Seppeltsfield 1921 100 Year Old Para Vintage Tawny

I think Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawny is one of the great wine traditions of the world. They are extremely rare wines because they have lasted 100 years and they will continue to exist for another 100 or even 170 years. 

Although very old bottles of Bordeaux, Rioja or Burgundy have survived and sometimes are extraordinary – there are never any guarantees and most are curios. 

On the other hand, Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawnies were laid down with the ambition for them to last for at least 100 years and to be shared by not the next generation but generations after that. 

You are listening to Andrew Caillard and I am a wine expert and master of wine. This podcast is about the 1921 Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawny which comes from the glorious Barossa Valley in South Australia. It also coincides with the 170th anniversary of Seppeltsfield which was established by Joseph Seppelt in 1851. 

There is something utterly magical about tasting a 100-year-old wine. It’s like visiting an ancient monument – yet going back in time and being with the people who built it. 

It is an experience few of us ever have the opportunity to enjoy. Yet when it happens it is so memorable and heart-warming.

The release of the 1921 Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawny – on its hundred birthday is a reminder that our forebears had great hope and visions for a prosperous Australia. 

When Benno Seppelt laid down a cask of 1878 Para Vintage Tawny at Seppeltsfield, he began a great tradition that has been respected and continued through depressions, world wars and intergenerational change - the tradition has lasted. 

Under the current ownership of vigneron Warren Randall, the visions of Benno and Oscar Seppelt have been geared to modern expectations. 

Seppeltsfield is very much a great 19th Century legacy and the centennial cellar epitomises the efforts and baton-changes of seven generations or more. There are few places in the world with such a collection of aged tawnies. 

After their century-long maturation these magnificent fortified wines are bottled in prime condition and offer a sensory experience like no other. They are so rare and extraordinary that the wines always seem to attract perfect scores – not because the wines are perfection – but because they offer a window into the past and go beyond the experience of a number. 

That sensory patina – known as rancio – is like a mystical and exotic aroma that wafts the mind away into another time.  And the taste is like peeling away layers of an onion – where every new sip unfolds another memory.  Few wines ever do that or unlock the emotions of nostalgia, feelings of place and sense of resilience - all at the same moment. 

This beautiful Para Vintage Tawny has survived the passage of time and developed into something ethereal and evocative.  It is a symbol of nature and loving nurture across generations. And that’s why I think it’s so special. 

And so what does the 1921 Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawny taste like?

Well it’s really difficult to truly capture something ethereal and everchanging. But descriptors like marmalade, treacle, molasses, liquorice, mahogany, Indian spices, tobacco, dark chocolate, country gardens, dried raisins, dates and grilled nuts and everything in between give a sense of its complexity and proportions. It is an endless sensory kaleidoscope that changes with air. 

When you taste this 1921 Para you only need a thimble to understand its power, concentration and layered complexity. 

Even at the finish the taste is lasting. It takes at least a few minutes before the taste finally vanishes. 

Now you can understand why the wines are bottled in perfume bottles. It is the taste, and not the drink, that is etched in memory.

1921 was a magnificent year in Australia – especially for grape growers and vignerons. It was regarded as one of the finest vintages ever gathered in South Australia. Combined with prices that could never have been dreamt of  - the wines promised vignerons a bumper year – with unmatched quality and quantity. 

At Seppeltsfield, winemaker Oscar Seppelt was excited. The company his grandfather Joseph had founded in 1851 had expanded to become the largest winery and drinks manufacturer in the Southern Hemisphere. 

The winery produced a bewildering range of table wines, sherries and spirits. But it also made cordials, vinegars and bitters for an increasingly sophisticated Australian market. The place was a magnificent 19th Century vision but harnessed to the new winemaking skills and technologies of the-day. 

Many Barossa growers had planted primarily shiraz, grenache and mataro (or mourvedre) – in response to new export markets - and by the 1860s and 1870s, the region was a patchworked landscape of vineyards across rich vivid chocolaty soils and rolling country. 

By the 1920s many of these vineyards were at the height of their productivity - and vignerons like Oscar Seppelt truly believed they were the foundation of a great wine industry in the Barossa. 

With the first World War now in the past the wine community was in a buoyant mood especially with the bumper 1921 vintage.

But even in 1921 the grapes arrived at the gravity flow winery by horse and dray. Although mechanisation was slowly being introduced, the old ways – and old timers - were still employed. 

In fact - steam engines still ran the pully systems that ran the pumps and presses in the winery. People were everywhere working the crushers, heaving away at plunging the open fermenters. The heady smell of fermenting grape juice filled the air - although ventilated windows prevented a build-up of alcoholic stupor.

Meanwhile in the sheds barrel makers banged away making up new oak casks and barrels or repairing them, and cellarmen clambered over the stacks of barrels topping up maturing wine. 

This place Seppeltsfield – an Empire of Wine- epitomised the ambitions of Australian vignerons during the 1920s. Seppeltsfield wines were sold in very State and massive volumes were sent to England in hogsheads to be sold as Australian Burgundy. But fortified wine was always a Seppeltsfield speciality. 

In 1878 the eccentric machine-loving Benno Seppelt - laid down his first barrel of vintage tawny, it was a puncheon actually, and it was not to be enjoyed until it had reached 100 years of age. It was a symbolic gesture of course and typical of this brilliant outward looking man. 

It was just one barrel among tens of thousands -something that could easily be lost and forgotten – as it turned out - by accountants or financial controllers for a century. 

But it was also something to prove to future generations that the Barossa was somewhere special. 

Joseph had first arrived to grow tobacco and make cigars, but the climate was not right. The Seppelt family planted wine grapes and encouraged new settlers – many of German origin - to do the same. 

And soon the fortiofied tawnies of Seppeltsfield were world famous – and Para – named after a creek - sometimes a river in the Barossa valley became synonymous with the finest wines of South Australia. 

The centennial collection of 100-year-old Para Vintage Tawnies offer an unbroken line of ambition and provenance. These tawnies are a liquid palimpsest of incredible beauty, density and complexity. 

I really love the story of these truly unique wines. This great old 1921 Para Vintage Tawny represents all things I love about Australian wine – resilience, generations of effort, technical brilliance and forward thinking as much as being one of the great wine experiences in the world. 

And for those lucky enough to leave home and visit theBarossa Valley in South Australia, Seppeltsfield offer an incredible array of tasting experiences and activities, including a tour of the Centennial Cellar and the opportunity to taste rare vintage tawnies and birth year vintages. You can also book for lunch or dinner at the brilliant Fino restaurant.