May 1, 2025 • 10 mins
Ebony Abblitt previews this year's drop.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My Heart Dazzy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
For a long time, Tasmania has been known as the
Apple Isle, but over the last two decades we've really
come into our own when it comes to another fruit, grapes.
Our State's wine industry has been growing from strength to
strength and is being recognized on a national and international stage.
Our Island's unique with its climate making it an ideal
growing region. I'm Ebony Applet, and in this week's episode
(00:25):
of My Heart Tazzi, I'm speaking with wine industry professionals
about how these years harvest is going and what we
can expect for Vintage twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
My Heart Dazzy.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There's a real positive feeling amongst Our State's great producers
at the moment, no matter where they're located. The twenty
twenty four to twenty five growing season is coming to
a close, which means harvesting season known as the Vintage,
is really ramping up and these years is creating a
bit of a buzz in the industry. At the start
of Vintage twenty twenty five, I was lucky enough to
(00:56):
speak with Sumfowl State's best growers and professionals shaping up
to be one of the best we've seen in a while.
According to the experts from Wine Tasmania, it's.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Always an exciting time of year when autumn comes around
and the grapes start rolling into the winery. Every year
is different and this is not different to the others.
And yeah, so far, so good. We're looking to get
really good yields out there. We're going to have some
(01:27):
grapefruit and what we've heard so far and that our
quality is still looking great.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's Paul Smart, Wine Tasmania's viticulture and wine making officer.
He really knows his stuff. Little changes to the climate
like snap, frost or smoke can impact the quality of
the grapes. But thankfully, even with the risk coming from
the West Coast bushfires earlier this year, the notoriously sensitive
grapes have bounced right through.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
With the fires being so large but so far away.
We don't believe that there is any smoke taint from
from this event. It was a one off, very quick
bit of smoke that came over the growing areas. So no,
the West Coast fires haven't impacted us that we believe,
(02:13):
but it's still a concern. We still have some fruit
out there.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Shirley Davi, Sis CEO of Wine Tasmania, otherwise known as
the Wine Queen, describes wine making as high risk but
high rewards.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Because we're so far south, our climate is a lot
cooler than most other Australian wine regions and it means
that we have a slower, longer season and ripening period,
so compared with some other wine regions, our great and
they are quite fickle and delicate, are out there hanging
out there on the vine for a much longer period
(02:47):
of time, and so you can imagine if you're looking
at the weather conditions from basically September through to April,
sometimes in May, that's a lot a lot of weather.
But these these delicate wine grapes need to need to
go through, so it's constantly high risk, but the reward
(03:10):
is there. We also know being in this cool, amazing
island climate, we also can produce some of the best
quality wines, not just in the country but in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Their excitement is infectious and it's echoed by Bellabon owner
Natalie Fryer, who's been in the industry in Tasmania for
more than two decades. Her vinyard in the West Tamar
region just outside Lonceestern specializes in sparkling wines. She's vintage,
she says, is going really well.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It's going to be a great year. Like I'm very
excited about both fruit quality and for the first time
in a long time, the fruit quantity. There's plenty of
fruit and that's just fantastic, not just for me, but
for the entire industry. You know, the growers get more
reward and the wine makers get more beautiful wine to
sell for people. So it's a great year. Quality is fantastic,
(04:02):
or of bit surprised, but how good it is. We
have some pretty rough weather in spring, and often that
means trouble ahead, but actually it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Harvesting can take between days to weeks and even months,
depending on the size of the vineyard and the equipment available,
and then the grapes are crushed to start the winemaking process. Unfortunately,
for the most party, it's not the mental image we
get of people with bare feet and rolled up pants
squishing them with their feet.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Sometimes it is. I know every year my husband, who
has his own wine brands, he takes his travelers off
and gets in there and presses the fruit with his feet,
and lots of people do that around the state, but
not at the volumes that people think. It will be
one small firm and that that happens for Sometimes it'll
be two or three, but it wouldn't be the large
volume of juice that I'm using to make it spark
(04:50):
and white.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
In the Derwent Valley. In the States South, the optimism
is absolutely echoed. Gerald Ellis purchased a land that has
become Meadowbank in nineteen seven. It was farm land, but
it's long since been converted to grow a wide variety
of grapes.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
Main varieties I guess what's typically non in Tasmania four,
which is pino nod a reasoning. But we're also got
some left wing varieties. We grow games with dan vignon,
blanc pino gree serrar, which is interesting given climate change.
