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Winemaking Tasmania boss Julian Alcorso at his Cambridge headquarters in eastern Hobart.
Moorilla Wines winemaker Conor Van der Reest samples some of his Vintage Brut rosé. “As the industry grows, (the time on lees) will hopefully get longer and longer but, unfortunately, sales are currently outstripping production.” Frogmore winemaker Nick Glaetzer said there had been a huge growth in sparkling production in recent years. “When I started in 2006, Frogmore was doing 300-400 cases a year and had just bought the disgorging machine,” Glaetzer said. “Now, we’re doing more than 10,000 cases a year of Pinot and Chardonnay sparkling.” Frogmore’s sparkling production includes the Evermore Cuvée and Forty-Two Degrees South NV Sparkling. Glaetzer also believes a single style would not be enough for Tassie to hang
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its hat on, believing Pinot Noir would also figure strongly in the industry’s future. Glaetzer’s colleague, Frogmore senior winemaker Alain Rousseau, said Tasmanian sparkling was “getting closer to the French”. “But, we still do not have that nice mineral acid that they have,” he said. “We’ve now got complexity and there are five to 10 Tasmanian wineries that are getting close.” Moorilla senior winemaker Conor van der Reest said sparkling had been one of his pet projects. “Prior to my arrival, sparkling was a bit erratic at Moorilla; they did it some years and didn’t do it other years,” van der Reest said. “So, I’ve been working on a sparkling program of all vintage wines where the blend changes every year, depending on what we get out of the vineyard. “We always have a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – which we trial from 9.5 to 10.5o Baumé. A tighter acidity with 9.5Be seems to work best for us.” Moorilla produces three sparkling wines under its Muse and Praxis labels: the Praxis Vintage Brut Riesling and the Muse Brut rosé and Vintage Brut. Delamere Vineyards boss Shane Holloway said sparkling had become extremely valuable to the Tasmanian wine industry. “Until now it has been the realm of the bigger companies, but smaller wineries are now getting involved,” Holloway said. “While a lot of people are now dabbling in sparkling, it’s going to be a long time before we see a real diversification of makers and styles. It’s a huge part of our portfolio, but it’s the amount of capital expenditure and the lay time that will slow the process down.” Delamere makes three sparklings: a Blanc de Blanc, a Cuvee and Non-Vintage Sparkling Rosé Pinot Chardonnay blend. W i n e & V iticultur e Jo ur n a l MARC H /APRIL 2012
“I do 1000 cases of sparkling, and it requires a lot of time to lay it down,” he said. “It’s four years before you see the finished product and that can be a long wait.” Holloway said Steve Lubiana had been a “huge mentor for me”. “He’s where I’d love to be in 20 years time,” he said. “The time and effort he’s put in to develop sparkling and put it on the map in Tasmania has been amazing. “When you look at Clover Hill with Karina Dambergs, Arras with Ed Carr, and Jansz with Natalie Fryar, we are part of a group of winemakers riding a new wave of sparkling.” Peter Dredge, winemaker for the former BRL Hardy and now Accolade-owned Bay of Fires, under which the House of Arras range is made by Carr and co, recalled how Carr and BRL Hardy’s viticulturist Ray Guerin had identified Tasmania as an ideal place for sparkling back in 1995. “They recognised Tasmania as the superior cool climate for sparkling wine,” Dredge said. “They’d been looking around the mainland, but Ed Carr was adamant that Tasmania was the place for sparkling. So, they scrambled and grabbed fruit anywhere they could. “Hardys were the first company that did what Tassie needed and that was to spread out and look for those important parcels of fruit,” he said. “They put them into a product that could be taken and held up as an example of what we could do.” Today, grapes from the Bay of Fires vineyard, purchased by BRL Hardy in 2001, supplement the fruit parcels bought from growers to produce the House of Arras range. Will Adkins, brand manager for Tamar Ridge, which was acquired by Brown Brothers’ in 2010 and makes sparkling under its Tamar Ridge, Devil’s Corner and Pirie labels, said the debate over whether Tassie hangs it hat on sparkling versus Pinot was “a healthy one”. “I don’t think we have to back one to the exclusion of the other,” he said. “There’s not a lot of places you can plant Pinot and really make it work. We have a real opportunity to grab the mantle with Pinot and take it out as a premium offering around the world. For sparkling, we are already seeing people calling Tasmania 'the Champagne of the south'. “The influencers and commentators are really picking up on the growth and quality of sparkling down here, which is great.” Adkins said the main hurdle facing Tasmanian sparkling in its quest for global recognition was the might of the Champagne brand. “It is so strong, especially in international markets, so it will be hard until we create our own sparkling identity, but it’s coming,” Adkins said. V27N2