Metala: A 130-Year Fight to Bring a Vineyard Home
Most wineries measure their history in decades. Metala measures it in six generations — and in a twenty-year campaign by one family simply to get their own name back.
William Formby’s Estate
The story begins in 1839, when William Formby arrived in South Australia from the United Kingdom. It took more than four decades of pioneering work before he was able to purchase the Metala estate in Langhorne Creek in 1882. Nine years later, in 1891, William and his son Arthur planted 21 rows of Shiraz and 14 rows of Cabernet Sauvignon on the property — vines that are still alive today, and now recognized as the world’s oldest family-owned Cabernet Sauvignon plantings. A further 5.4 acres of Shiraz went into the ground in 1894.
For almost fifty years, Metala wine was made in a purpose-built winery right on the estate, before winemaking passed to Arthur’s brother-in-law at Stonyfell Cellars. It was there, in 1962, that Metala Shiraz Cabernet 1961 won the inaugural Jimmy Watson Trophy — Australian wine’s most coveted accolade — instantly making Metala one of the country’s most recognizable wine names.
Lost, Then Fought For
Success brought change the family didn’t fully control. From the early 1970s, management of the Metala wine label shifted through a series of corporate holdings, beginning with Dalgety Wine Estate. The vineyard itself, though, stayed in family hands: in 1981, fifth-generation Guy Adams — just 17 years old at the time — took over running the estate, by then a 2,500-acre mixed farming property.
Guy’s commitment to the vines was tested almost immediately. In the 1980s, the Australian government ran the historic Vine Pull Scheme, offering growers financial incentives to remove vineyards in an effort to stabilize the industry. Guy turned the payment down. Instead, understanding the role his ancestors had played in building not just Metala, but South Australian wine more broadly, he chose to plant more vines, expanding the estate’s plantings to 300 acres.
That decision set the stage for a much longer fight. Together with his wife Liz — and carrying the words on the Formby family crest, Semper Fidelis, meaning “always faithful” — Guy spent the next two decades working to bring the Metala label itself back under family ownership. The dream finally became reality in 2022, when Metala returned home to Langhorne Creek and the family who had planted and tended its vines for over 130 years.
Langhorne Creek and Lake Alexandrina
Metala’s vineyards sit in Langhorne Creek, widely considered one of Australia’s most consistent wine regions, with the estate’s own vineyard map highlighting its proximity to Lake Alexandrina. Cooling breezes off the lake shape a microclimate well suited to slow, even ripening — conditions the family credits for the balance and flavor in Metala’s Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Farming across the wider mixed estate — which still includes broadacre cropping and livestock alongside the vines — follows a regenerative philosophy, an approach the family describes simply as staying “as light-footed as possible” on land they’ve worked for six generations.
Today, vines cover more than 200 hectares of the property, still centered on the varieties William and Arthur planted back in 1891.
A Wine Named for the Family Motto
Among Metala’s current range, one wine ties the whole story together most directly: Semper Fidelis, a blend built from the estate’s original Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon plantings, made in the spirit — and named for the motto — of the family that never stopped fighting to bring it home.