page_title: Romavilla Winery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Romavilla Winery / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Romavilla Winery, circa 1910
context_page_description: Romavilla Winery is a heritage-listed winery at 77 Northern Road, Roma, Maranoa Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1877 to 1878. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 14 August 2008. The winery closed for business in December 2012.
context_section_description: Romavilla Vineyards, on the outskirts of Roma in the Maranoa district of south western Queensland, was established in 1866 by Samuel Symons Bassett. It dominated wine-production in the Roma district and later in Queensland for many decades, and continues to manufacture commercial wines. The earliest section of the present winery buildings was constructed in 1877-1878.
  Grapes were grown successfully on the head stations of pastoral properties in the area in the 1850s, during the first wave of European settlement, but Romavilla produced the earliest commercial wine in the Maranoa in the 1860s and was among the earliest of Queensland's commercial wine producers. At the peak of viticulture in the Roma district in the late nineteenth century there were 50 local vineyards, the majority of which had been established in the 1870s and 1880s. Most of the grapes grown were for table fruit, but a small wine-producing industry also emerged at this time. The principal vignerons in the district included SS Bassett, John Robertson (manager of Mount Abundance Station), William Tune, James Spencer, Alexandre Robinson, and the Tardent brothers (Henri, Alexis and Emile, from the late 1880s). Grape growing and wine producing remained important local industries well into the twentieth century, with Roma being described in about 1920 as being surrounded by "a magnificent fruit and wine growing district".
  Bassett, born in Cornwall in 1840, arrived in Sydney in 1856 and worked on his uncle's Hunter Valley property for some years. From 1860 he managed Euthulla Station in the Maranoa for his uncle and cousin, until in 1866 he purchased from the Crown nearly 270 acres (109 hectares) of recently surveyed agricultural land just outside the town of Roma. Here he established Romavilla Vineyards, with vine cuttings brought in by bullock dray from Toowoomba. In 1869 he diversified his interests with the establishment in Roma of a general store and a depot for wines sales.
  In about 1870 Bassett built a house at Romavilla and in 1871 married Isabella Cameron of Brisbane. At Romavilla they raised a large family, with three daughters and six sons surviving to adulthood.
  Bassett had no formal training either in grape-growing or wine-making, and learnt largely by trial and error. By 1881 he was employing a manager to run the winery, while he (and later his sons also) travelled throughout Queensland to promote Romavilla wine. By 1888 Bassett had 55 acres under vines, from which he was producing 7,000 gallons of wine per annum, as well as table grapes for the local and Brisbane markets. The Romavilla cellar was capable of holding 30,000 gallons of wine, and Bassett usually kept 20,000 in stock.
  Like many of Queensland's early wine producers, Bassett's first cellar at Romavilla was above ground. That structure no longer exists. The earliest section of the present large winery building at Romavilla was constructed in 1877-1878, reportedly of cypress and imported Oregon pine, and was extended several times in later years. It accommodated the whole process of wine making, from crushing, to fermentation in vats, to maturing in barrels, to bottling, and incorporated a large underground cellar. In late 1888 the cellar was described as being partly above and partly below ground, "built of corrugated iron in 7 feet 6 inch lengths, with a space of 18 inches filled in with battens to the wall-plate, and covered with corrugated iron". The section of the cellar that lay partly underground measured 36 by 40 feet (11 by 12 m); attached to the end of this was a similarly constructed cellar building, all above ground, about 50 by 24 feet (15.2 by 7.3 m). There was no attempt to maintain a regular cellar temperature in this structure.
  During the 1880s Bassett's reputation as a maker of good wines was established when Romavilla won its first prize for wine in 1886. The winery sustained a list of impressive prizes, including four first prizes out of eight at the 1900 Queensland Exhibition, nine first prizes out of ten at the 1901 Exhibition, and medals at international competitions
caption: Romavilla Winery, circa 1910
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