How Tasmania’s Wine Industry Began to Sparkle: A Tale of Growth and Passion

Tasmania is Australia’s coolest and most southerly wine state — a green island closer to Antarctica than to the sun-baked vineyards of the mainland. That cool climate, once seen as a disadvantage, has become its glory, making Tasmania the source of Australia’s finest sparkling wine and some of its most delicate Pinot Noir¹.

An island made for the vine

Cool and maritime, swept by clean southern air, Tasmania could hardly be more different from the warm interior of mainland Australia. Its long, mild growing season lets grapes ripen slowly while keeping their bright natural acidity — exactly what fine sparkling wine, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling need. What once looked like a climate too cold for wine turns out to be very nearly ideal¹.

Champagne ambitions in 1823

Tasmania’s wine story is older than most of the mainland’s. In the 1820s Bartholomew Broughton made wine at Prospect Farm, near Hobart, and by 1823 was advertising it for sale — described, remarkably, as “made in imitation of Champagne.” From the very beginning, then, this cool island was reaching for sparkling wine, two centuries before it became famous for it².

The long fallow

That early promise faded. As the nineteenth century wore on, Australia’s wine industry moved to the warmer, higher-yielding vineyards of South Australia and Victoria, which could make robust, fortified wines cheaply and in quantity. Tasmania’s cool, low-cropping vineyards fell out of favour and all but disappeared, and for a century the island made almost no wine at all³.

Two immigrants restart the clock

The modern revival was the work of two European émigrés. In 1956 a French engineer, Jean Miguet, who had come to work on a hydro-electric scheme, planted vines in the Pipers River district in the north and named his vineyard La Provence. Two years later, in 1958, the Italian textile manufacturer Claudio Alcorso founded Moorilla Estate on the Derwent River near Hobart. Between them they proved that Tasmania could grow fine wine after all⁴.

Two immigrants, a Frenchman and an Italian, quietly brought Tasmanian wine back to life.— Miguet and Alcorso, 1956–58⁴

The sparkling island

Broughton’s old dream came true. Tasmania’s cool climate produces base wines of high acidity and finesse that are perfect for traditional-method sparkling, which now accounts for close to half of the island’s output. Its fruit is so prized that many of mainland Australia’s greatest sparkling wines are quietly built on Tasmanian grapes⁵.

Small, cool and coveted

Tasmania makes only a tiny fraction of Australia’s wine, yet commands a reputation out of all proportion to its size. Its Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling, alongside its sparkling, are among the most sought-after — and dearest — wines in the country. Australia’s cold outsider has come firmly in from the cold⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• New Zealand, the other cool-climate south
• Wine on the Australian mainland
• The Champagne that Tasmania imitates

References

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Tasmania. www.britannica.com ↩
2. University of Tasmania — Companion to Tasmanian History: Wine and Viticulture. www.utas.edu.au ↩
3. Wine Australia — Tasmania: Australian Wine’s Outsider Comes In From The Cold. www.wineaustralia.com ↩
4. Young Gun of Wine — Tasmania’s Wine History. younggunofwine.com ↩
5. Wine Enthusiast — The Grower-Winemakers Redefining Tasmania. www.wineenthusiast.com ↩
6. Wine Tasmania — Tasmanian Wine. winetasmania.com.au ↩

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine
Hugh Johnson
Places Tasmania and Australia within the long history of wine.

A Short History of Wine
Rod Phillips
Good on cool-climate viticulture and the modern New World.

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