Torzi Matthews, a food and winemaking partnership between Domenic Torzi and Tracy Matthews have passion and the firm conviction of appreciating the value of heritage tradition in the crafting of their wines and extra virgin olive oils.
I am fifth generation Calabrian - Abruzzese stock and grew up on the Adelaide Plains working for the family's market gardens as for Tracy she was born and raised in Sydney’s Newcastle with a long career in hospitality.
In 1996 Tracy and I stumbled across a small, frost-pocketed hollow in the beautiful Mt McKenzie, Eden Valley and fell in love with the area for its remoteness and its diverse thin soils.
The rationale was quite simple: this land would produce low yields of Shiraz fruit which in turn would translate into a full, flavoursome Italian style wine - the style of wine needed to match our Mediterranean Italian food.
Tracy and I had plenty of detractors and lots of unsolicited advice, some good, some …well some people don't have vision. The vines went in, the frosts came, the yields were low and Frost Dodger was created.
Frost Dodger wines are crafted via non-interventional Italian / European techniques where our heritage appassimento method is used for our Shiraz fruit a method that employs careful hand harvested whole bunches which are then put onto racks which are laid out for drying in the natural mother air on the estate and in turn fermented naturally by the indigenous yeasts from the vineyard.
Our Eden Valley Riesling also employs our European non-interventional methods with hand picked, whole bunch press free run juice fermented naturally by the indigenous yeasts from the vineyard.
You will have noticed our Italian varietal wines under the Vigna Cantina label which are now available for purchase. These represent my parents Mario & Francesca's native wine grape varietals that have seen a many hours in sourcing the planting materials and sites that was not readily available a decade ago. These wines are truly wonderful in their aromatics and fresh lively fruit flavours that are the pinnacle of Italian food pairing.
Our story doesn’t end there though. Whilst developing the wine side, Tracy and I took over the reigns of the family extra virgin olive oil business. Setting a new direction we increased the sourcing of wild olives scattered throughout the Barossa. These magnificent ancient wild olive trees date back to the 1880’s producing extra virgin olive oil of amazing quality and character.
Our purpose is to craft our wines and extra virgin olive oils for where it shows its expression of birth place.