(05:28):
We also used to have cabinet savignon, which we don't
have anymore. We've also got a small patch or green
which our viticulturalists parted some years ago as a bit
of a trial, and which is another interesting variety. So
there's certainly a mix of varieties there, and we're gradually
(05:50):
over years, I guess, eliminate some and concentrate more on others.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
This year's harvest started out strong for Meadow Bank, their
results similar to that of Bellemont.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Well, you'd have to be under a rocking hares man
and not to experience some of the usaful weather. We've
had just about the perfect weather for vimpage dry, fairly warm,
and certainly in our part of the area we do
get cooler night temperatures and quite warm day which produce
interesting flavors. So we're having Actually this year is a
(06:21):
is turning out to be a great image because on
top of all that, we've also got good yields, which
we haven't experienced in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It's shaping up to be a fruitful harvest season for
our states wine producers. But what does that mean overall
for Vintage twenty twenty five and the next few years.
After the break we'll dig deeper into the drums. We
can expect to be hitting our shelves in the not
too distant future.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
My Heartasy, I Heartasy.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Welcome back to iHeart Tazi. I'm Ebanie Applett and this
week I've had the pleasure to chat with some of
Tasmania's top one industry professionals and take a look into
how this year's vintages looking and it's going pretty great. Sorry,
I just had to throw at least one pun into
this episode.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
When you're deciding between sixteen great wines to create a bland,
it's much better than the siding between four great wines
and you know, twelve pretty good ones. So yeah, we're very,
very fortunate this year. It looks like every path that
we've had in the winery so far looks phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That's Natalie Fryer from Bellabon in the state's north. She
established her winery with the sole focus of creating Australia's
best sparkling, framing her wine around the fruit first and
then building complexity and depth. Last year, her Blanc to
blancs was named Australia's best sparkling white by Wine International
writer Tyson Stelza. And with high quality yields like this,
(07:44):
who knows what twenty twenty five could bring.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
It is absolutely the year we've been waiting for. So
we're trying not to mess up best we can, you know,
making the right decisions and you know, when you're offered
such a bounty by nature, it's it's incumber not need
to do everything you can to keep it perfect.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Jerald Ellis at Meadow Bank in the Dewan Valley says,
this use vintage is.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I think it's got a gift to winemakers.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The right combinations of factors coming together with the next
steps now to turn the grapes into the delicious wines
Tasmania is known for.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Once we hand it over to the winery, it's always
the winery'es job to do the job, because every year
we give the winemaker's perfect grapes. But we've never actually
had a perfect wine from the wine maker yet. But
that's just a standing joke that we have with them.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Wine jokes aside. Meadow Bank retain around thirty percent of
their yields for their own use and on sell the
rest to other wine makers who create and sell under
their own labels. It's looking like a very promising, prosperous
vintage ahead.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Obviously, we're in the marketing business, so every vintage you're.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Better than they are from the perspective of wine Tasbanias
Paul Smart, the mood is overall incredibly optimistic across the
States intry this year.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
We're a little island in the southern Ocean and we're
at the vagaries of weather and the last few years
have been a bit tough with particularly with wet and
cool weather which reduced our yields. But this year has
been a dry year, a warm year, which has led
to some solid fruit out there. The season is not
(09:22):
too hot, which means we don't have the issues that
we've seen on the mainland with really fast vintage. So
with a nice sort of Indian summer so to speak,
not too hot, not too cool, we should just cruise
through with the rest of vintage.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Surely. Davies says last year's vintage was good quality but
a lower than average yield, and the feedback she's hearing
suggests quality and volume of Tasmania and wine will be
strong this year. It's still going to be a little
while before we see bottles rolling out onto our shelves,
but it's one to watch and it seems to be
the case for the years to come as well. According
(10:01):
to modeling Wine Tasmania had put together by an independent economists.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The wine sector here in Tasmania is on track to
become the most significant economic driver for the state, out
performing all other sectors, and that we are forecast to
grow insize some fourfold, so we're talking significant growth. And
yet indeed, I think that modeling will show that the
(10:28):
wine sector is on track to kind of become perhaps
the most well known and most significant part of the
Tasmanian economy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And that's it for this week's episode of My Heart
t HASI. We'll be back next week. I'm Ebie Applett.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
My Heart Sasi
My Heart Dazzy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
For a long time, Tasmania has been known as the
Apple Isle, but over the last two decades we've really
come into our own when it comes to another fruit, grapes.
