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Producer
Utzinger -
Region
Tasmania
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RRP
$60
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Vintage
2024
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Variety/Varieties
Pinot noir
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Alc./Vol.
13.8%
Raspberries, cherries and a little wild strawberry, with a savoury dash of herbs running through the middle. Light on its feet but packed with flavour, and it lingers far longer than you’d expect from something this pretty.
Lauren and Matthias Utzinger met while travelling through Armenia, Georgia and Iran, and eventually settled on a steep, north-east-facing slope above Kanamaluka/the Tamar River in Tasmania — Lauren’s home state. Matthias brought a winemaking career built across Switzerland, Provence and the southern Rhône; together they planted their five-hectare site in 2018 to his own specifications, at a high density of 6,500 vines per hectare, certified organic from the outset, with 20 per cent of the land set aside for revegetation and biodiversity.
The rise has been rapid and, frankly, remarkable. Utzinger took out both the Danger Zone and Winemaker’s Choice trophies at the 2024 YGOW Awards, followed by New Vineyard of the Year in 2025, before claiming the major Young Gun of Wine title at the 20th Annual Awards in 2026 — four wins in three years for a project barely out of its infancy. Alongside pinot noir, the Utzingers make chardonnay, syrah and a fumé-style sauvignon blanc, with Swiss varieties, a blanc de blancs and a terracotta-aged gewürztraminer all quietly in the pipeline. Their guiding belief, repeated often and clearly meant: wine is grown, not made.
Tasting note
Raspberry, black cherry, wild strawberry and plum lead the way, with a savoury whisper of forest floor and warming anise threading underneath. It’s a wonderfully perfumed, elegant wine, with just enough new French oak in the mix to lend a soft dusting of vanilla and clove without ever crowding out the fruit. The palate is light in frame but dense in flavour — fresh raspberry and blackberry laced with oregano and a touch of rosemary, the kind of herbal lift that comes from a carefully judged portion of whole-bunch fermentation, working beautifully in this cool-climate style. Tannins are lithe and supple, another quiet nod to considered winemaking, leaving you with a generous mouthful of red fruit and restrained spice that lingers long after the glass is empty.
When to drink
You could enjoy this with a mild massaman duck curry. Or even, cheese, for dinner. It’s a thing. Especially on a Friday when you’re late home from work and cooking’s utterly out of the question. Cue some washed rind, lavosh and something a bit spesh to usher in the weekend. Like this.
Themes of this wine
Pinot Noir
Pinot noir is famously fickle in the vineyard and endlessly compelling in the glass — a thin-skinned, early-ripening variety that demands cool conditions and rewards patience with wines of perfume, savoury complexity and remarkable transparency to site. Its spiritual home is Burgundy, but cool pockets around the world, from Central Otago to the Mornington Peninsula and Tasmania, have carved out their own distinct expressions, each shaped by the particular climate and soil the grape happens to land on.
Tamar Valley
Tasmania Tasmania’s Tamar Valley runs north from Launceston along the river that gives it its name, benefiting from a cool, maritime climate that keeps ripening slow and steady. It has become one of the country’s most exciting cool-climate regions, prized particularly for sparkling wine, pinot noir and chardonnay, with a growing number of young, ambitious producers drawn to its combination of climate, relatively affordable land and a strong sense of frontier possibility.
Whole-bunch fermentation
Rather than removing every grape from its stem before fermentation, some winemakers choose to include a portion of whole bunches — stems and all — in the ferment. Handled well, this technique can lend a wine savoury, herbal and spicy characters, along with a textural lift to the tannins, adding a layer of complexity beyond straightforward fruit. Used with restraint, as it is here, it’s less about flavour dominance and more about adding an extra dimension that keeps a wine interesting glass after glass.
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