2015. Before Small Island had much of anything, there were emails.

Small Island started with a parcel of Pinot Noir from Glengarry, some savings, and ninety people willing to help make the first vintage happen.

There was no vineyard. There was no winery. There was not much equipment.

There were six barrels.

The first vintage was crowdfunded. $14,510 came from 90 people who were, in effect, backing a wine that did not yet exist.

Then we had to make it.

Old barrels. Subaru.

New French oak cost about $1,400 a barrel. Old oak cost considerably less.

So the first barrels were old ones, taken apart, shaved, toasted and put back together by Tasmanian Cask Co.

Two 300-litre barrels fitted in the back of a Subaru Forester. Just.

There was not yet a logistics department.

The emails sent to the original supporters at the time were less about brand storytelling and more about what was actually happening: barrels, vineyard samples, sugar levels, weather forecasts, borrowed equipment, and trying to work out exactly when the grapes should be picked.

Picking

By Thursday 9 April 2015, two of the best pickers had pulled out.

The plan, written down after work, looked like this:

Bins are up north, extra one in the truck, pallet jack borrowed, fuel in car, food ready, work in morning, drive to Tamar River, get busy friend to help move bins using ute, get nets up, things ready for picking, sleep, pick, drive home, process.

God help me.

The next night finished at about 1:30am. The alarm was set for 6:00am.

On Saturday 11 April, friends, family and three extremely fast professional pickers worked through twenty rows of Pinot Noir at Glengarry. A little after lunch, it was done.

Almost.

The missing 300 kg

On Sunday morning we discovered we had picked 2,800 kilograms of grapes. The truck could legally carry 2,500.

Five bins left for Hobart. One did not.

So there were 300 kilograms of Pinot Noir, nearly $1,000 worth of grapes, sitting in a picking bin on the other side of Tasmania while the rest of the fruit headed to the winery to be processed.

I had to be at the winery. The grapes had to come to Hobart. It was Sunday.

My friend Johnny looked at the problem and said:

“Don’t worry mate, I will get Dad’s ute and go get them.”

Hobart to Glengarry and back is a 436-kilometre round trip. The original email concluded it would probably take about 436 years to repay him.

The grapes made it.

Making wine

The emails then became increasingly detailed. There was foot stomping. A crusher-destemmer. Wild fermentation. Pumping. Pressing. Racking. Malo-lactic fermentation.

And cleaning. Quite a lot of cleaning.

The original explanation probably remains as accurate as anything we have written since:

“The processing of grapes for red wine is like most jobs in the winery: it’s about 20% moving heavy stuff around, 8% winemaking, 70% cleaning stuff and 2% drinking beer.”

About 15% of the juice was removed from the Pinot ferment to increase the ratio of skins to juice. Throwing it away seemed stupid. So it became rosé.

Eventually the Pinot was racked down into the thing the whole project had been organised around.

Six oak barrels.

It stayed there for a year, then spent another six months improving in bottle.

The first vintage produced roughly 2,100 bottles of Pinot Noir and a very small amount of rosé.

The rosé went first. It sold out.

Then the Pinot Noir from Glengarry won gold at the 2016 Royal Hobart Wine Show.

So we made another one.