Our State's wine industry has been growing from strength to
strength and is being recognized on a national and international stage.
Our Island's unique with its climate making it an ideal
growing region. I'm Ebony Applet, and in this week's episode
(00:25):
of My Heart Tazzi, I'm speaking with wine industry professionals
about how these years harvest is going and what we
can expect for Vintage twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
My Heart Dazzy.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
There's a real positive feeling amongst Our State's great producers
at the moment, no matter where they're located. The twenty
twenty four to twenty five growing season is coming to
a close, which means harvesting season known as the Vintage,
is really ramping up and these years is creating a
bit of a buzz in the industry. At the start
of Vintage twenty twenty five, I was lucky enough to
(00:56):
speak with Sumfowl State's best growers and professionals shaping up
to be one of the best we've seen in a while.
According to the experts from Wine Tasmania, it's.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Always an exciting time of year when autumn comes around
and the grapes start rolling into the winery. Every year
is different and this is not different to the others.
And yeah, so far, so good. We're looking to get
really good yields out there. We're going to have some
(01:27):
grapefruit and what we've heard so far and that our
quality is still looking great.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's Paul Smart, Wine Tasmania's viticulture and wine making officer.
He really knows his stuff. Little changes to the climate
like snap, frost or smoke can impact the quality of
the grapes. But thankfully, even with the risk coming from
the West Coast bushfires earlier this year, the notoriously sensitive
grapes have bounced right through.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
With the fires being so large but so far away.
We don't believe that there is any smoke taint from
from this event. It was a one off, very quick
bit of smoke that came over the growing areas. So no,
the West Coast fires haven't impacted us that we believe,
(02:13):
but it's still a concern. We still have some fruit
out there.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Shirley Davi, Sis CEO of Wine Tasmania, otherwise known as
the Wine Queen, describes wine making as high risk but
high rewards.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Because we're so far south, our climate is a lot
cooler than most other Australian wine regions and it means
that we have a slower, longer season and ripening period,
so compared with some other wine regions, our great and
they are quite fickle and delicate, are out there hanging
out there on the vine for a much longer period
(02:47):
of time, and so you can imagine if you're looking
at the weather conditions from basically September through to April,
sometimes in May, that's a lot a lot of weather.
But these these delicate wine grapes need to need to
go through, so it's constantly high risk, but the reward
(03:10):
is there. We also know being in this cool, amazing
island climate, we also can produce some of the best
quality wines, not just in the country but in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Their excitement is infectious and it's echoed by Bellabon owner
Natalie Fryer, who's been in the industry in Tasmania for
more than two decades. Her vinyard in the West Tamar
region just outside Lonceestern specializes in sparkling wines. She's vintage,
she says, is going really well.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It's going to be a great year. Like I'm very
excited about both fruit quality and for the first time
in a long time, the fruit quantity. There's plenty of
fruit and that's just fantastic, not just for me, but
for the entire industry. You know, the growers get more
reward and the wine makers get more beautiful wine to
sell for people. So it's a great year. Quality is fantastic,
(04:02):
or of bit surprised, but how good it is. We
have some pretty rough weather in spring, and often that
means trouble ahead, but actually it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Harvesting can take between days to weeks and even months,
depending on the size of the vineyard and the equipment available,
and then the grapes are crushed to start the winemaking process. Unfortunately,
for the most party, it's not the mental image we
get of people with bare feet and rolled up pants
squishing them with their feet.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Sometimes it is. I know every year my husband, who
has his own wine brands, he takes his travelers off
and gets in there and presses the fruit with his feet,
and lots of people do that around the state, but
not at the volumes that people think. It will be
one small firm and that that happens for Sometimes it'll
be two or three, but it wouldn't be the large
volume of juice that I'm using to make it spark
(04:50):
and white.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
In the Derwent Valley. In the States South, the optimism
is absolutely echoed. Gerald Ellis purchased a land that has
become Meadowbank in nineteen seven. It was farm land, but
it's long since been converted to grow a wide variety
of grapes.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
Main varieties I guess what's typically non in Tasmania four,
which is pino nod a reasoning. But we're also got
some left wing varieties. We grow games with dan vignon,
blanc pino gree serrar, which is interesting given climate change.
