A journey down the rabbit hole
SALIFE steps into the home of Domenic and Elise Palumbo to find out how they launched one of SA’s coolest food and wine venues on a shoestring budget, helped put the Fleurieu region on the map, and are now mindfully raising a family amid the chaos of a fast-growing business. And it all started with a breakdown.
It’s one of those magically still summer evenings at McLaren Vale’s Down the Rabbit Hole cellar door. As you enter through the timber archways and head down a garden path that meanders towards a whimsical sky-blue double-decker bus, it feels as if you’re stepping through a portal into some sort of wonderland, hidden among the vineyards.
It’s a Friday, and the lawn is blanketed in bohemian picnic rugs. With organic wines in hand, a large crowd is tucking into grazing platters, pizza and pasta, while blissfully soaking up the live music. The entire scene is cast in a golden glow as the sun dips below the ocean which can be seen in the distance, far beyond the vines.
It seems there is nowhere left to sit, but suddenly appears not a white rabbit, but the venue’s smiling and hard-working founder Domenic Palumbo, who then disappears and returns carrying a table that he sets up in a spare corner of lawn. Dom’s wife Elise is close by, keeping an eye on their two children Pippa and Bobby, playing with other kids in the crowd.
With their home just metres from their cellar door, these Friday night events are a big party in their backyard. Down the Rabbit Hole has become so popular, the couple now has a roster of almost 40 staff working across the business.
Yet, this unique food and wine destination would never have existed if not for a broken-down Kombi that left Dom and Elise stranded in the outback – where they even found themselves at gunpoint – during a two-year lap of Australia.
Before we get to that story, the couple invites SALIFE into their renovated 1950s brick home, where their pet ducks waddle across the back lawn. Elise describes their home as a calm, loving and open space that allows Pippa, four, and Bobby, two, to have a “wild and free” childhood. There is no television inside the Palumbo household.
Spending time in their flower garden with Pippa, four, and Bobby, two.
“No screens are a big one for us. I was raised without a TV and if we wanted to be entertained, we had to get outside. I think that’s such a gift in your childhood,” says Elise.
“Our children have a wide berth to explore and play outdoors. Every week, the kids count down the days to Friday when our backyard turns into their wonderland as it fills with families, and they get to dance the night away to the live music.”
While the lifestyle is ideal in many ways, Elise admits privacy is often in short supply. “Dom works seven days a week and we’re still learning how to balance our lives. It has grown more quickly and become a lot more than we ever envisaged,” she says.
“Our home often feels like a community house for our cellar door team, our friends and our family. I do love that Pip and Bobby are growing up with a strong sense of community around them. They also get to witness us at work and what that really means, whether in the winery, in the cellar door, or working in the gardens.”
Dom and Elise first met in 2008 while working together in hospitality. Elise grew up in Port Noarlunga and studied journalism. She aspired to be a writer and wanted to travel the world. Dom grew up in Adelaide in the world of food and wine – his nonno was an Italian winemaker and his nonna was a chef.
“My grandparents made wine every year, following the same traditional methods as they had in Italy,” Dom says. “I have great childhood memories of my sister and I stomping on big bunches of grapes, and hand-pressing the wine. Being around the purity of the natural way of making wine was incredible.
“I always knew that wine and hospitality were going to be a big part of my life.”
Pictured in Charles Knife Canyon, WA, Dom and Elise Palumbo packed up their lives, moved into their Kombi van and travelled Australia for more than two years.
It was after striking up a friendship with renowned Fleurieu winemaker Walter Clappis that Dom was encouraged to launch his own wine label – Down the Rabbit Hole – in 2012. Walter made the wine using grapes from his organic McLaren Vale vineyards. Today, the wine is made by Walter’s daughter Kimberly and her husband James Cooter.
While Dom was selling wine direct to retailers, Elise was running a weekly Aldinga night market called Fridays After Five, where the couple also ran a wine bar. Over the three years of running the markets, Elise helped to raise the profile of Aldinga and the Fleurieu.
“It was a great way for people to engage with the community. The markets were about highlighting how beautiful this region is, and that would eventually inspire what we do on a Friday night here at Down the Rabbit Hole,” says Elise.
“Growing up here, people didn’t seem to be excited about being from the Fleurieu. In fact, nobody seemed to even use the term Fleurieu back then. Now, I hope young people can be proud of being from this region.”
While Dom focused on the wine, Elise contributed with the branding and events, which were wildly successful and continued to grow in scale. Launching a cellar door was the ultimate goal, but the cost was too great, and the couple hoped to travel.
“We committed to hopping in the Kombi van every Sunday night and going away somewhere in SA, and we did that for about four years. Those little nights away greatly impacted us and affected our relationship in a positive way,” says Elise.
“We would drive down to somewhere like Deep Creek and have a night disconnected, sitting under the stars. If it was winter, we’d be in the van, with a bottle of wine, and have these big conversations.”
Hosting live music every Friday night has been a hit at the Down the Rabbit Hole cellar door.
Dom fell in love with these experiences so much that he suggested they hit the road and travel Australia in their Kombi, which they’d named Scout. “Moving into the Kombi and disconnecting from our day-to-day lives was a pivotal moment for us,” says Dom.
“It wasn’t as common for young Australians to do back then. We got rid of most of what we owned at the time and spent what ended up being two-and-a-half years travelling around the country. We used the time on the road to take the wines with us and visit restaurants and bottle shops.
“We grew to love the simple things in life. The material world, for me, dissolved. I went from being someone who was really focused on business, to experiencing life in a whole different way, and absolutely loving the simplicity of life – being among nature and out under the stars. It was such a big shift for me.
