VINES AND WINES

There's no doubt about it. Tasmania's viticulture is small scale. Apart from the State's largest wine producers - Tamar Ridge Tasmania, Kreglinger Wine Estates and Hill Smith Family Estates - the majority of vineyard operations on the island are small to medium-sized family businesses. 

It is common practice for some vineyards to grow grapes for other companies as well as for their own premium Tasmanian wine labels.

In 2024, Tasmania's total vineyard area exceeded 2400ha of vines. That's almost three times the planted area of the Mornington Peninsula, or five times that of Geelong - two of southern Australia's best known cool climate wine regions. 

However, the entire state of Tasmania is a single GI. The island's wine industry is among the most diverse and the most de-centralised of any of the 65 GIs distributed across Australia.

Many Tasmanian vineyards are less than 5ha in area. Visitors dropping by a cellar door might easily find themselves shaking hands with the person who grew the grapes and made the wine.

Few tasting rooms are open all year round. Check details in Wine Trails Around Tasmania, published annually by Wine Tasmania. A tasting fee may be charged by some cellar door operators, but this is often refunded with the purchase of wines from the vineyard.

Tasmania is home to many of Australia's best cool climate wines. In particular, the State's Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir and bottle-fermented sparkling wines have national and international reputations for superb quality and elegant, cool climate wine characteristics. 

Wine show successes of the modern era have an historical precedent. A Tasmanian white wine won an award at the Paris Exhibition of 1848.

In the 1960s and 1970s, leafy, light-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon wines helped lay the foundations for Tasmania's reputation as a producer of premium quality, European-style red wines. 

The 1982 Heemskerk Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, was included in the gold medal taste-off at the 1983 Royal Melbourne Wine Show in order to determine the winner of the event's prestigious Jimmy Watson Trophy for Best Young Red Wine.

Today's Tasmanian wine industry has a predilection for Pinot Noir. Almost half the State's total vineyard area is planted to Burgundy's classic red grape.

No matter where you travel in Tasmania, you are never far from top quality Pinot Noir. 

Wines marketed by the State's smallest vineyards are often the most highly regarded, and owe their excellent quality to the highly-skilled expertise and experience of grape-growers and winemakers. Specialist contract winemaking operations based in the north, north-west and the south of the island are also highly regarded by consumers and industry professionals.

The Bordeaux-inspired red wines of Domaine A lead a tiny brigade of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot producers in Tasmania. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot harvests combined seldom account for more than one percent of the island's total wine grape harvest.

In 2011, Barossa Valley-born Nick Glaetzer created a shockwave of national wine industry responses to his success in winning the Royal Melbourne Wine Show's coveted Jimmy Watson Trophy with a Tasmanian grown and made Glaetzer-Dixon Mon Pere Shiraz. The Rhone Valley red variety has barely a toe-hold in Tasmanian vineyards but may become an important planting choice as adaptation to climate change takes on greater significance.

Chardonnay accounts for close to one quarter of the State's total wine grape harvest each year, with Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling in total also approaching the 25 percent mark. 

It is estimated that more than a third of Tasmania's Chardonnay and Pinot Noir harvests are directed to sparkling wine production. Many large wine companies located on the Australian mainland in particular purchase Tasmanian Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for sparkling wine production.

Vineyards in North East Tasmania are widely respected for their key role in creating many of the country's best bottle-fermented wines. 

In 2024, Tasmanian vineyards collectively harvested more than 16,000 tonnes of wine grapes. This represented 1.2 percent of the national wine grape crush by volume and more than six percent by value.

The average value of a tonne of Tasmanian wine grapes in 2024 has been calculated at $3,674. This compares more than favourably with the national average of $613 /tonne.