Ed Carr has just got back from London. He was there to pick up a major award – the latest of many. After three decades in the wine industry, Carr’s trophy cabinet is stuffed with gongs. But this latest one, at the International Wine Challenge, is special: it’s the first time in the competition’s 40-year history that an Australian has been named Sparkling Winemaker of the Year.

The irony here is that Carr is originally English: he came to Australia as a child in the ’60s as a “ten-pound Pom”, and there’s still a hint of salty Yarmouth twang in his voice. I’ve been listening to that voice talk about sparkling wine for a quarter of a century. I remember first sitting down with him in the late 1990s to taste the wines he’d started making using chardonnay and pinot noir grapes grown in Tasmania.