block is the possible removal of old trees from the property, which has also been used by locals for many years for recreational walking, although it has been privately owned for generations. Appeals are pending. ‘Many people here would prefer that Adelaide remains in time warp’, says Garrett, who says the property needs to have a commercial basis to justify the amount of money he intends to spend on it. ‘The soil is degraded and over-grazed. We need to find a sustainable use for it and vineyards can be established and managed in an ecologically sound manner. I’m as conservation-minded as the rest of them.’ So Garrett, now resident at Springwood Park, has also bought a 196 acre block near Yarra Glen, already planted with 10 acres each of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Garrett was amazed to find that nobody had registered the name ‘Yarra Glen Vineyards’, so he did. Together with his involvement in a 600 acre development at Langhorne Creek, it will become part of an international vineyard concept, presently producing fruit for the major companies. Will he be able to keep his own name off a wine label for much longer?
