Tasting Report: Tasmanian Wine

With a historic second Jimmy Watson Trophy having just headed south to Tasmania, I thought it would be a good time to collate a tasting report looking across all the island’s wine styles and regions.

The fact that a Tasmanian pinot noir has just bagged Australia’s biggest wine show award (see my blog here) adds weight and tempo to the already well-established interest in Tasmania’s number one red wine style.  

The island’s array of distinctive regional expressions of pinot noir are becoming more and more clearly defined by Tasmania’s growing pool of talented and determined winemakers and the 2014 vintage is one that has brought both power and detail into play.  

As so often happens when quality is up, quantity is down and unusually low yields in 2014 will mean that the highest quality wines are in hot demand. The yields were decimated by an exceptionally cool and windy December, resulting in poor fruit set. The rest of the season was terrific and small quantities of very high quality grapes were harvested across all varieties.

Think fragrant, flavor-saturated wines with velvety tannins and you’re in the general realm of today’s best Tasmanian pinots. The best chardonnays have powerful, weighty presence and carry winemaker-derived complexity without breaking a sweat or compromising the connection to terroir.

And speaking of terroir, riesling is the trump card for Tasmania, delivering richness and concentration amid scintillating acid-etched detail and hair-raising, nervy attitude. The aforementioned pinot noir and chardonnay naturally also combine to produce Australia’s best sparkling wines.

If you’re a fan of high-quality cool-climate wine, there’s a lot to like about Tasmania.

Photos from top to bottom: Derwent Valley Vineyard, Meadowbank vineyard and Freycinet Peninsula

Contributing Editor Nick Stock is a renowned Australian wine writer, author, presenter and filmmaker who reports on his worldwide wine tasting experiences for JamesSuckling.com.