The same coordinate on the back label, seven years running.

43°01‘08.7”S 147°43‘05.2”E.

We’ve printed those numbers on Small Island labels every year from 2018 through to 2024.

Same place. Same growers. Seven vintages.

Saltwater River sits down on the Tasman Peninsula, a fair way from most things and not necessarily the first place you’d point to on a map and say, there. Let’s grow grapes there.

Fortunately, Ian and Anne Hoyle had already done that.

They own the vineyard. We don’t.

We buy the fruit, turn up regularly, eat a lot of berries and offer increasingly confident opinions about when everything should be picked.

After seven vintages, that relationship becomes more than buying grapes.

You start to know the place.

Which rows ripen first. Which bits carry more weight. What happens in a warm year. What happens when Tasmania decides summer has been cancelled.

And Ian and Anne know what we are trying to make.

Saltwater has given us Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and Gamay.

Then, as we got to know the vineyard better, we started pulling parts of it out and bottling them separately.

Hoyle’s Cut Pinot Noir.

MV6 Pinot Noir.

A Bit Special Chardonnay.

That is probably the interesting bit.

At first, it is one vineyard.

Then, after enough years, you start noticing that one little piece is doing something different.

And because winemakers are not particularly good at leaving things alone, you make it separately and see what happens.

Through all of that, the coordinate stayed the same.

There are plenty of romantic words you can put on a wine label about place and terroir.

A GPS coordinate is a bit less poetic.

It is also very difficult to bullshit.

Put it into your phone and you’ll end up in the right paddock.

Some years are better than others. Of course they are. It’s farming.

We don’t change the coordinate when the season is difficult.

Same vineyard.

Same people.

Try again next year.

After seven vintages, what you end up with is something much better than simply knowing where the grapes came from.

You know the place.

43°01‘08.7”S 147°43‘05.2”E.

We know our way there by now.