Tasmania... A fancy way to say Australia.

My apologies for the delay on the blog posts.  I have a pocket notebook full of thoughts and impressions from my travels, but failed to place on onto social media for easy consumption.  And seeing as how I have done almost nothing since being home, its a good time to reflect back on where I traveled. Tasmania first.

For those of you who don't know, Tasmania is that little not so little island off the bottom right corner of Australia. For many Australia's, it's second best to New Zealand as the punchline to a bogan joke.  History tells us that Tasmania not only has the oldest temperate rain forests on planet earth, but was also the prison colony for the prison continent in which Australia was first established.   According to "the bottom of the bottle" Tasmania is a gem, a somewhat hidden secret of beautiful landscapes, a plethora of quality food/wine/beer, and unfortunately not a single cute girl in sight.

My first impression of Tasmania was formed by a Texan (I know, even I associate with a few) who would respectively inflate his ego only like a texan can by adding the line "which is a fancy way to say Australia" whenever the Tasmanian we worked with would introduce himself as being from said Island.  Before arriving in Australia, Tasmania was only on my radar as a spot to visit because of how much Mick(that Tasmanian) talked it up as being a spectacular place. Thanks to one Matthew Boenzli, who has traveled to most of the other Australian states, we decided to go to Tasmania.  In hindsight, The Texan was half right (can Texans ever be fully right). Tasmania is a fancy way to say Australia, But Australia is a also an incorrect way to describe Tasmania.

I traveled to Tasmania on June 4th (their winter) with two of my best friends, Matt and Matt's epic beard.  We rented a Wicked Camper (www.wickedcamper.com.au is worth a visit) for the 8 days we were there for transportation and shelter when necessary. We were lucky enough to be able to stay with Mick (my Tasmanian friend) and his lovely lady Kylie (thanks Kylie) just outside of Hobart.  From there we drove our wicked Wicked camper van over 2200km covering most of the island.   Instead of rehashing each day with witty little jokes, I'm going to categorize the highlights for simplicity sake into things that are relevent to the Bottom of the bottle. Wine, Beer, Food, Highlights.

Tasmania Wine:
Maybe I'm biased towards cool climate growing having been hypothetically brought up on Oregon Pinot Noirs.  Maybe I had been drinking to many Barossa Reds and forgot how delicate and unique the subtle flavors of Pinot Noir are, but damnit Tasmania had some really great wines. Jansz, Bay of Fires, Morilla, Joseph Chromy to name a few.  Even a lot of the small vineyard to wine productions made great wines. There is still a lot for the passion of growing your own grapes and translating it into a quality vino without the pressures of market share. They are so far removed from the "wine industrial complex" that they make variety accurate tasmanian style wine. No false advertisement about the wines inspiration nor is it old world stylistic counterpart.  (for my aussie friends, it seems like every wine made in California is made "in a french style"). I was so impressed with Tasmanian wines that the only disappointment was Frogmore Creek (ironically a place I almost got hired).  The Bubbles, the Pinot, the Chardonnay, the Reisling, what more do you really need.  It would take a very long time to get bored of Tasmanian wines.  For those of you in the states, Tasmanian wines taste like what Oregon wines should, not the high alcohol overoaked (napa style) that a majority of the big players are pushing. Tasmanian wines are uninfluenced and uniquely Tasmanian.  I will hopefully work a harvest here someday.

Tazzy Beer/Whiskey:
Tasmania, like the rest of the budding australia "microbrew" scene is 20 + years behind where we are here in the states, but they are going in the right direction and have some very cool passionate people behind it. Notables were Moo Brew, Iron House, and 7 sheds. The major disappointment was 2 metre Tall Real ales. The philosophy behind this brewery is fundamentally cool, They aim to use estate grown grain and hop's to then produce their naturally barrel fermented real ales, untilizing lots of fun micro organisms to generate individual bacterial flavors.   But... the unfortunate but that follows all disappointments, is the quality control. 1/3 of the brews I purchased and drank had an infectious bug. This would be an accurate time to hashtag a Facepalm. This "gusher" as its commonly known in home brews, is a micro organism that can get into your beer and will feed on some of the larger starch and flavor compounds in the beer that our bud's Saccromyces dont eat (yeast pun) producing excess C02 (very bad in a sealed bottle) and a bad metallic aftertaste. Basically A gusher eats the good flavor, leaves a bad one, and can produce enough CO2 to explode the bottles. having a gusher infection in a homebrew is bound to happen but easy to avoid with proper sanitation. It is absolutely inexcusable in a commercially sold product. If I were a bottleshop owner, I would not stock this brewery.  It would not be right to talk about Tasmanian beer without mentioning the New Sydney Hotel in Hobart. They know their beer.  Not only do keep many great aussie microbrews on tap, they also have rotating taps of the likes of Brew dog, Sierra Nevada, and Mikkeller to name a few.  They are so confident in their beer knowledge that they have taken to putting anything and everything in their Hopinator and matched with an equally as good beer. Iron House through Portabella mushrooms when we were there.

