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Tasmania - Joe Holyman - Stoney Rise
75 Plays4 years ago
In the second episode of Fine Vines and Wine, I’m joined by Aussie wine personality Joe Holyman, owner of Stoney Rise in beautiful Tasmania. He gives me some great alternate wine recommendations for Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, we discuss why you should be visiting Tasmania as soon as boarders open and the concept behind Stoney Rise and their newly opened cellar door/bar/bottle o. Having previously tried his wines on Between The Wines with guest and friend of Joe, Mike Bennie, it was great to have him as my second guest - this episode is one not to be missed!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:07
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome to Fine Vines and Wine.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm your host Karis Pixie and each week I'll be giving you all an insight into the behind the scenes of our favourite beverage, wine.
00:00:17
Speaker
I'd love for you to use this podcast platform as a winery guide for your next weekend away, exploring everything Australia has to offer.
00:00:26
Speaker
You never know, you might discover a new spot or two to visit.
00:00:30
Speaker
I acknowledge the Katigal and the Palawa people, traditional custodians of the land that we recorded today's podcast episode on.
00:00:38
Speaker
I pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the nation.
00:00:49
Speaker
On today's episode, I'm joined by Jo Holyman, winemaker and owner of Tasmania's Stony Rise.
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome Joe and thank you for joining me.
00:00:57
Speaker
How has your week been?
00:00:58
Speaker
Thanks for having me initially.
00:01:01
Speaker
We've had a good week so far.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's only Tuesday so yeah just working through the week.
00:01:06
Speaker
Let's kick it off with some questions.
Jo Holyman's Background in Wine
00:01:09
Speaker
What has been your defining wine moment as a winemaker and also as the owner of Stoney Rise?
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh, that's a very length.
00:01:16
Speaker
That's a hard one to knuckle down.
00:01:19
Speaker
But I guess no defining moment, but I grew up around wine and I saw the pleasure it brought to my parents and their friends and the way that everything was always different.
00:01:33
Speaker
Every time we talked about it, there was something to learn.
00:01:35
Speaker
And I guess that is what piqued my interest.
00:01:38
Speaker
I'm a little bit, I like to be entertained.
00:01:42
Speaker
So the attraction to wine for me was the fact that it was never going to be the same every year or there was always something out there that I could learn about to make me have better knowledge of the industry.
Nature's Influence on Wine
00:01:54
Speaker
I love that.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, every sort of, I guess I have two wines from a winery near Goulburn and they're
00:02:01
Speaker
looking at it the other day and their 2015 rosé Shiraz is super dark but then their 2020 was really light and it's just crazy that that same grape variety over the years can just change so much yeah yeah I agree totally and it's you know it's all um
00:02:17
Speaker
comes down to nature and that's the most exciting thing about it is that whilst we all have to deal with it as farmers, we're dealing with mother nature, which is something we can never control.
00:02:28
Speaker
Quite a few vintages recently have been, over the last sort of five or six years, have been affected in some parts.
00:02:35
Speaker
It's still, it's an ongoing issue for all of us around the country and obviously, you know, when you look at California and South Africa come to mind recently that have all had awful
00:02:46
Speaker
bushfires during their growing season and it's just I don't think it's going to get any better in a hurry but as we saw in the Adelaide Hills recently you can you know if the fire's you know strong enough for you there's not much you can do at all and it's just about I guess you know my first priority is my family well my wife might disagree but the vineyard comes second yeah as long as my family are healthy I'm willing to give up a little bit of vineyard
00:03:12
Speaker
I totally agree.
Career Journey in the Wine Industry
00:03:14
Speaker
It sounds like you've been working in wine for a while.
00:03:17
Speaker
How long has it actually been?
00:03:18
Speaker
In a real job sense, I started working for Negotiants Australia, part of the S. Smith & Son Group in 1994, I like to say, because it makes it seem older.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, and obviously prior to that, I'd worked part-time in bottle shops and restaurants and worked in my little family vineyard and done some other vineyard work around South Australia.
00:03:42
Speaker
So it sort of goes back a little bit further than that, but that's my first real wine industry job today.
00:03:47
Speaker
What's your most memorable moment that you've experienced during your wine journey?
00:03:52
Speaker
To be honest, there's too many.
00:03:54
Speaker
I tend to work on the fact that the best glass of wine I've ever had is the one I'm having at the moment.
00:04:01
Speaker
Not that I'm having one at the moment.
00:04:02
Speaker
It's a bit early even for me.
00:04:03
Speaker
But I've been fortunate enough in my time in...
00:04:07
Speaker
in the wine industry to do some amazing things and visit some amazing people have some amazing dinners in fancy restaurants and but it all comes back down to how you enjoy the moment i think rather than any particular moment and that's what last week's guest said as well so it's definitely all about the moment and experiencing that too
00:04:28
Speaker
I think definitely a bottle can be amazing, but when you open it, if you open it with the right people in the right environment and have that sort of memory associated with it, then it makes it even more special as well.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think I could tell you about...
00:04:43
Speaker
You know, my first real defining wine memory, and like quite a few other people I've heard on podcasts recently, is the first time I ever tried Shadow at Chem.
