A simple fingerpost alongside the driveway greets visitors to Marion's Vineyard with thinly veiled facetiousness. 'Easy Street' it reads. Pointing matter-of-factly towards the property's cellar door and rows of ancient Cabernet Sauvignon, the sign has been there for as long as Cynthea Semmens can remember.
Crash or crash through. They're the alternatives facing many small-scale wine producers in today's global wine sector. Thanks to COVID-19 and over-production during the past decade, the world is awash with surplus wine. Recent data released by Wine Australia indicates the situation isn't quite so dire on the local front.
Pinot Noir producers can say what they like about their particular clonal selections, vineyard management and winemaking regimes, when it comes to making decisions on picking their precious parcels of fruit, nature itself usually has the final word. And the word on everyone's lips during past two vintages in Tasmania has been 'rain.'
You don't need to travel far in Tasmania to see the State's cool-climate wine industry is really bubbling along at the moment. New vineyards and wineries are popping up all over the place. It's a sign of the times. Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, business confidence continues to increase in Australia.
There'd be few wine lovers who've never dreamt of planting vines in their own patch of dirt. The lure of watching the sun go down with a glass of your own vino is hard to resist. But it wasn't anticipation of producing world-class sparkling that brought Susan Denny and Harry Rigney back from Queensland 13 years ago.
Few places flatter to deceive like modern wineries. With their workspaces defined by concrete, stainless steel and glass, the added presence of hi-tech equipment soon promotes the idea that winemaking is essentially a manufacturing process. Nothing could be further from the truth, says celebrated sparkling winemaker Natalie Fryar.
There are some 250 million bubbles of carbon dioxide crammed into your average 750ml bottle of non-vintage Champagne. At least, that's the estimate scientist Bruno Dutertre came up with back in the 1980s after a three-year, $7 million study carried out by Möet & Chandon. Strange, that.
Few winemakers can resist an opportunity to talk over plans for their next Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. But draw the conversation out a little and you soon find the factor that plays the greatest part in determining vintage wine quality is one where they have no say at all. It's the weather.
When asked to explain why the vineyard developments at his beloved Moorilla Estate had been given such enthusiastic support by Coonawarra winemaker David Wynn, the late Claudio Alcorso once replied, "We are all brothers in wine."
When Huon Hooke joined the 1992 judging panel of what was then the Tasmanian Regional Wine Show, change was in the air. It was the second year of the event and the Sydney-based wine journalist had arrived to lend support to the inaugural chairman of judges, James Halliday.
