Tasmania's Coal River Valley is fast developing an enviable international reputation for the quality of its cool climate wines. That's hardly surprising, given the valley's abundant summer sunshine, long dry autumns and world-class viticulture.
Few wine media stories attract greater readership than reports of competitive tastings where little known, home-town heroes whip the pants off more expensive, highly fancied wines from across the water. Around 40 years ago, three competitions set the US wine industry a-whooping and a-hollering about the quality of its Pinot Noirs.
It's been 12 years since Richard Angove worked his first vintage with Tasmanian Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The fifth-generation winemaker had been out of the country for the previous eight harvests. Returning to South Australia then brought with it additional cause for celebration.
Planting a few vines in your own patch of dirt is the stuff of dreams for those pursuing the romantic notion of making a little bit of home brew for themselves. But for those who choose viticulture for a livelihood, planting and maintaining a profitable vineyard is no place for dreamers.
Anyone who visited Tasmania's drought-ravaged East Coast last August will remember all too clearly the looks of anguish that accompanied grower predictions of their forthcoming year in the vineyard. For many, only the drenching rains of September 2019 averted what looked like becoming a potentially disastrous journey to vintage.
You don't need green fingers to grow a grapevine. But planting a vineyard and growing a wine business is a different matter entirely. That requires countless hours of careful thought and planning, not the least of which includes matching grapevines to soil types and climatic conditions.
The cool, damp conclusion to Tasmania's 2020 vintage may have diverted our attention recently, but data collected by the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology indicate last summer was the country's second warmest on record. The mean maximum temperature for the three-month period was 2.11ºC warmer than average.
Like bookmakers and accountants, winemakers seem to have unlimited capacity for storing numbers in their heads. Ghost Rock's Justin Arnold can regale you with all manner of detail if you want to chew over a wine's technical merits.
If you felt like hiding under the doona for a few more minutes this morning, spare a thought for Absolute Viticulture's Marty Smith. The chances are that by the time your feet finally hit the floor, the consultant viticulturist and vineyard contractor will have already spent an hour or so mulling over weather maps and busy work schedules.
When you're a winemaker who's just spent recent months working 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week, it can be hard to sum up how vintage turned out this year. Much of it passes as an unbroken sequence of grapes in, money out.
