Australia’s new crop of urban wineries

Alex has settled on an old paint factory. Nick has taken over an abandoned ice works. And Cam’s venue is a former bakery on a busy main road, right on the tram line. Say hello to Australia’s new urban wineries where the traditionally rural activity of crushing grapes and fermenting wine has been transposed to various city settings across the country. As the 2017 harvest looms, these new places offer town dwellers a glimpse of vintage without the inconvenience of schlepping all the way out to a wine region. Winemaker Alex Retief opened the ambitious Urban Winery Sydney to the public in May in a rejuvenated industrial complex in the suburb of St Peters but he had already processed almost 40 tonnes of grapes on the site in the months beforehand.