History

Tasmania’s first vineyard was planted by Bartholomew Broughton in 1823 at Prospect Farm in New Town. It followed those established by the early colonists in Sydney, which are now buried under high-rise carparks and buildings.

Vine cuttings in Tasmania produced the first recorded vines in the Hunter Valley in 1832 and the first vineyards in both Victoria and South Australia. So, Tasmania can legitimately claim to be the oldest producing wine region in the country!

By the mid 1800s, Tasmania had commercial vineyards at Moonah and New Town in Hobart, Campania in the south of the state, the lower Tamar at Windermere in the north and around Swansea, Falmouth and Port Arthur on the East Coast. And, a few years ago, Australia’s oldest-known bottles of sparkling wine (many still partly full!) were found in a long-forgotten cellar on a property adjoining the original New Town vineyard.

But the good times for the early Tasmanian industry didn’t last and the warmer wine producing regions took over. In the mid-1800s, vineyard workers were lured away to the Victorian gold rushes and bans on the production of spirits meant Tasmania could no longer produce fortified ports and sherries, Australia’s and Britain’s most popular drops of the day.
Apart from an eccentric Italian who tried to grow vines on rugged Maria Island under the label Mouton Rothschild, vineyards disappeared from the state and by the late 1800s vineyards had been transformed to apple orchards.

The revival came in 1956 when Jean Miguet, son of a winemaking family in Provence, France, planted a vineyard named La Provence (now Providence) at Lalla, east of Launceston. Another migrant, Claudio Alcorso, followed his lead and established Moorilla Estate in 1958.
As Australian drinking habits swung from ports and sherries towards table wines in the late 1960s and ‘70s, Tasmania’s wine industry started to expand.

Graham Wiltshire planted his small Heemskerk vineyard at Legana on the Tamar in 1966 and the early ‘70s saw the establishment of Pipers Brook Vineyard, Meadowbank, Stoney, Glen Ayr, Bream Creek, Craigie Knowe, Freycinet and Panorama, and the expansion of Heemskerk and Moorilla.
Cabernet was then king, before a swing to Pinot Noir in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Tasmania’s sparkling future was set in 1989 when Heemskerk and the French Champagne house, Roederer, introduced renowned sparkling wine brand, “Jansz.”

In 1986, there were 47ha of vines producing 154 tonnes of fruit. Today, there are some 1550 ha planted in 234 individual vineyards which produced around 7,000 tonnes of fruit last vintage.
Whatever your preference, you’ll find plenty of choice and quality as you explore Tasmania’s wine routes.