New on Huon and Channel blocks

Take a leisurely drive 30-minutes out of Hobart and you could be forgiven for thinking little has changed along the Huon Trail since you last travelled its blacktop. Natural splendour and the joys of rural living given prominence by SBS Gourmet Farmer Matthew Evans remain all pervasive.

But looks are deceiving. This sparsely populated sector of the island's cool climate industry has become the mouse that roared. Of the 37 Tasmanian companies awarded a 5-star winery rating in the 2019 Halliday Wine Companion, six have sites in the Huon Valley or the D'Entrecasteaux Channel: Chatto Wines, Home Hill, Kate Hill Wines, Mewstone Wines, Sailor Seeks Horse and Stefano Lubiana.

Yet for all that, the 20 or so producers located there manage less than 150ha of vines - eight percent of total Tasmanian plantings - and on average grow less than one percent of the State's annual grape harvest.

When Terry and Rosemary Bennett first set up Home Hill at Ranelagh in the Huon in 1992, their venture was like many others there - a challenging, somewhat exploratory foray into wine production. Born into a family of orchardists, Terry Bennett had already seen the highs and the lows of the valley's iconic apple industry. He'd also witnessed its vineyard pioneer - Chateau Lorraine - spend far too long bringing bulk wine into the State before finally closing its doors after licence suspension in 1983.

What Bennett didn't know then was that Eric and Jette Phillips, owners of an 11ha vineyard 20 kilometres south of Ranelagh at Glaziers Bay, were about to focus a national spotlight on the region and begin a decade of critical acclaim and wine show success for their Elsewhere Vineyard Pinot Noirs.

A company director by day and an ambitious vigneron during the hours lived beyond his thriving petroleum business, Bennett determined that Home Hill would chart its wine future with Pinot Noir at the helm. Chardonnay and Sylvaner would fill lesser ranks. His site's gently rising slopes were planned and planted employing conventional wine wisdom of the day. The vineyard featured long rows heading uphill, with vines 1.5 metres apart and managed within a modified lyre trellis system.

Expansions in 1993 and in 1998 offered welcome opportunities for viticultural fine-tuning, including frost protection and moves to upright VSP. The project's first few years had minor setbacks due to adverse weather, but gradually Home Hill began to prosper in a sunny Huon Valley microclimate that at times might struggle to receive 700mm of annual rainfall (2017, 2015, 2014 and 2008) but could also exceed 1000mm in other years (2016). Average January temperature maxima seldom tops 23°C.

Bennett became convinced his vineyard on the property's slopes could produce outstanding Pinot Noir in good vintages. He was less impressed with the vines in deep fertile soils at the bottom of the hill.

"They were way too vigorous," Bennett recalls.

"We didn't know at the time but we had planted a couple of clones of Pinot Noir that proved to be very heavy croppers - D5V12 and 8104. Deep soils also promoted unwanted plant vigour, including excess leaf production that shaded the grapes and retarded ripening during our cool summer and autumn. Our first wines were poorly coloured and lacked genuinely ripe flavours."

Careful research led Bennett to believe his pruning left too few buds on each vine for the size of the plant's vast root system and its huge capacity for vegetative growth. It wasn't long before Dr Richard Smart's writing on 'big vine theory' captured his attention and that of vineyard manager Peter Dunbavan.

"We decided to pull out every second vine at the bottom of the hill and fill the 3.0 metre gaps in the trellising by increasing the number of buds and the length of the shoots we could grow," Bennett adds.

"To prevent overcrowding of shoots and leaves and associated risks of shaded fruit, new vine structures were created by modifying our pruning. Instead of having a conventional T-formation comprising a single trunk with a head and two arms at the top carrying a total of 20 buds, each vine was re-configured with a new head at the end of each arm. That lifted the plant's bud-count beyond 40, creating a large canopy free from overcrowding. This two-headed system can then match vine behaviour above ground with what's going on below.

"The remediation work that's required to create these double-headed vines can be carried out in a single year, without incurring significant losses in production."

Put simply, it's a cool climate equivalent of the spur-pruning that takes place on warm to hot climate sites. Quick and effective in regions like the Riverland, spur-pruning is not sustainable in locations like the Huon/Channel where low basal bud fertility results in drastically reduced bunch numbers and bunch weights.

