Spring Vale Vineyard is a small, family-owned winery at Cranbrook, on Tasmania’s East Coast. Cranbrook is a 15-minute drive north of Swansea (10 km) and a forty-five-minute drive from the Freycinet National Park (50 km).
Spring Vale Vineyard’s small and intimate Cellar Door is actually an old stable, which was built by convict labour in 1842 and is now heritage listed.
The winery is owned and operated by the Lyne family. Built in 1842, the original Spring Vale homestead is one of the oldest properties on the east coast and has been in the Lyne family since 1875.
You can taste Spring Vale’s range of fine wines at the cellar door and sales room, located in the original convict-built stables.
The stable has been preserved (with minor restorations necessary) and is now a unique cellar door building with a very historic feel. In the same room, a modern Macrocarpa pine bar and impressive Myrtle shelving have been installed, to offer a great mixture of old and new.
Come and visit us at Spring Vale for your own personal tasting and experience our history and heritage for yourself.
Open 7 days a week 11am – 4pm, excluding Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
Continuing in the tradition of hard work and innovation established by William Lyne in 1826, Rodney and Lyn Lyne have planted 14.5 hectares of wine grapes at Spring Vale, principally Pinot Noir.
The vineyard began in 1986 when a small area of 0.8 hectares were planted to Pinot Noir. Further plantings were made in the following years: firstly, more Pinot Noir, then Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer, followed by Pinot Gris in 1996. In 2000, more Pinot Noir and a splash of Pinot Meunier were planted. A further 7.9 hectares of Pinot Noir were then planted in 2013.
In June 2007, Spring Vale purchased a neighbouring farm, “Melrose”. The purpose was to enable increased production of a lighter style red to be produced, with the first “Melrose” Pinot Noir being the 2008 Vintage.
The Freycinet Coast is the driest part of the state, with an average annual rainfall of 550mm. Warm days and cool nights are a result of this climate and ideal for slow ripening and excellent flavour development. The soil at Spring Vale is mostly a fertile clay loam, with the subsoil varying from porous friable loam with rock to medium-heavy clay. Drainage is excellent throughout the vineyard and the pH of the soil is around 6.5.
A modified Lyre (“U-shaped”) trellis system is used in conjunction with vertical shoot positioning (VSP), while the blocks planted in 2000 and after have a simple VSP trellis. “Melrose” is entirely VSP. Vineyard operations are mostly carried out manually – pruning, shoot positioning, leaf plucking and harvesting, although a tractor-mounted pre-pruner is being used with great success, as well as a tractor-mounted leaf-plucker on many parts of the vineyard.