Doing his own thing
In the 1840s, some of the same Silesian immigrants who set up in the Barossa Valley, planted vines in the central East Coast of Tasmania. Nobody tried it again however, until John Austwick retired from dentistry in 1979 and planted Bordeaux grape varieties at Cranbrook.
He was such a pioneer that he had to organise propagation of his own cuttings, because quarantine restrictions did not allow them to be imported. Uplands Nursery at Cambridge got to work on his behalf.
The first planting was of less than half a hectare, but now there are 5 hectares planted around the 1835 cottage at Craigie Knowe, where John lives with Buttons “the most photographed dog in Tasmania” who features in Huon Hooke’s book Wine Dogs. Another piece of local history on the property is the Cranbrook cricket pitch. The no-maintenance concrete strip laid in 1936 was covered with mats for a game.
John built a rustic winery and cellar door and made his first wine in 1983, figuring the chemistry he had learned at university would not be “terribly difficult to adapt to alcoholic fruit juice”.
“I do what I like,” he said. “I can muck up what I like – and I have made every mistake there is to make.” While some of his efforts have gone down the drain – because if, for instance, he picks a couple of weeks too early, he abandons the wine rather than trying to salvage it or sell it cheap – the cabernet sauvignons and pinot noirs that do make the bottle have consistently won prizes.
John’s model has been the “great French wines” and, like the great wines of Bordeaux, his cabernet sauvignon is blended. It contains 85% cabernet sauvignon, but the remaining 15% comprises cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot, in proportions that vary from vintage to vintage. “A straight cabernet is a little hollow in the middle palate to my taste, and also misses out on bouquet and the nose sometimes,” he said. “The other varieties give it greater complexity.”
Nor does he find wines with too much alcohol “a pleasant drink”, and he keeps alcohol levels in his own wines between 12.5% and 13%, which means they take a while to develop but also cellar well.
Hard frosts last October affected every vineyard on the East Coast to some degree, he said. “I’ve seen four of these frosts, it just depends when they come,” he said. In this case, the frost came just on bud-burst and John expects to pick few, if any, grapes this year.
This does not mean a quiet winter however. “I still have the 2005 and 2006 to bottle,” he said. And 2009 is too far ahead to be contemplating a quiet winter or lean times.
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