2024 Future Perfect House Wine $35

07/25/2025

Thomas New's House Wine is welcome addition to Tasmania's rapidly expanding range of cool climate Pinot Noirs. The bloke from Brisbane made wines in Queensland's Granite Belt before taking on work at Stefano Lubiana Wines at Granton and falling in love with the Derwent Valley in all its natural glory.

Pinot Noir doesn't needs to be classically crafted, given the best of oak and held onto for a couple of years before release. House Wine the varietal characters we know and appreciate from this part of the world, but there's freshness and vibrancy in abundance, too - what the French call 'joie de vivre.' It's not something demanding deep contemplation and navel-gazing.

This 2024 was poured to accompany a restaurant dish called Agnello - market lamb of the day with salsa rosso, olives and mint - the kind of simple flavoursome food that would usually have you searching for something Mediterranean on the wine list. Weighing in at 12.6% alcohol, it had just the right amount of vibrancy and freshness required to cleanse the palate and allow the dish's essential ingredients to shine. The wine can certainly be enjoyed on its own as a lighter style, but the restaurant clearly offered it for its capacity to allow the food on the plate to be the star of the show.

New has made sure the pricing is friendly. A small group of friends can share a couple of bottles in a top-flight restaurant and leave for home without being troubled by a pain in the hip-pocket nerve. That's a real bonus for interstate visitors who just want to kick back and have a good night out in the city.

Source: Retail purchase (at a Hobart restaurant).