Torzi Matthews, a food and winemaking partnership between Domenic Torzi and Tracy Matthews have passion and the firm conviction of appreciating the value of heritage tradition in the crafting of their wines and olive produce.
Domenic is fifth generation Calabrian – Abruzzese stock and grew up on the Adelaide Plains working for the family’s market gardens, Tracy was born and raised in Newcastle, NSW with a long career in hospitality.
In 1996 we stumbled across a small, frost-pocketed hollow in the beautiful Mt McKenzie, Eden Valley and fell in love with the area for its remoteness and its diverse thin soils. The rationale was quite simple: this land would produce low yields of fruit which in turn would translate into flavoursome European style wines – the style of wines needed to match our Mediterranean food. We had plenty of detractors and lots of unsolicited advice, some good, some …well some people don’t have vision.
The vines went in, the frosts came, the yields were low and the wines were created. Self taught as a youngster it was quite natural being involved in the production of wine for own consumption, with that confidence our wines are crafted via non-interventional Italian / European techniques that employs careful hand harvesting, whole bunch natural ferments, basket pressed and the use of fine grained French oak barrels.
We have also produced wines under the Vigna Cantina label that introduces our Italian family native varietals and those outside the Italian wares that I seek interest to explore. These wines are truly wonderful in their aromatics and fresh lively fruit flavours that are the pinnacle of Mediterranean food pairing.
Our story doesn’t end there though. Whilst developing the wine side, Tracy and I took over the reigns of the family table olive & olive oil business. Setting a new direction we increased the sourcing of wild olives scattered throughout the Barossa Valley. These magnificent ancient wild olive trees date back to the 1880’s producing extra virgin olive oil of amazing quality and character.
Our purpose is to craft our wines and olive produce for where it shows its expression of birth place.
