Business award no mean feat

It was an inauspicious start for a new contract winemaking business, but managing director and senior winemaker Julian Alcorso is a happy man nonetheless. After all, his Hobart-based company Winemaking Tasmania recently won the MYOB Business Award in the 2006 Telstra Tasmanian Business of the Year Awards. 

It was a spirited win for the best business in Tasmania in the 6-20 employee category – and given its reception, it might just as well have been a win in Tattslotto.

Five years ago, things were different. When the former Tamar Ridge and Moorilla Estate winemaker finally decided to strike out with a new company of his own in the middle of 2001, no-one could have foreseen that it would be a tough job for a man with an enviable wine show record, and some top-notch technology at his side.

Blaming it all on the weather would have seemed trite at the time had it not been for the damp days of late spring 2001 and early 2002. 

But the subsequent poor fruit-set that resulted meant vineyard yields across Tasmania were reduced by as much as 50 per cent for varieties like pinot noir. Added to that drama was the total failure of Traminer and Riesling crops on a handful of properties in the south.

Winemaking Tasmania's new $1.8 million winery at Cambridge had been counting on processing almost 150 tonnes of fruit from its small but enthusiastic clientele. In the end, the facility struggled to reach double figures in vintage 2002, and the bulk of the season's work was over by the end of April – a rare feat in Tasmania's brief viticultural history.

There was no exchange of fruit for winemaking services that year. No new wines for the company to market as cleanskins or products under the company's own label. Many of Winemaking Tasmania's small family-owned clientele opted to keep every last grape berry for themselves, rather than sell some to larger companies on the mainland.

Somehow, the company struggled through.

Five years on – and with a significant business award to its credit – the 750-tonne contract winemaking operation is forging ahead in leaps and bounds. Not only does it have some of the best processing, bottling and packaging equipment anywhere in the State, its list of 40 or so clients includes some of the cream of Tasmania's vintage crop.

That list continues to grow.

Then there are the company's additional roles, like the contract bottling and filtration it carries out for big name players like the Gunns-owned Tamar Ridge Estate. It's a tough job, as they say in the movies, but somebody has to do it.

And doing it well they are, with Winemaking Tasmania's six permanent employees providing good support to their boss with 20 years of winemaking experience. 

Come harvest time, assistant winemakers Greer Carland (pictured) and John Schuts shoulder up for much of the processing work. Behind them are several capable apprentices, a handful of part-timers, and the multi-skilled Keryn Nylander, who somehow navigates her way through the company's paper trail, and works up-front in PR.

Yes, it was an inauspicious start, but now that the winemaking juggernaut is finally starting to pick up speed – in spite of the industry's gloom and doom and talk of a wine glut - you get the feeling that this company's managing director wouldn't really have wanted it any another way.

"We're not quite home and hosed just yet," said a relieved Julian Alcorso after that first tough vintage on the site.

"But at least these days, we're home for dinner."

Five years on – in wine's highly corporatised world – even that can be an achievement.

First published Spring 2006: In Business Tasmania