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Ochota barrels
Adelaide Hills, Australia7 wines4.1 avg
43
Taras and Amber Ochota's Basket Range project - punk music, surfing, and some of the most emotionally charged natural wine in Australia, continued by Amber after Taras's death in 2020.
Ochota Barrels began as a passion of Taras and Amber during a surf trip along the Mexican west coast in a Volkswagen campervan in late 2000. After visiting several wineries and beautiful surf spots, they decided to make holistic wines back in their homeland in South Australia.
Taras Ochota was born around 1971 in Adelaide to Ukrainian-Australian parents - his grandfather had grown grapes in the Clare Valley. Before wine consumed his life he was a surfer and a musician who played bass in Adelaide's punk and hardcore bands (including Kranktus, who performed at Big Day Out). He studied oenology at Adelaide University and worked vintages at Two Hands in the Barossa and Nepenthe under Peter Leske in the Adelaide Hills, plus time in California and Italy. He launched the Ochota Barrels label around 2008, initially buying fruit from trusted growers in the Adelaide Hills, and gradually acquired his own small plots in Basket Range.
The philosophy was low-intervention in the fullest sense: native yeast fermentations, whole-bunch inclusion, minimal or zero sulphur, no fining or filtration, gentle extraction (often foot-stomping and short macerations), old French oak or neutral vessels. The wines are lean, aromatic, tensile rather than fruit-forward - shaped by the cool, high-altitude Basket Range terroir. The labels are hand-drawn and playful, almost all referencing punk and post-punk music.
The cuvées are a catalogue of Taras's record collection:
- The Fugazi - 100% Grenache from McLaren Vale (named after the DC post-hardcore band). The flagship.
- Impeccable Disorder - Pinot Noir
- A Sense of Compression - Chardonnay
- I Am the Owl - Syrah (Dead Kennedys)
- The Green Room - Grenache (sometimes with Syrah) from McLaren Vale
- Weird Berries in the Woods - Gewürztraminer
- Slint - Chardonnay (named after the Louisville post-rock band)
- The Mark of Cain - Pinot Meunier from Piccadilly Valley (named after the Australian punk band Kranktus toured with)
- Texture Like Sun - single-vineyard bottling
Taras died on 12 October 2020, aged forty-nine, after a prolonged autoimmune-related illness. The loss was devastating to the Australian wine community. Tributes and memorial bottlings poured in from winemakers around the world.
Since then Amber has continued the project, supported by Taras's father Yari and winemaker Lucas Armstrong among others. The style and spirit remain intact; recent vintages have been widely praised. Ochota Barrels is not just a winery in the Basket Range cohort alongside Lucy Margaux and Gentle Folk. It is the one people talk about when they talk about what Australian natural wine means emotionally, not just technically.
