Wines > Current releases

Cool climate elegance

VINTAGE 2010

Winter of 2009 broke Southern Tasmania’s 4-year drought, with welcome rains rehydrating our parched vineyard blocks. A great Spring and early Summer followed with balanced vine canopy growth and moderate bunch set. Dry, sunny and warm days followed late Summer into Autumn and our vineyard recorded 100 days straight with a daily maximum above 17˚C. Harvest of sparkling fruit began on March 15 and vintage finished with the picking of Bordeaux varietals in early May. The long ripening period resulted in softer acids in our whites and rich, ripe tannins in our pinot.

VINTAGE 2009

The 2009 vintage will go down in memory for all the wrong reasons. In October a severe frost caused significant damage, not only to our vineyards at Bushy Park but also to many other vineyards around Tasmania. This was coupled with very poor conditions for fruit set in December. The result was a decrease of 4583 tonnes from 9628 in 2008 to 5045 in 2009. This is not the sort of fruit thinning Meadowbank needed.

However, for every cloud there is a silver lining and for us in 2009 it was the beautiful finish to what was a very ordinary vintage. The white wines in particular seemed to benefit - especially the Rieslings.

VINTAGE 2008

Every now and then nature smiles on the brave and the foolhardy. One such occasion was the 2008 vintage. As the drought persisted in Tasmania one of the industries to benefit surely must have been the wine industry.

Following the frost affected vintage of 2007 the 2008 vintage was welcome. Excellent conditions during flowering and fruit set ensured bunches were even and full resulting in high yeilds. In anticipation of this we embarked on a fruit thinning program - something we very rarely do at Meadowbank. Despite this yeilds were generally quite high with some blocks averaging over 12 tonnes per hectare. The compensating factor was the glorious warm dry weather throughout March and April ensuring extraordinary high quality fruit despite the high yeilds. Record monthly temperature highs and low rainfall were the norm for these two months.

Vintage finished for us on the 25th April when the last of the Riesling and Cabernet were picked at our traditional Anzac day picking at Glenora.

Perhaps the only blemish to the 2008 vintage was some damage suffered by our nets due to the high winds on 2nd April. We look forward with confidence to showing you our wines from the 2008 vintage.

SHOW POLICY

Due to the proliferation of wine shows around the country Meadowbank enters wines in only three shows:

• The Royal Hobart Wine Show which attracts over 3000 entries from all over Australia and New Zealand.
• The Tasmanian Wines Show traditionally judged by Huon Hooke, James Halliday and an internationally qualified guest judge.
• The Derwent Valley Wine Show featuring only wines from the Derwent Valley.

Now available: tasting notes.