Endeavour Group Vineyard Sale Slashes Chapel Hill Assets in McLaren Vale
Endeavour Group vineyard sale plans will strip Chapel Hill's vineyards and heritage cellar door from McLaren Vale, marking a sharp pullback from South Australian wine production. The move comes as the company reshapes its wine arm around retail and fewer production sites, with direct consequences for workers tied to the region.
More than 80 per cent of grape production will be cut as Endeavour reduces winery operations from seven sites to three. That is the number that matters most for McLaren Vale and the broader South Australian supply chain: fewer vines, fewer processing points and a smaller operational footprint across a business that still sells wine brands through its retail network.
McLaren Vale faces late June shutdown
Late June is the deadline for the Chapel Hill cellar door, which sits in a 150-year-old chapel in McLaren Vale. Endeavour is also selling the Chapel Hill vineyards, the heritage cellar door, vineyards and cellar doors at Riddoch Coonawarra and Krondorf Barossa, and it will close a McLaren Vale bottling facility later in 2025.
Erin Leggat, McLaren Vale Wine Region CEO, called the plan a “huge disappointment” and said, “It reiterates our calls that we need a lot of support from both state and federal governments.” She added, “These closures will also represent considerable job losses for our region, the impact of which will be felt across all businesses throughout the region and throughout the regional community.”
Chapel Hill keeps its brand
Chapel Hill, Riddoch Coonawarra and Krondorf Barossa brands will be retained by Endeavour Group, even as the physical assets are sold. That leaves the brand names in place while the production base shrinks, a split that suggests the company wants to keep consumer-facing labels while stepping back from much of the wine-making infrastructure.
Three other assets also stay with the group: Dorrien Estate in the Barossa Valley, Cape Mentelle in the Margaret River and Isabel Estate in the Malborough region of New Zealand. Vinpac Angaston in the Barossa Valley is also retained after Endeavour invested $25 million there, reinforcing the concentration of its remaining winery footprint in a smaller set of sites.
From 1865 to 2019
1865 is where Chapel Hill's story begins, with the ironstone chapel built that year; the first wines came from the surrounding paddocks in 1975, and the site was exclusively owned by Adelaide's well-known Gerard family by 1985. Endeavour Drinks bought Chapel Hill in 2019 from Swiss billionaire Thomas Schmidheiny, bringing the site into a portfolio now being pared back.
2007 was a high point for the brand's winemaking profile, when chief winemaker Michael Fragos won world winemaker of the year at London's International Wine and Spirit Competition. If Endeavour follows through on its plan to keep buying grapes from the same vineyards, the brand names may survive the sale, but the acreage and the jobs tied to the chapel will not carry the same weight.