“It gave us a lovely direction and purpose in life, but also for what we wanted our business to be. Both of us were inspired, quite deeply, to be more giving in lots of different capacities and that really filled our cup. We built this place with that direction in mind.”
While the Kombi lifestyle was often less idyllic than it seemed on Elise’s Instagram page –which garnered a following of more than 300,000 people – the challenges made the experience more memorable.
“The Kombi is very small inside, and has no air conditioning, and it broke down a lot,” laughs Elise. “Early on the saying, ‘every breakdown brings a breakthrough’ became our motto, and without fail it proved itself true every time.”
Scout, the couple’s intrepid Kombi, tackles Razorback Ridge in the Flinders Ranges
During their travels, the intrepid Kombi broke down about 20 times, including two major mechanical failures. The first happened in Exmouth. “We had two and-a-half months living in a tent that a mechanic lent us, and we were hitchhiking every day. That is one of my favourite memories, even though there were moments where we were crying on the side of a road,” says Elise.
“Even with all the breakdowns, it gave us this power in life to give anything a go, because if it all goes belly up, we know we can end up living in a van and be really happy. We discovered freedom in that. I knew it would become one of the happiest times of our lives, and it did.”
Few young Australians were travelling by van at the time, Dom recalls. “By living life on the road, we were surrounded by lots of older people who’d been through life and who we hung out with around campfires and learned so much from,” says Dom.
However, as Elise explains, it was during their second breakdown that the couple found themselves at gunpoint. The Kombi had conked out again, this time in the remote outback near the border of New South Wales and Queensland, where there was no phone reception.
When they approached the only house they could see in the distance, they found themselves with a rifle pointed in their direction. “So, Dom raised his arms and walked up the hill towards the man to explain that we needed help. After a while, the man walked inside and brought out a satellite phone for us to use. Thankfully we knew the roadside assistance number by heart. He kept his gun on us as I called for help. It was incredibly strange,” she says.
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“After, we ran back to our van and locked the doors. It took eight hours for the tow truck to make it to us.
“The tow-truck driver told us he never went into that neck of the woods without a gun.”
The family in the lounge room of their home which they renovated with the help of friends and family.
Once back in Byron Bay, Dom and Elise learned the Kombi would take four weeks to be fixed, and at great expense, so they flew back home to South Australia.
On returning home, they had dinner with their winemaker, Walter. They explained to him that they had developed a clear vision for a cellar door. It so happened that Walter was selling a block of land that backed on to the vineyard.
“So, Walter brought us here, and as soon as Dom and I stepped on to this land, we both got teary, because it was everything we’d been describing to each other. It was overwhelming,” says Elise.
The property had a run-down house that Dom and Elise could renovate, and sheds that they could use to create a cellar door.
“Walter knew it was not feasible for us to buy the property, but he felt that we were meant to be here. He said: ‘If you guys can get back here in six months, you can start building your cellar door. When it’s open and you can afford to, you can buy this land from me’,” says Elise.
“Had it not been for that divine timing, the land would have sold. It was a scenario we couldn’t have dreamed of, and we were going to work as hard as we could to make it happen.”
First, needing somewhere to live, the couple rolled up their sleeves and got to work renovating the dilapidated house as quickly as they could, so that they could start on the cellar door.
“People who we’d met on the road around Australia flew in to help us,” says Elise. “Every weekend, friends and family kept rolling up to help. Whenever we’d just about had enough, it seemed like another car of people would just rock up and say, ‘we’re here to help, what can we do?’ There was a community of people wanting us to get the business open.
“We worked really hard. We hit some big roadblocks, but we did it, thanks to friends and family. We paid everything back, and then bought the property from Walter within two years.
“A lot of people look at it and say: ‘you guys are so young, how’d you do all this?’ We have to thank Walter, who was incredibly gracious in helping us get a foot in the door. He trusted that we would work hard and make good on his offer.”
Work and home-life are intertwined for the Palumbo family, but living alongside the cellar door and interacting with a large community has provided a beneficial upbringing for Pippa and Bobby.
Dom and Elise opened their cellar door at the end of 2019, fell pregnant with Pippa in early 2020, and shut down due to Covid just a couple of months later.
Fast forward to 2025 and the business is going strong. Down the Rabbit Hole has recently given its restaurant its own name, Fiore, meaning flower or bloom in Italian. The restaurant overlooks the on-site flower garden which provides florals for the table settings. The kitchen is overseen by executive chef Nick Tadija who uses organic, local produce, keeping with the organic winemaking ethos.
“We are passionate about eating organic at home and we don’t use any chemicals on our property. So, we wanted to walk the talk with the restaurant. That was a big commitment,” says Elise.
Down the Rabbit Hole has become known for its iconic bus, a 1974 Scottish Leyland double-decker, named Lennon. Dom and Elise sourced the bus from New South Wales and drove it all the way home, with a breakdown along the way, of course. It is now a tasting room.
“It’s such a unique, intimate space that often brings strangers together to become friends, and we’ve had quite a few love stories of people who’ve met on the bus, too. I sit upstairs and watch the sunset with a glass of wine quite often,” says Elise.
“When we were building Down The Rabbit Hole, we had a clear vision of what it was going to be, but it has become so much more. We bit off a lot all at once by starting a family as well, so we’re still learning how to balance our lives.
“We’ve never been afraid of working hard and I’m quite proud of that. Even when we were young, Dom and I always had two or three jobs.”
Looking in the rear-view mirror, Elise and Dom are grateful they were willing to follow their curiosity, take chances and answer the call of adventure – just as Alice followed the proverbial white rabbit. And despite their growing success, it’s their adventures that have kept them grounded.
“Memories are the most precious currency for me,” says Elise.
The article originally featured in the February 2025 SALIFE magazine.
