History

Tasmania’s first vineyard was planted by Bartolemew Broughton in 1823 at Prospect Farm in New Town, second in Australia only to those established by the early colonists in Sydney, all of which are now buried under high-rise carparks or Asian takeaways.

The first recorded vines in the Hunter were in 1832 and the first vineyards in both Victoria and South Australian were established with vine cuttings taken from Tasmania – by William Henty from Launceston to Portland in 1834; and from Hobart and Port Arthur to John Hack and John Reynell in South Australia in 1837 and 1838.

By that time, Tasmania had commercial vineyards at Campania, Relbia, the lower Tamar at Windermere, around Swansea, Falmouth and Port Arthur on the East Coast and at Moonah and New Town in Hobart.

And, a few years ago, Australia’s oldest-known bottles of sparkling wine, many still partly full, wire-capped and sealed with wax, were found in a long-forgotten cellar on a property adjoining Broughton’s original vineyard.

So, today, Tasmania can legitimately claim to be the oldest producing wine region in the country.

But the good times didn’t last.  In the mid-1800s, vineyard workers were tempted away to the Victorian gold rushes and, because of ban on producing spirits, Tasmania could no longer produce fortified ports and sherries, Australia’s and Britain’s most popular drops of the day, and so lost out to the emerging warmer wine regions of the mainland.

Apart from a mad Italian who tried to grow vines on Maria Island labelling some of his wines Mouton Rothschild, vineyards disappeared from the state and by the late 1800s what had been vineyards were apple orchards instead.

Until Jean Miguet, son of a winemaking family in Provence, France, planted a vineyard he named La Provence (now Providence) at Lalla, east of Launceston, in 1956.  Followed by another migrant, Claudio Alcorso, who established Moorilla Estate in 1958.

As Australian drinking habits swung from ports and sherries towards table wines in the late 1960s and ‘70s, so the wine industry here began its modern expansion.

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, GlenAyre, Bream Creek, Craigie Knowe, Freycinet and Panorama, and the expansion of Heemskerk and Moorilla.

Cabernet was then king, before the swing to pinot noir in the late ‘80s and ‘90s and, in 1989, Heemskerk and the French Champagne house, Roederer, set Tasmania on its sparkling future with the first Methode Tasmanoise Jansz. 

In 1986, there were 47ha of vines producing 154 tonnes of fruit.  Today, there are some 1350ha in just under 250 individual vineyards which, when recent plantings come into full fruit, will give an anticipated vintage of almost 8,000 tonnes and a smorgasbord selection of styles and varieties.