Finders Keepers

NIGEL HOPKINS

THE Sampson Flat bushfire in 2015 could easily have ended the dreams of Greg and Katrina Horner, who’d bought their 75ha Mt Bera property just seven years previously and had managed only six vintages before they were almost completely burnt out.

“We cut 25,000 vines back to ground level,” Greg says, along with the task of replacing posts and kilometres of wire and dripper lines.

There were just enough vines left untouched by the fire for a small vintage in 2016, but the restoration process is now complete, with Mt Bera’s 15ha of vineyards, near Gumeracha in the northern part of the Adelaide Hills