Tolpuddle Vineyard: producer profile and 19 wines tasted

It was never for sale, yet they bought it. Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw, cousins and co-proprietors of Shaw + Smith Wines in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills, visited Tasmania in 2011 on a fact-finding mission with no set plan to purchase a vineyard. Then they discovered Tolpuddle and were smitten.

Tolpuddle Vineyard in the Coal River Valley, about 20km northeast of Hobart, was already respected among Tasmania’s elite wine grape sites, but Hill Smith and Shaw saw the potential to do a whole lot more.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 19 Tolpuddle Vineyard wines

They envisaged creating an Australian version of premier cru. Now, after a decade of producing Tolpuddle Vineyard wines, a cabinet full of trophies proves their hunch was well founded.

‘It has that special something,’ says Hill Smith. ‘Tolpuddle was already producing some of the most expensive fruit in Australia, and I believe that was entirely justified.

‘It wasn’t a fruit salad vineyard, producing every variety. It had a very deliberate focus – only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – which is exactly what we wanted, but we felt it could be significantly better. Our decision to buy it was a spontaneous reaction. It got us that excited.’

Tolpuddle’s rebirth

Hill Smith and Shaw make no secret of their ambition to make the very best Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and realise that such lofty goals are intrinsically tied to exceptional vineyards.

With global warming a serious factor in determining future vineyard viability, they wanted to consider the coolest possible growing sites and went to investigate whether Australia’s southernmost vineyards held the answer.

Their reconnaissance took them to Accolade Wines’ Bay of Fires Winery in the northern Tasmanian region of Tamar Valley.

Tolpuddle Vineyard at a glance

Planted: 1988

Owners: Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw.

Chief winemaker: Adam Wadewitz

Production: 3,000 cases annually (25% allocated for export).

Vineyards: 30ha, comprising 12 blocks of Chardonnay and 14 blocks of Pinot Noir (13ha are new plantings not yet in production).

Winemaker Peter Dredge showed them barrel samples of wines from various vineyards across Tasmania where Accolade purchased fruit. The site that impressed Hill Smith and Shaw most was Tolpuddle, which Accolade was using in its elite Arras sparkling wines and Eileen Hardy table wines.

‘We drove down to look at the site and we were immediately sold on it,’ says Hill Smith, ‘so we started making enquiries.’

They knew the owners – especially the charismatic Dr Tony Jordan, who had established Domaine Chandon Australia – and commenced a conversation about buying the site.

Within six months, they had agreed on a price (‘Not an insignificant sum,’ offers Hill Smith candidly, arching an eyebrow). Now they faced the additional challenge of significant ongoing costs for fruit harvesting and vinification logistics.

The first vintage, in 2012, saw the hand-picked fruit transported across Tasmania to the Bay of Fires winery for processing, then the juice was shipped to Shaw + Smith’s Adelaide Hills winery for transfer to barrel and maturation.

The high cost of such a process didn’t bother Hill Smith. ‘I figured that a high price attached to Tolpuddle wines could drive respect for the Tasmanian identity – but we absolutely had to deliver elite quality from day one.’

It helped that Shaw + Smith was in the process of luring ace winemaker Adam Wadewitz to join their team from Best’s Great Western winery in Victoria.

The prospect of working with Tolpuddle fruit was the enticement that won him over. ‘Our viticulturist Ray Guerin took Adam to Tasmania for a vineyard inspection before the 2013 vintage commenced,’ recalls Hill Smith, ‘and Adam just stopped in his tracks once he tasted the grapes on the vine. At that moment, we knew we had him.’

A head-to-toe renovation

Shaw immediately focused on making significant changes in the vineyard. ‘Some of Tolpuddle’s Pinot Noir had been selling for $7,000 a tonne, which is at the top flight in Australia – but it was only bits of the vineyard commanding that sort of attention, not all of it. I said we had to get all the vineyard right before we went ahead, so we immediately focused our attention there.’

After installing a new dam to help manage frost control, soil was ripped between vine rows to alleviate compaction, drainage was improved, composting increased and cover crops introduced, along with more intensive vine plantings.

