Like any bloke with a farming legacy stretching back five generations, Julian 'Jack' Cotton really knows his onions. In fact, he knows his wool-growing and his seed and vegetable cropping, too. After all, they've have been the mainstay of farming operations at Kelvedon, on the East Coast, for as long as he's been working the 5300ha property.
With vintage now under way in Tasmania, you needn't look far to find growers who say that choosing when and where to pick are the most important decisions they'll reach over the next couple of weeks.
Nick Butler is short of words right now. Well-known for his affable nature, the winemaker from Rowella can hardly describe how he feels at the moment when he hears that some of his colleagues have already started vintage, and are bringing in some of the best fruit they've seen in the past few seasons.
How's your collection of Tasmanian sparkling wines? Got some good bubblies from 1998 and 2000? If you have, you're going to like this week's news. It seems 2005 may be on track to repeat the award-winning performances of two of Tasmania's most successful sparkling wine vintages.
It may not be immediately apparent but one of the decade's most significant marketing trends has been the linking of notions of quality and uniqueness with the geographical origin of a particular wine. So-called single vineyard wines in particular are often sold in limited numbers, at premium retail prices.
What's happening with Tasmanian Chardonnay? Jeremy Dineen laughs when he hears the question. Or perhaps it's more of a nervous chuckle. You see, the talented winemaker from Hood Wines is way too polite to be a Chardy-pooper.
Few places in the world can produce genuinely spectacular Pinot Noir. You can put that down to a lack of sites with growing seasons long enough and cool enough to allow fruit to develop true expressions of the variety. Issues such as soil type, vineyard aspect, clonal selection, canopy management and crop load can also confound a hapless vigneron.
Setting up a new vineyard in a cool climate wine region can be a risky business. There are few safe options in selecting a suitable site and the grape varieties you plan to grow there. So it's hardly the kind of venture you'd expect Dr Mike Sharman to be considering as he contemplated early retirement in 1987.
"Somebody once said to me that organic farming is really just yesterday's and tomorrow's agriculture," muses Coal River Valley wine producer Tony Scherer. "And you know, they're right. That's all it is. It's just that somewhere in between there was a period of about 50 years where we kinda lost our way."
First impressions are often the best, and the seven tasters sharing lunch at Peter and Brenda Bosworth's Morningside Vineyard just a few Sundays ago were right about the property's 2003 vintage. Free-draining soils work wonders in wet years.
