Sami-Odi

Sami-Odi is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.
Only the best of Australia’s best wineries are ranked as a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

Sami-Odi is a heart and soul producer of the Barossa Valley and of Australian wine at large. It is a small producer but a significant one. Indeed if Sami-Odi stopped operation tomorrow, Australian wine would be significantly lesser, such is its importance to the Australian wine story.

The secret of Sami-Odi’s success is both tangible and intangible: for twenty years it has taken old vine Barossa shiraz and nursed it carefully, and thoughtfully, into each bottle, and has done so with such success that there’s now a years-long queue of people lining up, every year, in the hope of buying themselves a bottle. As wine writer Mike Bennie wrote on The Winefront site, “Sami-Odi sits comfortably in Australian cult wine status for its quality and originality.” Bennie was referring specifically to Sami-Odi’s Little Wine blend but he could have been referring to Sami-Odi itself.

The intangible of Sami-Odi is the faith so inherent to what Fraser McKinley and wife Andrea have built. This faith is as instructive as it is inspiring. Faith in their growers, faith in their land, faith in their region and faith in the dream that if they built their wine right, wine lovers would come.

Last year I wrote that “Sami-Odi is Australian wine, face-forward and true.” If Australian wine is lucky, these words will ring just as true in a decade or two as they do today. Much as the Rockford winery did in the 1980s, Sami-Odi has honoured the past by illuminating a clear and honourable path into the future.

—

The subscriber-based The Winefront site has Australia’s best collection of Sami-Odi reviews. The Winefront site has reviewed 35 Sami-Odi wines, dating back to the releases from the 2010 vintage.