Wine
Dream Vertical – Stefano Lubiana, Pioneering Patience
As Tasmania’s earliest biodynamic innovator, Stefano Lubiana is celebrated for crafting some of the Apple Isle’s purest expressions.
"Pioneers don’t always wear capes, sometimes they wear gumboots and spend their days in the vineyard. Stefano Lubiana didn’t just plant vines, he planted a future for Tasmanian wine.” So observes Associate Professor Julie McIntyre, historian, and she’s right.
When Stefano (Steve) Lubiana and his wife Monique first walked the slopes of Granton along Tasmania’s Derwent River in the late 1980s, the notion of world-class wine emerging from Australia’s island state might have seemed fantastical.
Today, 35 years on, Lubiana’s wines are benchmarks for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, sparkling wines, cool-climate excellence and biodynamic viticulture. The Lubianas have built more than a winery; they’ve lifted up a region once overlooked, and written a new chapter in Australian wine.
Stefano Lubiana and Selector’s Paul Diamond discuss the finer points of the wines of the tasting.
TASSIE ON A TEAR
Figuratively and literally, Tasmania is cool, and its wines are increasingly critically acclaimed and coveted. Though it accounts for less than 1 per cent of Australia’s wine production, its influence far outweighs its volume, cementing its status as the nation’s undisputed home of world-class sparkling wine.
Yet this phenomenon is astonishingly recent. The late-1800s to mid-1900s saw little viticultural activity beyond sporadic plantings. It wasn’t until 1974 that Clive Halliday, a Launceston GP, established Pipers Brook Vineyard, soon joined by soil scientist and winemaker Andrew Pirie. Their rigorous application of soil mapping, clonal selection, and canopy management proved Tasmania’s marginal climate could yield wines of exceptional finesse, though almost exclusively in the north.
In the south, near Hobart, vine and wine was virtually non-existent, despite the state’s first vineyard having been planted on Bruny Island as early as the 1820s. “Pipers Brook was the biggest producer back then,” recalls Lubiana. “They made fantastic Rieslings, so crisp, so good. For sparkling though, nothing had been released. Graham Wiltshire had wine on tirage when I arrived in 1989, but that was it.”
He notes the scarcity of trained winemakers at the time, until Andrew Hood, Claudia Radenti of Freycinet, and others arrived, bringing oenological rigour that helped lift the region’s ambition.
Stefano Lubiana, a key pioneer in the development of Tasmanian wine.
Lubiana helped transform the Derwent Valley into a sparkling powerhouse.
HERITAGE AND SPARKLING DREAMS
Lubiana is the fifth generation of a winemaking family; his son Marco now represents the sixth. His roots trace to Moorook in South Australia’s Riverland, where his father Mario founded Lubiana Wines in the early 1950s after migrating post-war from Istria, now Croatia, one of the world’s oldest wine regions.
Winemaking was never a choice, it was an inheritance. But a 1985 trip to Champagne changed everything. The Champagne bug had bit, and his plan to take over the family business pivoted toward a new quest: finding a cold place suitable for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and sparkling wine.
“Back in 1988, 89, when I was scouting, I came here and thought it was obvious,” Lubiana says. “Champagne isn’t France’s warmest region, so you’ve got to go cold. For me it’s about latitude effect and daylight hours so I wanted to go south to get my cold, and I came here and saw the potential,” he recalls. “I needed something frost free, not too close to the sea and something with porous soils, and Granton ticked all those boxes.”
The Derwent Valley, then dismissed as marginal, has since become a hub of cool-climate excellence, with dozens of boutique wineries acknowledging Lubiana’s pioneering role.
DREAMS INTO REALITY
Early vintages met scepticism: could Tasmania consistently ripen grapes, let alone produce wines of structure and longevity? By the mid-1990s, the answer was clear: Lubiana’s Pinots were wooing judges with silky textures, red-fruit purity and earthy nuance; qualities rare in Australian Pinot at the time. The industry as a whole sat up and started paying closer attention.
But accolades only hint at his true impact. Lubiana gave Tasmania credibility at a moment when the global perception of Australian wine was dominated by ripe, warm-climate styles. He opened the door, not just for recognition, but for serious investment and talent.
“Steve was the first to treat Tasmania like a Grand Cru region, not an experiment,” says Michael Hill Smith MW. “He planted on a steep, south-facing slope when everyone said it was too risky. He proved that seriousness of intent could overcome climatic marginality.”
James Halliday concurs. “He showed, vintage after vintage, that with the right site, clones, and obsessive attention to detail, Tasmania could produce Pinot Noir of world-class structure and longevity, wines that stand shoulder to shoulder with Burgundy.”
