No easy road to success
A simple fingerpost alongside the driveway greets visitors to Marion's Vineyard with thinly veiled facetiousness. 'Easy Street' it reads. Pointing matter-of-factly towards the property's cellar door and rows of ancient Cabernet Sauvignon, the sign has been there for as long as Cynthea Semmens can remember.
"My dad has a great sense of humour," the Tamar Valley winemaker smiles.
"He's had a lot of great ideas over the years, too. Trouble is, he hardly ever finished anything he started. We're still working on the things that matter most here."
More than 40 years have passed since Mark and Marion Semmens first set foot on the former apple orchard, just outside Deviot. The couple had come to Tasmania on a holiday and had fallen in love with the steep bush block. Within a matter of months, the family had packed up their home in California and returned to the State to start new lives in cool climate viticulture.
"I can remember planting vines here when I was only five years old," recalls the busy mother of two young boys.
Semmens and her husband David Feldheim 'came back home' in 2010, after living and working interstate. Two years ago, the wine science graduate became a legal custodian of the 7.5ha family vineyard, along with her brother Nick and her mother Marion.
The West Tamar site has spectacular views of the river but its association with Easy Street is purely fanciful. There's not much opportunity for sitting back and watching the vines grow. There's a lot to be done.
Many of the vineyard's oldest vines are 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 and replanting.
"I'm really keen to make good wine here," Semmens says, eyeing vineyard rows that need most attention.
"It's what's out there that matters most. Good wine is made in the vineyard. Honestly, there are times when I really wish I had become a viticulturist rather than a winemaker. I'm really loving my tractor time."
Five years ago, Semmens set herself the goal of introducing biodynamic vineyard management on the site.
"This is a really beautiful vineyard and we're very, very lucky living where we are," she adds.
"But the climate is changing. We've really got to think of the future. There's no point in looking ahead 10 or 15 years. We've got to think bigger than that. Our seasons are warming and we now have lower rainfall than we had when my parents planted here in the 1980s.
"We weren't really farming all that smart before. This land has to become a viable working environment that can sustain a whole range of living things. That means creating better soils by increasing biodiversity and microbial activity and not being reliant on synthetic chemicals in our management.
"We need to compost and plant cover crops, and make sure our soils are properly aerated so that they can hold water better and help build resilience in our vines."
"We need to compost and plant cover crops, and make sure our soils are properly aerated so that they can hold water better and help build resilience in our vines."
Semmens believes it's no longer relevant just to talk of sustainable viticulture. Vineyard practices need to be healing and regenerative.
That's where biodynamic viticulture has special appeal. Many of the field and compost preparations devised by founder Rudolf Steiner are homeopathic in nature. They're based on farming practices devised centuries ago. Their timing and application takes into account the passing of the seasons as well as a range of lunar and planetary influences.
"This year's vintage was a really difficult one for us because it was so cool and damp," Semmens explains.
"Transitioning to organic or biodynamic viticulture is a bit like an addict coming off drugs and having to go into rehab. It's really tough. We've been doing that on our vineyard for five years now. But with this year being a La Nina year, it was really challenging to keep our site free from disease.
"We had to apply our organic sprays many more times than we've done in the past. To make matters worse, for the first time ever we had a hailstorm go through the vineyard in January. We lost around 15 percent of our fruit.
"Fortunately, the heat we had in late March gave us a bit of a spurt in ripening. Our yields overall were really low but we've got some Pinot Noir with amazing quality. We're also really happy with the Syrah this year. Financially, it was pretty tough, but we have to maintain focus.
"There's always next year."
First published: The Examiner, 20 June 2021
Last page update: 10 June 2026