00:04:54
Speaker
And I was about 14 and got a little sip.
00:04:56
Speaker
My dad had bought a bottle with some friends and I got a tiny little sip.
00:05:00
Speaker
And I remember that distinctly, but I wouldn't say it was at my best moment or my worst moment.
00:05:05
Speaker
It's just one that, you know, the first one that sticks in my mind.
00:05:09
Speaker
I feel like my, I think my first, probably not taste of wine, I'd say was probably my first taste of alcohol was probably stealing gin from my dad's alcohol cabinet when I was 15, 16 and taking it out with my friends.
00:05:23
Speaker
And I still don't like gin to this day.
00:05:25
Speaker
So it must have definitely done something.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one.
00:05:30
Speaker
It amazes me that people can have such an experience that puts them off something.
00:05:37
Speaker
I've done some damage to myself on just about every kind of alcohol there is, but nothing's ever stopped.
00:05:44
Speaker
The only thing I probably don't drink anymore, which I drank a lot of when I was young, is Bundaberg rum, but we still normally have at least one of those during harvest.
00:05:52
Speaker
So I don't really like it, but
00:05:54
Speaker
It hasn't ever stopped me drinking it.
00:05:56
Speaker
I don't think I've ever had that with wine though.
00:05:58
Speaker
So just the spirits, just not the wine.
Pandemic Challenges and Local Support
00:06:02
Speaker
So you opened a new cellar door in 2020.
00:06:06
Speaker
Congratulations.
00:06:07
Speaker
Cause 2020 was definitely a bit of a year.
00:06:10
Speaker
How is that going?
00:06:12
Speaker
And have you had to adapt to any new challenges?
00:06:15
Speaker
Oh, there's a couple of answers to that, I guess.
00:06:18
Speaker
The first one is I have been amused by everyone's, you know, writing off of 2020 like coronavirus was going to go away on the 1st of January.
00:06:30
Speaker
It hasn't actually gone away.
00:06:33
Speaker
So I'm not sure that 2021 is going to be that much better.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:39
Speaker
Look, the building was finished pretty much at Christmas time last year and there was a few jobs to do that we slowly got done and then obviously COVID hit.
00:06:52
Speaker
We had a cellar door which was part of our house.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:56
Speaker
My wife worked out.
00:06:57
Speaker
I think when COVID first hit with the four square metre rule, I think we could get half a person in it, and that didn't include someone serving them.
00:07:06
Speaker
So it's a pretty small space.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:08
Speaker
So there was no point opening and, you know, there was nowhere to sit.
00:07:14
Speaker
So when you could open again,
00:07:17
Speaker
There was no sit-down space because everyone had to sit down to drink or taste.
00:07:22
Speaker
So we just sort of made sure we got the building.
00:07:25
Speaker
It's still probably 95% finished, and we just gave it a go.
00:07:32
Speaker
It was, you know, in a funny sort of way, I think in Tasmania we've been very lucky.
00:07:38
Speaker
and haven't suffered the lockdowns and the up and downs of many other states.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I feel very sorry for all my friends in those places.
00:07:48
Speaker
You know, the Tasmanian people were fantastic.
00:07:50
Speaker
We're pretty well known for Tasmanians love travelling around Tasmania when no one else is around.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:57
Speaker
They took advantage of it and in a weird sort of way, I think we were probably too late because I think most of the Tasmanians had done a lot of their travelling.
00:08:06
Speaker
But it's been very well supported by the locals and the tourists that have been here.
00:08:11
Speaker
And, look, I think...
00:08:14
Speaker
we had to open it.
00:08:15
Speaker
We couldn't sort of go, well, because of COVID, we won't open because that's not doing anyone any favours.
00:08:21
Speaker
And I think, you know, with people so keen to travel and not to be able to go overseas, you know, Tasmanians, especially because it's a bit of a hotspot, we need to offer people things to do.
00:08:35
Speaker
So there was a bit of
00:08:36
Speaker
sort of all of that involved in opening um but we just needed to open it was we were lucky enough to be in a position where we weren't locked up and there were people moving around and we've had some great support from everyone I feel like as well especially I've really enjoyed even though I'm originally from England so normally I go back to England um yes very obvious normally I go back um every summer for a couple of months and that's kind of like my big travel stint but um
00:09:04
Speaker
I've actually really enjoyed exploring more of Australia.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:08
Speaker
Going to places that I hadn't maybe thought of going to or probably wouldn't have had time to go to.
00:09:13
Speaker
So it's actually been quite nice, like rediscovering new parts.
00:09:17
Speaker
which I think a lot of people, I think a lot of Australians are finding out and getting to experience stuff that they normally would have passed over to go to Europe or something like that.
00:09:28
Speaker
So it's kind of like, it's like a double-edged sword, like it's kind of sucked, but it's also been good, I think, for the hospitality industry and the tourism industry in Australia when it's not been locked down.
00:09:39
Speaker
Oh, totally.
00:09:39
Speaker
And I think even before the real lockdown, so maybe in late February, early March last year, we had, when COVID had sort of just started and it was...
