Syrahmi — artisan wine, made with nature

CASE STUDY | Syrahmi and Garden of Earthly Delights
https://syrahmi.com.au

Planning application for winery and licensed premises (cellar door)

Land-use planning approvals can make or break innovative ventures in the peri-urban context.

The story of Syrahmi winery perfectly illustrates the challenges.

The winery is located in Tooborac, about 100km from central Melbourne, in a region where food and hospitality are key to the area’s identity and to the local economy.

In developing his craft, Syrahmi’s Adam Foster had worked with some of the most outstanding wineries in Australia and France and travelled extensively through Europe. After some years making wine using the infrastructure of other wineries, Adam was passionate about the next logical step — creating wine, his way, working with nature, at his own property.

Foster lodged an initial planning application and was unsuccessful. The proposal described a small-scale operation, largely non-mechanised, sourcing grapes both from the land and from other Heathcote region vineyards. It was a model that didn’t meet with the planning regulator’s perception of a winery.

Adam and partner Pip Foster commissioned Linda Martin-Chew to prepare a new application. This included a review of precedent decisions from The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal which supported Foster’s case that some of the grapes could be produced on other properties — before being processed and sold on site. (The Tribunal often refines and interprets matters, where a planning scheme definition is unclear.)

The new application included the appropriate advocacy, along with a process schematic for the winery, a red line plan for the liquor licence, a waste management plan and internal layout of the facility. It was successfully approved within six months.