LANGHORNE Creek winery Rusticana is marrying two of its more unusual produce pursuits to create a unique food offering at its cellar door.
The winery is now making jams and sauces infused with its Zinfandel and Durif variety wines to further showcase the label’s rare grape varieties.
It’s a typically unpredictable approach from Rusticana owners Brian and Anne Meakins who have 25 acres of lesser known grape variety vines planted on their property — and another 25 acres of horseradish grown for their Newman’s label products.
Along with making the wine, the two bottle some 4000 jars a week of horseradish, relish and mustard with Newman’s products sold in Coles, Woolworths, IGA and Foodland throughout Australia.
The latest move in making jam and sauce was about celebrating all that was happening on the property.
“Now we have a local contact making the jams and sauces for us using our Zinfandel and Durif wines and also a marmalade with our white wine,” Mr Meakins said.
“We’re using everything we’ve got and trying to make things a little bit different. There are now seven cellar doors in Langhorne Creek and we are all really good friends and we’ve decided to not double up on other people’s products.”
He said visitors to each cellar door could expect to see a different range and Rusticana also hosted tours of its horseradish side of the business.
The Meakin family first bought the Newman’s horseradish label in 1947 and it was in 1992 that the factory and processing plant was opened at the Langhorne Creek property.
Rusticana — the botanical name for horseradish — produced its first wine label in 2003 and now has a half dozen labels that were being sold at wine cellars throughout Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills.
Both labels were likely to appear in Adelaide at the upcoming launch of the new Langhorne Creek Wine Region website at Electra House on July 12.
Owner of Olfactory Inn in Strathalbyn Simon Burr, formerly a chef at the Edinburgh Hotel, would be cooking using locally donated produce and wines for the region would be tasted.
Mr Meakins said Olfactory was one of Newman’s horseradish customers.
The Langhorne Creek Wine Group was fighting for better brand recognition similar to higher profile regions in the Barossa and McLaren Vale.
