Tassie Mania
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GREAT SOUTHERN STATE
Our smallest state has everything that nature could throw at you – crystal-watered white sand beaches; fossil-laden cliffs; drippy, misted rainforests; and vast tracts of craggy World Heritage-listed wilderness. Then there are the marvels that have been shaped by human endeavour – like the rare and ancient rock markings created by the Palawa people tens of thousands of years ago; the many tangible reminders of Tasmania’s brutal convict past; and the marvellously subversive MONA – a subterranean museum dedicated to the themes of death and sex, located in a quiet Hobartian suburb.
And did somebody say... viticulture?
TERROIR NULLIUS?
Grapevines arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, (or Lutruwita, as it had been known for 40,000 years) with the first British settlers – no doubt in anticipation of a civilised little tipple after a hard day’s hunting thylacine. But early viticultural efforts tanked, and by 1870, it was generally considered that Tassie was no place for growing winegrapes. When a second attempt to establish a commercial vineyard in the 1880s and 90s also failed, the conventional wisdom prevailed, and Tassie wine’s fate was sealed.
But Tasmania didn’t have a problem with terroir. It had a problem with taste. These were the years when the primary market for Aussie wines was the Old Dart. And, while the English appetite for wine was prodigious – particularly in the upper classes (they didn’t coin drunk as a lord for nothing) – their taste ran more to heavy, sweet fortifieds like Port and Blackstrap. There was simply no market for the elegant, lighter-styled wines that cool-climate Tasmania produced. At the turn of the (20th) century, when wine was flourishing in just about every other Australian state, Tassie instead busied itself supplying Blackwood and Oak for their casks.
THE EUROPEANS
By the mid-twentieth century, local opinion regarding Tasmania’s unsuitability for wine was well and truly entrenched, both culturally and bureaucratically. It took two European immigrants – Frenchman Jean Miguet and Italian Claudio Alcorso – to challenge the thinking. In 1956, at Lalla, in the Tamar Valley just northeast of Launceston, Jean and Cecile Miguet established La Provence; and just two years later, in the south of the island, Claudio Alcorso purchased property on a small headland jutting into the Derwent River in Berriedale. He named his property Moorilla. The genie was out of the bottle.
WINE ISLAND
Forty percent of Tasmania is too rugged and too wet for agriculture of any kind. The Roaring Forties hammer the west coast, bringing rain, hail and snow (yep, sometimes even in summer in the wild southwest). So, viticulture is focused in the eastern two-thirds of the island.
Under Australia’s Geographic Indication regulations, the entire island has one single wine region designation (Tasmania!) but there are seven distinct viticultural districts, including Derwent Valley, Coal River Valley, Pipers River and Tamar Valley.
It should be no surprise, given its cool-climate profile, that the classic sparkling varieties of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier excel here (think Heemskerk, Jansz, Delamere and Stefano Lubiana). But there’s also exceptional Riesling (Freycinet, Bream Creek, Pressing Matters); Sauvignon Blanc (Bay of Fires, Ninth Island, Moorilla); and Pinot Gris (Holm Oak, Josef Chromy, Chain of Ponds, and a cracker under the Coldstream Hills label).
LOVE ISLAND
Today, Tassie’s elegant, cool-climate wines are adored around the world. That is, when the world can get its hands on ’em. (Canny Tasmania exports just 5% of its wine internationally.) But without a doubt, the best way to experience Tassie wine is at one of Tasmania’s 95 cellar doors. So, here’s the plan:
- Get outta Lockdown
- Stay outta Lockdown