Cool change

Ten wines reviewed – five of them rated 95 or better – with four of them given 'top rated by variety' listing, and the fifth named Sparkling Wine of the Year (rating 98). Is it any wonder Ed Carr is suitably chuffed with House of Arras being named Winery of the Year in the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion?

"Arras is the first sparkling wine producer to win the award, so that makes it very special for all of the team," he says.

"It's taken a lot of work, a lot of investment and a lot of time."

Good times; tough times. Times gone by; times to come...

Time is always on Ed Carr's mind.

(Maybe it's genetic? His father was a watchmaker/jeweller.)

Three years have passed since House of Arras moved from Accolade ownership to DMG Fine Wine. Very few fans of the iconic Tasmanian label will have noticed. There was no change in direction. No bump in the road. It's been business as usual for the winemaker who's been the driving force behind the industry-leading sparkling wine brand.

"DMG is a family-owned company, with William Dong at the head of it really wanting to forge ahead with this business as well as its existing Handpicked Wines business," Carr explains.

"The plan is for our volumes to keep increasing over the long-term. There's a clear understanding that this is a long game. There can be no compromises in quality for the sake of quantity."

House of Arras celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2025. One year further on, Carr is pleased to report that the company's contracted vineyards were able to meet their targets in the late and very challenging 2026 vintage.

(Arras sprang to life under parent company BRL Hardy, before subsequent ownership by Constellation Brands and then Accolade Wines.)

"We've also got the 25ha Pipers River vineyard we purchased with the winery there," he adds.

"Volumes were down slightly in 2026 but we've got some very elegant base wines as a result. It was a very late season. We didn't finish picking for sparkling until ANZAC Day at Pipers River. It was our latest finish ever. Our team there did a great job.

"Handpicked Wines already had vineyards in the Tamar Valley that were being managed organically, so one the benefits in the change of ownership is we've now got a bit more knowledge and expertise in Tasmanian viticulture at our disposal. 

"Our only other changes have been working out where our new markets are and what volumes we need to support each of them."

That noted, change comes slowly in the rarified world of traditional method sparkling wine production. The past three decades have been more evolution than revolution for House of Arras.

Carr says the only genuinely revolutionary phase occurred back in the 1970s and 1980s in Australia, when the first producers began moving into the country's southern latitudes to pursue cool-climate viticulture with new-fangled varieties like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

"Up until then, we were using varieties like Colombard and Muscadelle, with even a bit of Shiraz and Grenache going into the blends. Cool-climate meant sites with altitude or elevation, except for vineyards in the Clare Valley and Padthaway in South Australia, which were to a large extent also regarded as cool-climate at the time," he recalls.

"At least, when they were compared with traditional regions like Barossa Valley."

In 1988 – two years before he made a ground-breaking Pinot Noir Chardonnay blend as sparkling winemaker at Seaview Wines – Carr crossed Bass Strait to take a look at what pioneering producers were doing with table wine in Tasmania.

"This was still a couple of years before the first Jansz sparkling wine was released, but even then Tassie seemed like the place to be."

Carr finally got a chance to explore Tasmanian sparkling wine for himself in 1995, the year after he was persuaded to jump ship and become chief sparkling winemaker with South Australian-based BRL Hardy.

Indeed, there were two sparkling wines that vintage – a 1995 Pinot Noir Chardonnay and a 1995 Chardonnay Pinot Noir.

Tasmania produced a record crop of 2154 tonnes from 318ha of productive vineyards in 1995, but there still hadn't been enough of it to go around.

"Both those wines were Tasmania/Yarra Valley blends because we couldn't get all the fruit that we wanted out of Tassie," Carr says.

"Besides, we still weren't entirely convinced that Tasmania was the place to be. We felt there'd be opportunities to work with fruit from other cold-climate regions to enable us do some cross-regional blending. But when we saw that Tasmanian juice in 1995 – and then made wine from it – it was immediately apparent that what we had then was so different from what we'd been working with before from mainland vineyards.

"These wines were so elegant and intense. We had absolutely no idea about their longevity. But I can clearly remember my boss Peter Dawson saying these were the best sparkling wine bases he'd ever seen. Peter was then chief winemaker at Hardys.

