Kabminye Wines, Krondorf Road Café
& Peripheral Art Space

In the mid-1800s a Silesian settler, Johann Christian Henschke, arrived at Krondorf in the Barossa Valley with his wife and children. At the time he could not have foreseen that five generations later one of his descendants would find a notebook in which he wrote his farm accounts, tucked away in his blacksmiths barn, or that a few years later that same descendant, Ingrid, and her husband

Rick Glastonbury, together with their daughters Ilona and Tullia would set up the Kabminye Wines cellar door, Krondorf Road Café and peripheral art space in a modern straw bale, steel and glass building designed by Rick on Johann’s land in 2003. Rick made all Kabminye’s wines with 100% Barossa fruit, using many rare traditional grape varieties and innovating wine making styles, with his first vintage in 2001.

Ingrid’s Krondorf Road Cafe served traditional Barossa recipes (the food of her ancestors) and delighted in chatting with locals in the cellar door about their memories of their lives and food in the Barossa Valley.

Ilona developed her art practice and showcased contemporary art in peripheral art space, and Tullia established the front of house procedures and researched recipes together with Ingrid, but with the passage of time Ilona and Tullia moved on to other things.

Ten years later, in 2013, Rick and Ingrid sold the property as a dwelling and moved the cellar door to the side verandah of their house just down the road at 179 Krondorf road, reopening in April 2014. Sadly, Rick contracted cancer and passed away at the end of 2016 and ten months later Ingrid closed the cellar door but has plans which are yet to be revealed. In the meantime, she has started a blog about her experiences, which can be found here.

Incidentally, the name Kabminye is an aboriginal word which apparently means ‘Morning Star’. It was given to the hamlet of Kronsdorf because of anti-German feelings during the Second World War, after which the name was changed back to Krondorf. Interestingly, the railways used the word Kabininge instead of Kabminye for their siding on Krondorf road.