Apsley Gorge is a small vineyard found on the banks of the Apsley River, north-west of Bicheno on Tasmania’s East Coast. Phenologically it’s about three weeks behind the area’s leading vineyard, Freycinet, in budburst and harvest. As far as I’m concerned Apsley Gorge is a star on the rise, as a recent tasting of its 1996 Chardonnay and 1997 Pinot Noir amply confirmed. Its four hectares were first planted and impressively fenced, much to the disappointment of the local fauna, in 1988 by a partnership between Brian Franklin and Greg and Maureen Walch. Brian Franklin is presently awaiting first crops from new plantings of red Bordeaux varieties at Apsley Gorge. There’s just less than a hectare, 75% of which is cabernet sauvignon, the remainder equally divided between cabernet franc and merlot. To date these varieties have done reasonably well, but not as consistently as chardonny and pinot noir, within the East Coast region. Brian Franklin has now invested heavily in the development of a winery-restaurant complex in the old fish factory on Bicheno’s waterfront, to be opened to the public next summer. The 100 tonne winery component is now open and processed 18 tonnes of fruit during the 1999 vintage. Winemaker Angus Sutherland, a recent Charles Sturt Graduate, receives external support from Winenet, one of Australia’s leading winemaking consultancies. However it was former winemaker Andrew Hood, himself one of the leading consultant winemakers in Tasmania, who made the wines that created Apsley Gorge’s enviable reputation up to and including the 1998 vintage and including those I recently tasted. Hood has capably reacted to the vineyard’s terroir, by fashioning its chardonnay in a lean, minerally Chablis-like expression of the variety without malolactic fermentation, and its pinot noir into one of the New World’s more convincing impressions of Volnay. The Chardonnay 1996 has a lightly tropical scent of citrus, quince and cumquat. Its creamy leesy and tight-grained powdery oak aromas are lifted by lemon sherbet-like and bathpowder complexity. Long and very complete, it’s a restrained, austere and savoury wine whose piercing flavours of melon, grapefruit and grilled nuts penetrate a chalky mouthfeel, finished with taut, refreshing acids. The wine easily holds its 13.7% alcohol and should improve over the long term. I rate it at 18.7 and recommend drinking between 2004-2008. Apsley Gorge’s Pinot Noir 1997 has a medium to full bright cherry red colour and a fragrant musky aroma of genuinely ripe Volnay-like red berry confection, cherries and plums. Very complex, it’s a marvellously integrated marriage of fruit, animal aromas, spice and creamy cedar oak. Supple and willowy, very refined and elegant, it delivers a succulent, fleshy mouthful of concentrated, plummy, raspberry and cherry confection fruit and cedary oak that borders on the fatty, but is tied neatly together around tight, powdery tannins. It’s also rated at 18.7 and will best be enjoyed between 2002-2005. Distributed in Melbourne by Sutherland Cellars, which is pushing the Tasmanian industry the same way it helped establish WA’s more than a decade ago, the Bichenot Winery and Apsley Gorge Vineyard can be contacted on (03) 6375 1221.
