Worth wait in gold
When Clinton Mead entered his vineyard's first commercial release of Pinot Noir in the 2023 Tasmanian Wine Show, no-one was more surprised than he when it won one of the only two gold medals awarded in its class.
But when the same wine struck gold at the 2024 National Cool Climate Wine Show – and later came away with the top gold and Trophy for Best Three-Year-Old Pinot Noir at January's 2025 Tasmanian Wine Show – Mead and his wife Tanya Dalton knew it was more than a matter of beginner's luck.
Their 2022 Cascades Bay Pinot Noir really is something special.
You don't have to be big to be best.
Mead and Dalton purchased their site at Koonya on the Tasman Peninsula in 2014. The couple waited more than a decade before finally signing on to the property they felt matched their exacting vineyard requirements.
"I was a project manager with Fairbrothers for many years, so Tanya and I lived most of our time up in town," Mead explains.
"But we'd also had a property down here on the Peninsula, for about 25 years now. We'd always wanted to grow some vines and make some wine. That's an easy thing to say but you need the right place for it. It's no use taking shortcuts."
When their Shelly Beach Road site came onto the market, it ticked a handful of boxes right at the outset. It had once been an apple and pear orchard, part of a larger farming operation. Owned by the one family for several generations, the orchard had been both productive and well managed.
Indeed, Mead and Dalton uncovered a very efficient network of long-established agricultural drains when it came time to prepare their land for planting.
"We also knew Norfolk Bay Vineyard was just along the road and thought they had a pretty good track record as well," Mead says.
"Our contract was settled on April Fool's Day, 2014."
Within a matter of weeks, the couple sought the advice of legendary viticulturist, Fred Peacock. Not just among the best in the business, Peacock was more than privy to a little local knowledge. His award-winning Bream Creek Vineyard is located only 45km away, overlooking Maria Island and Marion Bay on Tasmania's south-east coast.
The 50-year-old vineyard has won more than 80 wine show trophies – and somewhere in excess of 1200 medals – since Peacock took ownership of it in 1990.
Mead points out the Dunbabin family's highly successful Bangor Vineyard Shed is even closer than Bream Creek. It's around 30 km north, at Dunalley.
The couple's first vineyard plantings were made in 2016. Within the last couple of years, their 1ha of Pinot Noir has been joined by small additions of Chardonnay, Gamay and Pinot Meunier.
The vineyard's name is an acknowledgement of the importance of provenance and vineyard terroir when it comes to growing, making and marketing top quality Pinot Noir.
"Cascades Bay is the bay right here – just out in front of us – which is then part of the much larger Norfolk Bay," Mead says.
In colonial times, the tiny settlement of Koonya was the site of a convict probation station, just beyond the infamous penal colony of Port Arthur. Established in 1841, it was originally called Cascades because of its close proximity to nearby waterfalls.
The first vines to be grown on the Tasman Peninsula in the 20th century were experimental selections established in the 1960s by plant physiologist Dr Don Martin. Then officer-in-charge of the CSIRO in Tasmania, Martin later went on to play a key role in helping Claudio Alcorso realise his vineyard aspirations at Moorilla Estate, in the Hobart suburb of Berriedale.
The young vines overlooking Cascades Bay quickly settled into their clay and sandy loams. Mead says vineyard management is structured around painstaking natural farming practices that avoid harsh synthetic chemicals. There's no intention to seek certification in the future but the carefully timed use of organically approved sprays plays a key role in building up the vineyard's own natural defence mechanisms.
Babydoll Southdown sheep, free-range chickens and guinea fowl all help with weeding and pest control, while making their own unique contributions to soil health and biodiversity.
The vineyard's trophy-winning Pinot Noir from the 2022 vintage was made at Cambridge by the highly experienced Dr Island team of winemakers, James Broinowski and Peter Dredge.
Mead and Dalton took Broinowski's advice and watched on as he turned their mollycoddled first harvest into 2021 vintage Rosé. The sighs of relief were palpable when the decision was made to turn the next harvest into serious, oak-matured Pinot Noir.
Now four years into production, the site is already exceeding the expectations its owners held at the beginning of their ambitious small-scale project. First-hand experience suggests that not only is Pinot Noir the right variety for the cool sheltered spot, it has every possibility of matching the show-winning performances of its wine-producing neighbours at Dunalley and Bream Creek.
Climate data sourced from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts highlight some remarkable similarities.
Koonya receives slightly higher annual rainfall than Dunalley, for example, but is less exposed to the wind. Both sites share the same mean January temperature (16.4°C) while Cascades Bay appears to play piggy-in-the-middle when growing degree-day measures are compared across the three vineyard locations.
With a trophy and a couple of gold medals already adorning the vineyard's showcase, there should be few surprises when the couple's next significant milestone is reached.
Last page update: 26 May 2026