Domaine A was founded in 1989 by Peter and Ruth Althaus, who were so passionate about the site’s potential for Bordeaux-style wine that they packed up their lives in Switzerland and moved to Tasmania.
Today, their original mission endures. Each vintage is a constant reflection of this extraordinary, elemental terroir: climate and soil, vineyard and method, founded on 200-million-year-old Jurassic dolerite. Our wines are made without compromise and reflect the low yields from our carefully tended vineyards. If the fruit isn’t perfect, the wine doesn’t get made. When other vineyards pick fruit early out of fear, we wait, ready to take the risk.
We mature our wines in French oak barrels, where they’re stored in a temperature-controlled cellar for up to three years. They’re then bottled at the winery, where we carefully age them for up to a decade, so they’re ready for you to enjoy as soon as we release them.
The result is a testament to the love and care that goes into crafting them. These wines have distinct personalities, not constrained by region or varietal typicity.
The three coloured lines you see in the “A” on the label aren’t just there to look pretty: they tell a story of the wine’s journey, pedigree and tasting profile.
When he was making each vintage, Peter Althaus would pass on his wines to his friend, designer Dario Zuffo, who had synaesthesia—a phenomenon where a person’s senses cross over and combine in their brain. In this case, it meant Peter’s friend could “taste” colours. Peter would ask them to sample their wine, then tell Peter what colours they “tasted” when they drank. He then used these colours on the front of our bottles. The first stripe indicates fruitfulness, the second acidity and the third speaks to the wine’s tannin structure.
Although we don’t have somebody with synaesthesia today to help us, the tradition of picking the colours that appear on the wine label continues. That task is assigned to winemaker Conor, who approaches his responsibility with reverence and dedication, carefully selecting the colours that best suit each wine vintage.
The secretly grown vines that become an acclaimed wine
Once upon a time, there were Sauvignon blanc vines growing at the Domaine A vineyard. Ruth Althaus asked her husband Peter to pull them out. Peter, sensing an opportunity, elected to keep them growing. In secret.
Many months later, Peter surprised Ruth with a glass of white wine. After tasting it, she was upset, thinking he had opened a bottle of her favourite Château Margaux without permission. Imagine her surprise when it was actually a Sauvignon blanc that Peter made in secret, using the vines she told him to destroy.
This was the start of Lady A, named after Ruth—or Lady Althaus.
The Stoney wines are a different expression of place and terroir—and as such, their labels tell another set of stories. These are all about the land where we make wine. The labels feature the ancient dolerite rocks—over 200 million years old—that the Domaine A vineyard is planted on.
Tasting colours, an upset wife, and a mathematician-turned-art-collector. Delve into the stories, legends and traditions that made Domaine A.
1973
Our first acre was planted by the pioneering George and Priscilla Park. The site was home to a tiny, quality-driven winemaking operation and with it the beginnings of viticulture in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley.
1989
Swiss couple Peter and Ruth Althaus established Domaine A after scouring the Southern Hemisphere for the perfect cool-climate terroir with the vision of producing world-class, Bordeaux-inspired wines to rival the great estates of France.
2018
In March 2018, the estate was purchased by Tasmanian gambler David Walsh (owner of the Museum of Old and New Art) and his wife Kirsha. David made Conor van der Reest winemaker and custodian of the extensive portfolio of Domaine A and Stoney Vineyard wines.
Today
Today the vineyard continues to produce world-class wines under the Domaine A and Stoney Vineyard labels. Each vintage is a reflection of an extraordinary, elemental terroir, founded on 200-million-year-old Jurassic dolerite.