00:09:50
Speaker
you know, at the time probably considered something that was happening overseas and not in Australia so much.
00:09:55
Speaker
We had quite a few people traveling around Tasmania and instead of having their one or two months overseas, they were doing that back then.
00:10:04
Speaker
So I think I was talking to my father the other day and he tells me it's the first time he hasn't been outside Tasmania in 65 years.
00:10:13
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:10:15
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it's the first time I haven't been outside of Tasmania, well, since I was about 14, so 36 years.
00:10:26
Speaker
Oh, wow, that's actually crazy.
00:10:28
Speaker
It's a bit weird for my wife.
00:10:30
Speaker
She's stuck with me at the moment.
00:10:31
Speaker
I'm not travelling selling wine or doing vintage or something.
00:10:34
Speaker
So, yeah, it's the way it is.
00:10:37
Speaker
And as I said earlier, it's not changing in a hurry, I don't think.
00:10:41
Speaker
No, I definitely don't think
Diverse Offerings at Stony Rise
00:10:43
Speaker
so.
00:10:43
Speaker
I agree with that.
00:10:45
Speaker
Going off that a little bit, what do you think the wine industry will see more or less of in 2021?
00:10:51
Speaker
We might see.
00:10:53
Speaker
I agree.
00:10:55
Speaker
So as well as having a cellar door, you also offer a bar takeaway bottle and sell homemade French onion dip, which sounds delicious.
00:11:04
Speaker
Do you think with the future of travel and COVID so up in the air that having multiple revenue options is the way forward for a successful winery or cellar door?
00:11:13
Speaker
Sorry, that was a long question.
00:11:15
Speaker
No, that's fine.
00:11:17
Speaker
To try and break it down a little bit, we've always discussed the idea that if we built a cellar door, we didn't want it to be like a cellar door.
00:11:26
Speaker
It wasn't necessarily all about the revenue options.
00:11:30
Speaker
There was a couple of things that led us towards what we're doing with selling other people's wines.
00:11:38
Speaker
having some beers, doing a little food obviously goes is a natural cellar door thing and we never had that before so we had to include that.
00:11:46
Speaker
A couple of reasons we wanted to do it a bit differently one was you know if I lived in a near a wine region and they had an awesome restaurant which most wine regions do you know in a particular winery and
00:12:01
Speaker
It's always frustrated me that people put so much time and effort into these fantastic restaurants, but then you only serve your own wine, which if I want to go to your restaurant once a month in that winery, I don't really want to drink your wine once a month.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so that was part of the idea that, and because we're 20 minutes from Launceston in a reasonably off the beaten track part of the Tamar River, we wanted it to be a local hangout.
00:12:35
Speaker
So it was a bit of a community thing.
00:12:38
Speaker
And that's the same reason.
00:12:39
Speaker
If we have friends that want to come locally once a month and they don't want to drink our wine, then I don't mind, but I'm happy for them to use the space.
00:12:50
Speaker
And that's really what it was all about.
00:12:52
Speaker
So there was the two aspects to it.
00:12:55
Speaker
And obviously, to do what we did, we had to get a general license, which meant that we also had takeaway.
00:13:01
Speaker
We don't really open it as a bottle shop as such, but any of the wines we have available, you can take away.
00:13:09
Speaker
All the non-alcoholic drinks or the, you know, beers or whatever.
00:13:12
Speaker
So do you source the beers and the non-alcoholic drinks locally in Tasmania as well?
00:13:19
Speaker
No.
00:13:20
Speaker
So the concept of the wine list is, well, the non-alcoholic beers are the sober beers from Queensland, native ingredient craft beers, non-alcoholic.
00:13:29
Speaker
And then we've got some Australian-made tonic and lemonade, but we do seed-lipping cans.
00:13:36
Speaker
Okay, yes, I like seed lip.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
So and then even down to the Bickford's Blackcurrant Cordial that is handy to have in the fridge for when the parents have got children with them if they don't want something else.
00:13:49
Speaker
And that obviously comes from South Australia.
00:13:50
Speaker
And then the wine list side of it was actually I didn't want to upset any local Tasmanian producers because
00:13:59
Speaker
So I took the stand that we wouldn't have any other Tasmanian producers on the list.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, I like that because then I guess if you want to try those other Tasmanian wines, then you have to go and visit their establishments.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, and I just didn't want, to be honest, I didn't want everyone saying, oh, how come you got their wine on and not mine or...
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, that too.
00:14:18
Speaker
Here, try this.
00:14:19
Speaker
You should put it on your list and all that sort of stuff.
00:14:21
Speaker
It just took it completely out, even down to the fact and probably the only downfall of it, I think, is we're not showcasing Tasmanian sparkling wine, but you can have a glass of champagne if you like.
00:14:33
Speaker
I think we were talking because I used to have another podcast and we interviewed the familiar at Nomad and he said that they tried to start with a fully Aussie wine list, but people would come in and if they wanted to celebrate, they didn't want a glass of Australian sparkling.
00:14:47
Speaker
They wanted a glass of champagne because it's that connotation that comes with that.
00:14:51
Speaker
So it's quite nice to have a champagne on the list as well.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just, as I say, it's the same thing.
