It makes sense when you meet Steve Lubiana that he was up to his chin in grape skins from the moment he could walk, snapping at the heels of his winemaker dad. There’s barely a moment when Steve isn’t playing with plants, fermenting stuff or pouring drinks to try with food.
I first met Steve and his wife Monique, who is just as much a part of Stefano Lubiana, in Milan, of all places. They were looking at equipment at a wine industry fair that I’d been sent to cover for an Australian technical magazine. Though Stefano Lubiana is famous as Tasmania’s first certified organic and biodynamic vineyard, what’s sometimes overlooked in the best naturally run estates is the attention to detail in farming and the winery. That goes for something as prosaic as machinery (and Steve, we discover, likes machines). It makes sense, though; when you work so hard to grow the finest fruit, you don’t want anything to impede its pristine flow to the bottle.
Steve and Monique’s vineyard is in Granton, near Hobart in the lower Derwent Valley. We talk a lot about the specific details of the region and the site. Tasmania has become such hot property over the last 15 years, it’s hard to imagine the scene as it was 35 years ago. Claudio Alcorso is credited with planting the island’s first commercial vineyard at the end of the 1950s at what became Moorilla (referenced in the conversation), and Andrew Pirie, who founded Pipers Brook Vineyard in the ’70s, is also mentioned. But winegrowing ventures were few and far between. It’s also worth noting that, although Tasmania is legally treated as one Geographical Indication (GI), the conditions experienced by growers ensconced in its various pockets vary widely. Despite theoretical proximity to one another, the sense of frontier growing persists. That’s farming on the margins, I suppose.
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The wine that Steve mentions attempting as a schoolkid was Amarone, a style that hails from the Veneto region of northeast Italy. It’s a red wine made with partially dried grapes, and you could see how the slightly sweet, rich, chocolatey, enveloping texture might appeal to a child (even if the elevated alcohol isn’t ideal). Staying in or around the Riverland, Bill Moularadellis (founder of Kingston Estate) and Andrew Peace have become big players in this warm, dry, productive area of irrigated vineyards. Other classmates at Roseworthy included Vanya Cullen (of Cullen Wines in Margaret River), Nick Butler and Matt Aldridge.
Steve’s early vintages overseas were spent at Castello di Ama in Gaiole, Chianti, and with Bauchet Frères in Bisseuil, Champagne, where he stayed with Lionel Legras in the Côte des Blancs village of Chouilly. Later vintages came with Gerhard and Brigitte Pittnauer in Austria’s Burgenland (Gerhard’s importer, Steve’s distributor and my part-time employer are one and the same: CellarHand), and with Saša Radikon in Friuli. Radikon is known for the skin-contact (“orange” or “amber”) white wines that were common in the days of Steve’s forefathers and became particularly trendy in the 2010s. Their texture and the bleeding of aroma and flavour into surprisingly exotic, often savoury, zones make the best examples deeply compelling and great potential partners with food.
Alex Podolinsky is the man Steve mentions as popularising the biodynamic agriculture movement in Australia. We talk a bit about the effects of biodynamic viticulture, and I aim to put together a more explicit, specific detailing of these practices through some medium soon. Watch this space. Also, you can listen to Anna Flowerday of Te Whare Ra on this subject in episode 13.
Steve and Monique’s son, Marco, has his own label and is increasingly influential at Stefano Lubiana. He’s a brilliant young winemaker (winner of the 2024 Young Gun of Wine title in this Australian competition), and together this family crafts an excellent range of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (various tiers and selections) as well as aromatic whites and fuller reds.
Sparkling was where it started, though, and there are a few terms that may need some explanation. Steve mentions the cuvée being used for these wines; he is referring to the most pristine part of the juice before pressing risks any harsher textural compounds from the skins entering the fray. Tirage refers to the stage where the fermented base wine is put to bottle for a second fermentation—the one that gives it fizz and lees influence in traditional-method sparkling wine. Steve’s ideas on this are interesting. And disgorging (sometimes called degorging) is where the yeast lees are expelled from the bottle, with the bottle resealed with a cork for eventual sale, sometimes with the addition of “dosage”—a dash of balancing sweetness. (The current disgorgement of Steve and Monique’s famous Brut Reserve has a dosage of about 4.5g/L.)
