Where the Adelaide Hills wine region begins and ends

Where the register's line begins

A geographical indication is a description that names where a product comes from. In the wine trade it points to where the grapes were grown: only a wine made from grapes grown inside the boundary defined for a place may carry that place's name. The boundaries are set in legislation, and Wine Australia records them in its Register of Protected Geographical Indications and Other Terms; each entry is a written description of a boundary rather than a drawn line.

The Adelaide Hills entry names one point as the start of the boundary: the spillway of the South Para Reservoir, on the Adelaide map sheet 6628, at grid reference UG033592. The register places the region inside the Mount Lofty Ranges zone, in South Australia, which is the frame the region sits in.

Inside the line

Two smaller regions sit inside the Adelaide Hills boundary, and each has an entry and a starting point of its own. The Lenswood entry begins at the intersection of Croft and Coldstore Roads, on the Onkaparinga South map sheet 6628-2-S, at grid reference 024367. The Piccadilly Valley entry begins at the Crafers interchange roundabout, on map 6628-48, at grid reference MR902247. Both sit inside the region of Adelaide Hills, and both carry the Mount Lofty Ranges zone above them.

The entries nest because the system is built that way: sub-regions sit within regions, and regions sit within zones. A region or sub-region is entered only when an application to the Geographical Indications Committee shows that the grapegrowing conditions inside its boundary are alike. The zones are the frame above that. The committee declared them in December 1996, and they cover the whole country, so no grapes can be grown for wine in Australia outside a zone.

The name follows the grapes: only wine made from grapes grown inside the boundary may use it, and the register's rules are about grapes rather than bottles. Wine Australia audits the claims: a winery that puts an indication on its label has to show, from its own documents, that the grapes came from the place it names, as far as the blending rules require.

When each line was entered

Every one of the entries below rests on a direction from the Geographical Indications Committee's presiding member to the Registrar, under the WAC Act 1980, section 40Z, and the register records the date of each.

1. December 1996The Geographical Indications Committee declared the zones that frame the system, covering the whole of Australia.
2. 9 February 1998On 9 February 1998 the Adelaide Hills indication was entered in the Register of Protected Names, under section 40Z of the WAC Act 1980.
3. 16 October 1998Lenswood's name went onto the register on 16 October 1998, as a geographical indication inside the Adelaide Hills region.
4. 14 April 2000On 14 April 2000 Piccadilly Valley was entered, inside the Adelaide Hills region and the Mount Lofty Ranges zone.

The three dates sit inside one story: the frame came first, in December 1996, then the region, then the two smaller regions that stand inside it, each entered on a direction of its own.

Reading the register's text

Wine Australia's own note on the boundary files is careful about what a map can do. The maps, it says, translate the written descriptions into a spatial format, and the written description is the legal definition. The same note appears on the Lenswood entry.

That is why this guide gives the points the entries give, rather than drawing a line across a map. The Adelaide Hills entry sets its boundary out in words, with map sheets and grid references, and names the South Para Reservoir spillway as the start; the two smaller regions begin where their entries say. The entry itself, linked at the foot of this page, is the document for the rest of the boundary.

Two things are worth knowing before reading any of them. The nesting is real and it is legal: a wine from inside Lenswood is inside the Adelaide Hills and inside the Mount Lofty Ranges as well, because that is how the entries are drawn. And the names on the register are not descriptions of a landscape: each is a boundary that was applied for, tested against the grapegrowing conditions inside it, and entered with a date.

The weather guide gives the rain and the temperatures across these ranges, station by station, and the hills face guide follows the western slope below them.