00:14:56
Speaker
I mean, we could do an individual producer from Tasmania for a month each, you know, to get through 12 a year.
00:15:03
Speaker
There's always still going to be someone who says, why have you got that on, not that?
00:15:07
Speaker
And we just figured that this was the best way to do it.
00:15:09
Speaker
Whereas this way, you know, it's a bit of a pity, as I say, because, I mean, we do make arguably the...
00:15:15
Speaker
some of the best sparkling wines in the world.
00:15:18
Speaker
And it's a pity not to showcase them, but it's just... And then the rest of the list is just really... There's a few friends from the mainland.
00:15:27
Speaker
There's a lot of... The idea part of the concept was that we would showcase wines from other regions around the world that are similar.
00:15:35
Speaker
So, you know, there's Burgundy for Pinot and Chardonnay.
00:15:40
Speaker
There's Oregon.
00:15:41
Speaker
There's some New Zealand stuff.
00:15:44
Speaker
Oh, awesome.
00:15:45
Speaker
And then we've got, you know, some Austrian Grunewelt Lina because we grow Grunewelt Lina.
00:15:51
Speaker
I was going to ask you about that.
00:15:52
Speaker
I've never actually heard of that.
00:15:54
Speaker
What sort of grape variety is it?
00:15:56
Speaker
What's it similar to, if it's similar to anything?
00:15:59
Speaker
It's very similar.
00:16:02
Speaker
It's the most widely grown variety in Austria.
00:16:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:07
Speaker
And...
00:16:08
Speaker
It's, as a default reaction, I would tell people that it's a little bit like a cross between Pinot Gris and Riesling.
00:16:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:18
Speaker
Depending on how you make it.
00:16:19
Speaker
So, you know, texturally, it's got a bit of depth to it.
00:16:24
Speaker
If they're, you know, left to ripen to higher alcohol, so you can become quite silky.
00:16:31
Speaker
and you know textural and but they all that retains its acidity very well like grisling so you can have this sort of structure and acidity at the same time so that was and then you know there's we grow we're the only people in tasmania that grow trousseau so we we've got some jura wines and wines we like to drink so that was also part of it that had to be the idea is that it's a bit of an opening into our life where the food is stuff that we like to eat mainly locally sourced yeah um
00:17:00
Speaker
And then the wine list was all about, you know, this is what Lou and I drink at home, so why don't you have a go?
00:17:05
Speaker
Or, you know, if you're going to have comp de cheese, then you really should be drinking Sauvignon or Vangern from the Jura to go with it because that's where the cheese comes from.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess then the flavour profiles match.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, so that's really what was the idea of that.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:21
Speaker
It's a bit like me putting my cellar in the cellar door so that people know what we drink.
00:17:26
Speaker
For us, as people who eat and drink and go around.
00:17:30
Speaker
One of the strangest comments that I find that we get in cellar door is people find it really hard to believe that we really don't drink our wine.
00:17:38
Speaker
And I always reply to them, well, do you drink the same wine every day?
00:17:42
Speaker
And they go, no.
00:17:42
Speaker
That's a very good point.
00:17:44
Speaker
I've never thought about it like that.
00:17:46
Speaker
They go, no.
00:17:47
Speaker
And I say, well, why should I?
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
I mean, we spend a lot of time making the wines and we've tasted and done the stuff a lot.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:55
Speaker
Every now and again, we'll have a glass of something that's left over from cellar door, but I don't run to the cellar door every day to grab a bottle of wine for dinner because that's not the way the wine industry works.
00:18:06
Speaker
Don't leave just yet.
00:18:07
Speaker
We'll be right back after this short break.
00:18:09
Speaker
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00:18:17
Speaker
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00:18:18
Speaker
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00:19:04
Speaker
spelt C-H-A-R-I-S available to purchase at winesave.com.au happy sipping no I completely I actually completely understand that I've never thought about it like that but now you say that it is yeah it makes a lot of sense I know I sent you some questions but I have added a couple of extra ones so I saw that you have a more sustainable approach and you don't use pesticides and you started doing that quite a while ago
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah.
Sustainability and Future Plans
00:19:35
Speaker
What steps did you take when you were adopting a more sustainable approach?
00:19:39
Speaker
Look, the big issue down here to this process is the weather.
00:19:44
Speaker
People don't quite understand and it's interesting in one of the early questions when we were talking about bushfires, but the interesting thing about the Tamer Valley for a reasonably, for a cool climate is that
00:19:55
Speaker
You know, the average humidity rating in Tasmania over the summer is 66%, which isn't probably that much lower than Sydney.
00:20:04
Speaker
So the humidity is the big issue down here over the growing season.
00:20:08
Speaker
So we are susceptible to, relative to the season, we are susceptible to the moulds, the powery mildew, downy mildew especially.
00:20:17
Speaker
So that plays in my mind.
00:20:19
Speaker
I guess, you know, I was saying to someone the other day, I didn't study winemaking or viticulture.
00:20:25
Speaker
I did wine marketing and
00:20:28
Speaker
But I went to university late and probably would have studied one of the other two if I could be bothered, but I just wanted a piece of paper and a job.
