Just coasting

Open by appointment only. Seen that on a winery website or your Discover Tasmania app? Yes, it's disappointing if you like to buy wines from the people who grow them and make them. But set sail for the State's sunny East Coast anytime from Thursday 23 October to Sunday 26 October (inclusive) and you're in for a pleasant surprise.

 It's the return of the region's Great Eastern Wine Week.

This is the 11th year of the popular East Coast food and wine extravaganza. Right now, everything looks set for a bright and breezy affair.

The Great Eastern Wine Week Launch Party gets proceedings underway in Swansea – at The Branch – on Thursday 23 October, from 2pm-10pm.

Regular visitors to the Southern Wine Trail – and the Tamar Valley Wine Trail in the north – often take cellar door tastings for granted. The stark reality is that the tyranny of distance often makes commercial cellar door operations financially unsustainable for a significant number of producers on Tasmania's East Coast.

Many are also small and family-owned, and don't have the wherewithal to look after winegrowing, winemaking and wine marketing on the scale required to attract reliable visitor numbers to a tasting room. They're also likely to be tightly constrained by relatively low levels of wine production, something much less common in the Tamar Valley and around Pipers River/Pipers Brook, for example.

A vineyard outing near the end of the month should provide plenty of opportunities to taste and buy wines that are hard to find at your local retailer. 

Besides, late spring is a wonderful time of year to visit the State's East Coast. The region offers stunning views and is home to a veritable smorgasbord of high quality farm produce and scintillating seafood.

More than two dozen commercial vineyards can be found scattered here and there along the coast. Fourteen of them are taking part in the Great Eastern Wine Week.

Hurly Burly Wines and Treehouse Vineyard at Little Swanport are its southern outposts. Priory Ridge Estate at St Helens is northernmost.

Some 15 events have been organised by participating wineries and local businesses.

Vines were first planted on the East Coast in 1830. Like everywhere else in the young colony, pioneering coastal vignerons were way ahead of their times. Every single venture foundered. It wasn't until John Austwick (Craigie Knowe) and Geoff Bull (Freycinet Vineyard) planted vines in 1979 and 1980 that viticulture seemed possible.

More than 40 years later, the East Coast remains the domain of the small, quality-driven producer. Vineyards here contributed just 13 percent to Tasmania's total wine grape harvest in 2025.

You don't have to be big to be best.

According to the panel of judges who presided over the 2025 Tasmanian Wine Show back in January, the East Coast is home to Tasmania's Pinot Noir Producer of the Year. And the producer of the State's best Shiraz. 

Cranbrook's Gala Estate.

The Estate has been farmed by the Greenhill and Amos families for more than 200 years. Provenance is everything when it comes to producing super-premium cool climate wines.

Those award-winning Gala Estate Black Label wines will be in popular demand among the visitors who sign on to Sunday's Paint & Sip at Gala Kirk. The vineyard has teamed up with Achaica Schola Art Studio to stage their unique art experiences ($95pp) at Cranbrook's historic church.

Two sessions are available: 10:00am-12:30pm and 2:30pm-5:00pm.

Seating is limited to 10 people and participants of course must be over 18 years of age. Bookings are essential. Phone: 0401 326 197 for details.

If Sip & Sing sounds more like your vehicle for artistic expression, be sure to head to Priory Ridge Estate for Miss Jacquie's Saturday afternoon of music, laughter and local wine.

Be assured this isn't just another karaoke event. It's not even an open mic. Miss Jacquie's Sip & Sing is in fact a professionally guided, interactive musical workshop-meets-show, where those that sign up become part of the band. The band in the vineyard.

Organisers say it's not a performance requiring rehearsal.

The session is timed for 1:00pm-3:00pm and costs $50pp. Bookings are essential. Phone: 0467 818 438 for details.

Meanwhile, the crew at the Devil's Corner cellar door at Apslawn say they're looking forward to being taken over by pirate ruffians and an ocean of mermaids and sailors at the Great Eastern Wine Week.

Their Resolution Shipwreck Ball is to be held on Friday 24 October from 6:30pm-10:30pm. Guests are invited to dress appropriately for the occasion.

The maritime mayhem features a night of food, frivolous festivities and fabulous wines. High energy live music will come from Irish band No Rest for the Leprechauns, and local favourites The Pretty Things.

Bookings are essential, with tickets costing $130pp. Free return bus travel to Devil's Corner is included. The route takes in St Helens/Scamander as well as Bicheno, Coles Bay and Swansea. Phone: 0448 521 412 for details.

If you're into freebies on a broader scale – or, hopefully, you're more inclined to spend your days becoming acquainted with new players – there's further good news. Treehouse Vineyard and Rivulet Wines are hosting visitors for the first time at their home bases on the East Coast.

Treehouse Vineyard is a near neighbour to Little Swanport's very popular Boomer Creek Vineyard. 

Matt and Kate Carlin first planted vines on their Tasman Highway property way back in 2013. More recent additions now see the couple managing a 2.5ha vineyard comprising Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir.

The Carlins don't operate a vineyard cellar door, but visitors during the Great Eastern Wine Week will find them very much at home. They plan to run a pop-up cellar door just a grape-toss away from their family-built treehouse-in-a-eucalypt.

The home itself – along with significant parts of the vineyard's infrastructure – have been built from timber grown and milled on the property.

Power and water supplies are off-grid.

Treehouse Vineyard will be welcoming visitors from 10:30am-4:00pm on Friday 24, Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 October.

Bookings are not essential. Phone: 0429 311 885 for details.

Keira O'Brien and her Rivulet Wines hit the ground running back in 2018 when she produced one of the State's best small-batch Rieslings from fruit grown on the East Coast. She was part-way through a four-year stint at Winemaking Tasmania at the time, where she worked with clients and vineyards all over the State.

O'Brien's move to Freycinet Vineyard as that company's general manager/winemaker in 2022 brought with it three years' worth of opportunities to scout around for land suitable for planting her own vineyard. As luck would have it, Rivulet suddenly found itself a new home just outside Swansea on a property that already had vines.

The Great Eastern Wine Week will see O'Brien dusting off her welcome mat and opening the doors of her Grange Road homestead on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 October. Rivulet Wines receive kid-glove treatment all the way from grape to glass. O'Brien's trademark lightness of touch is often matched by innovation and a certain playfulness.

Those skills haven't gone unnoticed. In 2022 and 2023, O'Brien was shortlisted as a finalist in Australia's Young Gun of Wine Awards. Acclamation from industry peers in the latter year saw her take home the coveted 2023 Winemakers' Choice Award.

Bookings are not essential for Rivulet free tastings: from 12:00pm-5:00pm. Phone: 0404 845 854 for details.

Log on to eastcoastwinetrail.com.au for all details regarding The Great Eastern Wine Week. The event is to be held from Thursday 23 October to Sunday 26 October (inclusive) 2025.

Log on to www.winetasmania.com.au for a free 54-page Wine Trails 2026 visitors guide. Invaluable for this wine week and for every other week.