Wine & Food

Boutique winery Domaine A/Stoney Vineyard makes signature wines that have become internationally sought after.

For Peter and Ruth Althaus, the purchase of Stoney Vineyard in 1989 was the result of a long and exhaustive worldwide search for a site ideally suited to cool climate viticulture.

A wine virtuoso and teacher for 20 years, Peter Althaus was a general manager with IBM in Switzerland before his passion for wine led him to Tasmania’s Coal River Valley, about 15 minutes drive from Hobart.

Domaine A/Stoney Vineyard is tucked away in a sheltered section of the valley and from the beginning, Peter and his wife Ruth saw the potential in the location. The region’s temperate maritime climate, low annual rainfall, and long, dry and mild growing season allows the fruit to ripen well into late April and early May.

‘Our wines are more comparable to northern European wines than Australian ones because of the climatic conditions locally. Our wines appeal to those countries educated on French wine,’ he says.
Althaus personally selects the fruit for harvesting, handpicking the grapes at optimum ripeness during the cool days of autumn and delivering them to the winery for immediate processing. According to Althaus, ‘Single vineyard wines have a certain characteristic. It’s important in this business to have a particular signature to your wine.’

What started as just 0.5 hectares of noble grape vines has become 11 hectares of grape varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Pinot Noir, and the white grapes of Sauvignon Blanc. The vineyard now exports more than 60,000 bottles a year to London, Zurich and the US, as well as distributors in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.

Althaus’s artisanal approach to wine-making has earned him the praise of wine experts in Australia and overseas. One of the UK’s foremost wine experts, Matthew Jukes, included Domaine A 1998 Cabernet on his list of top 100 Australian Wines.  ‘Tassie’s premier estate yields one of the icon Cabernets in Australia – the 1998 Domaine A is nothing short of life-changing wine’, said Matthew.

Domaine A Cabernet Sauvignon is Tasmania’s first wine to be included on the prestigious Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine in 2005; testament to Peter and Ruth Althaus’s passion and drive to produce a world-class cool climate Cabernet based wine.

Domaine A Cabernet Sauvignon can be found in many of the best restaurants throughout the world including the London restaurants of Gordon Ramsey and Tom Aitkens, Shannon Bennett’s Vue du Monde in Melbourne, Aria in Sydney, and the Grange in Adelaide. Not surprisingly, the 1998 vintage is now in very limited supply.

Visitors can sample it for themselves at the cellar door or as part of a Coal River Valley wine tour.

For more information on Domaine A/Stoney Vineyard.