00:20:34
Speaker
So I did wine marketing.
00:20:37
Speaker
And I think the great advantage of not studying these things is that you're willing to give stuff a go.
00:20:43
Speaker
Instead of thinking, oh, I know what's going to happen.
00:20:45
Speaker
I had no idea what was going to happen when I started doing it.
00:20:48
Speaker
But
00:20:48
Speaker
I was willing to, you know, and that's sort of the way I look at things like planting Grunewald Lena and Trousseau and those things.
00:20:54
Speaker
It's about giving it a go and if it doesn't work, we'll try something else.
00:20:57
Speaker
But, yeah, so there was no real hoops.
00:20:59
Speaker
I mean, we live, our house is 10 metres from the first row of the vineyard.
00:21:05
Speaker
I've got young children and my wife and I just didn't want them growing up in a space full of chemicals.
00:21:11
Speaker
You know, we did want them to eat the dirt and, you know, I was not sure that I would have let them eat the dirt if...
00:21:17
Speaker
We'd been using fungicides or herbicides.
00:21:21
Speaker
So, look, we work on a system, I guess, down here, the French lute résoné, where you do everything for a reason.
00:21:28
Speaker
So some seasons we do less.
00:21:30
Speaker
A season like this one...
00:21:33
Speaker
We've been on our sort of more normal process.
00:21:36
Speaker
So we use two chemical sprays a year around Christmas time when generally the disease pressure is at its greatest.
00:21:45
Speaker
And then we revert back to the basic sulphur copper sprays for the rest of the season.
00:21:50
Speaker
And then there's no additions in the winery other than sulphur.
00:21:53
Speaker
It's all about working with the land and with the environment to do the best we can with the minimal amount of inputs.
00:22:01
Speaker
But I do have mouths to feed and banks to pay.
00:22:03
Speaker
What grape varieties are you currently growing and what seems to be the most popular, if there is a most popular one?
00:22:11
Speaker
Look, we grow Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Grunewald, Lina and Trousseau.
00:22:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:22:19
Speaker
So, and then we buy in a little bit of Pinot Gris for us.
00:22:24
Speaker
So we're predominantly Pinot.
00:22:26
Speaker
So Pinot is the best seller because that's the one we make the most of.
00:22:30
Speaker
The Stoney Rice Pinot is sort of, you know, majority of more than half of our production is Stoney Rice Pinot.
00:22:36
Speaker
The other wines are made in smaller quantities.
00:22:39
Speaker
So, yeah, there's not sort of anything in particular that stands out.
00:22:43
Speaker
We think all the varieties are suitable to the climate and our site.
00:22:47
Speaker
Do you have any plans in the work for 2021?
00:22:49
Speaker
After vintage?
00:22:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:54
Speaker
Not really.
00:22:54
Speaker
It'd be nice to go to P&V and have a beer with Mike at some point.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:00
Speaker
Maybe.
00:23:01
Speaker
No, not really.
00:23:01
Speaker
We're not really planning too much at the moment.
00:23:04
Speaker
I think there might be a bit of... No, we do have a little bit more land we can plant vineyard on, but that won't be this year.
00:23:09
Speaker
It might be next year, maybe.
00:23:11
Speaker
So, no, it's just pretty much...
00:23:14
Speaker
the business as usual for us we'll get through vintage and it sort of stays pretty busy for us because we release a lot of wine quite early so we sort of release four or five wines in september so we battle through to get them finished and ready and bottled and then by the time we've done all that the grapes start you know we're pruning at the same time the grapes start growing again it's and it's groundhog day
00:23:36
Speaker
But it'd be nice to do some stuff.
00:23:38
Speaker
Part of the plan for the new cellar door is that we've put in, we haven't, so one thing that we haven't finished is the kitchen.
00:23:45
Speaker
So the plan is to put in a commercial hood and some hot plates sort of half a dozen times a year.
00:23:52
Speaker
We plan on inviting old friends from the industry on the mainland, especially down to cook for a weekend.
00:23:58
Speaker
So chefs from restaurants around Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, wherever.
00:24:02
Speaker
Oh, awesome.
00:24:03
Speaker
So I guess it'd be nice to finish that and maybe get some of them underway for next summer.
00:24:08
Speaker
So, yeah, so that'd be one little thing we need to do to get the whole thing finished and then we just keep going.
00:24:14
Speaker
See how winter is.
00:24:15
Speaker
That's always the trick down here.
00:24:17
Speaker
You know, if the support keeps going, it'll be a good one or if the borders open up.
00:24:22
Speaker
And people get fearful of travelling to Tasmania in winter and it's the best time of the year to be here.
00:24:27
Speaker
The last time I visited was maybe like six, seven years ago, but we went in, I'm trying to think, I think we definitely went in winter.
00:24:36
Speaker
It was very cold anyway when we went to Cradle Mountain.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
See, there's another anomaly.
00:24:43
Speaker
People come to Tasmania and they go 1,200 metres up in the sky in the middle of summer and can't work out why it's cold.
00:24:50
Speaker
But if they were 1,200 metres up in the French Alps, I'd think it was lovely.
