General News
3 September, 2025
Bottles of opportunity
NOT many people would choose the pungent smell of fermenting vinegar over the inviting aroma of freshly baked artisan bread but for independent produce entrepreneur Anthony Kumnick, it’s the natural progression of his story living in Great Western.
Anthony and his wife Amanda established Great Western Granary with a vision to supply high quality locally-produced sourdough bread to cafes and retail outlets in the region.
But after a seven year journey, the pair have decided to bring the weekly bread bake to an end.
“We also do pizzas every second Friday and we’re still going to carry on doing the pizzas and potentially some ad hoc events maybe, just not the regular weekly bake that we do,” Anthony said.
A changing economic landscape and new opportunities are the driving factors behind ending the sourdough bread production.
“We were going gangbusters up until the interest rate rises started to creep in, then people started to make different buying decisions and cafes were hurting, restaurants were hurting, and people started to make cheaper decisions with their food purchasing,” Anthony said.
“We’ve got another business that we’ve just started up, Grampians Vinegar, so we’re making vinegar from local wine.
“We’re using Bests Wines to make a rosé and a shiraz vinegar, and that’s been on the back of the downturn in the wine industry and the large amount of excess wine there is sitting on shelves.”
Anthony is passionate about minimising waste, pointing out that winemakers have found themselves in a position where they’re producing more grapes than they can use.
“There’s thousands of tonnes of grapes just being thrown out because of the downturn in the market, so we’re looking to use some of those grapes that would just get thrown out and we made a cordial, which is a vinegar-based cordial,” he said.
“It’s a shiraz cordial, which is hitting the non-alcoholic marketplace, it’s a bold, refreshing beverage with a bit of sophistication – that’s how we market it.
“It ticks the beverage box and also ticks the cooking box because you can use it in the kitchen, sort of replacing your balsamic, you can drink it as well, pour it over ice-creams, deglaze pans, all that sort of thing.”
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