Dalfarras is a celebration of wine, art and family; with my wife Rosa – artist and Dal Farra before marriage, myself – as the winemaker, and our daughter Hayley – bringing a new generational philosophy and focus; offering a range of carbon neutral, premium wines under captivating and contemporary artworks.
The bottom line is great drinking and stunning visuals – enjoy!
– Alister Purbrick
A creative union between partners in crime Alister and Rosa Purbrick and their eldest child, Hayley Purbrick.
Rosa Purbrick is the artist and the wines are named in homage to her maiden name Dal Farra. She is a creative soul who brings her passion for the natural landscape into her works and a vibrant energy to the Dalfarras labels.
Alister Purbrick is the 4th generation of the Purbrick family at Tahbilk and adds his wine-making touch to the Italian and Spanish inspired wines.
Their daughter Hayley, who is passionate about the environment is making sure the wines are modern yet environmentally friendly carbon neutral wines.
The Dalfarras range of wines offer lively, upfront fruit characters and bright varietal definition under the livery of bold and contemporary images.
We hope that you enjoy these premium quality wines with friends and family.
In many vineyards across Australia wandering vistors will find rose bushes, planted neatly at the end of row-after-row of low-running grape vines. Pristine punctuation marks in a sea of lush greenery, these decorative details also have a practical function as a barometer for vine disease. If a rose is sick, so too will be the vines.
Rosa Purbrick (herself named after the hardy rose species) has kept watch over vines all her life. Born in Mildura, she grew up in a large Italian family with a heritage steeped in home made vintage. Her father produced his own potent ferment, renowned for its unique ‘kick’ and designed, no doubt, to ‘fine’ out his daughters’ potential suitors. Rosa remembers picking clustered bunches of grapes and heaping them into old ‘diptins’. She and her siblings would weave vine leaves through the perforations to keep themselves entertained on hot summer afternoons when energy levels dropped and heads became hazy with the hum of insects.
Fate came to Rosa in the form of a husband robust enough to withstand her father’s home made vintage. She married winemaker Alister Purbrick in 1982 and thus joined the oldest and most revered of Australia’s wine legacies – Tahbilk Vineyard beside Victoria’s Goulburn River.
As an artist, Rosa’s life and work are synchronised with the vineyard’s seasonal changes. Her imagery is etched in tune with the shifting moods of the landscape – from its blushed springtime mornings, to its crisp autumnal dusks and silent winter nights. For many years her paintings aimed for naturalism in carefully arranging close detail of foliage and colourful blooms. Many of these lyrical still-life compositions were translated onto wine labels for the property’s Dalfarras range of wines – dedicated to Rosa’s maiden family name – Dal Farra.
From these early pictorial idylls, Rosa has moved forward to a fresh arena of experimentation, one that links her more intimately with the ‘living energy’ of the vineyard. She now paints closer to the earth and allows the sun to dazzle her gaze. This submission to a more emotional relationship with her environment has sent her imagery spinning into a dervish of distinct yet related avenues. Pictures leap from one medium to another – from slick oil finish to porous paper texture – as the subject itself refracts and warps between figuration and full abstraction.
These divergent strains ‘converse’ with each other, as if to suggest a debate about the physical qualities of wine and its age-old entaglement with the human ‘spirit’.
Anna Clabburn, October 1999
