SUMMER IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA is less a season than a standing invitation. The Gulf goes flat and warm, the stone fruit arrives, and every wine region in the state remembers it has a lawn. December and January are when this place stops being a destination and starts being a habit – the drive down the Fleurieu you’ve done a hundred times, the ferry you keep meaning to book, the cellar door you promised you’d get back to. Three months, and a state that makes it easy. Here are some of our picks.
Handpicked Festival
14 November, Lake Breeze Wines, Langhorne Creek
Ten years ago this was a backyard concert. It is now six thousand people in a vineyard near the shores of Lake Alexandrina, with a cocktail forest, twenty-odd food trucks and Langhorne Creek finally getting the attention it has always deserved. The lineup is always incredible. Go for the setting regardless. handpickedfestival.com
Summer Vines
January, McLaren Vale
Eleven days of long lunches, paired tastings and the Vale’s summer whites and rosés, which are built for exactly this weather at exactly this latitude. The 2027 dates land soon; last summer it ran across the back half of January. summervines.com.au
The Bay Sheffield
Late December, Colley Reserve, Glenelg
Professional foot racing on the grass at Glenelg, run since 1887 and still one of the great South Australian afternoons – bookmakers, sprinters, a crowd three deep, and the beach fifty metres away. The right thing to do with the flat days after Christmas. baysheffield.org.au
The Heartbreak Choir
20 November – 5 December, Dunstan Playhouse
State Theatre Company closes its year with Aidan Fennessy’s play about a country town choir and the handful of people holding it together. Funny, generous, and a great night out. statetheatrecompany.com.au
Kangaroo Island
January
Forty-five minutes on the ferry and you are somewhere else entirely. January is the month for it: long evenings, empty sand at Stokes Bay and Vivonne, sea lions at Seal Bay, and a food and wine scene that has rebuilt itself since the fires with more ambition than it had before. Book the crossing now – January fills early.
That’s the last of our picks for 2026. Thank you for reading this year, and for the letters and the tip-offs about places we’d missed. This list could have been three times as long, which is the best problem a magazine in this state can have.
We’ll see you in February. Until then, get out into it.
Tom Archontidis, Publisher
Follow Fifty+SA on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