Lubiana’s wines and estate were the first in Tasmania to become fully certified biodynamic, no small feat. Long before it was fashionable, he committed to holistic farming: native grasses between rows, thriving birdlife, soils humming with microbial life.
The estate thrives as a self-sustaining ecosystem and the wines, in turn, possess a vibrancy and mineral tension that speak directly of place. Jancis Robinson MW notes that “While others chased yield and concentration, he nurtured biodiversity and balance,” she wrote. “His biodynamics weren’t dogma, they were a practical response to the fragility and potential of his terroir.”
The cellar door entrance of Tasmanian winemaker Stefano Lubiana.
A lovely line up of Stefano Lubiana's Chardonnays on a table.
STEFANO LUBIANA: THE WINES
As you might expect, Lubiana’s sparkles are some of the best in the country. From the rich, nutty longevity of the 2011 Prestige, the plush toastiness of the 2013 Grande Vintage, through to the ethereal complexity of the 2017 Brut Rosé and the precision of the 2016 Blanc de Blancs, all wines show thought and skill.
Every Lubiana bubbly is a delicious expression of unique parts: some stand-alone and some interlock, building something new, but all have a thread of ethereal elegance that represent an appropriate inspiration point for the whole Lubiana picture.
His Chardonnays mirror this precision. The 2024 Primavera Chardonnay, the entry point, offers pure, saline layers of lemon, lemon curd, and sea spray. The 2023 Estate Chardonnay lifts the dial, taut, salt-licked, with white peach, preserved lemon, wet stone, toasted almond, and chamomile florals.
Collina Chardonnay, made only in stellar years, is flintier, more muscular, yet no less refined. The 2022 is effortless, fine, complex and tightly wound, with citrus, stonefruit, toasted nuts, and a whisper of creamed pastry. The 2012 remains regal: creamy lemons and limes, nuts, earth. The 2008, now in full maturity, sings with beeswax-lined pear and citrus, beautifully balanced.
THE WINES OF THE TASTING
Stefano Lubiana Sparkling
2016 Blanc De Blancs
2013 Grande Vintage Brut
2019 Brut Rosé
2011 Prestige
Stefano Lubiana Chardonnay
2024 Lubiana Primavera Chardonnay
2023 Estate Chardonnay
2022 / 2012 / 2008 Collina Chardonnay
Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir
2024 Primavera Pinot Noir
2023 /2009 Estate Pinot Noir
2022 / 2016 Sasso Pinot Noir
2022 Ruscello Sv Pinot Noir
2022 Il Giardino Sv Pinot Noir
2022 La Roccia Sv Pinot Noir
PEERLESS PINOTS
Lubiana’s Pinots have earned cult status, and rightly so. Each is a study in place and patience: transparent, finely tuned, built on vibrant acidity and layered complexity that
unfurls over decades.
The 2024 Primavera Pinot Noir offers an elegant gateway, waxy cherries, red and blackcurrants, soft, silt-lined earth. The 2023 Estate Pinot Noir deepens the narrative, with sappy rhubarb, dense dark fruit, chalky tannins and lengthy savoury drive.
Then come the Lubiana Sasso Pinot Noirs, vintage-select flagships, made only in exceptional years. Graceful yet commanding, they layer dark plum and cherry with raspberry, rhubarb, pepper, dried herbs, and a spine of earthy minerality. The 2022 is tightly wound and perfumed, the 2016 is in full flight with wild strawberry, sour raspberry, red plum, forest floor.
The Sasso wines come from three single vineyards – Ruscello, La Roccia and Il Giardino – and in 2019 Lubiana released small amounts of each vineyard from the 2017 vineyard. All three are incredible, world-class wines that are a tribute to 30 years of Pinot devotion, each showing a distinctive expression of place, dirt and grape.
Ruscello is fine and savoury with bags of complexity; red berries, herbs and smokey cherries. La Roccia is gritty, flecked with limestone and wild in flavour; rhubarb thistle, raspberry but high in polish. Il Giardino is expansive, yet compressed and complex, with fine layers of red and black cherries, dried and milled herbs and a raw savoury edge that asks for time.
Lubiana, Monique, and now Marco have built something extraordinary, not just wines of pleasure, but wines of purpose. They’ve crafted benchmarks defined by elegance, restraint, terroir, transparency, and authenticity, and in doing so have helped elevate Tasmania to global relevance.
This legacy is still young in the arc of Australian wine history, yet like the good wine in a cellar it promises to evolve, and get better with age. What a gift.