The critical harvest months of March and April loom large in the minds of wine producers in Australia's south-east, cool climate wine regions. With that comes the prospect that grapes may not be the only things that are crushed during vintage 2019.
With row upon row of vines in Tasmania now looking resplendent with the tiny bunches they will carry through to harvest, it's not hard to see why anyone would want to plant a vineyard. Why anyone would want to plant a vineyard in the middle of suburban Launceston isn't quite so easily explained.
With literally thousands of products vying for attention on restaurant wine lists and retail shelves, choosing a good bottle of red, white or sparkling can be a real challenge nowadays.
"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it," wrote American author Mark Twain. More than a century later, much the same can be said of climate change.
A wine show solely for Tasmanian wines? That will never work. Critics scoffed of Phil Laing's daring bid to bring Australia's leading wine authority to Hobart to judge the inaugural Tasmanian Wine Show.
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.
When winemaker Nick Glaetzer left home in search of a cool climate vineyard from which to produce wine with distinctly European characters, few of his South Australian peers could have anticipated his career-defining move to southern Tasmania in 2005 and the creation of a successful wine business there three years later.
You don't need to travel far these days to see Tasmania's cool climate wine industry is on a roll. New vineyards are popping up everywhere. And is it any wonder, industry analysts might add.
Cool climate vineyards have a habit of transforming lives. One day, they're just sticks and posts amid a field of freshly ploughed earth. The next, they're chock-a-block full of sprawling vines, presenting all manner of challenges to the hapless grower.
It's been another glorious spring day in Tasmania's northeast and the rich red soils of Sinapius Vineyard at Pipers Brook have become warm and slightly crusted under foot.
