Winemakers can talk all they like about wild yeasts, cold soaks and oak maturation, but the factor that plays the greatest part in determining wine quality is one in which they have no say at all. It's the weather.
Tasmanian Pinot Noir. It's become one of the success stories of the State's cool climate wine industry, and it's not hard to see why when you taste the trophy and gold medal winners at the recent Tasmanian Wine Show. Rich and vibrant, they bear the hallmarks of expressive aroma, fine texture, great balance and superb length of flavour.
As a young bloke growing up on the family farm at Bangor in Tasmania's south-east, Matt Dunbabin learned early on that being a custodian of a property with almost 200 years of history can present all manner of opportunities and challenges.
Premium Tasmanian wines and beers, fresh local ciders, bold Tasmanian spirits, and an ever-changing landscape of food stalls, on-site entertainment and culinary events. That's been the Festivale recipe for success over recent years, and event organisers say 2020 will be no exception at Launceston's renowned 'party in the park' this weekend.
It's been almost three decades since Hobart wine educator Phil Laing staged the first all-Tasmanian wine show and helped create what has become an annual report card on the quality of one of the country's smallest and most marginal wine-growing regions.
Drive through the Coal River Valley on a 40-degree summer's day and it's hard to believe that this part of southern Tasmania is regarded as a cool climate wine region by Australia's grape growers and winemakers.
Renowned writer Gore Vidal was once asked to comment on his success as an award-winning novelist. He responded with characteristic bluntness that it was all due to a matter of style. "Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn," declared the brash Californian.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that what goes up must come down. It's an inescapable fact of life. That said, there's no doubting last summer's prolonged bushfire activity on the margins of the Huon Valley and D'Entrecasteaux Channel brought its high-flying wine producers back to earth with a bump.
For a wine-producing region that conducts its business between latitudes 41° and 43° South, Tasmania has always had to contend with a range of adverse growing conditions created under the influence of the Southern Ocean.
