The Adelaide Hills is one of South Australia's great larders. We map a region of cheese-makers, chocolatiers, farm gates and serious cellar-door kitchens.
A region you can eat
The Adelaide Hills is, before anything else, a larder. Cool air and rich volcanic-edged soils make it ideal for produce, and a tight-knit community of makers turns that produce into some of the best food in South Australia. You could spend a weekend here and never eat the same thing twice.
Cheese and chocolate
Woodside is the obvious place to start. Woodside Cheese Wrights and Udder Delights both make handmade cheese worth crossing town for, while Melba's Chocolate Factory lets you watch chocolate being made the old way. It's a town you graze rather than visit.
Farm gates and provedores
Beerenberg, near Hahndorf, has turned a family farm into a national jam-and-sauce institution, with pick-your-own strawberries in season. Village provedores at Mylor, Aldgate and Stirling stock the smaller makers — the smallgoods, the bread, the things you build a picnic from.
Ridge-top kitchens
The cellar doors take the food as seriously as the wine. Glass-walled kitchens at Pike & Joyce and Howard Vineyard, the restored pubs at Crafers and Stirling, and the German halls of Hahndorf all turn the region's produce into long, lazy lunches.
The takeaway
Come hungry, bring an esky, and build your day around the table. In the Hills, the food is the destination.
