Stefano Lubiana Wines

Cellar Door

A cellar door tasting room currently operates 5 days per week - from Sunday to Thursday inclusive - in temporary premises on the company's 25ha vineyard site. Adjacent to our existing winery, an ambitious new building development program progresses towards its April 2013 opening. The new facility will house a purpose-built tasting room, 40-seat restaurant and biodynamic interpretive centre. The centre is being part-funded by a $110,000 Federal Government-sponsored TQUAL grant allocated in Ausindustry's 2011 funding round.

Opening Hours

The cellar door opening hours are 11.00am to 3pm, from Sunday to Thursday inclusive.

Vineyards

Overlooking a broad expanse of river estuary in the beautiful Derwent Valley, our property provides a home to 25ha of biodynamically managed vineyards. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were first planted here in 1991. Various expansions over the years have added Riesling, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Nebbiolo. Our most recent developments include a new 7ha Pinot Noir vineyard established in 2010.

Biodynamic vineyard management practices allow us to maintain and sustain the unique features of our site, by combining traditional farming practices such as recycling, composting and cover-cropping with the careful use of specially-devised natural homeopathic preparations that enhance each vine's capacity to maintain good health and combat disease. We keep dogs, chickens and miniature sheep on our property to assist us with pest and disease management.

Vintages

Owners Steve and Monique Lubiana established their cool climate vineyard site in 1991 and made their first wines in 1993 from wine grapes purchased from neighbouring vineyards. Vintage 2012 is the company's 20th in Tasmania. The frost-free nature of our vineyard site has ensured continuity of supply of high quality fruit throughout our company's history in this State.

Wine Making

Fifth-generation winemaker Steve Lubiana owns and operates a modern 300-tonne winery on the property. We are always keen to push the winemaking boundaries in Tasmania. However, we operate a winery not a refinery. We do not use reverse osmosis, electrodialysis or any other form of interventionist winemaking that has the potential to compromise a wine's capacity to convey its true expression of our vineyard terroir.

Each vintage, our fruit is hand-sorted in the vineyard before arriving at the winery and passing over a mechanical triage table, where any remaining leaves and damaged bunches are removed by hand prior to processing.

Bottle-fermented sparkling wines - made according to traditional French methods - are produced on site, with our Vintage Brut releases undergoing a minimum six years' ageing on lees. Wines in our Prestige sparkling wine program spend 15 years on lees.

All white wines produced on the property undergo some degree of oak fermentation and maturation. For Pinot Grigio, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc products, this is done in older French oak puncheons, each holding 500-litres of wine. Chardonnays are typically barrel-fermented and lees-stirred in 225-litre French oak barriques, with wine sometimes being accommodated as well in slightly larger 300-litre French oak hogsheads.

Fruit for our Pinot Noir table wines is subjected to de-stemming and crushing before being gravity-fed to a mix of large open-top stainless steel and oak fermentation vats. Following several days of soaking at ambient temperature, these Pinot Noir batches begin to ferment spontaneously in the presence of indigenous yeast. Our vats are hand-plunged several times per day during primary fermentation. Extended skins maceration (post-ferment) builds colour and structure into our new wines. Oak maturation is a necessary component of all our Pinot Noir table wine production. Our Estate-labelled products are typically aged in a mix of new and used French oak barriques for up to 15 months before being fined with egg whites and packaged in premium Burgundy bottles.

All our table wines are screw-capped for quality.