Cellar Door Conversations: Fiona
Meet Fiona Weller
About 35 minutes north of Launceston is the vineyard, winery and cellar door of Moores Hill. You can’t miss it as you drive up the West Tamar Highway. It’s near the Batman Bridge turnoff, but before the little historic township of Beaconsfield. We caught up with Fiona Weller, Co-Owner and Manager of Moores Hill Estate, to find out how she and her winemaker husband, Julian Allport, have developed a brand that is renowned for its high quality and outstanding drinkability among wine lovers.
How would you describe Moores Hill?
Moores Hill is quite a classic brand, but with a modern edge. We respect the traditional but we also like to innovate and do things better, where we can. Being 100% off-grid is testament to that – we really wanted to be future focused when we built our winery and although a massive decision at the time, it was definitely the right one. Our company values are built on creating consistent, high quality wine through skill, care and attention to detail. We’re small but we’re hands on, from vine, to bottle to box, we do it all. And it’s vitally important that we deliver value in our wines.
How long have you owned Moores Hill?
We bought Moores Hill in 2008 and since then we’ve been on a journey to turn a basic farmgate operation into a premium wine business. Over the years we’ve made a few changes - we’ve upgraded the cellar door and planted new vines but the biggest development was building our 100 tonne capacity winery on site which is off-grid for power, water and waste. Being able to make all our wine on site was a game changer and also allowed us to put sustainability at the heart of our business. We’ve got plans to convert to organic farming, next.
Was this always your chosen career?
No. In fact, I planned to have a career involving Australia-Japan relations. I studied Japanese at high school and uni. But I wasn’t a very dedicated language student! I really enjoyed the food and karaoke but it wasn’t quite enough to sustain a career in international diplomacy. I was, however, interested in running my own business at some stage, so when I met Julian and he studying to be a winemaker, we started to explore the idea of running a wine business together. I always thought Tasmania was a beautiful place. And it wasn’t as hot as South Australia where I’m from; Adelaide is really hot these days! So climate change definitely played a part as we were deciding where this wine business might be. Julian wanted to make wine here and I agreed it sounded like a good idea.
What is important to you when people meet you or try your wines?
We want people to experience the depth and purity of flavour in our wines. They are long and generous. They are vibrant. The fruit really shines, yet they’re well rounded and finished. But at the end of the day, we really just want people to enjoy drinking Moores Hill wines. We get good reviews and scores for our wines which is really great but I get emotional when an everyday customer rings up to order our wines for a family occasion like, “its my wife’s birthday and your Chardonnay is her favourite’ or ‘we have your Pinot Noir every year at our family Christmas’. That’s the best.
Moores Hill wines are featured in several of the current Wines of Tasmania boxes. Visit our shop to order your subscription now.