A Nossa História
Our Story
'Adega' simply means winery.
It’s a word you become well acquainted with travelling through Portugal’s great wine regions.
A simple name for a brand with a simple goal, to create Portuguese-inspired wines on the opposite side of the globe.
Inspired by Portugal’s wine heritage and reinterpreted through the landscapes of McLaren Vale.
The Iberian Peninsula, and namely Portugal, offers a very close climatic comparison to Adelaide and its surrounding wine regions. With our proximity to the cold Southern Ocean and the eastern embrace of the Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale shares striking parallels with Portugal’s coastal landscapes.
Regions like Península de Setúbal, Lisboa and the Oeste, Ribatejo, Colares, Bairrada and the Costa de Alentejo feel almost replicated here, not only in atmosphere, but in seasonality, rainfall, and geology. Even further inland, places like Dão and the Douro Valley echo similar annual patterns to McLaren Vale and the neighbouring Hills.
Adega Wine Company is this; an attempt to show terroir & cultural similarities while celebrating our differences
Henry Smale
Winemaker and founder Henry Smale is a self-professed Lusophile (from Lusitania, the Romans' word for Portugal), a lover of all things Portuguese. Growing up outside of the capital Lisbon, Henry found a love of nature, of the raw power of the Atlantic, how the summers smelt sweet under the pine trees and how the rainy winters brought life to the meadows and hills browned by the summer sun. A country of tradition and heritage that was both proud and humble, its architecture and culture as beautiful as its rugged natural landscape.
While visiting the Fleurieu Peninsula, after returning to his native Australia to study Environmental Science, he was amazed by the similarity of the coast, the vegetation, the sea and the sky. The feeling of ‘home’, of a Portugal on the other side of the world, would eventually lead him to moving to McLaren Vale and learning of Portugal’s influence in the Australian Wine landscape. Old fortified making varieties still exist in significant numbers, varieties like Verdelho, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Cão remain, decades since the fortified wine era of Australia declined. Adega began as a way of seeking out these varieties, and work out what has existed, and still exists, here in McLaren Vale.
Henry has returned to Portugal to work vindima (vintage), learning directly from the Portuguese winemaking craft and the extraordinary diversity of its regions and grape varieties. Through travel, tasting, and time in the cellar, the idea for Adega Wine Company became clear: to make wine that reflects this influence, and to share a deeper understanding of a country still underrepresented in the wider wine world, particularly in Australia.
