This Sunday I also had my youngest Luke ( 6 foot 4 inches and 18 years old ) do tend to like the larger servings! Anyhow, after a very small debate we landed on homemade pizza and we decided that Chilli Prawn and Rocket would be our pick. My contribution was to make the dough and cook the pizzas. The pizza style and matching wine were totally outsourced and the lady responsible for this surprising rule-breaking combination totally delivered! One of the best combinations I’ve had in some time.
- Our choice of matching wine was a Sparkling Shiraz Seppelt Original Sparkling Shiraz from the Great Western Region of Victoria
- Chilli Oil and seeds, Prawns, Passata, rocket lettuce, Italian mozzarella,
The sparkling shiraz from Seppelt is such a great match and also a fun wine for the occasion. While it's delicate in many ways, it's also powerful with the backbone being supported by some of the oldest shiraz vines in Victoria. The Great Western Region is a fairly unique place to grow shiraz.
Great Western is a sub-region of the Grampians wine region in Victoria, south-eastern Australia. The historical area has been producing wine since the 1860s and is home to some of Australia’s oldest wine estates. Shiraz is the region’s key grape variety, making a more spiced, delicate red wine than those that come from South Australia to the west. Great Western is also the birthplace of the quintessentially Australian sparkling Shiraz wine.
Seppelt is a historic Australian wine producer that has been making wines in the Great Western sub-region since 1863. Today, it is widely known for its range of cool climate Shiraz and sparkling wines produced from its selection of vineyards in Victoria – in the Great Western, Grampians, Henty, Heathcote, and Bendigo regions.
The estate’s first vines were planted in Great Western by Jean Pierre Trouette, Anne Marie and Emile Blamed in 1863. Within the same time period, Joseph Best founded the Great Western winery and in 1888 the winery was purchased by Hans Irvine. The tradition of making sparkling wines at Seppelt can be traced back to Hans Irvine who made the first Australian sparkling wines using the Traditional Method.
By 1900, Seppelt had established itself as the largest wine company in Australia and in 1918 Benno Seppelt acquired the Great Western winery. Seppelt continued to expand for the remaining part of the 20th Century and in 1985 was purchased by SA brewing in 1985 and in 1990 became a member of Southcorp wines. Most recently, Seppelt joined Foster's portfolio in 2005.
The Seppelt Great Western winery is surrounded by 105 hectares (260 acres) of Shiraz vineyards cultivated for the production of the estate's St Peter's, Show Sparkling Shiraz, Chalambar, Moyston, and Victorians wines.
The Seppelt Mount Ida and Coppermine vineyards at Heathcote sit atop a long band of red volcanic soil and are also planted to Shiraz. The cool-climate Drumborg vineyard in Henty was established in 1964 with the sole purpose of producing high-quality sparkling wines and to this day the original Riesling plantings still provide fruit.
By Darren Campbell - Founder of Winerelique.com 
