The Ellis family trace their Tasmanian roots right back to 1827, when William Ellis landed on what was then called Van Diemen’s Land as a not-so-free settler. An enterprising spirit saw those shackles relegated, with him founding a hotel near to Hobart sometime later. Fast forward, and his descendent Gerald Ellis approached a career in imbibables from a different angle.
In 1976, Ellis started planting a vineyard on his grazing property in the Derwent Valley. Ellis wasn’t the first to put vine to soil in the modern development of Tasmanian viticulture, but he wasn’t too far off, with those early vines now some of the Apple Isle’s oldest and most revered.
The 60-hectare vineyard is dominated by pinot noir, accounting for about half the plantings, while chardonnay occupies 10 hectares. The balance is made up of riesling, pinot meunier, sauvignon blanc, shiraz and pinot gris, with a quarter of a hectare of gamay now in production. New plantings continue apace, with 14 hectares planted in November 2024 – mostly chardonnay, with a smattering of pinot noir and a single hectare of chenin blanc, a newcomer to Meadowbank.
“Our vineyard is located in the Upper Derwent Valley and is largely unaffected by cooling sea breezes,” says Ellis, “Being inland, we also experience large diurnal fluctuations – warm days and cool nights. The cool nights express themselves in good acid, balanced by ripe fruit characters from the warm days. The end result are wines that have great cellaring potential – particularly the rieslings, chardonnays and pinot noirs.”
Tasmania is a phylloxera-free zone, so all the Meadowbank wines are on own roots, but Ellis has his own brand of biosecurity controls in place, nonetheless. “A seven-kilometre dirt road for a driveway, within a 2,500-hectare farm, plus the odd shotgun-wielding farmer walking around … biosecurity takes care of itself,” he jokes. A strict regime of footbaths for outside visitors from known Phylloxera zones and a ban on outside viticultural equipment fills in the gaps.
The Ellis property is close to the inland edge of the Derwent Valley subregion, with it experiencing more of a continental climate. “Our vineyard is located in the Upper Derwent Valley and is largely unaffected by cooling sea breezes,” says Ellis, “Being inland, we also experience large diurnal fluctuations – warm days and cool nights. The cool nights express themselves in good acid, balanced by ripe fruit characters from the warm days. The end result are wines that have great cellaring potential – particularly the rieslings, chardonnays and pinot noirs.”
Ellis notes that their long tenure on the property has given them a decent survey of how much of an “enormous” impact climate change has had, and that they are adjusting accordingly. “Since 1976, vintage has moved forward by four weeks on average, so climate change is real simply based on the rapidity of change.” While Ellis notes that a shift away from late-ripening cabernet in Tasmania, alongside stylistic choices from winemakers valuing freshness, have also helped move that window, he considers his experience with shiraz proof enough. “Where that was probably a year-to-year proposition to get ripe back [in the ’70s], these days it is comfortably in its natural range,” he says.
With an approach that goes well beyond the vineyard operation, Meadowbank is increasingly prepared to manage the impact of climate change, as well contributing to arresting its progress. “Meadowbank is a 2,500-hectare property of which just 60 hectares are under vine,” says Ellis. “Approximately 900 hectares is under a conservation covenant, and a further 30-hectare carbon sequestration block has been set up in conjunction with the University of Tasmania and Greening Australia. Also, we have a conservation block of Eucalyptus morrisbyi, an endemic species to Tasmania. We are also working towards being energy self-sufficient, which began with the installation of a 70-kilowatt solar system to run our irrigation pumps.”
Similarly, Ellis is working to integrate sustainable practices across their operations, including under-vine mowing to move away from herbicides, as well as employing copper and sulphur over synthetic controls. “With a level of tongue in cheek, we refer to what we do as ‘commercial organics’,” he says. We have always been and will always be farmers, and there is a certain pragmatism that comes with that. Of course we look to farm sustainably – there are three generations living on the farm and we have an eye on the next fifty years – but sustainability to us means we look after the soil, the water, the plants, the animals (big and small), alongside the people we grow for, our amazing team, the name and brand, the business, and our own welfare.
Part of that push towards sustainability is building the capacity to weather catastrophic events that could wipe out an entire vintage. “The answer probably doesn’t lie in the vineyard,” Ellis says, “more in stepping back and looking at broad business resilience. That means either having sufficient buffer/capacity to weather what is ultimately a financial storm, or being diversified enough in your interests that risk is sufficiently spread. And to be honest, it is ideally both!”
Ellis speaks from experience here. “We lost an entire vintage in 2012 to a local fire started by a hoon doing circle work in paddocks to our north on a 40°C day,” he says. “We were fortunate to have had such good working relationships with the people we grew for that they didn’t turn elsewhere and simply trusted us to come back. It was a remarkable show of faith.” Luck plays a role, too: “We’d had enough time and space over the years to develop business resilience and the capacity to come back,” Ellis says. “This isn’t always going to be something that is afforded to people.”
Currently, a large portion of the fruit is allocated to Accolade Wines, which has had a long-standing relationship that has seen the grapes fill bottles for Bay of Fires, as well as being a cornerstone of Australia’s most acclaimed sparkling wine brand, Arras. Peter Dredge (a former Bay of Fires winemaker) continues his business relationship with the Ellis family, which sees him making the Meadowbank wines alongside his own Dr Edge label (using their fruit, as well as sourcing across different subregions) at Moorilla Estate.
“We sell approximately 85 per cent of production to other winemakers and work very closely with them to deliver the best quality we can,” Ellis says. “I think we are in a fortunate position where our fruit is well recognised for its quality, and that the winemakers we sell to are all selling their wines at the premium end of the market. This is achieved by listening to winemakers’ requirements and acting accordingly.”
With so many different winemakers using Ellis’s fruit across Meadowbank’s history, how does he stay true to his plot of land? “Not trying to be anything or anyone other than Meadowbank,” he says. “While the French have that beautifully romantic catch-all phrase ‘terroir’ to so perfectly capture why a wine is what it is, the Aussie equivalent would probably be ‘Fucked if we know!’. So stylistic choice isn’t so much of a choice, but more simply what it is. It either works or doesn’t.”
GET FIRST ACCESS TO THE NEXT WINE ICONS – DELIVERED
Find out moreEach month, get 3 bottles of our freshest discoveries. We taste thousands to bring you the best.
Join us and support emerging winemakers, sustainable vineyards, and the development of young professionals.
Please sign in or create account as candidate to bookmark this job
Please sign in or create account to save this search
Please sign in or create account as candidate to create a resume
