This Barossa Winemaker Is Swapping Grapes for Grain and Making a Series of Single-Origin Ales

At first glance, the views from Stonegarden’s Flaxman Valley cellar door provide a classic snapshot of the Eden Valley. The 170-year-old stone cottage looks out over rows of gnarled 90-year-old riesling vines and a series of valleys ringed by patches of native bush. But look beyond the eucalyptus trees encircling the property and you’ll notice an unusual addition: a field of hand-sown barley.

This grain may lack the glamour of the region’s most celebrated agricultural product, but for Ben Radford it represents the logical extension of a lifelong passion. The longtime Rockford winemaker and Stonegarden co-owner has spent 35 years trying to understand the relationship between grapes and the land on which they’re grown. Now he’s applying that knowledge to an entirely new crop.

The Single Origin Ale project started with a conversation between Radford and the team at boutique malting facility Malt Donkey about how using barley from different sites affects a beer’s flavour. “Though it’s famed as wine country, wheat and barley have been grown in the Barossa for more than 150 years,” he says. “So it wasn’t long before I started thinking about doing something with the different soil types in the Barossa and Eden Valleys.”

Because he wanted to see whether beer could express terroir in the same way as wine, “I wanted the most extreme soil types and climates”. That meant sourcing parcels of grain from nearby Moppa’s ironstone-rich soils, the decomposed sandstone and quartz ridges of the cooler Eden Valley and the black and red clays of Dutton, which sits on the edge of Mallee country. To fully understand the process, Radford knew he’d also need to grow his own barley, so he dry-sowed a small field near his own vineyards.

The next step was working with Malt Donkey to turn the grain into a beer that was “the opposite of an IPA. We wanted to make sure the barley was the star and didn’t want to smother it with hops,” he says. “That would be like taking a beautiful riesling and putting it in new American oak.” The same hops, yeast and ferment temperatures were used across all four batches of Single Origin Ale, then the beers were sealed under cork and bottle-conditioned in sparkling wine bottles.

Tasting them for the first time, Radford admits to some nerves. “I didn’t know if they would be significantly different or not. With wine, you can taste the richness or sweetness or pepperiness of the berry. But tasting the grain in the field, it was just like barley, so it was definitely an experiment.”

Fortunately, the finished beers produced some stark contrasts, though not always in the ways he expected. “There are definitely different flavours, but I don’t think you can compare the flavours you get from grapes grown in those areas with barley,” he says. “In a wine line-up, Moppa would be last because it would be the most powerful and full-bodied. Here it’s second. And the biggest surprise was the one from our property and how different that was.”

Christened Wild Thing, the Flaxman Valley barley was dry-grown on a property that has been herbicide-free for 25 years and had produced only 138 bottles. That meant the barley had to compete with dozens of other grasses, clovers and medics, and though they were all removed after harvesting, Radford has a hunch that they affected the flavour. He compares it to whole bunch winemaking, and the result is an intriguing sip with a hint of honey and an almost herbal bitterness.

The other releases range from a clean Eden Valley ale to the biscuity Moppa and rich Dutton, where extra heat and low rainfall resulted in a higher protein content that added depth to the flavour and produced aromas of pastry with blackcurrant jam. At prices from $29 to $48, the ales are meant to be enjoyed around the dinner table just as a bottle of wine would be.

Radford says that it’s still early days and he’ll need to see several vintages before he can confidently map flavour characteristics onto particular regions. But he’s thrilled with the results so far.

“Each of these ales comes from a single patch of land and reflects the climate, terroir and choices made by the farmer. Ultimately, winemaking is about growing something from scratch, watching the grapes form and then turning them into a beverage. This is simply another version of that.”

The four ales are available to purchase from Stonegarden. Prices start from $29.

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