Cafe Society: She’s apples ... for now

CIDER guru Andrew Smith warns Tassie’s golden age could lose its lustre if we aren’t careful.

Andrew Smith, from WIllie Smiths, at the Apple Shed at Grove. Picture: CHRIS KIDD

IT will be pumping by dark tomorrow, but all’s quiet at the Apple Shed at Grove this morning.

I’m at the Huon Valley venue before this weekend’s Mid-Winter Festival to talk to Andrew Smith, who launched the event in 2014 with cider-making business partner Sam Reid.

When we met six years ago after the launch of the Willie Smiths cider brand, I was struck by Smith’s clarity of vision for the fourth-generation apple business he helms, and his tough talk. I’m back today to find out if he has been fermenting a winning vision for the Apple Isle as well as his apple business.

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“You don’t get change without challenging,” he said in our first interview, at the family’s 47ha orchard operation 1.5km down the road. He was referring to a generational clash with his father Ian after he returned from international travels in 1991 with a radical plan to transform the orchard. “They don’t give you the keys. You have to push them out of the way.”

After proving to his dad on a few experimental hectares that his ideas could fly, Smith led seven years of replanting for intensive growing, at which time the farm was certified as organic, later becoming a national vendor to Woolworths and, in 2010, a fresh juice processor.

Smith and Reid launched the acclaimed Willie Smiths Organic Apple Cider range in 2012, opening the Apple Shed cider house, cafe and heritage museum about a year later. It’s now a distillery, too, with French-style apple brandy barrel-ageing under the Charles Oates label.

Andrew Smith at the opening of The Apple Shed museum and cider house in 2013.

Father Ian, now in his mid 70s, remains a fixture in the orchard and processing sheds.

It all sounds rosy, but Andrew Smith says he is driven by fear.

“As primary producers, we are fear-motivated most of the time,” he says over the cappuccino he drinks daily at the Apple Shed, his favourite meeting spot. “We fear weather events, market fluctuations and competition from emerging economies or even local producers, so we are constantly trying to get the things we can control under our control, and they are really limited.”

Value-adding and direct retailing help, but not enough to let him relax or rest on his laurels. Likewise, he says that though Tasmania is enjoying a golden age (“this is as good as it gets”), it is no time for us to slip into a false sense of security and forget what this place is all about.

“I am worried for Tasmania,” he says.

Andrew Smith, left, with head cider maker and distiller Tim Jones in their distillery in Grove. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

While not endorsing the delivery or timing of the Hobart Lord Mayor’s recent assertion that the visitor boom is threatening the local lifestyle, he says he thinks he knows what Ron Christie was trying to say: “We do need to manage this growth very carefully.”

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If we don’t, he suggests, we are at risk of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. That goose is not tourism. It’s our way of life. Tasmania’s isolation, which has been its major disadvantage for most of its commercial life with the cost of getting goods off the island, is fast becoming its major advantage.

“With [much of] the world now overpopulated, overpolluted and overcommercialised, Tasmania stands out [as a haven],” Smith says.

Its unspoiltness is its most valuable point of difference. So how do we protect it? Keep population growth in check, says Smith, maintain our clean air and water, hold on to hydro power and adopt a carbon-neutral power-generation goal. And commit to eliminating single-use plastic-bags without delay. Culturally, we need to ride, not resist, change. He nominates environmentalist Bob Brown, LGBT activist Rodney Croome and Mona owner David Walsh as inspirational Tasmanians who have led the way.

Andrew Smith, left, and Burning Man creator Marcus Gibbon put some finishing touches on the effigy ahead of this year’s Mid-Winter Festival. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

But where is the vision in politics? Smith wants to see a masterplan for Tasmania, prepared by government and representing prevailing community wishes, that outlines agreed-upon goals for each decade over the next 50 years. Choosing what not to do is just as important as choosing what to green-light. He says we must not let inappropriate developments compromise Tasmania’s character, diluting its distinctiveness.

“Do we want to go like every city in the world and have high rises in Hobart? Absolutely not,” says Smith. “If you want to build 50-storey buildings, build them in Melbourne. Once you let one into the middle of Hobart, it will be death by 1000 cuts.”

Do we want to end the 17-year moratorium on genetically modified organisms in agriculture? “The advantage of GMO does not outweigh the disadvantage of having it. If you want to go GMO, go somewhere that already has it. Let us keep our point of differentiation.”

What about a cable car on kunanyi/Mt Wellington, the mountain he has been looking at the back of ­and loving ­his whole life? No thanks. “Why erode what that mountain is?”

As for the relatively low cost of our agricultural land, which offsets traditional disadvantages such as high wages and distance to market? Let’s hope we can hold that steady to some extent.

“With our land-cost advantage, and if we keep the air and water clean and the route to market — the shipping ports and infrastructure — agriculture will absolutely thrive,” he says.