– Susan Papps (Yelland)

Wine was not part of my childhood.

Growing up in a country town through the 70s, 80s and early 90s, wine held no great significance in our home. Like many households, there was often a cask of Coolabah in the fridge — practical, unceremonious, and never something spoken about with reverence. It was simply there.

For a long time, I struggled to understand what I was meant to do with my life.
I watched people around me move forward with clarity — careers chosen, ambitions declared — while I felt untethered, searching for something that would ignite me and help shape the person I hoped to become.

Then one ordinary day, working at the local supermarket, I was moved into the liquor department.

And something shifted.

I found myself surrounded by bottles that seemed to hold far more than wine — they carried stories, history, legacy, generations of families, and a sense of place I had never considered before.

It was as if a light had quietly switched on.

In that moment, I knew I wanted to understand wine. All of it.
I wanted to taste it, study it, talk about it, and immerse myself in the world that existed inside every bottle.

That curiosity became momentum.

I moved to the city and enrolled in a wine course — which, as life would have it, was later cancelled. But by then the direction had already been set.

So I kept going.

New York City called next, where I enrolled in the renowned Windows on the World Wine School under founder  Kevin Zraly. The scale of wine — global, cultural, intellectual — unfolded before me in ways I had never imagined.

Not long after, I arrived in the Barossa Valley knowing absolutely no one.
But when you feel a pull that strong, you learn to trust it.

I simply began.

Looking back now, it is extraordinary to reflect on the people wine brought into my life long before we started our own business. And while I am not one for name-dropping, I will never forget meeting Robert Mondavi at a book signing — sealed with a gracious peck on the cheek. A small moment perhaps, but one that felt monumental at the time.

By 2005, Michael and I took the leap and founded our own winery.

What I have come to understand is this:

Wine is never just a business.

Wine gathers people.

It draws together individuals who may otherwise never meet — across countries, cultures, and generations — united by something beautifully simple.

The people our children have grown up meeting through wine are extraordinary. Not because they are famous or influential, but because they are kind, passionate, curious people who value connection.

Wine creates circles of belonging.

Over the years, I have watched bottles opened in moments of celebration, poured quietly during times of grief, shared across long tables, and gifted as gestures of love and friendship.

Wine brings light into shade.
It encourages conversation.
It aligns strangers through shared experience.

And so I have come to believe that this life in wine is far greater than a profession — it is a thread that weaves people together.

When I reflect on my fifty years, the most defining turning points — the moments that shaped my happiness and gave me direction — all trace back to wine.

Not to wine as consumption.

But to wine as connection.
As passion.
As purpose.

In a world that can often feel uncertain, hurried, and fragmented, there remains something profoundly reassuring about opening a bottle to share with others.

Because at its heart, wine reminds us to pause.

To gather.
To listen.
To celebrate.

And above all — to belong.

 

photo. Me (Susan Yelland 23yrs old) Parents Margaret and Kelwyn visited while on holiday in the USA 1998