In today’s climate of global corporate wine ownership and multi-beverage models, Pirramimma has stood the test of time from 1892 to today. Still, family owned and run, and largely from the same property founded by AC Johnston over a century ago comprising over 100 hectares of prime McLaren Vale fruit, Pirramimma and the Johnston family are synonymous with McLaren Vale.
Four generations of Johnston have called McLaren Vale home, making Pirramimma one of Australia’s oldest wineries to still be in family control. The soils once worked to exhaustion under a traditional European philosophy of farming have been for decades nurtured slowly back to organic health. The wines, respected and revered worldwide are the end product of knowing intimately certain characteristics of their home vineyards.
Geoff Johnston, current custodian himself celebrated fifty vintages alone at Pirramimma, giving the wines the best possible chance of being picked and nurtured into some of Australia’s best wines. They have pioneered varieties suited to the region, such as Petit Verdot and Tannat, which with the climate changing around us are best suited to McLaren Vale and the taste profile.
The acclaim speaks for itself, with Pirramimma being awarded 2020 its fourth AWC Vienna Best Australian Producer title. A long and deep connection with the famed McLaren Vale region began all the way back at the end of the nineteenth century when South Australia was a fledging colony set up by free settlers from Britain. They are proudly one of South Australia’s founding wineries and are still proudly family-owned by the Johnston family.
The Johnston family arrived in South Australia in 1839 and in 1892 Alexander, the tenth of thirteen children purchased 97 hectares of rich farmland adjacent to the fledgling village of McLaren Vale. He named his land Pirramimma, an aboriginal phrase meaning “the moon and the stars”. Alexander selected McLaren Vale due to the regions cooling sea breezes from the Gulf of St Vincent, the Mediterranean climate, rich diverse soil structures and quality drainage.
ACJ’s original land handing was a mixed farm, with small plantings of Grenache and Zante currants, a dairy, piggery, cattle, sheep, shearing shed and cropping land for hay and grain to feed the Pirramimma Clydesdales that tirelessly worked with us. In 1914 ACJ expanded Pirramimma by acquiring the neighbouring Katunga winery and vineyards.
The new acquisition helped fulfil the supply contract with W&A Gilbey in London, and for the next 50 years, Gilbey took Pirramimma wine global under the Gilbey label – enhancing the reputation that McLaren Vale wines live long and travel far. ACJ is remembered as “a man of outstanding personality who devoted a large portion of his own energies to promoting the prosperity of the McLaren Vale district, which he loved so much.”