Steve Lubiana
I’ve admired Stefano/Steve Lubiana’s wines since I first visited the estate in late 1999. Steve Lubiana is one of the more important producers in all of Australia: for the quality of his wines, for his leadership (among others) in the development of biodynamic viticulture, and for the way he has put the Derwent Valley on the world wine map. He has done the latter by making the best of sparkling wine, chardonnay wine, and Pinot Noir, among other varieties. Or as Steve Lubiana expresses it: “We wear a lot of different hats, sparkling hats, Burgundy hat, syrah hat, table white hats. But it’s all built off a pinot noir winemaking philosophy. Keep everything clean. Don’t feel like you need to create miracles. Listen to the vineyard.
“(Over the years) the vineyard has told us that it wants to be something different to what we were once trying to make. As we’ve learned that, we feel as though we’ve made way better wine. What’s the vineyard saying? We’ve listened to it over the years. We’ve had the same soils to work with, and ultimately when you’ve worked with your soils over time you make better wines.”
That and then some.
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The cellar at Stefano Lubiana wines is a large concrete-constructed place with curved ceilings. It’s not underground but it’s on the lowest tier. For this photograph I had the overhead lights turned off, so that the small amount of natural light coming from one small opening would have a chance to shine. I have no great preference between the colour and black and white versions (above and below) though I like the harmony of the blue. The light works best with Steve angling his face in the direction of the light but then, I also like the image with Steve looking straight at the camera (scroll down).
On this day I also took shots of (Steve’s son) Marco Lubiana, which were used for this article here. I’ll save any extra images from that shoot for a separate post but what I will share here is a quick image of Steve, Marco and Phoebe Lubiana.
