Meet the Maker - Eliza Coulls - Lansdowne Vineyard - Adelaide Hills, South Australia

Though Lansdowne vineyards' home to the slowest growing vines in Adelaide Hills, it's certainly never a dull moment for the young hustling family behind it, Eliza and Tass ('Tosh')! This Young Gun duo is making some tremendously exciting small-batch minimal intervention production that are turning heads to the Hills in hope of tasting their hard-to-get-your-hands-on wines.

The vineyard is perched up 350 metres in the Forreston Valley where it experiences a Mediterranean climate with cool wet winters and warm dry summers that linger into long stretched autumns. Stunning early sunsets over the vineyards and cool air pooled in the valley under the starry skies make for an ideal temperature fluctuation (diurnal swing) which ensures the grapes ripen slow and steady; a prerequisite for the kind of flavour complexity and elegance we see in the wines from Lansdowne.

Eliza and Tosh believe in the importance of sustainability and transparency in their wine which means they take a full-love, but hands-off approach to make sure their wines sing in the same key as their unique roots.

We had a chat with the incredible Eliza, and asked her a few questions about all things wine, fashion, travel and the daily grind of running a family wine business....

What is your all-time favourite grape variety?

It is of course our first love Pinot Noir. Pinot has a fresh, elegant, and graceful attitude that everyone craves in their lives. It can be a challenge, but it’s always worth it.  It’s friendly with everyone, but only a few are close enough to know its true self.

Your bubbles are among our highest rated wines at Good Pair Days - from the 'It's Not My Fault I like Bubbles'  to your Pet Nats. What's your secret?

A lot of hard work in the vineyard …and hands-off in the winery.

We have transitioned the vineyard to organic viticulture over the last five years, and in doing this we have seen the regeneration of biodiversity and the return of healthy fertile soils. It has opened our minds to the resilience that natural systems already have. In addition to this, we have been revegetating in and around the vineyard with endemic native plants to support populations of insect predators which contribute towards the control of vineyard pests naturally. As a family, we are committed to growing organically and the long term sustainability of regenerative agriculture and we are seeing the results speak for themselves in the wines

Oh, and we always make sure that ‘It's not my fault is ‘100% Pinot Noir’  which we will not ever change.

Celebrity crush?

It has to be the Italian fashion designer Valentino.  He is famously quoted as saying “I love beauty, It’s not my fault’ in the film Valentino The Last Emperor. A beautiful documentary about his career and life. This quote was this inspiration for the name of ‘It's not my fault I like bubbles’. The film is funny, elegant and over the top, yet classic. It kind of just fit with the personality of our bubbles.

You are entirely family-owned... What’s it like running a family business? Have you always known you'd make wine?

As a small family business you always need to wear many hats - but life is versatile and never boring. One day you are in the vineyard pruning, another in the winery blending, another day on the road talking to customers, attending events marketing ( back when they happened!) running the business and always lugging around many cases of wine.

The Lansdowne approach to wine is pretty simple - to make quality, creative, expressive wines that represent a place and time from our single site in the Adelaide Hills. We celebrate the stuff that we think makes the world a more interesting place. Our early careers in hospitality and design were the inspiration to create refreshing wines, both inside and out.  We are always driven by creativity and change, with a focus on vineyard sustainability & organics. We are always looking for new ways to evolve.

However over the past few years we have realised our best life is grown and lived slowly… Our purpose is to continue to run a conscious company that is sustainable, ethical and helps agriculture practices that do not deplete the environment. If 2020/21 has taught us anything, it's how much we still need to learn to look after our precious and ancient country. We have a responsibility to be able to say we did everything we could to help change the future.

Will our Good Pair Days wine community be able to visit you one day?

Yes, sometime soon. We are planting a new vineyard this year, and once established a home for Lansdowne Wine will follow. The plan is to showcase the importance we place on design and sustainable organic agriculture.

It will be a place to connect our wine to the land - educate and experience vineyard techniques, organics, and the work we do with the program ‘Ecovineyards’ Keep your eyes on our socials for more updates! Visit  https://lansdownevineyard.com/

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