Charles Reuben Estate has won awards for wines, spirits produced with ‘paddock to glass’ ethos
You’ve heard of paddock to plate, but what about paddock to glass? That’s what the owners of Charles Reuben Estate at Tea Tree call their business philosophy.
Tasmania
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Across the road from Jens Volkmann’s Tea Tree home sat a vineyard he and his partner, Louise, had coveted for years.
Finally, in 2013, they bought Charles Reuben Estate.
The necessary reinvigoration of the 26-hectare property, however, proved to be a tough task.
“To be honest, launching a new product is a hard slog,” Mr Volkmann said. “And launching a new product that nobody knows is even harder.”
Today, the Volkmanns occupy a niche of their own in Tasmania’s wine and spirits market, picking up a number of national gongs for the boutique products made at their on-site distillery, including fruit brandy, aged brandy, port, pisco, and gin.
Mr Volkmann said the business was founded on a ‘paddock to glass’ ethos and a general philosophy of sustainability.
“We’re not adding sugar, we’re not adding colour to our products,” he said.
“I just want to leave a slightly cleaner planet than I found – and not spray the crap out of (the crops).
“I don’t want to leave a property that’s full of Roundup and all types of toxic stuff.
“Everything that comes out of the still is clear. It is just what it is. Why pretend it’s more raspberry because we put red colouring in?
“It’s something that we don’t want to support, we don’t want to do. We want it clean and clear and local.”
For some of its renowned spirits, Charles Reuben Estate, which also has 7500 lavender plants it uses to distil lavender oil, is provided with surplus fruit from Reid Fruits and Lowdina Orchard.
“There’s hundreds of tonnes (of cherries) each year that aren’t the right size or have the wrong colour and they just get sorted out,” Mr Volkmann said.
“It costs more to transport them somewhere than to just dig a hole and drop them in (landfill). So for us it was quite important for us to start this project here, as well, to be able to hopefully in the future … say to fruitgrowers, ‘We can take 10-20 tonnes of your cherries, or 50-100 tonnes even, and make a good spirit out of them and there’s a market for it and you can sell it’.
Emboldened by a strong crop of grapes this past harvest season, Mr Volkmann is optimistic about the future of the vineyard and distillery.
“Things have really picked up,” he said.
“It’s really important to us to have control over what (ingredients) come from where.
“We really know every ingredient that we put into our product and that makes it so different and so worthwhile doing.”
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