Vintage Longbottom

THE STRENGTH AND LOVE OF FAMILY AND WINE DRIVES THE LONGBOTTOM STORY INTO A NEW ERAKim Longbottom has built her wine business around the core message that family comes first. Twenty years after releasing her first wave of classic red wines with husband Mark from the Limestone Coast’s famed Padthaway region, a new chapter in the Vintage Longbottom story has begun with the arrival of daughter Margo into the company.Their family story continues and now includes the next generation.Margo brings with her a family-instilled passion for wine as well as a vibrant new outlook stemming from her studies in fashion, digital marketing and business.Surrounded by wines and vines all her life, she freely admits she loves the lifestyle that comes with the business as well as the hard work, from getting her hands dirty during vintage to the essential sharing of the admin load and vital new community connections via social media.The wine operation established by Kim and Mark Longbottom, Henry’s Drive Vignerons, paid direct homage to the history of their property where a horse-drawn mail and passenger coach service, run by Henry John Hill, operated in the 19th century.Like the coach drivers of that era, who earned the much-admired respect of locals for their enduring energy and devotion to duty, Kim and Mark became leading family wine producers connected deeply to the Padthaway region in south-east South Australia, now part of the larger zone known as the Limestone Coast.The Longbottoms set up a range of highly regarded wine brands marking the property’s history: Henry’s Drive, The Postmistress, The Scarlet Letter and Morse Code. After Mark’s death in 2008, Kim continued the business with the same commitment and devotion, and with Margo now on board the time came to continue the family story with a fresh start as mother and daughter in new surroundings.