It may not be the proper season for it, but this week sees a fair bit of spring-cleaning taking place in and around Tasmania's Southern Wine Trail. For close to 40 of the State's 185 licensed wine producers, the cleaning will be more than idiomatic.
Tasmania's cool climate wine industry may be small but one of its strengths is that many of its key players have a high degree of public accessibility. Drop by all but the largest vineyard cellar doors and the chances are those hands with the tasting glass grew the grapes and made the wine as well.
Duncan Ferguson and Susana Fernandez are no slouches when it comes to winemaking. It's what you'd expect of a couple who've lived and worked in some of the world's top wine-producing regions.
Two trophies; 2 gold, 5 silver and 10 bronze medals. That was the story behind the Brown Family Wine Group's crowd-pleasing performances at the recent 2025 Tasmanian Wine Show. The presentation of awards on Friday 10 January - at Hobart's Henry Jones Art Hotel - followed three busy days of judging. There were 413 wines submitted by 65 producers.
There are 65 wine regions in Australia but few of them produce true cool climate wines. You can put that down to having growing seasons just long enough and mild enough to allow wine grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to develop true expressions of their variety.
North West Tasmania has long been recognised as a small, quality-driven wine-growing district. It's too bad much of the praise comes from industry insiders. Wine judges, winemakers and wine media.
When Neil and Julieanne Snare established Winstead Vineyard 35 years ago, they planted just 50 vines of Pinot Noir. It wasn't meant to be a vineyard, they said. Those 50 vines were really just an unorthodox form of landscaping – their way of tidying up a five-acre lot they had cleared to build their home.
As a teenager growing up in the quiet rural setting of Tasmania's Jordan Valley, all Andrew Jones wanted to do was to find a steady job in the city and maintain his single-digit handicap on the local golf course.
When Matthias Utzinger left home to travel the highways and byways of Africa and Asia, few Swiss winemaking peers could have predicted a life-changing move to Tasmania and the creation of a small-scale wine business. It wasn't something the young bloke from Zurich ever considered himself.
There was a time when living and working off grid was regarded as the domain of hippies, dropouts and ne'er-do-wells; as much about self-sufficiency as being economically and environmentally sustainable. These days, two percent of all Australians live off grid, according to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
