Tasmania Annual Wine Report: Delivering on Promise Way Down Under

Orchard fruits and dairy come well before wine in Tasmania, which is often referred to as the Apple Isle, at least by Australians. The country’s smallest and perhaps most beautiful state is stamped with a cool, maritime climate, yet the southernmost regions are dry while the northern ones are considerably wetter, meaning vintage variations in wine are strongly delineated.

Despite external perceptions of verdant, bucolic fields, Tasmania’s southern zones of the Derwent and Coal River Valleys are largely dry when they aren’t enshrouded by clouds and regular drizzle. A reliable propensity for ripening grapes is the reason these regions were planted before others. The Channel District and Huon Valley at the southernmost end of the island face Antarctica and receive more rainfall. It is not until one heads north to Tasmania’s second-largest city, Launceston, that the landscape begins to glisten green and the humidity born of more regular rainfall becomes palpable.

I headed directly south from Hobart to the D’Entrecasteaux Channel on my recent visit to the state. There I visited Mewstone Wines in the aptly named hamlet of Flowerpot. A gorgeous north-facing vineyard, gently undulating, Mewstone is comprised largely of loamy duplex soils formed on Jurassic dolerite, a clay substrata.

Winemaker Jonny Hughes indicated that 2023 was “a cool La Nīna year that was light on volume, albeit very late and concentrated as a result,” due to prolonged hang time. It was also a high-acid vintage that required forensic viticulture to mitigate the ever-present prowl of botrytis and downy mildew. Hughes noted that picking didn’t finish until late May. This would be akin to November in the Northern Hemisphere! 2022 was a similar dynamic, albeit a bit more voluminous. It stands to reason that excellent riesling resulted.

Hughes crafts two suites of wine: the Hughes & Hughes label, denoting the addition of purchased fruit from other Tasmanian regions, and the pricier Mewstone, hewn of estate material alone. Both rieslings are excellent! The former, a 2023, is a piercing, tensile style with a dollop of residual sugar draped across the finish in the name of poise. The latter, a ’22, offers a broader swathe of stone fruit allusions layered with lees work, a fleck of skin contact and older barrel handling. The Mewstone Chardonnay Tasmania 2022 is excellent, too. While it was the first iteration tasted across more than 150 wines, it augurs positively islandwide for a stylistic pendulum that has swung toward generosity of extract, embellished with cool climate tension and savoriness, over obvious fruit. More exceptional examples were to come.

While the string of recent La Niña vintages possibly favors white wines, at least according to many vintners, quality pinot noir tends to be the domain of superior growers rather than a pervasive category that defines Tasmania per se – at least for now. This, of course, is nothing unusual. Burgundy, southern Germany, Oregon and better parts of New Zealand are no different when it comes to this capricious grape. Yet Tasmania’s troughs are deeper and its highs fewer and farther between.

A lot of this, of course, can be directed at the minuscule quantity of wine produced. Tasmania barely makes up 1 percent of the Australian crush. Yet while there are many exhilarating white wines and promising syrah, particularly as the climate warms, prosaic pinot is the norm rather than the exception before a discordant lightning strike here and there shatters complacency, making one realize that the potential is still there, if not still largely untapped.

The first lightning strike during my trip was leveled by Stefano Lubiana and his imperious raft of biodynamic, single-site pinots, during my visit to his winery in Granton, in Derwent Valley. The wines today are crafted by his son, Marco, who is not yet 30, and who also runs his own eponymous project. Marco ferried me about the sites before leaving on a surfing trip to Indonesia the following morning. A near-vertiginous amphitheater was revealed, facing due north to northeast while receiving the reflective and refractive warmth from the Derwent River, flowing directly below.

Stefano Lubiana Wines is just around the bend from MONA, Tasmania’s acclaimed gallery devoted to new and modern art, and it was here that the father of the Tasmanian wine scene, Claudio Alcorso, opined that had the French settled Hobart instead of the English, “the valley’s hillsides would be replete with vines.” Lubiana has clearly listened.

The sites vacillate between calcareous marl over alluvial gravels, and bluer more meagre clay with fissures of limestone. In typically laconic Australian fashion, Marco quipped that “it is not limestone that really matters, but just the rock. Good rock.”

The entire Lubiana range is stunning, with minimally invasive handling, a little more tension to the whites and a pulpier, easier-going nature when it comes to the reds. While I encourage you to stack your cellars with all of these Lubiana beauties while waiting patiently for eight to 10 years for them to soften, my favorite for now, as it so often is, is the Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir Tasmania La Roccia 2021. The carapace of tannin is beautifully refined, serving as a bulwark of restraint, staving off any excessive fruitiness from seeping across its barriers.

