Johann Samuel Schulz was born in Prussia in 1819. He set sail for a new life in the colony of South Australia in the ship Prince George, arriving in Port Adelaide on 21 November 1838, just two years after the colony was proclaimed. By 1842 he had married and saved sufficient money to buy a farm at Rowlands Flat in the Barossa Valley.
He was soon joined in the area by fellow countryman Johann Gramp, who established the first vineyard in the Barossa at Jacob's Creek, and later by Bruno and Hugo Seppelt and Samuel Hoffman.
Johann Schulz developed an appreciation for wine which he passed on to his descendants; it found an outlet 150 years after his arrival in Australia, when Peter Schulz established Longleat 2 km south of Murchison in the heart of the Goulburn Valley.
Peter had for some time been a good friend of the Purbricks at nearby Chateau Tahbilk, and in 1975 he and his wife Jenny and their son Mark, decided to replant what had been old vineyard country right on the banks of the Goulburn River. They planted 6 hectares of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, Rhine riesling and semillon, and in 1981 made their first wines with the help of Alister Purbrick.
Peter Schulz was their winemaker, and Longleat produced three estate-grown wines each year: a medium to full-bodied shiraz with good pepperyfruit character; cabernet sauvignon, a deep and complex wine with minty fruit character; and a delicate, medium-bodied Rhine riesling. They bought in grapes from elsewhere in the Goulburn Valley for both red and white table wines. In 1987 they began developing a vineyard in the King Valley, in north-east Victoria, where they planted sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and pinot noir.
In 1998 the Schulz's sold Longleat to a group of friends who continued the tradition of making fine wines.
In 2004 Guido and Sandra Vazzoler became the latest owners of this gorgeous property and began the production of Murchison Wines.
