The creamy quality of the cheese and the tropical notes of the sauvignon blanc are a match made close to heaven, up here on these lush landscapes. Tasting them together, standing on the terroir they spring from, is quite the moment.
It’s our first evening in St Helens. Despite the proximity of a French-style restaurant overlooking the harbour, and a quirky beer garden in town, we are eating in. We have been called upon to help clear the fridge at a friend’s shack, after a long weekend.
With three families having brought provisions, the table groans with gourmet leftovers. The resulting meal is crowned “brinner”, a splicing of breakfast and dinner. Multiple children obligingly polish off chorizo, bacon and eggs, and cherry tomatoes from a roadside stall.
At the grown-ups’ table, things are more epicurean. We are dipping our hash-browns into the buttery juices our scallops were baked in, and slurping from the shell. The sea continues to provide, with monstrous prawns from George Town Seafoods, and the land with a cheese board of local chevre and cloth-bound cheddar. We’re washing it down with a Priory Ridge sauvignon blanc. And these, dear reader, are the leftovers.
. . .
It would be rude to come to the east coast and not indulge in oysters. On the drive out along St Helens Point, we can see the oyster beds tended by Lease 65, floating in Georges Bay. Our walk on the Peron Dunes, or in my son’s case somersaulting off them, certainly works up an appetite.
The Wharf Bar & Kitchen solves that with lunch overlooking the boats in the harbour. Brown Pacific gulls wheel overhead, pleasingly separated from us by plate glass windows. My oysters are kilpatrick, cloaked in Worcestershire sauce and bacon, but still meltingly soft. My young companion takes a fine quality schnitzel from the kids’ menu, and we have our greens on the side in a cucumber cooler mocktail.
I once met the owner of Priory Ridge Wines, Julie Llewellyn, at an agricultural conference. Now, despite having just begun picking for this year’s vintage, she invites me up to her cellar door in the hinterland.
Julie and her husband David inherited the family farm in 2002. Determined to keep it in the family, they built a home and had the land assessed. Northern slopes running down to the George River offered a premium angle for viticulture, and the Devonian granite an intriguing terroir.
The couple had impeccable credentials for launching a boutique vineyard and cellar door venture. Julie was a teacher of food technology and hospitality, and David the former Tasmanian Minister for Primary Industries.
In 2008 they broke ground with four varietals: pinot noir, pinot gris, chardonnay and the slightly left-field sauvignon blanc. The first vintage was bottled in 2011. Exceptional winemaker and friend of 40 years, Brian Franklin, whose own wines from Apsley Gorge are exported internationally, made the pinot noir from the start, and will make all Priory Ridge wines from this year onwards, in his newly built facility.
Franklin’s expertise and that terroir have wrought wonders, with the sauvignon blanc crowned a “fume” in 2013, the result of ferment and maturation in French oak.
. . .
We’re gathered in Julie Llewellyn’s father’s old sheep shearing shed, now converted into a cellar door, rustic charm firmly intact. Photographs and tales of the family’s history line the walls along with some of the old shearing equipment.
We’re getting special treatment, as Llewellyn has persuaded Ian Fowler from the Bay of Fires Cheese company to send a tasting plate.
Fowler’s family is cheese-making royalty from Derbyshire, England, and can trace artisanal lineage back 14 generations. Arriving in Tasmania 14 years ago, Ian established himself as a dairy share farmer and now keeps his own herd of cross-bred cows at Goulds Country, in the heartland of north-eastern dairy country. Immediately after milking, the cheese-making begins, and the traditional business of washing and turning the rounds every three weeks. Ian’s cheese room, lined with pine shelves on which the rounds sit quietly maturing, has the ambience of a hallowed space.
He has sent us his Cloth-Bound Cheddar, which won Best Cheddar in the Australian Grand Dairy Competition. Aged for a year, it has been turned and rubbed by hand every three weeks. Smooth and a little bit tart, it’s the perfect foil for Julie’s robust pinot noir.
Holding its own on the plate is the Semi-Hard Rind Cheese. When left to come to room temperature for serving, this cheese softens, seducing the unwary diner into opening another bottle of Priory Ridge. The creamy quality of the cheese and the tropical notes of the sauvignon blanc are a match made close to heaven, up here on these lush landscapes. Tasting them together, standing on the terroir they spring from, is quite the moment.
If you’re in St Helens by the sea, don’t forget to head for the hills too. That’s where the gold is.
George Town Seafoods is at 38-44 Franklin St, George Town.
Priory Ridge Wines is at 280 Ansons Bay Rd, St Helens.
The Wharf Bar & Kitchen is at 1 Marina Parade, St Helens.
Bay of Fires Cheese is at 25824 Tasman Highway, St Helens.
Fiona Stocker is a Tamar Valley-based writer, editor and keeper of pigs. She has published the books A Place in the Stockyard (2016) and Apple Island Wife (2018). More of her writing can be seen at fionastocker.com.