00:24:54
Speaker
Well, they said international travel isn't probably happening until at least 2022.
00:24:58
Speaker
So we've got a little bit of a while yet for people to discover more of Australia.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think so.
00:25:06
Speaker
And, yeah, I can't see us going anywhere.
00:25:09
Speaker
I'm not sure that I'd be getting on a plane to go overseas at the moment.
00:25:12
Speaker
No, I definitely wouldn't.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
So...
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, so it should be okay.
00:25:17
Speaker
It's just it'll be a bit of a local support thing and stuff and you just work your way through it.
00:25:23
Speaker
I mean, we're used to having them reasonably quiet.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's definitely changed.
00:25:27
Speaker
We know at the early days we used to shut our cellar door for three months, but we stay open now.
00:25:32
Speaker
And what as well for people listening, when is your cellar door open?
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, we're open Thursday to Monday through to Monday from 10am to 5pm.
00:25:44
Speaker
Awesome.
00:25:45
Speaker
So a lot of time to visit.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker
There's, you know, it's quite a few down here opening up seven days again.
00:25:53
Speaker
Not many people did initially, but more have now.
00:25:55
Speaker
But we just like the idea of having a couple of days to sort of recoup and Luke and do other things for herself and sort of keep up to date with stuff.
00:26:05
Speaker
So going back to when you mentioned Mike from PMV Merchants, we actually had him on our last podcast in Between the Wines.
00:26:13
Speaker
I know, I listened to it.
00:26:14
Speaker
Oh, awesome.
00:26:15
Speaker
And he bought along some of your wine, which is amazing.
00:26:20
Speaker
And then he also bought some of the Brian wines as well.
00:26:24
Speaker
And I was going to ask if you can tell me a little bit more about that.
00:26:28
Speaker
I guess it really, Brian's something that Mike and Pete and I put together as a way of remaining in contact a bit and making sure that we, you know, stayed in touch and got together every now and again.
00:26:40
Speaker
Obviously, with COVID, we're not doing that either.
00:26:42
Speaker
But, yeah, so it's just we buy – it's not very big.
00:26:45
Speaker
We buy a little bit of fruit from around Tasmania and make three wines.
00:26:51
Speaker
And really, it's about us being together and having fun.
00:26:55
Speaker
What wines are you drinking at the moment?
00:26:58
Speaker
All sorts of things, to be honest.
00:27:01
Speaker
I quite often get Mike to send down a mixed dozen to me of things that are not too weird.
00:27:06
Speaker
I'm not a weird wine guy.
00:27:10
Speaker
I like to try a lot of them, but I wouldn't.
00:27:14
Speaker
I don't want to try them every day.
00:27:16
Speaker
I guess probably 95% of the wine my wife and I drink is white.
Wine Preferences and Pairing Philosophy
00:27:21
Speaker
We just find that we don't eat a lot of red meat.
00:27:24
Speaker
We really only drink wine if we're cooking and eating.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's not really a beverage, and that's how I grew up.
00:27:32
Speaker
It's not a beverage wine.
00:27:35
Speaker
If I needed beverage, I'd drink flavourless beer.
00:27:38
Speaker
So we drink quite a bit of Riesling.
00:27:42
Speaker
Last night we opened a bottle of Austrian Gruner, a lot of Chablis because I can afford Chablis but I can't afford white burgundy.
00:27:52
Speaker
I love the acidity of Chablis.
00:27:55
Speaker
So, yeah, and then just as I say, random purchases.
00:28:00
Speaker
Due to my history in the industry, I've got...
00:28:03
Speaker
A lot of friends who are importers or distributors or whatever, and so, you know, I'll randomly say, if I'm ordering some wine for them that I want to put in my cellar, I'll say, can you just mix me up 12 bottles of Australian wine or whatever?
00:28:17
Speaker
get them to send it down to me.
00:28:18
Speaker
And so it's a real random non-selection, I guess.
00:28:23
Speaker
There's no rhyme nor reason.
00:28:25
Speaker
There's reason to the things I buy to put in the cellar, but not what we drink.
00:28:30
Speaker
I like that, I guess.
00:28:31
Speaker
I'm trying to branch out a little bit.
00:28:34
Speaker
I am sort of someone that drinks a lot of rosé, but at the moment doing the podcast, I am trying to try some different ones and try some
00:28:42
Speaker
Some ones that more mainly I'm not really a big fan of Chardonnay or Sauvignon, but I'm trying to try some and kind of taste different ones and sort of branch out a little bit from just being a rosé drinker.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, well, you need to move on to Pinot Gris with skin contact.
00:29:01
Speaker
That can be your supplement for rosé.
00:29:05
Speaker
Okay, perfect.
00:29:06
Speaker
And then if you're trying, you know, try it.
00:29:09
Speaker
Sonsere instead of Sauvignon Blanc or try it from where it comes from, I think, is always a nice place to start.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:18
Speaker
And then, yeah, just try everything.
00:29:21
Speaker
Try everything.
00:29:21
Speaker
I think that's a big thing.
00:29:22
Speaker
You just get someone else.
