Wine Region	Langhorne Creek, SA
Wine Maker	David Freschi
Guy & Liz Adams are fifth generation farmers from Langhorne Creek, where Guy’s great, great grandfather Arthur Formby first planted grapes in 1891. Having supplied fruit for some of South Australia’s legendary red wines from their famous Metala vineyard, the Adam’s decided that the next step was to develop a wine label of their own.
The Brothers in Arms label, released in 1998 is rich in old vine fruit, some as old as 118 years! For years one of the wine industry’s best kept secrets, Langhorne Creek is now a strong premium wine producer in its own right. Brothers In Arms, the essence of Langhorne Creek, evolved from five generations of grape growing tradition. The vines planted in 1891 led to the estate vineyard known as “Metala” vineyard, recognised as one of the most famous in South Australia.
Facing climate challenges head on – “Metala has been proactive in adopting and trialing new and more environmentally sensitive farming practices for many years. For example many of our broad-acre cropping soils are quite light and so over the years we have developed the practice of direct seeding with minimal tillage to encourage the integrity of those soils. In the vineyard we also crop our mid rows during the winter months with legumes and cereals. These are then sprayed off and rolled flat to create a mulch mat that adds organic matter, suppresses weeds, reducing spraying requirements, and also retains our precious moisture. Our understanding of our soils has led us to follow a program of minimal passes over the vineyard to reduce soil compaction. Whenever possible we will combine activities to achieve more than one outcome at a time. Water is one of the most precious resources and we have been using state of the art dripper systems which are computer controlled for accuracy for over 20 years. As new technologies are developed we are open to trial and measure their usefulness to our enterprise. Irrigation is scheduled according to data we retrieve from the soil moisture monitoring system which is set up in every one of our 40 blocks. The winery operates entirely on rainwater which is captured after use and treated on site. This water is then pumped out to a 10 Hectare woodlot site established to regenerate an area of remnant vegetation on our property.  Within the vineyard the use of pesticides is essentially non existent. Our approach is known as Integrated Pest Management where we encourage natural predators to do the work for us. The use of the re-vegetation belts around the vineyards, contribute heavily to this with native birds and animals using them for shelter and feeding in the vineyard.”