TRAVEL Gasworks Cellar Door
In the heart of Hobart’s dock precinct, Gasworks Cellar Door offers the chance to sample Tasmania’s finest coolclimate wines without stepping outside the city
Who says you need a vehicle to go on a journey? Visiting wineries is no fun if you’re the driver but unless you take an organised tour or splash out and hire a chauffeur for a few days, you’re not going to make it all the way round Tasmania to properly appreciate its abundance of delicious offerings. However, Gasworks Cellar Door, nestled in Hobart’s waterfront precinct, lets your tastebuds trace the map under one roof.
I started my Tasmanian wine journey with a 12x25ml tasting card which, at $10, amounts to three standard glasses, and for the next hour Gasworks Cellar Door manager James Hordern gave me a grand tour.
“What we’ve done is laid the rooms out as the three main viticulture areas of Tasmania – the north, the east and the south,” says Hordern, as he pours me my first tipple of the day, an elegant 2014 Pooley Estate Riesling from Richmond, and explains: “It’s very perfumey on the nose, then you have the very delicate flavours of lemons and limes. What would go well with that is, say, half a dozen Bruny Island oysters.”
With Hordern’s guidance (he says he’s been married to wine for decades, after starting his career in Sydney at the Intercontinental hotels, and moving on to The Wine Society, then the wine wholesaling industry), I chose five whites, one rose and six reds. He then rolled out his big map of Tasmania to explain how the island’s diverse terroir means the wines from each region have very different flavours and sensations.
It’s as much about letting the locals know what’s on offer on their doorstep as it is about showing it off to tourists, Hordern says.
“We were looking on the market and found everyone was selling wine, but they were not giving the background behind it all,” he says. “So we thought this was a great opportunity to take Tassie to another level, especially for our locals, and a large part of our business is also made from tourism.”
Visitors are free to wander in and take a guided tour through the rooms adorned with maps of the wine regions, and then choose from a range of different tastings.
With more than 400 wines on sale, Hordern explains there are too many to fit in the building all at the same time, so he collaborates with the wine makers and turns the wines over every two months. “There is a range of 42 wines here at any one time. We sell the wines as if we are at their cellar door,” he says.
My coy admission that I am a beginner in wine-tasting, after sipping class No.5, a soft white-stoned fruit-flavoured Cape Bernier Chardonnay from the East Coast, is met with much more enthusiasm than I expected.
“We get total guidance from the customers – we find out from them what level you are at, and if you are at entry level, we love that because we can work together at the beginning. But if you want to talk technical, we are happy to do that as well.”
After falling in love with my last tasting, the complex blend Petit ‘a’ Cabernets by Domaine A, Hordern reveals it goes perfectly with any slow-cooked stews, making it a great winter warmer.
“And that’s how it’s all done. You’ve just drunk your way around Tasmania, and you didn’t have to drive anywhere – and you got to learn a little bit along the way,” he says.
So what exactly does the Tassie wine industry have to offer that other places don’t?
“We make the best wine – it’s as simple as that,” Hordern says. “We are consistently one of the best countries in the world to grow wine. We’ve got the blue sky, the mountain, the fresh air. Everyone is so genuine, the people are beautiful, the lifestyle is great and we have great grog and food. It just all works beautifully.”