Endeavour Group has sold the Chapel Hill vineyard and winery in McLaren Vale to a retirement village operator.
This is confirmation of a rumour first reported in The Week That Was about a month ago.
There is some suggestion the Chapel Hill site could become a resort rather than a retirement home.
Endeavour will lease back the vines to produce Chapel Hill wines.
The wines will be made at Endeavour’s Dorrien Estate winery in the Barossa Valley.
Rachel Steer
The Chapel Hill property has been bought by Adelaide-based Torrens Retirement Services for an undisclosed amount.
Endeavour announced in May that it would sell both Chapel Hill and Oakridge Wines.
The company said at the time it was reshaping the Pinnacle Drinks business to an “asset-light, customer-led portfolio”.
Highly regarded winemakers Michael Fragos (Chapel Hill) and David Bicknell (Oakridge) were retrenched in July.
Endeavour bought Chapel Hill in 2019 from the Schmidheiny family in Switzerland. They had owned it since 2000.
At the time Endeavour was part of Woolworths.
Adelaide professor Tom Nelson planted the first vines at Chapel Hill in 1972 and the first wines were made in 1975.
Tom recently passed away.