There’s a new chapter unfolding at Koonara, and before it goes any further, we wanted to sit down with you – our most loyal supporters – and share it properly.

You’ve been part of everything we do here at Koonara. You show up to our events, visit the cellar door, follow our journey to organic certification in Coonawarra, and support our ethos of low-sulphur, honest wines made with genuine care. You laugh at our silly videos, share our posts and cheer us on from wherever you are in Australia. Being invited into your lives – through our wines, finding a place in your special moments, big and small – is what brings us the most joy in this business.

So you’re the first to hear about our next chapter.

We’re consolidating the Koonara wine range. Going forward, the wines we make will come only from our own Coonawarra home-block vineyards: our Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. The broader range – the labels we’ve developed over the years working with some wonderful local growers – will sell through as stock runs down and won’t be produced again. And yes, that does mean saying goodbye to some of your favourite wines.

Dru & Nicole at our Mount Gambier Food and Wine Fiesta Event with a crowd of people in the background.

Koonara has never been just a wine label, and honestly, we’ve never been people who do just one thing. We’ve ventured into multiple cellar doors, homewares, glassware, jewellery and explored overseas markets. We have hosted Food and Wine Fiestas, Platinum Marquees at fabulous Race Days, cellar-door events, art classes, markets, and Good Food and Wine Shows. And of course, built our loving Koonara community – whether that’s on socials, visitors to the cellar door or at events.

And at the heart of all of it were the wines.

Our wines and our logo were born from the Angel’s Share – the portion of wine that naturally evaporates from the barrel as it ages. We figured what was left was their gift to us. That’s how our first wine names came about: Ambriel’s Gift, the angel of communication, and Ezra’s Gift, the angel of self-expression.

Over time, the names evolved to include the people and places closest to us. Our daughters Lucy and Alice, Dru’s gran Emiline May, our winemaker Peter Douglas, who we were quietly very lucky to have until he retired in 2024, and Dru’s father Trevor – a man so handy with a shotgun that word spread among the local crow population that Koonara’s vineyard was not a safe place to fly over.

And the land around us, too. The Golden Orb spiders, the razor-sharp rocks, the daisies and dandelions, the Cape Banks lighthouse. Every label has a story – and every one of them is deeply sentimental to us.

Dru and I are not stepping back from anything. We are stepping toward something.

Thirty years in wine taught us what brand authenticity is worth – and what it costs when it’s compromised. We know that first-hand, having had our own wines counterfeited in China. That “challenge” became the foundation for something new. We have built Securicode – a unique code-based platform that allows brands to verify their products are genuine, protecting what they’ve spent years building.

Consolidating the range is about making space to focus on our next chapter.

Here is what it means to you.

Koonara.com stays open – you can continue to buy direct for as long as stock is available. Some wines from our Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz home-block vineyards will be around for the long haul; others won’t last much longer, so if there are labels you absolutely love or have been meaning to stock up on, now is genuinely the time.

Your loyalty points don’t expire. Keep earning and redeeming.

Our Koonara community means the world to us. You’ve spent your money, your time, your afternoons with us. You’ve brought friends, recommended our wines, turned up to events, pressed the love heart on a social post and cheered us on from your couch on a Friday night with a glass in hand.

So thank you. Genuinely, from the bottom of our hearts, it really has meant everything to build this with people like you around it.

Now, pour yourself something good – you deserve it.