Unfortunately, we live in a world where not everyone wants to gets along! Personally, I don’t always see eye-to-eye with everyone I come across, but when world leaders decide to have a dummy spit, things can become ugly very quickly. The outcome is many innocent people are negatively impacted and the lasting misery of conflict lingers for years. We witness such suffering, like what is happening in Ukraine, daily through the many media channels that flood our private lives.

My family had a heavy involvement in World War Two. Both my grandfathers played their role. One (John) was a squadron leader captaining a Lancaster bomber, while the other (Frank) drove a tank and was part of D-Day. I can’t imagine what John and Frank went through mentally on a daily basis, not knowing if they would ever return home to see their families. Thankfully, they both did, but as we know many had a one way ticket and died on the battlefields (land, air or sea). No matter what side of the war you sat, the courage and sacrifice soldiers made to protect their homelands was beyond comprehension.

As an individual, there is little that can be done to change enormity of past wars but future conflict can be averted if the lessons of the past never fade away. One of my personal projects has been to stop the grubbing/removal of the old vineyards in the Riverland that were planted by Australian soldiers that returned home from both world wars. The Ricca Terra Soldier’s Land Shiraz, Grenache and Riesling all are grown in vineyards owned in one period of time by a returned soldier or his/her family.

Many of the returned Soldier’s have grown old and passed on, but part of their DNA still exists. In our case, it is the vineyards and land they tended. The Soldiers' Land Wines is our way of respecting and preserving the past.

Remembrance Day (11th November) is a memorial day observed on Commonwealth member states since the end of the First World War to honour armed forces members who have died in the line of duty. Along with ANZAC Day, it is a very important annual event for The Returned & Services League (RSL), whose role is to take care for the health and well-being of the Service and Ex-Service community.

The RSL is heavily dependant on financial support from government and private donations to operate. Ricca Terra has been a supporter of RSL since the launch of the Soldiers’ Land wines. This year will be no different. We have joined up with our distributors in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to raise money to the regional RSL’s. In Adelaide we will run a promotional program with a number of the leading bottle shops. The support has been fantastic.

Leading up to Remembrance Day, we will be offering the full range of Soldier’s Land Wines via our website. For every case sold, we will donate $50/case to RSL - South Australia. This contribution will be added to the upfront donation of $3,800 we will be contributing in person next week.

This is very good cause and we hope as many people as possible support The Returned & Services League.