Gardners Bay: Wine and Heritage

Gardners Bay brings together winemaking, heritage and views of the Hartz Mountains and the surrounding hills. The town is worth exploring if you want your trip to include not only a tasting but also the landscape and history. Two wineries offer different experiences: Hartzview Vineyard offers tastings and a range of wine categories, while Two Bud Spur focuses on meeting the winemakers and sampling wines from the current range. There is also a self-guided walk to restored fruit pickers’ huts.

Wine with a view of the Hartz Mountains

At Hartzview Vineyard, you can look out over the Hartz Mountains and the surrounding hills. The cellar door offers tastings and the opportunity to buy cool-climate table wines, fortified fruit wines and liqueurs. These categories offer different options for wine enthusiasts: you can plan your visit around the kind of drink that interests you most. The landscape provides a distinctive backdrop, making Hartzview a destination where the wine and its setting are equally in focus.

Meet the winemakers and taste wines at Two Bud Spur

Two Bud Spur is a boutique vineyard in the centre of Gardners Bay in the Huon Valley. The straw-bale winery is environmentally friendly; its cellar door is open on summer weekends and at other times by appointment. As visiting arrangements may change, check in advance. At Two Bud Spur, you can meet the winemakers, learn more about their work and taste wines from the current range. This makes for a different kind of wine visit from Hartzview, with the focus on talking with the winemakers and sampling their current wines.

Gardners Bay Distillery also offers a hands-on insight into beverage production: for distillation, it uses purified and filtered rainwater collected from the family property in Gardners Bay, in the Australian state of Tasmania. The water’s origin adds a distinctive production detail to the area’s wine offerings.

Seven fruit pickers’ huts and their history

Another side of the town is revealed at the heritage-listed Hartzview Vineyard Pickers Hut Village. Located in Gardners Bay, it offers a self-guided discovery walk to seven different restored small fruit pickers’ huts. The huts give the walk a clear focus: here, the heritage of the fruit pickers’ huts takes centre stage, rather than wine tastings or meeting winemakers.

Their history also includes their use during the Second World War: some of the huts housed Italian prisoners of war. This historical layer adds to the experience of seeing the restored buildings and makes the walk interesting for travellers who want to learn about a place’s history. It is important to note that only some huts were used this way; this historical use does not apply to all seven.

Gardners Bay as a place to look for a holiday rental

When choosing a holiday rental, it helps to consider what you want to focus on during your stay. Wine tastings and conversations with winemakers offer a different experience from a self-guided walk around a heritage-listed group of huts. If you plan to visit Two Bud Spur, keep in mind that it is open on summer weekends and at other times by appointment.

Discover more destinations

Discover more destinations: Plenty, Falmouth, Pipers River, Tea Tree, Ulverstone, St Helens, Woodbridge, Austins Ferry

For the broader travel overview: Tasmania.