The 2013 bushfires which ripped through Dunalley devastated the region. Bangor Vineyard Shed was no exception, but from those catastrophic events a plan was put in motion, which a decade later has helped land national recognition. When Vanessa and Matt Dunbabin took over Bangor – a 6000 hectare farming property which has been in Matt’s family for more than 120 years – in the early 2000s, growing grapes was an idea the couple threw around but didn’t act upon for close to a decade. In 2010 they finally took the leap, planting eight hectares of vines to grow Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay. Having traditionally been a fine wool merino sheep property, the Dunbabin’s had envisaged setting up a small cellar door to sell their wines, only for those dreams to go up in smoke when Dunalley was engulfed by bushfires in early 2013. More than half the town’s buildings and a primary school were destroyed, and Bangor didn’t escape the carnage. “When it was our turn to move onto the farm and take things over we had this idea that we’d like to grow grapes, we sat on that for probably about 10 years before we actually did anything and then in 2010, we took the leap and we planted our vineyard,” Vanessa says. Tourism Awards INDUSTRY FEATURE
“We have eight hectares of vines, growing Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay and then we needed to find a way to obviously sell that wine, we had an old historic shearing shed on the farm that we were going to use as our cellar door. “We imagined having this little cellar door in our lovely old shearing shed and selling a few bottles of wine to the passing punters, but we lost that building in the large bushfire. 2000 hectares of Bangor was affected by the fire that at that time, it was quite obviously a major event for the entire community. But that’s what forced us to do a rethink and that’s how we came to build Bangor Vineyard Shed and it’s been a whirlwind ever since.”
33 Tasmanian Hospitality Review April/May Edition
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