"It wasn't until 1998 that we were able to get enough fruit from mutilple vineyards for this new project to become entirely Tasmanian. Those first wines from 1995 were released in 1999, just in time for millenium celebrations. We thought four years in the making was a bloody long time back then."

The launch brought with it a new brand name for its wines. Arras.

Carr says the name owes its origins to the company's marketing people and means 'an intricate or rich tapestry.'

"It was a great choice because the name really suited our winemaking philosophy," he explains.

"The winery's mission has always been about weaving together different fruit from different Tasmanian vineyards and subregions."

Carr says the project's future became writing on the wall by the end of the 1990s.

In order to gain a little time in expanding its production base and create a more reliable supply of cool-climate fruit, Hardys then began offering long-term contracts to select growers in Tasmania.

These agreements – typically for 10 years – gave farmers like Jack Cotton at Kelvedon Estate the confidence to plant vines in what was then a high-risk industry, knowing there was a guaranteed buyer for their fruit.

It was an ambitious model. It allowed Hardys to expand production without developing extensive vineyard plantings at their own expense. And it also helped determined the style and quality of the Arras fruit intake, right from the outset.

Carr and company viticulturist Ray Guerin (pictured above) both recognised that producing world-class sparkling wines would require extended maturation processes, à la Champagne – and that could only result from world-class viticulture.

Guerin spent 17 years working side-by-side with Tasmanian growers to determine which varieties and clones were best suited to their site. His influence even extended to detailed vineyard management.

The industry veteran encouraged growers to ensure dappled sunlight fell on their fruit during the season, avoiding both excessive bunch shading as well as harsh, direct sunlight.

The fastidiously managed handwork required in the vineyard offered marked flavour enhancement while preserving fresh natural acidity. It also eliminated the sunburnt fruit that could introduce errant characters into pristine sparkling wine bases.

Wine grape quality soon went through the roof.

Growers were duly rewarded for their efforts via a carefully calibrated scale of payments that took into account their fruit quality and its ultimate destination within the company's extensive sparkling wine portfolio.

Rather than favouring wines from a single estate, Carr and Guerin worked together to advance the idea that the best sparkling wines came from a tapestry of vineyard sites across the island.

They found Chardonnay from the central East Coast often contributed a certain refined and focused minerality to sparkling wine bases. Pinot Noir performed well on inland sites with rocky, sandy soils. Pinot Meunier from Pipers River provided valuable blending options.

The House of Arras wines celebrated by the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion reveal just how far Carr's pet project has come over the past three decades.

Entry-level A by Arras wines – made exclusively for certain retail chains – come with around two-and-a-half years of yeast lees ageing.

"The next level up for us is Brut Elite, which is four to five years on lees," Carr says.

"Our vintage products are seven to eight years. Our prestige cuvées are 10 years plus, but with many of them in recent years exceeding that by quite a wide margin. They're basically released when we think they're ready."

Part of the reason for the continuing upward trend in extended lees ageing has been the introduction of oak fermentation in creating base wines, first introduced in 2007. Combined with inscrutable cool-climate viticulture and the complex nature of lees-ageing, Arras wines are now much finer than they used to be and are finished with incredibly low levels of dosage.

Current releases from 2017 typically carry around 3.0g/L of sugar, or less.

"In 2025, we released the 2006 Arras '30th Anniversary' EJ Carr Special Release Late Disgorged (Magnum) for our own celebrations," Carr notes.

"That wine had just under 17 years on lees prior to being disgorged and has a dosage of just 1.7g/L.

"That would be regarded as extraordinary in Champagne, let alone in Tasmania."

Wine ages more slowly in a 1500ml magnum than it does in a 750ml bottle. So it should comes as no surprise to hear that the next significant release of new products in September this year will include three wines in magnum – Brut Elite, Grand Vintage and E.J. Carr Late Disgorged.

"We've still got magnums of some of our 1998 blends in our museum," Carr says.

"They're lovely wines to be able to bring out every now and again to see the evolution of the brand. Releasing magnums in our current program is yet another kind of evolution. It gives us the chance to diversify the range a bit further and build on the brand's well-established reputation for quality and longevity."

Winery of the Year 2037 anyone?

Last page update: 31 August 2026