Dudley Wines

The family at Dudley Wines invite you to share their picturesque piece of KI at their cliff top Cellar Door.

ADDRESS

1153 Cape Willoughby Road PENNESHAW SA 5222

Directions →

PHONE

OPENING HOURS

5 days a week - 10:30am-4:30pm

(Closed Tuesday & Wednesday)

Lunch Bookings →

WEBSITE

Visit

TASTINGS

We have 14 wines in our portfolio, all grown and produced 15km SW of our Cellar Door on Kangaroo Island.


We offer self-guided wine flights from $14 each, which you can enjoy in your own time, while taking in our spectacular view. The tasting paddles include 5 of our wines and are equivalent to approximately one glass of wine per paddle. You can pre-book your wine flight on the booking button below.


We also offer a complimentary wine tasting of 3 of our wines, which you can enjoy at our bar with one of our staff members to guide you through. You do not need to book for complimentary wine tasting.


LUNCH OPTIONS

We offer the following two lunch options at our cellar door;


Clifftop set menu - Includes priority seating for the day, platters and gourmet pizzas designed to share and a glass of wine/softdrink on arrival (for children aged 3-14 years, this includes ham, cheese and pineapple pizza slices and a juice).


A` la carte menu - Choose from our small cellar door menu of share food.


For groups of 9 or more, you are required to select our clifftop set menu.


All dietary needs/allergies must be stated at the time of making a booking, otherwise, we cannot guarantee our ability to cater for them.


For those without a booking, we offer an Island grazing board for you to enjoy with a glass of wine.


MORE INFORMATION

Groups: For bookings of 9 or more people, we offer a set menu of platters and pizzas to share and a glass of wine on arrival for $45pp ($20 for children aged between 3-14years). Please call us to book for groups of more than 12 or for more details phone: (08)8553 1333.


Kids Welcome: There is plenty of lawn for the kids to run around, and a nature play area to keep them entertained.


Pets: Dogs are not allowed in any of the cellar door dining areas, including the lawn, however, you are welcome to tie them under our shady tree at the back of the building, just ask if you need a water bowl.


All Seasons Comfort Clothing and Accessories: We are proud to stock a beautiful range of Wool and Natural Fibre clothing and accessories made from fibres including wool, possum, alpaca, cashmere, bamboo, and cotton, rayon and silk. The super soft and warm Merino Snug clothing and accessories use wool grown right here on Kangaroo Island.

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E X T R A   H E A D I N G

About

HISTORY

Dudley Wines, Kangaroo Island is enthusiastically run and owned by Jeff and Val Howard, their three children and their families.


The Howard family history on Kangaroo Island dates back to 1883, when William Howard and his wife, Janet moved to land near Cuttlefish Bay on the Dudley Peninsula. Ruins of their original home still stand, just 7km from the site of the Dudley Cellar Door. Jeff, a fourth generation 'Islander' was raised on this same farm. His father Tom, and brother Mos, became dairy cow farmers, and supplied the Island with milk for many years. Tom purchased a block, running to the south coast of the Peninsula in 1964. This was Porky Flat, a rough-as-guts, few thousand acres that ran to the south coast, full of scrub, limestone and wildlife.


In the mid 60’s, when he was 18, Jeff was given a few cattle and sheep by Tom, and with limited equipment he was sent on the challenge of taming the wild unknown that was Porky Flat, and turning it in to viable farmland. Slowly a merino sheep and cattle farm took shape. Jeff met Val, who came to the Island as a teacher from the Barossa Valley, South Australia's wine capital. They built a house on the farm and had three children.


With the collapse of the wool industry in the early 1990’s, Kangaroo Island farmers had to move away from the wool monoculture and some very exciting and successful industries began; Honey Farms, Eucalyptus Farms, Lavender farms, Beef Cattle farms, fat lamb farms, marron farms, Egg farms, larger scale cropping and Vineyards were born. 


Jeff was one of the founding partners of the Dudley Wines company, established in 1997 by him and his 2 good mates. They planted vines in 1994 as an experiment and, with plenty of help from the locals, made their first small quantity of red wine in 1997 in part of the old shearing shed at Porky Flat. This was a Cabernet Shiraz blend they named 'Shearing Shed Red', and was purely for their own use. By 1998 they had so many grapes that they made their first commercial vintage wine. 


The business grew and was taken over solely by the Howard family in 2010. Beef cattle are still a major part of the Howard family business, as too is the Cellar Door at Cuttlefish Bay, which opened in 2011.


OUR WINEMAKER

Brodie Howard, Jeff’s son and fifth generation Islander, took over the role of winemaker in 2000, after completing his later years of schooling in the Barossa Valley. Brodie gained winemaking experience during vintages in the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, but is mostly self-taught, having received guidance from some of Australia’s top wine makers.


He controls every step of the process from grape to barrel to bottle, therefore he knows exactly what goes into every bottle. Brodie has never been one to play it by the book, and his unique blends reflect this; he loves experimenting, but has also gained Australia -wide accolades for his traditional wines.


Jeff and Brodie work together in the vineyard, winery and on the farm. The island lifestyle provides a good distraction from the busy day to day activities; they always manage to squeeze in a fishing trip when the weather is just right, for product research of course - fresh grilled King George Whiting matches perfectly with a glass of Dudley’s ‘Grassy Flat Sauvignon Blanc’!


OUR VINEYARDS

Dudley Wines’ vines are planted in a beautiful valley, within the Howard’s 4000 acre property, known by the locals as Porky Flat. Although it is a working beef cattle farm, the estate is still approximately 30% untouched native bushland.


Early settlers named ‘Porky Flat’ due to the abundance of Australian Echidnas (‘porcupines’) that flourished there; the Echidna’s attraction to the area’s loose soil composition for ease of foraging is shared by the grapevines, which thrive in the loam/limestone structure.


The 20 acre vineyard is surrounded on two sides by original malley scrub, home to the native kangaroos and wallabies, and the winery was built overlooking the vines. The plantation is 7km inland from the rugged south coast of the Dudley Peninsula (Cape Hart), where a colony of New Zealand Fur Seals lives and whales and dolphins can be spotted. The isolated nature, and the pristine surrounds of the vineyard contribute to the unique characters of Dudley’s range of wines.


The closest neighboring vineyard to Porky Flat is ‘The Helyar's’ which is 10km away. Dudley picks some of these grapes to use in some of it’s wines.


Adjacent the winery, a cellar has been dug out of the hillside and walled with limestone to provide a suitably stable environment to house 200 barrels of maturing wine and pallets of bottled stocks.

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