By all accounts, John Tothill, one of the founding fathers of the Clare Valley’s wine industry, was a man of vision. Clearly a person of great determination and dedication, Tothill bought an estate close to the village of Auburn from Colonel John Barker, who was an ex-British army officer with a distinguished career in India, in the early 1890s. In those days Australia was John Bull’s vineyard and the British thirst for our fortified wines seemed unquenchable.
Auburn’s proximity to Port Wakefield, which had