(05:28):
We also used to have cabinet savignon, which we don't
have anymore. We've also got a small patch or green
which our viticulturalists parted some years ago as a bit
of a trial, and which is another interesting variety. So
there's certainly a mix of varieties there, and we're gradually
(05:50):
over years, I guess, eliminate some and concentrate more on others.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
This year's harvest started out strong for Meadow Bank, their
results similar to that of Bellemont.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Well, you'd have to be under a rocking hares man
and not to experience some of the usaful weather. We've
had just about the perfect weather for vimpage dry, fairly warm,
and certainly in our part of the area we do
get cooler night temperatures and quite warm day which produce
interesting flavors. So we're having Actually this year is a
(06:21):
is turning out to be a great image because on
top of all that, we've also got good yields, which
we haven't experienced in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It's shaping up to be a fruitful harvest season for
our states wine producers. But what does that mean overall
for Vintage twenty twenty five and the next few years.
After the break we'll dig deeper into the drums. We
can expect to be hitting our shelves in the not
too distant future.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
My Heartasy, I Heartasy.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Welcome back to iHeart Tazi. I'm Ebanie Applett and this
week I've had the pleasure to chat with some of
Tasmania's top one industry professionals and take a look into
how this year's vintages looking and it's going pretty great. Sorry,
I just had to throw at least one pun into
this episode.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
When you're deciding between sixteen great wines to create a bland,
it's much better than the siding between four great wines
and you know, twelve pretty good ones. So yeah, we're very,
very fortunate this year. It looks like every path that
we've had in the winery so far looks phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That's Natalie Fryer from Bellabon in the state's north. She
established her winery with the sole focus of creating Australia's
best sparkling, framing her wine around the fruit first and
then building complexity and depth. Last year, her Blanc to
blancs was named Australia's best sparkling white by Wine International
writer Tyson Stelza. And with high quality yields like this,
(07:44):
who knows what twenty twenty five could bring.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
It is absolutely the year we've been waiting for. So
we're trying not to mess up best we can, you know,
making the right decisions and you know, when you're offered
such a bounty by nature, it's it's incumber not need
to do everything you can to keep it perfect.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Jerald Ellis at Meadow Bank in the Dewan Valley says,
this use vintage is.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I think it's got a gift to winemakers.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The right combinations of factors coming together with the next
steps now to turn the grapes into the delicious wines
Tasmania is known for.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Once we hand it over to the winery, it's always
the winery'es job to do the job, because every year
we give the winemaker's perfect grapes. But we've never actually
had a perfect wine from the wine maker yet. But
that's just a standing joke that we have with them.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Wine jokes aside. Meadow Bank retain around thirty percent of
their yields for their own use and on sell the
rest to other wine makers who create and sell under
their own labels. It's looking like a very promising, prosperous
vintage ahead.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Obviously, we're in the marketing business, so every vintage you're.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Better than they are from the perspective of wine Tasbanias
Paul Smart, the mood is overall incredibly optimistic across the
States intry this year.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
We're a little island in the southern Ocean and we're
at the vagaries of weather and the last few years
have been a bit tough with particularly with wet and
cool weather which reduced our yields. But this year has
been a dry year, a warm year, which has led
to some solid fruit out there. The season is not
(09:22):
too hot, which means we don't have the issues that
we've seen on the mainland with really fast vintage. So
with a nice sort of Indian summer so to speak,
not too hot, not too cool, we should just cruise
through with the rest of vintage.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Surely. Davies says last year's vintage was good quality but
a lower than average yield, and the feedback she's hearing
suggests quality and volume of Tasmania and wine will be
strong this year. It's still going to be a little
while before we see bottles rolling out onto our shelves,
but it's one to watch and it seems to be
the case for the years to come as well. According
(10:01):
to modeling Wine Tasmania had put together by an independent economists.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The wine sector here in Tasmania is on track to
become the most significant economic driver for the state, out
performing all other sectors, and that we are forecast to
grow insize some fourfold, so we're talking significant growth. And
yet indeed, I think that modeling will show that the
(10:28):
wine sector is on track to kind of become perhaps
the most well known and most significant part of the
Tasmanian economy.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And that's it for this week's episode of My Heart
t HASI. We'll be back next week. I'm Ebie Applett.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
My Heart Sasi
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