Inside Steve Flamsteed's second Decades release, the Tasmanian label he co-founded with brewer Brad Rogers

In 2022, three decades after meeting at Roseworthy, Steve Flamsteed and Brad Rogers bought a vineyard together in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley.

Although their paths diverged after uni – Steve made cheese at Milawa in northeastern Victoria before making wine, first for Leeuwin Estate and then Yarra Burn before landing at Giant Steps in 2003, while Brad pursued a career as a brewer, eventually co-founding the popular Byron Bay-based Stone & Wood in 2008 – they had remained friends.

“We developed a rapport pretty quickly at Roseworthy,” says Steve. “We were both from Queensland, and we both love the same music, that kind of late ’70s punk, post-punk stuff,” says Steve.

“We also bonded over pinot noir, and we used to joke about the fact that one day, when we’re both grown up, we should get a vineyard together. It was just one of those random statements.”

After Brad sold Stone & Wood to Lion in 2021, he rang Steve and told him to start looking for a site. “I was like, ‘seriously?’,” says Steve. “And he went ‘yeah, let’s do it’.”

While looking around at vineyards in Tasmania for Giant Steps, where he still consults, and tipped off by Liam McElhinney from Tasmanian Vintners, Steve landed on a little site in Tea Tree, not far from the Tolpuddle and Stargazer vineyards.

“I rang up Brad and said, ‘look, this is weird, mate, but I think I might've found the vineyard’. He goes, ‘oh great, where? In the Yarra Valley?’ And I said, ‘it's actually in the southern part of Tasmania’. He's like, ‘okay’. It seemed like a pretty safe place to invest in a vineyard together and grow pinot.”

They called it Decades, after the Joy Division song. “Then we started thinking about all the other little synergies. We’d known each other for three decades. The vineyard was decades old. And the song, it’s one of those songs that just drags you in.”

Of the 30ha of land they purchased, which has uniform soils of black cracking clay over calcareous limestone, just two hectares were under vine. They’ve since planted another seven hectares, mostly to pinot noir, adding clones of 667, Pommard, 943, 828, MV6 and 115 in blocks to the existing plantings of 114, 115 and Mariafeld. “Each particular parcel should produce three or four tonnes of fruit, so, there'll be lot to play with there,” Steve says.

“The surprise was that the vineyard also grows really interesting chardonnay, too,” he adds. “We were just going to grow pinot, but there were a couple of rows of chardonnay that made lovely wine, so we persevered with that as well.” Just over a hectare in total is planted to chardonnay, and the vineyard is managed by viticulturist Paul Laing, who previously owned the site and still has a neighbouring vineyard.

The first Decades wines – a pinot noir and a chardonnay – were made in the 2023 vintage and released last year. The 2024 vintage wines hit shelves last Sunday afternoon.

With at least three or four, even five, years to wait until the new plantings come online, fruit for now comes exclusively from the original 30-year-old vines, which limits production (just 740 cases were made in total in 2024). Steve’s still not sure how the new fruit will shape the wines in the future.

“We’ve got a couple of years to get our shit together, but Decades, the actual label, will be reserved for the really premium stuff.”

See how Dave Brookes scored the 2024 Decades release below.  

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