nouveau / liquid assets / preview / review


Tolpuddle Vineyard 2012–2021: Martyrs to the cause


Anthony Rose enjoys an exciting ten-year vertical tasting of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Martin Shaw’s and Michael Hill Smith’s Tasmanian project


O


n a reconnaissance trip to Tasmania in 2011, Michael Hill Smith AM MW and his cousin


and partner in wine Martin Shaw were enjoying a seriously liquid dinner on their first night with the legendary Tasmanian terroirist Dr Andrew Pirie and ex-Hardy’s Peter Dawson at The Stillwater in Launceston. Dawson claimed that Tasmania would be making the best Chardonnay and Pinot Noir within a decade and that the Tolpuddle Vineyard was producing some of its best. “We then tasted with Pete Dredge at Bay of Fires, and all the Chardonnays that we loved came from Tolpuddle; all the Pinots, too, for that matter, which we’d never even heard of,” recollected Hill Smith.


104 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023


As they drove through the gates of the property in the Coal River Valley north of Hobart, they instantly fell in love with the vineyard but had no idea of how to proceed. “Martin was very pragmatic and not given to spontaneity in any form, so it was all the more surprising that he became so set on buying the vineyard, which we did in 2011,” explained Hill Smith. It was highly rated as a business model, and big companies were prepared to pay up to AS$7,000 per ton for some of the fruit, but no Tolpuddle wine was put out under its own label. It had been allowed to run down, was spur-pruned, and soil compaction was a problem. Because it was patchy in parts, the big companies


would go around cherry-picking the bits that they wanted for their blends. In their search for a vineyard site


for sparkling wine 24 years earlier, Domaine Chandon’s Tony Jordan and Gary Crittenden, whose winery is on the Mornington Peninsula, were shown some analyses of fruit from Glen Ayr by George Park of Stoney Vineyard. They approached Bill Casimaty, who had established a small trial vineyard at his historic Glen Ayr property close to Richmond, to form a three-way joint venture to develop a sparkling-wine


Above (from left): Adam Wadewitz, winemaker; David LeMire MW, head of sales; Martin Shaw, Michael Hill Smith AM MW, co-founders/MDs.


All portrait photography © ChrisCrerar. Bottle photography courtesy of Tolpuddle


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