When David Bowley went to check on his vineyards on December 19, 2019, they were the picture of every winemaker’s dream.
Gum trees dotted the surrounding paddocks and the valley was lined with a deep, verdant green as the grape vines neared vintage.
A 1920s farmhouse overlooking the vineyards was the heartbeat of the property.
The business he had founded 12 years prior, Vinteloper, was on a steady path of sustainable growth and was making waves in the wine industry.
But on December 20, the Cudlee Creek bushfire tore through the area and everything changed.
The same hills were engulfed in flames, the gum trees stripped of all life and the valley of vines was reduced to nothing more than scorched earth.
With the trials and tribulations of 2019 behind him, David once again has thriving vineyards and a cellar door at his disposal.
At the time, David and the Vinteloper crew were in the middle of a staff Christmas event.
They knew a fire was out of control in the area, but the reality of the situation only hit once a team member showed David an online article covering the fires.
“Everyone on the team was safe and together, which is good, but we were just watching it from afar,” David says.
“The moment of realisation that it was all on fire was about six in the evening (when) someone came over with their phone and said, ‘you should have a look at this’.
“It was an article about the fires and the photo was (our 1920s) farmhouse on fire.”
The news bulletin that evening also showed footage of the property burning and David later discovered that 95% of Vinteloper’s 27,000 vines were burnt. “My memories of that day are that it was just the lowest time,” David says.
“I didn’t expect to come back from it.”
Those initial feelings of desolation were felt throughout the local primary production industry, – and in the aftermath some were able to make it back while others never recovered.
David says he and his team at Vinteloper had built the business and brand on the ethos of doing things differently, which, along with “thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of manual labour”, he credits with paving the path to recovery.

“Every fire is different and every impact is different – you’ve got to figure out your own circumstances,” David says.
“… There’s a bit of a scramble for a lot of questions and not many answers, but in the fullness of time, we’ve been able to recover, because we’ve done things differently.”
Today the grape vines at Vinteloper are once again producing award-winning wines and are a constant reminder of the resilience shown by David, his family, his business and the region as a whole.
But the true embodiment of their journey to recovery can be found in the 1920s farmhouse.
Reduced to rubble by the fire, only the skeleton remained.
But thanks to David’s wife, Sharon, the farmhouse ruins were reimagined and reinvigorated – brick by brick – as a cellar door.
“I’m the one sitting with you getting interviewed, but really, she’s the one who deserves more credit than I do because I wanted to knock the building down,” David says.
“She said ‘you can’t imitate that kind of history, let’s retain the building, let’s do something with it’.
“The process in its basic form, was to have a concept and find the architects who could take the imagined concept, put it onto paper and make it buildable.”
The architecture firm tasked with materialising David and Sharon’s vision was Adelaide-based Detail Studio.
They understood the value of the ruin and were able to create a building that was an ode to the past, as well as a statement for the future.
“There’s a lot of ‘gonnas’ in the world and there’s only so many doers,” David says.
“Architects are doers.”
With the trials and tribulations of 2019 behind him, David once again has thriving vineyards and a cellar door at his disposal.
In its current form, Vinteloper is bigger and better than it’s ever been – which evokes a sense of anxiety for the self-described imposter-syndrome-sufferer.
“To tell you the truth, I feel so nervous, but excited,” he says.
“I think it puts us in a different category, but I’m really excited that people can come here and just be immersed in what we do, in such a beautiful space.
“Everything else will be what it will be.”