Coonawarra rallies for a real dinkum celebration

Australia's Zema Estate, 400km southeast of Adelaide, makes some of the most incredible cabernet sauvignon in the region.
Winemaking has been in the Zema family since 1835 when Demetrio Zema's great-grandfather opened the first wine bar in Armo, in Calabria, Italy.
In the 1950s, Demetrio fell in love with Francesca, but Francesca's family moved to Australia for a better life after the war, on the understanding that she would soon move back to Italy to marry Demetrio.
But Demetrio became impatient and decided to go to Australia, marry his girl and bring her back himself.
She convinced him to stay and they settled in Penola, while Francesca's father started working for Wynns, it was 1953.
Two sons, Matteo and Nicola arrived.
Demetrio earned a living and a fierce reputation as a painter - but wine was in his blood. In 1982 they bought their first vineyards, in Coonawarra. Demetrio now has 60ha of vines in three prime Coonawarra locations.
Experienced local winemaker Greg Clayfield has joined the team.
His 2006 cabernet sauvignon is multi-faceted, warming and lovely, but his 2005 Family Selection Cabernet is truly triumphant with spearmint and cedar aromas, hints of prune and pepper.
It is supple, smooth and juicy in the mouth.
Just down the road, on the last Friday of every month, just about everyone in Coonawarra and neighbouring Penola gather at the town hall for Tea Night.
And one thing's for sure, this month Tea Night at Coonawarra on September 24 will be a big one.
They call Coonawarra Australia's other Red Centre, but despite being one of the Southern Hemisphere's most famous wine regions, the population of Coonawarra sits at only a sleepy 40 or so people.
Apart from the tiny town hall (which looks like something time forgot) a general store and a wee church, there isn't much else to Coonawarra, apart from vines, vines and more vines.
Every family brings a salad or vege, different people are rostered on to cook whatever meat is on and even if you're some famous rock star winemaker you have to take your turn pulling pints of beer at the bar.
Tea Night is a tradition dating back generations and it's a way of making sure everybody keeps in touch and, more importantly, that loads of fun is had over good tucker and good grog at least once a month.
Even the teenagers lurking outside hunched over their cellphones trying desperately hard to look depressed seem (dare I say it) happy.
"It's a small place where not much out of the ordinary happens, but everyone goes to Tea Night," says local raconteur and winemaker Doug Balnaves as he guided me through Penola.
"And there's a lot of excitement in the town because October 17 is when Mary MacKillop is going to be canonised here."
It was at Penola in 1866 that Mary MacKillop, an Australian Roman Catholic nun, and Julian Tenison Woods, a priest and scientist, founded the Australian Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.
They provided a free Catholic education, initially for the isolated bush children of Penola, but over the following decades her schools spread far and wide.
She will be the first Australian saint and will become known as St Mary of the Cross.
"People are coming from all over the world and I don't know if the town knows what it's in for," Doug says.
"It's going to be the biggest event this town's ever seen".
That was just hours before a police car mysteriously veered across the main street during a late-night patrol and ploughed into the Coonawarra Wine Centre office.
That drew crowds, it was a big event, and one that "was just so weird and random for this town", said Lisa Gulyas, administration and events officer for the Coonawarra Wine Centre.
However, just two months later, on August 1 a tornado ripped through Penola frightening the locals and destroying everything in its wake.
Just after the shops had shut and people had gone home at 6pm, the tornado, measuring 50m wide and leaving a path more than 3km long, tore through the main street.
It cut power, obliterated some buildings and damaged others including the historic Mary MacKillop schoolhouse.
The repair bill for the town was estimated at several million dollars - but by all accounts the canonisation is going ahead.
So Tea Night in the Coonawarra Town Hall on September 24 will have the locals downing a few glasses of cabernet sauvignon and praying for an uneventful few weeks until the big day.
Doug told me Penola was settled by the Scots and Irish.
"Half of them were teetotallers, half were committed alcoholics.
"When they began using the local pub as the post office, half the town wouldn't go in to get their mail, and half of them wouldn't come out."