One of the other highlights was the tour of Cascade Brewery that Matt, Matt's beard and I took. if you ever find yourself in Hobart, its worth your 20 dollars to tour the brewery if for no other reason to stand on top of the 100K Liter fermenters.  The brilliance of this brewery other than it was started and built by convicts is that they capture all of their C02 produced to carbonate, bottle, and even sell of some excess, way to be an efficient business. When Matt does move to Australia he can still get his PBR in the form of Cascade's pale ale.  The Only distillary we made it to was Lark, right on the Hobart waterfront, and If the others are better, then tasmania is a goldmine for scotch style whiskeys.  I actually brought a lark whiskey all the home for its uniquness. They practice a more traditional fermentation on their must, and by traditional, they do not control the ferment temperature. Allowing ferment temp to climb into the high 20's/low 30's Celsius (low to mid 70's Fahrenheit), you get certain esters produced by the yeast that smell and taste anywhere from Banana to bubblegum (wheat beers). This, along with the water they use, gives the whiskey a very cool oily consistency with these sweet banana undertones. If for no other reason its worth a taste for the uniqueness of the whiskey.  I think Matt's beard leveled up from heavy metal guitarist to hefty lumberjack from the high quality of alcoholic beverage in tasmania.

Tasmanian Food:
Being as inland and german as I was in the Barossa valley (more figuratively then literally), the incredible seafood accessible in South Australia eluded me. I made up for it in Tasmania.  It seems like all of the seafood I had in tasmania, from the oysters to scollops to salmon were raised in a Rombaur-esque environtment. Everything was so rich, as if they were pre-buttered. I've consumed a lot of salmon, and tasmanian is by far the best.  They are known for their vast array of honeys, and is prime hop growing region. I need to go back and eat a lot more.

If I were a better writer I could put into words how strikingly beautiful Tasmania was. I would say how while nothing compares to the grandiose of yosemite valley or standing on the south rim of the grand canyon. Tasmania has subtle beauty everwhere. It takes every attractive landscape on the west coast save the mojave, adds some scottish style highlands, and stuffs it all into an island the size of southern california.  Everywhere you turn the landscape is so attractive you cant help but go "wow, this place is beautiful".   The highlights of an already highlighted island were Cradle Mountain National Park, The Central Highlands, Every Water fall, The East Tamar Valley, Mount Field National Park, Mole Creek Valley, the entire east coast and especially Wineglass bay, Hastings cave, Port Arthur, the south central forests and valleys south of Huonville. Basically the entire Island.

I want to go back to Tasmania, very badly, we were there 8 days, and only scratched the surface. The hikes I still want to do, the beaches to visit, wine/beer/whiskey to taste, the food, the surf (tasmania has a lot of surf and not a lot of surfers), everything there has Josh Smith written in big words across the top.  I could very easily see myself living in tasmania, maybe easier than living anywhere else in the world.

P.S. yes I saw Tasmanian devils. Matt and I went to an animal park (australian for petting zoo basically)  in the Mole Creek Valley. It was right at devil feeding time.  We walk over to the devil enclosure with a man who I'm pretty sure worked on the Sea Shepherd and associated more with the devils than with humans.  Now devils are cute, very cute black little marsupials with a white strip across their chest as if they were off to a formal ball. Out of this 5 gallon bucket Mr. Sea Shepherd was carrying comes road-killed raw meat, which I am pretty sure he had hit himself.  A wallaby leg here, a piece of wombat there, and half possum later, the cute little devils instantly transform into their namesake. Their ears get flushed with blood making them glow bright red, they start growling a high pitched wail of a growl.  Sharp teeth for days rip and tear off pieces of vehicular animal-slaughter half the size of their little bodies and proceed to run lap after lap around their enclosure trying to keep it for themselves. Its probably the most energetically primitive dinner party you could imagine. All the time growling and glowing at their devil brother's and sisters.  Never have I seen something so cute become so deadly that fast.  I believe in Karma, and while I do not believe in the reincarnation aspect of that spiritual belief, I really really hope that I come back as a Tasmanian Devil.