Back in 1998, Ashley Huntington landed himself one hell of a job. The qualifi ed winemaker, who originally hails from regional Victoria, took up the position of senior winemaker at Hardy’s La Baume winery in the south of France. Life, you would think, could hardly get any better.
“I don’t actually know of another international Australianowned wine business that could off er that sort of experience at a senior managerial level, in an area that produces nine per cent of the world’s grapes,” Ashley says. “And we were living in some of the most extraordinarily beautiful countryside imaginable, with a unique chance to be part of a community and gain a much deeper understanding of another culture and people.”
But six years and seven vintages later, Ashley and his wife Jane decided that it was time to establish their own business. And as far as they were concerned, there was only one place in the world to do it. And it wasn’t the south of France.
“Before we left Australia for France, Ashley was doing a vintage at the Rochecombe winery in Tasmania,” Jane explains. “It was then that we caught the bug and identifi ed southern Tasmania as a fantastic place to grow things. When the decision was made to leave France, we set about looking for an agricultural property, and we found what we were looking for in the Derwent Valley.”
Ashley and Jane are fervent believers that southern Tasmania has the potential to produce distinctive wines of international class. But on their arrival in the Derwent Valley in 2004, with daughters aged three and fi ve in tow, their path took a decidedly unexpected turn. With the crowded market of vineyards and small wineries around Australia representing a challenging prospect, the couple perceived an opportunity to do something diff erent and very exciting – with beer.
“I was fascinated by beer as a small business opportunity,” Ashley recalls. “In Europe I had become acquainted with styles and regional interpretations of beer that were far more winelike than the beverage as represented in Australia. It’s a very monotonous, industrial beverage here, made almost exclusively by corporate giants in monolithic factories. There seemed to be an opportunity to interpret beer, which in its own way is capable of all the aromas and colours of wine, on a small scale.”
Certainly, they were in a very good place to do it. The Huntington’s property is a stone’s throw across the Derwent River from the Bushy Park hop fi elds, where 90 per cent of Australia’s hops is grown. And determined to maintain a focus on a purely regional product, Ashley and Jane did something rather original. They decided to grow their own grain and establish a farm-based brewery, basically applying the vineyard model of winemaking to the brewing of beer. Of course, to a seasoned vigneron, it made perfect sense. There was just noone else in the world that was doing it.
“Beer has lost its link with the land,” Jane off ers, by way of explanation. “It’s easy to forget that it is, after all, an agricultural product. Also, hops have long been bred with only bitterness in mind. We are keen to bring back old heritage varieties and make beers big on fl avour and aroma. There is, we think, a gap there in the market.”
The key to this is a focus on ‘real ale’ – bottle-fermented beer, which leaves the yeast sediment to settle on the bottom of the bottle. The beer is handmade and unfi ltered, in a process the Huntingtons say is a little like making champagne. “With champagne, you make a base wine and then re-ferment it,” Jane explains, “and that’s how we get the bubble in our ale. We don’t make beer and artifi cially gas it. The natural fermentation process gives the beer a soft sparkle rather than the gassy soda-streamtype eff ect of the fi zzy lagers we’ve all grown used to.”
The result of all this is the Two Metre Tall Company – the name being a nod to Ashley’s height. It made its fi rst brew in 2006, with four varieties of real ale. A break in production followed, in order to allow Ashley and Jane to convert their shearing shed into a new brewery that will turn out the brand new brews of 2009.
Firmly settled in their new home, the Huntingtons have no regrets about leaving the world-renowned countryside of southern France behind. Comparing their last two homes is perhaps a little like comparing a vintage fi ne wine with a fl avoursome real ale, but Jane is not too shy to express her opinion.
“I’d say it’s superior here,” she says. “The majesty of it, and the diff erence in density of population is something that I adore. I love the fact that our girls can walk to school and are out running on the green grass looking out over the River with Mount Field off in the distance. I wouldn’t live anywhere else now – we’re here forever.”
Australian beer connoisseurs, no doubt, will drink to that.

For more about the Two Metre Tall Company, visit: http://2mt.com.au.