00:29:24
Speaker
You go to your local shop.
00:29:27
Speaker
I've plugged Mike enough.
00:29:29
Speaker
Wherever you live, go to your local shop and don't choose anything.
00:29:32
Speaker
Tell the people what you like to drink.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker
and get them to choose it for you.
00:29:37
Speaker
And that way you're branching out your ideas.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually a really good idea.
00:29:43
Speaker
I'll have to try that.
00:29:45
Speaker
I mean, I am going back to the natural and the funky wines.
00:29:48
Speaker
I am trying a few of those as well.
00:29:51
Speaker
But like you said, some of them taste, some of them are great and then some of them just taste a little bit too weird.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I find that quite a lot of them I can have a glass of, but I'm probably never going to drink a bottle of it.
00:30:04
Speaker
And that, to me, defeats the purpose a bit of a product like that.
00:30:08
Speaker
But I'm sure that there's obviously, you know, a lot of interest and a lot of people out there that love them.
00:30:13
Speaker
And that's great.
00:30:14
Speaker
We don't, it goes back to why I don't drink my own wine all the time.
00:30:19
Speaker
We're all allowed to do whatever we want, really.
00:30:21
Speaker
Fizz it up, have it warm, have it cold, put everything in the fridge, whatever it is, put ice cubes in it, doesn't really matter.
00:30:29
Speaker
So going back to food and sort of like eat and having like wine as being what you have with your food, what's your favourite food and wine pairing?
00:30:42
Speaker
I guess going back to previously, I love Comte cheese, which I consider to be, for me, the greatest cheese in the world, and crisp white saline wine from the Jura.
00:30:56
Speaker
I just think it's about, you know, I really like drinking
00:31:00
Speaker
Pinot Noir with tuna because I think they go really well together or Pinot Noir and salmon because I think there's enough flavour in those two fishes to, you know.
00:31:10
Speaker
And I think food and wine pairing is all about, you know, doing it yourself rather than I think the days, I'm sure it's been said before, but the days of the old white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat are gone.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yes, definitely.
00:31:24
Speaker
And there's a lot of people that don't eat meat.
00:31:27
Speaker
So then you've got to come up with, you know, some other way of doing it.
00:31:31
Speaker
So I think it's about enjoying it yourself.
00:31:34
Speaker
You know, I think food and wine pairing is just as important as we were talking about before as the company and the situation.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:42
Speaker
You know, the food and wine pairing is always going to be better if you're having fun with your friends than it is sitting on your own doing it.
00:31:49
Speaker
So I think it's about experimenting, like choosing the wines you drink.
00:31:53
Speaker
You need to experiment and try the things that you like.
00:31:56
Speaker
And you can't go past, you know, things like the obvious things, which tend to be the wine, eating the food from the region that the wine comes from.
00:32:06
Speaker
So whether it's, you know,
00:32:10
Speaker
Saturn and Faguar or whatever it is there's you know food and wine pairings in Europe that we can do here with our own products that but it still um is why those products were grown alongside each other from your wines I feel like this probably is quite a hard question asking you to pick favorites um from your wines what would you take to a dinner party a barbecue and save for a rainy day
00:32:38
Speaker
A dinner party, I guess, going on my previous comment, we would probably take Holloman Chardonnay along, which you tried before.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:49
Speaker
The barbecue would either be Stoney Rise Pinot Noir or our no-close skin contact Pinot Gris, the no-added sulfur wine.
00:32:58
Speaker
Then for the rainy day, look, anything for us that we make under the Holloman label is great.
00:33:04
Speaker
made for cellaring.
00:33:05
Speaker
So depending on which wine of those three that you like the most would be the one.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:12
Speaker
So we keep the same amount of all of them every year.
00:33:17
Speaker
So, yeah, that's the easiest way to answer that.
00:33:20
Speaker
Then I can get away with not picking a favourite for one of them.
00:33:23
Speaker
And last question, why should people visit Tasmania and its wineries, going back to people staying locally in Australia?
Unique Appeal of Tasmania's Wineries
00:33:32
Speaker
It's funny, if you look at the statistics, most of the people that come to Tasmania are actually visiting wineries.
00:33:40
Speaker
So we don't actually have to convince them to do it because they're already doing it.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
Oh, look, I think, you know, one of the things people don't quite understand about Tasmania and the great
00:33:53
Speaker
or the winemaking industry that is that, you know, we're considered, well, we're one geographical indicator, which is a bit silly considering we're very spread out.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:05
Speaker
But there's a reason for that and that's another podcast.
00:34:08
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:34:11
Speaker
It's the variance, you know, even though we're in the Tamer Valley just like Piper's Brook is, Piper's Brook's 45, 50 minutes away from me, which is like driving from the Barossa to Clare.
00:34:25
Speaker
So they're very different places and so the length and breadth of the island gives you an opportunity to try...
00:34:34
Speaker
Wines, you know, it's almost like driving, you know, around South Australia going to wine regions, but you can do it all in Tasmania.
00:34:42
Speaker
The varieties are different, but you can get a cross-section of the industry from a drive around the place.
00:34:49
Speaker
And there's some amazing people here doing amazing things.