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It is the fruit sweetness that so often detracts from drinkability in many New World pinots. California, for me, is the case in point. Mercifully, Lubiana’s wines are built on a foundation of savoriness, each fidelitous to their respective site. The Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir Tasmania Il Giardino 21, for example, is svelte and a little looser at the seams than La Roccia, but still bound to a sinuous belt of savory tannin, lathered with lilac, pomegranate, griotte and porcini. On a different note, the Stefano Lubiana Chardonnay Tasmania Collina 2022 is a masterpiece, demonstrating the importance of structure to the complexity quotient when it comes to white wines.

The day after my visit to Lubiana, I tasted at Pooley Wines in the Coal River Valley, traditionally a source of very good riesling and sturdy pinots that seem increasingly reliant on a good tuft of whole bunches for their tannic persuasion. I then proceeded north to my tasting base in the Tamar Valley, north of Launceston. There I faced a phalanx of bottles, to be tasted across two days.

The Tamar is suddenly the picturesque postcard of the mind’s eye, come to life. According to winemaker Joe Holyman at Stoney Rise, this is because "of the rainfall over the mid-summer and the humidity that results,” making for a pastoral, undulating confluence of fields and vineyards that trail the thoroughfare of the river. The geology is comprised of ironstone clay to grayer sands, suiting a broad range of varieties that Holyman articulates in his typically deft fashion. Like Lubiana, he comprehends the need for tannin in his wines and the sort of meticulous viticulture that serves as a prerequisite for achieving it. After all, quality fruit precludes quality tannins.

I adored the Stoney Rise Trousseau 2022, an effortless substitute for cru Beaujolais to be quaffed in large drafts. On a more complex note, I cherished the build of tannins, too, in the Stoney Rise Pinot Noir Project X 2021, which is more reductive, oaky and obviously reliant on a spindle of piquant whole-bunch tannins. Holyman reckons he has the components at a point of better balance today. I couldn’t agree more. This recent iteration brims with an umami warmth, reeling off scents of griotte, lilac and garden herb strewn across a kaleidoscopic structural lattice, led by fine-boned tannins. While chardonnay here is also worthy of attention, it was the Stoney Rise Savagnin Tradition 2021 that woke me from a temporary slumber. Like the Trousseau, it was birthed by Holyman’s adoration of the Jura. Plump and saline, it reels off compelling vibes of curry powder, betel leaf, finger lime, tamarind, ginger and chamomile.

From the tasting bench, the Chatto Pinot Noir Tasmania Intrigue 2022 and Chatto Pinot Noir Piper's River Bird 2022 impressed equally. The former is more structured and darker of brood, while the River Bird is redder of fruit, fragrant and extremely delicate, reminiscent of a pretty Chambolle-Musigny.

Sparkling wines are a strong suit for Tasmania, too, with the cool climate serving up strong natural acidity and optimal physiological ripening patterns for the style. The House of Arras is the clear leader here, although the brand has just been sold and the future remains unclear.

Otherwise, the whites of Stargazer make the label a strong contender for the best white wines in the land. The rieslings are all excellent, yet it is the Stargazer Tupelo Coal River Valley 2023, a bend of pinot gris, pinot blanc, riesling and gewurztraminer, that is the most striking cuvee, reminiscent of Marcel Deiss's field blends with no dearth of ripeness or textural intrigue.

Finally, a shout out to the dangerously drinkable Sinapius Gamay Tasmania Vaughn’s Jardin 2022 from Piper’s River and Utzinger Chardonnay 2022 and Riesling 2023, sourced from a riverside embankment just a stone’s throw from Holyman, in the Tamar. Here, Swiss-trained Matthias Utzinger and his Tassie partner, Lauren, craft mellifluous wines that flow across the palate like a transparent mountain stream.

Like so many wines of Tasmania, they reflect plenty of promise and optimism embedded in the landscape. Yet, to date, this promise is best expressed by certain makers over others, rather than by a Tasmanian creed, or sense of Tasmanianness per se. Whites are largely stronger than reds, with a few exceptions of outstanding pinot noir. Hopefully a stronger Tasmanian voice will be heard with time, although seen through an Australian lens, it feels like Tasmania may well be timeless.

– Ned Goodwin MW, Senior Editor

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