In 1952, Giuseppe & Maria emigrated from Italy to Australia. They stayed in Sydney for about a month and then decided to make the move to the Riverina region as there was plenty of work on the farms for them to start their new lives together. They then began making a living on talents they brought all the way from Italy, producing olive oil and wine. They began working until they had enough money to buy their own farm and begin planting their own grapes which came about in 1968. Giuseppe began growing his own grapes and producing a popular Italian style drop that then turned into supplying bulk wine in 200-litre drums Australia wide.

In 1969 the cellar door started the cellar door was open for business! The popular wine style back in those days were fortified wines and they used to be sold in 2l flagons. Fortified wines included cream cherry, blackberry marsala, brown muscat’s, choc mint marsala, coffee marsala, strawberry marsala and the list goes on.

Back in those days everything was done by hand and a clear example of this is when a pitch fork was used to get the grapes off the back of the truck into a hopper to get crushed, it would then go into a tank with the refrigeration being blocks of ice in open fermenter tanks. Once this was done the skin and seeds of the grapes were squeezed through an all manual press. The wines were then filtered to get it ready for bottling with all corks and labels being applied by hand.

In 1989, the demand of wine grew and this is when the winery went into expansion with more grapes being planted for more varietals including Shiraz, Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. The company then moved onto another farm by the name of 1164 and began planting Italian varietals.. Montepulciano, Durif, Lambrusco and Lagrein.

By 1995 sales began to grow and because of this, the winery underwent a large expansion in production including development of vineyards and other expansions to the winery. The winery then moved onto a farm that consisted of 1,600 acres to keep up with consumer demand and this came about in the year 1995 and they managed to plant the grapes within 12 months.

Today, with 4 generations in the making, Warburn remains family-owned, with over 50 years in business. The company distributes a large portion of wine to Australia’s biggest retailer as well as exporting wine to almost 30 countries. Warburn is now positioned in the top 10 of Australia’s largest wine producers and is also the 8th largest winery in Australia. The family strives to continue their hard work and passion of making wine to support future endeavours, for the company’s ambitions and success.