00:34:55
Speaker
they're all pretty friendly.
00:34:58
Speaker
You can go from the big ones to the little ones like anywhere else, I guess, but the scenery, you know, is amazing.
00:35:05
Speaker
And even the drive along the West Tamar from Launceston to our place, I think, is totally under-publicised.
00:35:14
Speaker
I always say to people when new visitors that I drive down the road here, driving along the river,
00:35:21
Speaker
that if it was anywhere else in the world, people would be going to this place just to do the drive.
00:35:25
Speaker
So there's plenty of options and, you know, it's a pretty relaxed place and it never gets busy even when it is busy.
00:35:33
Speaker
It's still not busy.
00:35:36
Speaker
So, you know, I'm 20 minutes from a half an hour from an airport and 20 minutes from a city and, you know, I can actually be in Melbourne faster than I can be in Hobart.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's very convenient as well being so close to the airport.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, and for Tasmanians, half an hour weighs miles.
00:35:52
Speaker
But I've lived in country South Australia and in Sydney and Melbourne and Adelaide and half an hour is just down the road.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, it really is.
00:36:02
Speaker
Even back in 1994, it used to take me an hour to get from Bondi to Rosebury, which I think was about 12 kilometres.
00:36:12
Speaker
It probably still does.
00:36:13
Speaker
It's probably even worse in which hour.
00:36:15
Speaker
It's worse now.
00:36:16
Speaker
When I'm out with our distributors, you know, I used to, as a sales rep, would get around eight on a good day, eight or ten calls a day, and now we're lucky if we get six.
00:36:27
Speaker
It's just the way it is.
00:36:28
Speaker
But it is.
00:36:29
Speaker
It's amazing down here.
00:36:30
Speaker
You can be down at Greens Beach for a swim at 4 o'clock and you can watch the sun go down from Dove Lake at Cradle Mountain straight after it.
00:36:40
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:36:41
Speaker
And also thank you so much for giving me an insight into running Stoney Rise and also being my second podcast guest for this season.
00:36:51
Speaker
Who was first?
00:36:53
Speaker
Emma Norbiato from Calabria Family Wines.
00:36:56
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:36:58
Speaker
In Riverland.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yep.
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah, cool.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yes, so they were my first.
00:37:03
Speaker
But, yes, thank you so much.
00:37:05
Speaker
Hopefully I can get to Tasmania soon.
00:37:07
Speaker
I would love to go back.
00:37:08
Speaker
It's definitely on the list.
00:37:11
Speaker
Do you have anything planned for this week or when does your vintage start?
00:37:15
Speaker
We're about the middle of March.
00:37:16
Speaker
So basically this week I've got my last foliage spray to put on.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:23
Speaker
And I will be putting my nets on.
00:37:27
Speaker
We have to net the vineyard down here thanks to the English.
00:37:31
Speaker
Because of the birds they introduce, they eat our grapes.
00:37:33
Speaker
I always say to people that I wish we'd...
00:37:36
Speaker
Well, we were actually discovered by the French before the English, but I wish we'd been settled by the French because we would have eaten all the little birds by now.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's my next job.
00:37:44
Speaker
And then we have a little bit of a, there's probably a week or so where there's nothing major to do.
00:37:49
Speaker
And then we start cleaning the wine and getting ready.
00:37:51
Speaker
And then how long does, sorry, I know I said we were finishing, but some few questions.
00:37:55
Speaker
How long does the vintage season take for you guys?
00:37:59
Speaker
Our home vineyard only takes about six or seven days to pick.
00:38:03
Speaker
We're only eight hectares.
00:38:05
Speaker
We do it slowly.
00:38:06
Speaker
All our fruit sorting is done by our pickers.
00:38:10
Speaker
So it's not very long, but then some of the fruit that we buy in, which isn't that much further down the river than us, tends to be a couple of weeks later.
00:38:19
Speaker
So it's sort of, I guess we're busy for about a month, but we're probably down in the winery for six or eight weeks.
00:38:27
Speaker
Okay, awesome.
00:38:28
Speaker
So quite a long time.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, it sort of drags out more and more, I guess, relative.
00:38:34
Speaker
It changes with the seasons, obviously.
00:38:37
Speaker
Warm years, it all happens faster, and cool years, it happens more slowly.
00:38:40
Speaker
We don't manipulate the wines in the winery, so there's no heating or cooling.
00:38:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:46
Speaker
We're all nature-based.
00:38:49
Speaker
If it's hot, the ferments go faster.
00:38:50
Speaker
If it's cold, they go slower.
00:38:52
Speaker
Thank you so much again for coming on.
00:38:54
Speaker
I really, really appreciate it.
00:38:55
Speaker
No worries.
00:38:56
Speaker
Thank you.
00:38:57
Speaker
Anytime.
00:38:57
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:38:59
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening.
00:39:01
Speaker
Please rate, review, subscribe and share with your friends.
00:39:04
Speaker
I'll see you next week for another closer look into the wine industry.
00:39:07
Speaker
Now go and grab that glass of wine.
00:39:09
Speaker
You deserve it.
00:39:39
Speaker
you