Cradle Coast: Your Guide to Tasmania’s Tasting Trail

Follow the Tasting Trail in Tassie’s north-west to discover cellar doors, small-batch producers and plenty of excellent food and drink.

Venture to the top of Tasmania, west of Launceston, and you’ll find more than 40 boutique growers living the good life. “It’s a real food bowl,” says Bron Dance, co-owner of Meander Valley Vineyard. “We have salmon up the road and truffles, wine and berries. You get to meet the people who’ve made the products and it just feels so authentic.” Pick your producers (you can see the full list and a map at Tasting Trail) and make a weekend of it.

Stay in style

Slow-cooked lamb shoulder with chimichurri and lemon yogurt at Ghost Rock Wines

For nearly 10 years, Justin Arnold and Alicia Peardon have been running Ghost Rock Wines. The successful vineyard makes award-winning drops, including pinot gris, riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir, and has a restaurant that serves food worthy of what’s in the glass (Scottsdale pork belly with apple salad; grilled Stanley octopus with pistachio and carrot leaf pesto). Now they’ve added accommodation to the mix with Vineyard House, which looks over the vines to Bass Strait. The three-bedroom house is in Northdown, on the eastern edge of the Tasting Trail, and offers easy access to the region. Plus, if you want to stay in after a big day out, Peardon can organise the restaurant’s slow-cooked lamb to be delivered direct to your door.

Stops to put on your itinerary

Meander Valley Vineyard

Bron Dance and Jade Nicholls’ six-hectare property in Red Hills produces 15,000 bottles of wine a year, including pinot gris, pinot noir and a French-American hybrid called Baco Noir. “We’re the only ones growing and producing it in Australia,” says Dance. Pull up a beanbag, build your own platter from a range of locally sourced ingredients or order a pizza on the weekends. There’s a lovely onsite cottage for overnighters (and glamping tents with woodfired hot tubs on the way).

Plump Berries

“We work with nature,” says Olivia Rundle, who makes a limited run of spirits with her partner, Aaron Powell, at this farm and distillery in Barrington. In the off-season, you can tour the chemical-free farm and taste the goods, from cherry brandy to strawberry fruit wine. And when the patch is laden with every type of berry you can imagine? “We charge by the bellyful.”

The Truffle Farm

Australian truffles are traditionally unearthed in winter but this estate in Deloraine has them 10 months of the year. “The summer truffle is a bit milder so you need to use more of it to get the same flavour,” says Mary, one of the guides. The Truffle Farm hosts a variety of tours throughout the year but two things are guaranteed: you’ll receive a masterclass in the fragrant fungi and be able to watch one of the farm’s dogs hunt for them under the property’s oak trees.

Hazelbrae

When Christie McLeod and Mick Delphin fell in love with a block of land in the tiny town of Hagley, they inherited an orchard of hazelnuts. “We didn’t even eat hazelnuts,” says McLeod. But after the couple tried them fresh off the tree and “they didn’t taste a thing like hazelnuts in the supermarket”, they saw an opportunity. The first stop on the Tasting Trail, Hazelbrae offers a self-guided orchard tour and, during harvest in March and April, a pick-your-own option.

Eastford Creek Vineyard

This acreage has been in Rob Nichols’ family “forever” but the farmer didn’t plant vines until 2018. “It took a wine-fuelled evening to come up with that idea,” says Nick Turner, Nichols’ son-in-law.The family now makes everything from rosé to gamay, has opened a tasting room and casual eatery and hosts vineyard tours.

The region’s annual TrailGraze, with special events and tours, is on 11 to 13 April 2025.