Dirty deeds

Mention the name Richard Doyle in your next wine conversation and it's fairly likely you'll see blank faces being pulled. "Richard who?" they'll say. That's not surprising. Your average Tasmanian wine consumer wouldn't have a clue who you're talking about. 

After all, Doyle (pictured below) is just a bit-player in an industry that otherwise has a couple of hundred players, including vineyard workers, winemakers, and company viticulturists.

But talk to those intimately involved in the industry – to vineyard owners and researchers particularly – and you'll get an entirely different idea of the bloke who lectures in soil science at the University of Tasmania.

The former Kiwi with the quick wit and even quicker intellect is one of the State's most highly regarded scientific minds when it comes to understanding what's going on beneath the industry's 1100 hectares of cool climate grape varieties.

Doyle was lured to Tasmania in the 1990s by the prospect of carrying out some long overdue fieldwork and research investigations. He says those in the industry in New Zealand have quite a different way of looking at what goes on in the soil in a vineyard row.

"Australia's soil science has basically taken a utilitarian route over the years," he explains.

"It's often been about trialling fertilisers and stuff of a fairly practical nature. In New Zealand, soil science has been much more theoretical, trying to understand the development of soils, why soils are where they are, and how they relate to their geology."

He says the Pinot-oriented town of Martinborough in the south of the North Island was simply sheep-grazing country until a soil scientist visited the area and noticed its silty gravelly soils and set up Martinborough's first vineyard.

That was just over 25 years ago. 

Today, the company that Dr Derek Milne helped found is regarded as one of New Zealand's most successful producers of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – the same grape varieties that provide the backbone to Tasmania's emerging wine industry.

"Tasmania and New Zealand were once part of the same continent, then they went their separate ways about 90 to 100 million years ago. Since then, they've had quite different geological histories," he adds.

The subsequent results lie right beneath our feet.

"New Zealand soils are basically silty material over gravel, and that's got two great benefits. One is that silty material has the highest available water-holding capacity of all soil particles. Clay holds the water too tightly, and sands don't hold it enough.

"Down here in Tasmania, our soils have a much more complex geology. We've got much more variation in them when we begin to think in terms of establishing vineyards. It's an enormously complicated issue, and we need some really good investigation to address that," he says.

True to those words, Doyle these days is typically knee-deep in research when he manages to escape from his lecture theatre.

One of his principal roles at the moment is supervising the project work being carried out by Hobart PhD student, Sam Rees (pictured). The young bloke from Nandroya Vineyard currently has around about 20 soil pits open at Meehans Vineyard and Frogmore Creek in the Coal River Valley.

Quite literally, he says he has his hands full, trying to get around all his sites to describe what's going on beneath the vines. 

Digging holes isn't exactly a full time job, but clearly there's more to it than meets the eye. 

Doctorate research takes a minimum of three years to complete.

First published 20 September 2006: The Examiner

Last page update: 20 September 2026