With almost 7ha of bearing vines and the talented Gilli Lipscombe creating its wines, Home Hill has become one of Australia's most awarded producers of Pinot Noir. Exhibits in national wine shows won 10 trophies in mid-2018. Double-headed vines now average yields close to 6.5 tonnes/hectare, with the outstanding 2013 vintage producing 9.5 tonnes/hectare, even after rigorous fruit-thinning.

Such figures can make your head spin if you maintain commitment to more traditional viticulture. That noted, Home Hill's successes have simply added fuel to the enthusiasm and endeavour of its fellow Huon/Channel producers.

Paul and Gilli Lipscombe (pictured at Sailor Seeks Horse), Jim Chatto (Chatto Wines), Jonny and Matt Hughes (Mewstone Wines) and Kate Hill (Kate Hill Wines) have already experienced successes beyond the national wine show circuit. This year, the Lipscombes followed up their 2017 inclusion in a Bloomberg list of the Best 50 Wines under $US50 with a win in the 2018 Young Guns of Wine (Winemaker's Choice). Fellow Young Guns, Mewstone Wines (Best New Act), debuted in the Halliday Wine Companion as the author's Best New Winery. Jim Chatto, meanwhile, received a Halliday 98 for his 2016 Chatto Isle Black Label Huon Valley Pinot Noir, the highest achieved by any Tasmanian producer. Kate Hill chimed in with the book's highest pointed Tasmanian Riesling.

Together with Steve Lubiana and his son Marco, these relatively new arrivals have become recipients of the baton passed on by longer-established producers of Huon/Channel wine. Typical of their generation, each not only has industry-accredited qualifications in viticulture or oenology, there is extensive national and international experience as well.

You don't need much conversation to understand that it is not taking on Mother Nature that drives them in their pursuit of perfect Pinot Noir, it's their willingness to restrict production requirements to as little as 3.0 tonnes/hectare in order to suit the unique environment in which they operate. Low impact management - including biodynamics in the case of Stefano Lubiana - plays a critical role.

Home Hill, Kate Hill, Mewstone, Sailor Seeks Horse and Stefano Lubiana will have planted new clones of Pinot Noir by year's end. That will see selections like 667, 828, 943 and Abel find a place alongside regional favourites that include D5V12 (aka 2015), D2V5 (8104) G5V15 (8048), Dijon 114 and 115, MV6, and Dijon 777. Those on rootstocks will set their owners back $5 per vine, so insider knowledge has been crucial to planting decisions.

"G5V15 worked well at nearby Panorama Vineyard, but you need to keep the crop down," observes Jim Chatto (pictured below).

"D5V12 is good at Home Hill, and Abel is coming along really well here. But my favourite has to be 777. It seems ideally suited to the climate, especially our mild summers. If I was up north in the Tamar Valley, I wouldn't have it at all, it's far too warm and steamy there."

And while producers like the Lubianas are happy to stick with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for now, others are keen to explore different options.

As well as managing Jim Chatto's vines, Paul Lipscombe intends planting both of Jura's indigenous red grapes - Trousseau (aka Bastardo) and Poulsard (Ploussard) - on the thin bony soils of the 6.5ha Huon Valley operation he and wife Gilli call Sailor Seeks Horse. Kate Hill (in the Huon) and Mewstone (on the Channel) have nailed their colours to the mast with trial plots of Syrah, including R6WV28, 'the old Tahbilk clone.' Channel growers Brett Andrews and Laura Purcell are already producing tiny volumes of Dolcetto wine from their 2.0ha Tickleback Ridge Estate.

If the 2010 predictions for ongoing high atmospheric emissions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prove true, such far-sighted and innovative decision-making will have been well founded.

According to the Huon Valley Municipality's 2016 Local Climate Profile, "The municipality is projected to experience a rise in average temperatures of 2.6°C to 3.3°C over the entire 21st century... The eastern part of the municipality is projected to receive slightly increased rainfall in most seasons... These changes would affect the choice of grape variety, bring the ideal harvest date forward in the year, and affect grape quality."

Climate sceptics take note.

First published December 2018: Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker, Issue 659

Last page update: 26 May 2026