“The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the
results of that love.”
Sitting Bull
Earth. King Island was not only known for what could come out of its wind, but what could come out of its earth. Every last morsel of Black Label cloth-wrapped Cheddar and Brie and Reblochon and Blue Triple Cream and Roaring Forties Blue were brilliant, and every one could be found at the Taste of Tassie celebration at Salamanca Place, following the culmination of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Debbie and Robyn and JB and I took it all in, the hundred of stalls of artisanal local foods, the bistro and carnival atmosphere, and the random street performers that had infiltrated the festivities. We found a table beside a large group of papier mâché skeletal zombies and a huge black raven puppet mime. Lao Hmong people had the garden market produce covered, outside the laneways and squares, in the sandstone shadows of the former warehouses, built during the whaling industry boom of Hobart port, in the early 19th century. I loved the exterior lead plumbing.
Crayfish and orange roughy and oyster and salmon mongers shared space with the microbrewery owners and, most exciting for me, as a vintner and patron of the Heartbreak Grape, the largest collection of pinot noir winemakers, outside of Beaune, under one roof.
“Let’s go taste Tassie.” I said to JB. Though not strictly an oenophile, JB had several remarkable traits that would serve to enhance the adventure we were about to embark on. First, he was of good convict stock, and was discriminating in his choice of beverages. Second, he had knowledge of local lore, and knew some of the pinot purveyors personally. But it was his third attribute that would take us beyond plebian and into the patrician. JB’s brother, Jimmy, was the owner of the most famous seafood restaurant in Hobart. Robyn and I had eaten there, and its reputation was well deserved. Any budding yeast winemaker would give his first born, to have a fair go at the restaurant’s sommelier, a fact that I was not about to leave unexploited.
The only brakes on our escapade, were the tasting fees that each winery imposed on prospective buyers, to ensure that the descendants of half the original population of Van Dieman’s Land, was not unfairly rewarded for their thirst. Because of the stars in the eyes of the pinot pourers, however, this turned out to be a totally ineffectual impediment. Perhaps it was my initial introductory pitch.
“Hello.” I said. “I’m an international pinot aficionado from Canada. I’m sure you know JB, whose brother Jimmy is the proprietor of the finest seafood restaurant in town, and is always looking for exceptional wines to showcase from his cellar.” The response was immediate, and generous.
“No worries.” They would say, pouring out large samples of their reserve pinot, in the large glasses they kept under the counter for their special customers. No money crossed hands. I took their card, and JB and I went on to the next one.
This strategy worked fabulously for the first few suppliers, until the cumulative effects of their serial indulgences came up and whacked our heads. It became increasingly more difficult to maintain coherent speech, or strategy. Our final attempt to procure a free méthode champenoise fizzled rather than fizzed.
“Hello.” I believe I said. “ This is JB. His brother is a big bastard. Let’s have some bubbly.” We were done. Out of the earth of the Natural State, the Island of Inspiration, and A World Apart, Not A World Away, we had gone to ground.
Even in the world’s most remote penal colony, wine and terroir were inextricably shackled. On another day we had picnic at Morilla Estate. It was for sale, and I seriously considered making an offer, before Robyn made a more serious counteroffer. JB knew one of the originally transported, who baited his sale of an ancient Grange Hermitage, with a half decent 1967 Seppelt Great Western Colin Preece Memorial Burgundy. I should have known it wasn’t worth it by the ullage hanging below the neck of the bottle. I did manage to score a 1990 Henscke Hill of Grace at a local wine shop, and this would prove magnificent, ten years later.
We took Win out to a winery lunch out up the Freycinet Penisula, an outcrop of wild, pristine coastland on Tasmania’s east coast, eighty miles north of Hobart. And then JB suggested we leave everyone, and go walkabout.
“Where are we going, JB?” I asked.
“Wineglass Bay.” He said. And we began our trek along a path lined with white-flowering Kunzea myrtle, buzzing with insects, past eucalypts with moth larvae scribbles, climbing uphill through the three bare jagged pink and grey Devonian granite peaks of the Hazards, rising in a line from the sea like the Pillars of Hercules.
About forty-five minutes in, we came to a ridge, flanked by rock walls dappled with bright orange lichen. It was the same lookout view that Louisa Meredith wrote about, in 1853.
‘On either side of the ravine rose the towering summits of the
mountain, bare masses of granite heaped up on high like giant altars,
or rising abruptly from belts of shrubs and trees, like ancient fortress
walls and turrets. But the downward and onward view was like
enchantment! Far below my giddy perch...lay, calmly slumbering in
the bright sunshine, that blue and beautiful nook of the Pacific named
Wineglass Bay.’
I drank in my first sight of Wineglass Bay, a flawless dazzling white sand crescent fringed by a sapphire-colored sea, framed by sparkling roseate granite sea cliffs. A wombat crossed our path.
A sea eagle soared above us, black cockatoos and green rosellas flitted through the trees, native hens scurried through the scrub, and penguins waddled up the beach to their burrows. Pacific Gulls and Pied Oystercatchers waddled on the beach. Seals and bottlenose dolphins and a southern right whale played offshore.
“I see why they called it Wineglass Bay.” I said, appreciate the symmetry.
“That’s not why.” Said JB. And we continued downhill, towards the beach, through a wild hinterland of heath and Casuarina forest, punctuated with banksia, orchids, wattle and honeysuckle, melaleuca, and Oyster Bay pine.
A half hour later we emerged to a Bennett’s Wallaby on the beach, waiting for us, with a joey in her pouch. There were dunes behind the beach and, at the other end, there was a backwater, tea-stained from the Leptospermum 'tea tree'. The odd 'blue bottle' Portuguese Man' o war lay on the white sand with loaded tentacles, waiting. Even here, was a Fatal Shore. But not as fatal as what named it.
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