Because many of the original grape clones planted at Tolpuddle were chosen specifically for sparkling wine production, adding new clones to increase diversity and complexity for elite table wines was seen as crucial. Chardonnay clonal varieties Bernard 76, 95,96 and 548 were introduced, along with Pinot Noir clones Abel, 777, MV6, 667, 828 and Pommard.

‘We had to sort out what worked and what didn’t,’ says Shaw. ‘We made a lot of very important decisions that were going to steer the future course for Tolpuddle.’

Tolpuddle Vineyard timeline

1988 Tolpuddle Vineyard planted by co-owners Dr Tony Jordan, Garry Crittenden and the Casimaty family. It is named after the Tolpudlle Martyrs, who were English convicts transported to Australia in 1834 for the crime of trying to form an agricultural union. The leader of this group, George Loveless, served some of his sentence on a farm property that is now part of the Tolupddle vineyard.

2006 Tolpuddle wins inaugural Tasmanian Vineyard of the Year award.

2011 Vineyard purchased by Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw.

2012 Debut vintage of Tolpuddle Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

2013 Winemaker Adam Wadewitz’s first vintage.

2015 The first vintage vinified at Shaw + Smith’s Adelaide Hills winery.

2019 No Tolpuddle Pinot Noir is released, due to the winemaking team being wary of possible smoke taint from bushfires across Tasmania.

2020 New clonal material introduced to Tolpuddle Pinot Noir.

They also changed the processing regime, hoping to achieve greater refinement and more control over fruit handling.

From the 2015 vintage, fruit was hand-picked at night, stored in refrigerated containers and shipped immediately to South Australia.

Time spent in the container during transportation matched the time Shaw + Smith choose to cold-store all their Chardonnay and Pinot Noir fruit before processing, so the Tolpuddle fruit was then subjected to the typical fastidious sorting, crushing, fermenting and maturation that is standard procedure at Shaw + Smith’s Adelaide Hills winery.

Important philosophical winemaking questions needed to be answered, especially how best to address the distinctive Tasmanian acidity that is so pronounced in Tolpuddle fruit, a consequence of its typically very cold, very dry ripening season.

How to frame it? How to tame it? ‘We can see many wineries in Tasmania are wrestling with this notion, but that acidity is part of the DNA and personality of the site,’ says Hill Smith. ‘That acidity certainly has attitude and it gets your attention – but it’s an asset that will give these wines extraordinary longevity.’

Standing on its own two feet

Importantly, once the wines were ready to sell, they were marketed as Tolpuddle Vineyard, rather than branded as part of the Shaw + Smith stable.

‘We didn’t want to follow the corporate growth mantra, so we felt no need to plaster Shaw + Smith’s name all over it. We felt this special site needed to show its own identify, so we issued it under its own label.’

The Chardonnay won immediate acclaim, but achieving the ideal viticulture and winemaking balance with Pinot Noir required more work, especially when introducing the influence of more clonal diversity as new vines across the Tolpuddle site came into maturity.

‘Pinot Noir is more capricious. It reacts so sensitively to vintage and yield differences that it took time for these wines to show site familiarity – and you can see this across the 10-year period – but we have now arrived at a very strong place,’ says Shaw.

Much of this comes down to careful winemaking inputs and technique. ‘Yes, there’s whole-bunch influence in the Pinot Noir,’ said Wadewitz at the Tolpuddle 10th anniversary tasting masterclass, ‘but do we get the percentage right?’ Looks shoot back and forth among the Shaw + Smith hierarchy. ‘Let’s just say that we are never certain, and that there is always discussion amongst us.’

They have made a point not to enter Tolpuddle wines in many wine shows – just a few prestigious events as benchmarking exercises – and yet the Tolpuddle wines have now won 20 trophies across the 10 vintages produced.

‘A different set of circumstances are presented at this site with every vintage, but the wines from Tolpuddle Vineyard definitely show a sense of place,’ says Hill Smith. ‘Being able to capture that in the glass – identifying the true essence of that special site – is where the great excitement is.’

Tolpuddle Vineyard: tasting notes and scores for 19 wines

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