Island of salvation

Two things surprised me about my chance to explore Tasmania’s wine country. The first was quite how small the wine industry is there.

I had heard about how its cool climate was providing an island of salvation for wine producers on the increasingly torrid mainland, and expected to find vines going into the ground at a feverish rate. In fact Tasmania has only 1,500ha of vineyards, hardly more than England’s current tally. “More wine is spilt on the mainland each year than the entire island produces,” says Sheralee Davies, chief executive of Wine Tasmania and a veteran of the much bigger wine industry on what some Tasmanian winemakers call the “North Island”.

The other thing that amazed me – how dry Tasmanian wine country is – may explain the brake on vineyard expansion, in spite of the fact that Tasmanian grapes command much higher prices than those grown on the mainland. Western Tasmania may be wetter than anywhere else in Australia but the eastern part was tinder-dry earlier this month and Hobart vies with Adelaide for the title of driest capital in Australia. Most of the vineyards in the south-east of the island – in the Derwent and Coal River Valleys and Huon – and on the warm east coast, would not survive without irrigation. Although the Tasmanian premier Lara Giddings acknowledges that “wine is a critical part of Tasmania’s future”, more official investment is needed in irrigation before plantings can expand significantly.

For the moment, mainlanders are snapping up some of Tasmania’s viticultural jewels, encouraged by the fact that a Tasmanian Shiraz, Glaetzer Dixon, Mon Père 2010 from Frogmore Creek’s winemaker, won the coveted national Jimmy Watson trophy this year. Brown Brothers of Victoria across the Bass Strait bought the dominant Tasmanian wine company Tamar Ridge in September 2010, renaming it Tasmanian Wine Estates. (The two biggest companies – Brown Brothers’ acquisition and the Flemish-owned Kreglinger with its Ninth Island brand – account for more than half of the island’s production.) Yalumba of South Australia had already acquired the Jansz sparkling wine operation, and last year the award-winning Tolpuddle vineyard was acquired by Shaw + Smith of Adelaide Hills.

Mainland sparkling wine producers such as Domaine Chandon and Accolade, which produces such admired fizz as Arras and Bay of Fires, have been sourcing their base wines from Tasmania for years now. All of these companies recognised that Tasmania’s cooler (if not necessarily wetter) climate could provide them with racier, more refreshing wines than their current vineyards on the mainland were likely to in the future.

Ross Brown of Brown Brothers admits, however, that Whitlands, one of the vineyard areas they had developed in Victoria, was actually too cool, and provided suitably ripe Pinot Noir only two years in every five. What the more maritime climate of Tasmania can offer is fruit that ripens reliably every year but retains a very attractive level of natural acidity (adding acid is routine in most Australian mainland wine regions). This makes Tasmanian wines well balanced and good candidates for ageing.

Like many Tasmanian wine producers, Brown Brothers is chiefly interested in the island’s Pinot Noir, believing this will be the next big thing in Australia. Crucially, Pinot Noir is not replicable (unlike Brown Bros’ previous investment in Pinot Gris/Grigio plantings in Victoria) in the hot wine regions on the mainland that can churn out wine relatively cheaply. Pinot Noir accounts for about half of all the vines in the ground in Tasmania’s wine regions.

Chardonnay is the second most planted variety but with only about half as much vineyard as Pinot Noir, and an even higher proportion of it than of Pinot Noir goes into base wines for sparkling wine. This is a shame as Tasmania’s still Chardonnay can be stupendous. It is no accident that Penfolds now depends on Tasmanian fruit for its top Chardonnay, Yattarna, while both the top Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for Accolade’s Eileen Hardy label are now 100 per cent Tasmanian.

The still Pinots are certainly very promising, with good freshness, only medium body and attractive, dry finishes. Of about 160 licensed vine growers, fewer than 30 actually make wine themselves, and for the moment a high proportion of the wine grown on the mainland is vinified by one of two contract wineries, which may have a rather blanding effect on its character.

But the wines produced by some of the most ambitious of the new wave of young smallholder-winemakers, such as Joe Holyman of Stoney Rise and his friends Vaughn Dell and Linda Morice of Sinapius, have an intensity that transcends the norm – as do the wines of young Canadian Conor Van Der Reest, who is doing his best to transform Moorilla Estate into a modern Tasmanian landmark.

If Tasmania produces any seriously ordinary wine of any variety, I failed to find it. I found some outstanding Riesling, although this relatively minor variety is giving way to the inexplicable fashion for Pinot Grigio, and to Sauvignon Blanc which has become the island’s third most planted variety. In general the island’s growers find it difficult to ripen Cabernet and Merlot, but one admirable exception is Peter Althaus of Domaine A.

One big difference between Tasmanian wine producers and their mainland counterparts is that they manage to sell everything they produce. No embarrassing surpluses here. Only 40 producers sell outside Tasmania and only about a dozen export – although, as throughout the rest of the Australian wine industry, the focus has been shifting towards Asia. Under Althaus’s guidance, one ex-Red Army general has constructed a perfect copy of Hobart’s Government House on his estate in China. Still Tasmanian wines that may be found outside Australia include Apsley Gorge, Josef Chromy, Domaine A, Frogmore Creek, Stefano Lubiana, Nocton Park, Stoney Rise and Tamar Ridge.

For more tasting notes see Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com

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Jancis’s picks

• Derwent Estate Chardonnay 2007

• Domaine A, Stoney Vineyard Merlot 2005 and Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

• Frogmore Creek Riesling 2007, FGR Riesling 2010 and 2011. Chardonnay and Evermore Pinot Noir 2009

• Glenayr (Tolpuddle Vineyard), Pinot Noir 2008

• Moorilla Estate, Muse Gewurztraminer 2010 and Pinot Noir 2009

• Sinapius Riesling 2010, Chardonnay 2010 and Pinot Noir 2010

• Stefano Lubijana, Collina Chardonnay 2008

• Pipers Brook Vineyard, Reserve Pinot Noir 2006

• Pressing Matters Pinot Noir and Rieslings 2010

• Stoney Rise, Holyman Pinot Noir and Chardonnay 2010

• Tamar Ridge, Kayena Vineyard Pinot Noir and Botrytis Riesling 2009