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| Photo: MONA/Remi Chavin |
Fabulous Tassie pinot noir at a price that won't bust the budget. I love everything about this wine, made at Moorilla using grapes grown at the St Matthias vineyard in the north of the state. The label is typically outrageous with sicko graffiti images, but the wine is refined and elegant. Good work here from winemaker Conor van der Reest, who keeps the fruit power in check and delivers a beautifully balanced wine that is varietal and appealing. This is fresh and vibrant, and ready to enjoy. Very noice. $32. www.moorilla.com.au.
Nocton Vineyard is one the (relatively) larger producers in the Coal River Valley, north-east of Hobart, is a producer on the move. New management, new labels and big plans, including a cellar door project in the works. Chinese-owned, it has had a focus on the Chinese market but is now broadening its horizons to home consumers. This is downright delicious with classic cool-climate chardonnay characters of peaches, pears and melons, allied to savoury and mineral notes. There's also plenty of length here, lots of refreshment and good value. $28. www.noctonwine.com.au.
42 Degrees South is the entry-level label for high-quality Coal River Valley producer Frogmore Creek and utilises not only estate fruit but also grapes sourced from the rest of the state. This is quite a bold pinot; rich and quite intense, but also with an easy drinkability. Winemaker Alain Rousseau has blended sustainably-grown estate fruit with grapes from the East Coast to produce an early/mid-term drinking pinot with red berry fruits to the fore. Nicely balanced. $29. www.frogmorecreek.com.au.
Tasmania is far better known for chardonnay and pinot noir than it is for sauvignon blanc, but Freycinet Vineyard winemaker Claudio Radenti believes the East Coast of the island state is particularly well suited to savvy. This is a very lively, intense wine, partially barrel fermented in older oak, although tropical fruit flavours and vivacious acid are the driving forces. Probably best enjoyed in its youth, it is a vibrant thirst quencher that would provide a very good match to Tasmanian seafood. Very long, very lively, extremely refreshing. $28. www.freycinetvineyard.com.au.
One of Australia's benchmark chardonnays and the Hardy's white wine flagship, this is a blend of fruit from Tasmania and the Yarra Valley. In both regions it was a vintage of low yields but high quality. This is very stylish and elegant with the cool-climate fruit the star turn. There are ripe stone fruit flavours interwoven with crisp citrus notes and toasty oak that adds to the party. The matriarch after whom the label is named would doubtless be very proud. Shop carefully and you'll probably be able to find it for well under the recommended retail price of $95. www.hardyswines.com.
The prices for top-notch Tasmanian pinot noir can be stratospheric, which is why it is rewarding to come across one that shines but doesn't break the bank. Stoney Rise is the entry-level pinot from idiosyncratic Tamar Valley producer Joe Holyman and this new release is gloriously gluggable, sensationally sessionable, or whatever phrase you'd like to use to say that it is ridiculously easy to drink. It is all about the fruit, some estate grown, some purchased from local growers, in a drink-now wine that Holyman recommends enjoying with a pizza margherita and some delta blues. It is a juicy, focused little number with dark red fruit notes and restrained oak. One of those wines where it is all too easy to finish a bottle in one session. $28. www.stoneyrise.com.
Peter Dredge is a hugely talented young winemaker who learnt his trade at Petaluma, who shone at Bay of Fires and is now making wines at Meadowbank in Tasmania's Derwent Valley. I first tried this a few weeks ago at Tasman Quartermasters in Hobart and then again the other day. It is a young red, made in tiny quantities, but it typifies the new wave of on-the-edge (see what I did there) pinots being made by labels like Sinapius, Two Tonne Tasmania and Sailor Seeks Horse.This is a blend of fruit from the Derwent Valley and the Tamar Valley further north, vinified at Moorilla. It's been through carbonic maceration and was them de-stemmed and fermented in open tanks before being basket pressed and matured briefly in older French barriques. As is all the rage it was bottled without fining or filtration. The label has an angry Dredgy raging against the machine; the wine is the opposite; delicate and nuanced. $55.
