Earth mothers
Sustainable, organic, permaculture, biodynamic. Those are the buzzword alternatives to conventional viticulture, often dismissed in the past as the domain of ratbags and hippies. The kind of winegrowing you said you did if you walked barefoot and didn't own a tractor with a whizz-bang spray unit.
Nowadays, these planet-friendly approaches to viticulture have genuine street-cred. Indeed, to many wine producers, they're fundamental to ensuring the health and well-being of our future generations, wine consumers included.
Tamar Valley winemaker Cynthea Semmens figures in that industry cohort. She believes her company's future is inextricably linked to the way in which it interacts with its environment.
"Vintage 2020 was completed at the end of a season when we used only organic sprays on this property," says the joint owner of Marion's Vineyard.
"I think in the previous year, we ended up using only one chemical spray in the vineyard. We're gradually weaning ourselves off conventional regimes. It's like we've been addicts of those practices in the past. It's not an easy journey but we're feeling really good about it."
Ten years have passed since Semmens and her husband David Feldheim returned to Tasmania after living and working interstate. Marion's Vineyard was her childhood home. Nowadays, along with her brother Nick and her mother Marion, Semmens has become a custodian of a family property with a 40-year history and an even longer future.
"We want what we're doing here to be part of a 200-year plan," she continues.
"There's no point in looking ahead 10 or 15 years. We have to think big. But there will be long talks with professionals."
Semmens says significant reduction in the use of synthetic chemicals has been matched by increasing commitment to softer, more earth-friendly regenerative practices. These include mulching, composting and cover-cropping. Recent successes with compost teas have been augmented by some exploratory forays into biodynamic viticulture.
Right now, actively achieving 2019 ACO Standards and subsequent certification with Australian Certified Organic looks a distinct possibility. The ACO Bud logo is a stamp of integrity that appears on the majority of organic products sold in Australia.
"As a mother of young children, I've become more focussed upon our family's life style," Semmens says.
"Choosing quality over quantity; eating better foods grown closer to home, having a certain level of trust in the way it was produced."
The busy mother of two young boys has fond memories of growing up on the 14ha property outside Deviot. Her playground offered panoramic views of the Tamar River and its surrounding countryside, 30 kilometres north of Launceston.
She was barely five years old when she helped Marion and Mark Semmens plant the vineyard's first vines back in 1980.
Semmens' parents had arrived from California only months before, having just completed purchase of their rocky bush block and its moribund apple orchard. Their emigration to Tasmania had been preceded by periods of some very elementary backyard winemaking in the United States. Long before that, Marion's early childhood years included countless hours spent helping her mother Anna tend the family's vineyard on the island of Cyprus.
They may have been modest and unremarkable experiences, but their formative nature provided a good grounding for the pioneering roles the Semmenses subsequently took on in the emerging Tasmanian wine industry.
Respected author, critic and Australian wine industry doyen James Halliday would later refer to Mark Semmens as 'a stormy petrel,' but much was achieved during the couple's joint ownership of Marion's Vineyard.
Its initial plantings comprised 4ha of Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Müller-Thurgau. Additions made during the 1990s included many grape varieties then regarded as coming straight out of left field. They included Cabernet Franc, Cascade, Mavrodaphne, Pinot Gris, Shiraz, Tempranillo, Viognier and Zinfandel.
Marion Semmens continues to tend the property's ageing olive trees. They stand as an ever-present reminder of her former homeland and its connections to farming and family forebears.
Cynthea Semmens has clearly inherited both parents' wine genes. She studied marketing and winemaking at the University of Adelaide and Charles Sturt University. On completing her Bachelor of Applied Science (Oenology) in 2000, she worked vintage in Chile before later moving on to the celebrated US wineries of Au Bon Climat (Santa Barbara) and Domaine Drouhin (Oregon). Next came career enhancing employment in South Australia as a winemaker with Hardys and then Leasingham Wines.
"I loved the Clare Valley, but I'm not an inland Australia girl," Semmens admits.
"I missed the water. Besides, I had three really hot vintages and winemaking there was such a challenge."
Fourteen years on, Semmens basks in the warmth of her Tamar River water views. Her father Mark no longer enjoys joint ownership of the property. The vineyard's oldest vines are also in need of significant work to restore them to their former glories. Some have already succumbed to trunk diseases and have been pulled out or are scheduled for removal.
"We're around 7.5ha in area these days, with the capacity to go to maybe 8.5ha by the time we finish our rejuvenation and replanting programs," Semmens explains.
"I'm really keen to make good wines here. Not just in the winery but out there in the vineyard. I really wish I'd been trained as a viticulturist rather than as a winemaker, though by now I probably would have thrown out everything I learned 20 years ago.
"I'm loving this tractor time, it's helping to create our futures."
First published 14 November 2020: tasmaniantimes.com