Wine legend’s donation to transform Adelaide ‘eyesore’
The bedraggled German Club is being turned into a swanky new meeting place after one of SA’s top names in wine chipped in a huge donation. See how it will look.
A more than $2 million upgrade of the South Australian German Club’s Brooklyn Park home is expected to create a transformed building following a donation from one of the state’s top names in wine.
Alongside a $900,000 grant from the state government, Dr Wolf Blass – one of SA’s most prominent winemakers – has donated $1.3 million from his foundation towards the project.
Blass was born in Germany, where he studied viticulture, winemaking and oenology – receiving his Master of Wine at the age of 20 – before moving to Australia in 1961 and settling in the Barossa to take a three-year contract with Kaiser Stuhl Wines, where he developed sparkling wines.
The Barossa is where he built a business that now has a global reputation and has won more than 10,000 awards.
Blass said he had maintained a lifelong connection to his German heritage, and hoped the upgrades would ensure the German Club would remain a “vibrant gathering place for generations to come”.
“The German Club has always been about people coming together – to share our culture, our food, our stores and, of course, a good drink,” he said.
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“I’m very proud to be able to help the Club take this next step. I want to see it become a place that people are excited to visit and a place that future generations can continue to enjoy for many, many years.”
Artist’s impression of the proposed redevelopment of the German Club’s Brooklyn Park home. Render: Supplied
The new funds will see the tired old building on Airport Road in Brooklyn Park transformed, with a new façade, kitchen, bathroom, and other amenities to be constructed.
German Club moved from Flinders Street in Adelaide to the Airport Road former Scout Hall in 2019 – something described as “quite a shock” by German Club vice president Brigitte Olijnyk.
“It’s a bit of an eyesore, but we needed a hall,” she told InDaily.
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“We want to be able to return the character to the building.
“We’ve done our best to decorate with flags and banners to conceal on the inside the very ordinary interior of that building.”
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Olijnyk said “it will not look anything close to what it looks like now once we’re able to complete the project”.
The German Club has been “flipping a lot of sausages and schnitzels to fundraise for this”, having so far saved more than $300,000 to qualify for the government grant.
Olijnyk welcomed the support of long-time club member Blass, a German migrant who moved to Australia in the 1960s before opening his eponymous wine label that decade.
Blass was recently named the SA Legend of the Vine at the 2026 Wine Communicators of Australia Awards for his contribution to the state’s wine industry.
Construction of the redevelopment is expected to commence later this year and be completed in 2027.
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