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.
