Dudley Wines, Kangaroo Island is enthusiastically run and owned by Jeff and Val Howard, their three children and their families.
The Howard family history on Kangaroo Island dates back to 1883, when William Howard and his wife, Janet moved to land near Cuttlefish Bay on the Dudley Peninsula. Ruins of their original home still stand, just 7km from the site of the Dudley Cellar Door. Jeff, a fourth generation ‘Islander’ was raised on this same farm. His father Tom, and brother Mos, became dairy cow farmers, and supplied the Island with milk for many years. Tom purchased a block, running to the south coast of the Peninsula in 1964. This was Porky Flat, a rough-as-guts, few thousand acres that ran to the south coast, full of scrub, limestone and wildlife.
In the mid 60’s, when he was 18, Jeff was given a few cattle and sheep by Tom, and with limited equipment he was sent on the challenge of taming the wild unknown that was Porky Flat, and turning it in to viable farmland. Slowly a merino sheep and cattle farm took shape. Jeff met Val, who came to the Island as a teacher from the Barossa Valley, South Australia’s wine capital. They built a house on the farm and had three children.
With the collapse of the wool industry in the early 1990’s, Kangaroo Island farmers had to move away from the wool monoculture and some very exciting and successful industries began; Honey Farms, Eucalyptus Farms, Lavender farms, Beef Cattle farms, fat lamb farms, marron farms, Egg farms, larger scale cropping and Vineyards were born.
Jeff was one of the founding partners of the Dudley Wines company, established in 1997 by him and his 2 good mates. They planted vines in 1994 as an experiment and, with plenty of help from the locals, made their first small quantity of red wine in 1997 in part of the old shearing shed at Porky Flat. This was a Cabernet Shiraz blend they named ‘Shearing Shed Red’, and was purely for their own use. By 1998 they had so many grapes that they made their first commercial vintage wine.
The business grew and was taken over solely by the Howard family in 2010. Beef cattle are still a major part of the Howard family business, as too is the Cellar Door at Cuttlefish Bay, which opened in 2011.
https://www.dudleywines.com.au/