From the earliest days of colonial settlement, the Coal River Valley surrounding Richmond became synonymous with tough, gritty dry land agriculture. Cereal crops came first – wheat, oats and barley – then broad-acre farming, based around sheep and cattle.
Dr James Murdoch at Craigow raised small crops of medicinal plants along with the apricots that grew to become a vast orchard by the beginning of the 1900s. Higher value crops – small fruits, wine grapes, vegetables and seeds – had to wait another 80 years for their time to shine.
Completion of the Craigbourne Dam in 1986 changed valley landscapes forever. No longer dependent on rainfall and seasonal river flows to maintain healthy soils and bank balances, smallholders showed what could be done with niche crops. They included Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.
The past decade has seen spectacular growth and development of the industry in the Coal River Valley. In 2025, growers there accounted for more than 30 percent of Tasmania's total wine grape harvest. Ten years earlier, it had been 16 percent.
Valley floors, river terraces and rolling foothills all bear vines. Higher ground is underpinned by Jurassic dolerite and sedimentary rock. Basalt flows often snake through alluvial sands, mudstone and gravels; heavy clay and clay-loams. Valleys are a complex mix of soil types, structures and textures.
The wines here are quite simply world-class.
In May 2026, National Geographic named southern Tasmania one of the 15 best places in the world for food right now:
'In Hobart, Tasmania's capital, that deep relationship to terra and tide surfaces in everyday food.'
Pressing Matters was founded in 2002 by Riesling and Pinot Noir aficianados Francis Douglas and Greg Melick, along with Greg's wife Michelle. For the next two decades, Melick juggled distinguished law and military careers as a senior counsel and Major-General in the Australian Defence Force Reserves, while overseeing development of a remarkable...
In 1985 – straight out of school – Darren Brown began a TAFE horticulture course and landed a job at Moorilla Estate with industry pioneer, Claudio Alcorso. It was to be the start of a 40-year career around vines and wines, culminating in the creation and operation of one of the Coal River Valley's most loved vineyard cellar doors.
You can learn a lot from visits to a vineyard cellar door. Much the same can be said for visits to the vineyard itself. Coal River Valley farmer Will Eddington walks his site every day and admits it's still a journey of discovery.
It was 1980 when Ian Roberts first kicked over the soil on his Cambridge property of Riversdale Estate. He was a university student, looking to flex his entrepreneurial muscles. Angora goats came first. And within a decade, he was a leading Australian breeder with a world record price in his stock books.
Medical researcher Professor Andrew Palmer investigated the permaculture movement for almost a decade before he and his wife Esther purchased their historic Roslyn homestead in 2012. The 30ha property at Campania was once part of a much larger landholding granted to the pioneering soldier settler George Weston Gunning in 1823.
When former Sydney couple Jake and Mary Sheedy first set eyes on the 95ha grazing property of Valley View just outside Campania, it was at the height of the global pandemic in Australia. Their business partner was locked down and unable to travel to meet the vendors and kick over some soil.
The historic Burnside property at Orielton had been a home to grazing and cropping for more than 150 years before six friends sat around a dinner table and decided it was time for a change. Time for Pinot Noir. Sticking closely to the notion that 'friends don't let friends do silly things alone,' all six prepared a north-facing site.
The brand may be small by name and small by nature, but James Broinowski's Small Island wines have been making their presence known since they first appeared in bottle just over a decade ago. Indeed, when Broinowski released Small Island's 2015 Rosé at Hobart's iconic Taste of Tasmania in December that year, the wine sold out within four days.
Born and educated in NZ, Samantha Connew is a law graduate who jumped ship and made a big splash in the wine world after discovering Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir while working part-time in a wine bar.
It's been 30 years since Peter Fogarty first planted vines at his family's Chestnut Hill property outside Perth. Next came plans for what has since become one of Australia's leading family companies in the premium wine sector, the Fogarty Wine Group.
