Charting new taste territory

Vineyards are renowned for changing people's lives. One minute they're all sticks and ploughed earth, and the next thing you know they're all shoots and leaves, with grape bunches galore. And for growers like Chartley Estate's Peter and Loraine Kossmann, that's the fun part. 

Then comes the hard slog of actually selling what results from endless skirmishing with the forces of nature.

It's a good thing the Rowella couple already know a fair bit about running a business, and juggling supply and demand. They've spent 20 years operating their Adelaide Bay Seafoods company from its headquarters at Inspection Head, Beauty Point.

Even so, that won't make their debut appearance at the country's largest food and wine exhibition this weekend any less harrowing than that being experienced by other newcomers to the Sydney-based event.

But if all goes according to plan, success there could provide some welcome financial returns to the 7ha family-run operation that started off as a hobby vineyard barely six years ago.

Peter and Loraine Kossmann are the human face of the wine industry's vast biennial roadshow it calls Wine Australia. The first of these ambitious events was held back in 1996. This year, representatives from 350 companies based in 63 of Australia's key wine regions will come to together to pour their tasting bottles at Darling Harbour's Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

And while it may not turn out to be of the same grand scale as Wine Australia 2000 – when 500 exhibitors presented 7,000 wines to 33,000 consumers, 5,000 trade visitors, and 350 international guests – the prospect of being on show for almost 30 hours between Friday afternoon and Monday evening will be a daunting one, even for the most seasoned of performers.

So what prompted this busy couple to down their tools in the Tamar and join forces with the 16 other vineyards being represented on Tasmania's Cool Wine and Food stand?

"Basically, we'd like to have more of our own grapes made into wine under our own label, rather than be selling them as fruit for other labels," Loraine explained as she prepared her consignment of wines and tasting samples, made under contract by Winemaking Tasmania.

"When Wine Australia was last held, we were still small and trying to get ourselves ready to go out into the market and get ourselves known. Now that the vines are more established, and our vineyard is large enough, we think we've got enough grapes to begin producing a bit more wine under our Chartley Estate label.

"Until recently, we've been selling a lot of our grapes to other producers, like Taltarni in Victoria, so we thought we'd go up to Sydney this weekend and have a bit of a look at the market there. We've barely got into Melbourne so far, and we'd really like to meet some new people and make our wines more widely known."

On present form, it seems the couple will never find a better opportunity than at Wine Australia 2006. 

Their Adelaide Bay abalone production has already found a willing clientele at Sydney's Hay Market, and the property's stylish 2004 Black Crow Pinot Noir, 2005 Riesling, and 2005 Pinot Gris are all food-friendly wines that should look very smart indeed alongside the Tasmanian stand's highly regarded morsels of top-notch tucker.

Wine Australia 2006 takes place at Darling Harbour's Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre from 14-17 July, 2006.

Tasmanian wine brands being represented at the event include Arras, Bay of Fires Wines, Bream Creek, Cape Bernier, Chartley Estate, Dalrymple, Darlington, Delamere, Holyman, Jansz Tasmania, Kreglinger, Meadowbank, Moores Hill Estate, Moorilla Estate, Ninth Island, Pipers Brook Vineyard, Pirie Tasmania, Sharmans, Stefano Lubiana Wines, Stoney Rise Wine Company, Tamar Ridge Wine Estates, and Tigress.

First published 12 July 2006: The Examiner

Last page update: 31 August 2026