Why food lovers are taking this delicious detour in Tasmania

Fast forward 40 years and the Dornauf family is still dairying, but the berry patch is now the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm, producing hundreds of tonnes of fruit annually, with an attached 155-seat cafe.

These 22 hectares of berries are just one small piece of a band of volcanic soil that stretches across northern Tasmania. Rich, red and full of goodness, it's helped foster Tasmania's reputation as a food producer par excellence, and helped Launceston become one of only 57 global UNESCO Cities of Gastronomy. It's also the red carpet along which the Tasting Trail Tasmania makes its way, tastebud by tastebud, across the state's north-west.

The trail is a driving degustation, with 44 food and drink producers dotted along its course. My journey along it begins outside of Deloraine at the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm and by the time I reach Stanley, near its far end, it'll come to feel appropriate that the fishing town's major landmark - the Nut - is named like a food.

"The challenge has always been to get people to come off the ferry [in Devonport] and turn right," says Scott Dornauf, Jenny's grandson, general manager of the raspberry farm cafe and chair of the Tasting Trail committee. Tasmania's north-west is often overlooked by visitors in their haste to be elsewhere, but the Tasting Trail is as good a reason as any to indicate right rather than left in Devonport.

Overseeing a busy holiday lunch sitting at the cafe is Scott, one of four brothers born to the dairy farm and the only one now not farming. Berries feature in subtle ways in about half the cafe's dishes - a house-made raspberry vinegar hollandaise on the eggs Benedict, a smoky raspberry BBQ sauce on the steak sandwich - and, naturally, in almost every dessert in more prominent ways.

The cafe is one of the trail's more prominent stops, sharing a busy 40-kilometre stretch of the Bass Highway with Van Diemens Land Creamery, Ashgrove Cheese and Anvers Tasmania. It's when you get beyond the highway, however, that the Tasting Trail really gets personal.

"I think people now want to get close to their produce and food," Scott says, and this is a trail where you can sample chocolate made from the world's rarest cacao beans, dig with the dogs at a trio of truffle farms, and wander through the angel's share of a distillery barrel room. But ultimately the Tasting Trail's produce comes to be nurtured as much by stories as the fertile soils and the world's cleanest air that blows over the region.

Often the person you meet at the farmgate or cellar door is the very person who produced the food or drink you're sampling. It might be an accountant and event manager turned vignerons, or vets turned cheesemakers. Or, in the case of Plump Berries, it's a structural engineer and law lecturer turned fruit liqueur distillers, drawn to the area by the loamy red earth.

"That's what's brought us here," says Plump Berries co-owner Olivia Rundel. "I wanted some of that soil."

To find Plump Berries, you have to seek it out, hidden among beef and potato farms, with Mount Roland rising craggily above and Lake Barrington pooled below. Were it not among a small cluster of Tasting Trail stops - Plump Berries, the Truffledore and House of Hargraves wines - it might rarely be found.

"Probably one-third of our visitors last year came here after going to the Truffledore," Olivia says. "The Tasting Trail has been great for us."

One of the region's newest producers, Plump Berries operates as a pick-your-own berry farm, but it's Aaron Powell's distilling of the fruits that sets it apart.

From a tiny still - "probably the smallest legal distillery in the country", Aaron says - he turns an array of berries into liqueurs sold exclusively through Plump Berries' farm shed turned cellar door.

Flavours change according to the patch's output and Aaron's whims, but a couple of things are certain: book a tasting and you'll be served by Oliva or Aaron, and every ingredient in the liqueurs, barring the sugar, has come from the property.

"We call it single origin," Olivia laughs.

For most visitors, a drive along the Tasting Trail might involve only a handful of stops, but the producers' flavours and food regularly entwine, creating a sense of cross-pollination and culinary camaraderie. It's evident at Ghost Rock Wines, where ingredients from around seven Tasting Trail producers appear on the restaurant menu. It's evident also at Anvers, where Belgian-born chocolatier Igor Van Gerwen uses plentiful local produce in his chocolates, including from Tasting Trail members such as Hazelbrae Hazelnuts, Hellyers Road Distillery and Christmas Hills berries.

But the star ingredient at this chocolate factory is Fortunato No. 4, a cacao bean from Peru thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 2009. Only about 40 chocolatiers around the world have access to it. Anvers is the only one in Australia.

Anvers' own product makes it into other menus and recipes along the trail, including a black ale brewed by Railton-based Seven Sheds, one of seven craft breweries that can turn the Tasting Trail into a hoppy hop.

Wineries are just as abundant. Though overshadowed by the nearby Tamar Valley, the north-west is dotted with vineyards. At Eastford Creek Vineyard, one of Tasmania's youngest wineries, the trail's personal touch is exemplified. Visit almost any day and you'll be greeted by Rachel and Nick Turner, cellar door managers and daughter and son-in-law of property owners Rob and Sue Nichols.

In 2018, the Sassafras vegetable farmers turned one of their least productive cropping slopes into 12 hectares of vines. Inside an amphitheatre-like slope of grapes is the property's 130-year-old granary and dairy, transformed three years ago into Eastford Creek's rustic cellar door.

Under winemaker Andrew Gaman, the vineyard is one of the few in Tasmania producing gamay, and tastings can be accompanied by seasonal platters.

"We have some people who come every season for the platter," Nick says. "It's platter bingo."

Eastford Creek isn't the only Tasting Trail producer to find change in grapes. At La Villa Wines, a stray piece of Italy seemingly transplanted to Tasmania, third-generation apple and pear farmer Marcus Burns, noting the orchard's ageing trees, diversified into vines 15 years ago.

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Growing what Marcus believes to be the world's southernmost nebbiolo and savagnin vines, La Villa's cellar door sits wrapped inside the vines and the remaining orchard. Cypress trees and wrought-iron gates announce the cellar door with its terracotta roofing and Bologna-style porticoes and arches, inspired by Marcus and wife Gail's years living near Bologna when Marcus was racing for an Italian cycling team in the early 1980s.

"Quite often we'd see these sorts of buildings in the middle of pasture in Emilia-Romagna," Gail says. "We thought of that when we were planning a cellar door."

For Meander Valley Vineyard, a 40-minute drive away near Deloraine, the change for owner Jade and Bron Nicholls was even more stark.

In 2021, the couple made the snap pandemic decision to give up their careers in accounting and event management in Melbourne to purchase the boutique winery. They now produce Australia's only baco noir, a wine variety more commonly grown in Canada, but it's seeing visitors roll in from the Tasting Trail that gives Bron, the face of the newly refurbished cellar door, the greatest pleasure.

Meander Valley's wines are almost exclusively available at the cellar door, and two glamping tents with decks and outdoor baths looking over the vines will open in early 2025. In summer, there's live acoustic music and wood-fired pizzas (including one featuring produce predominantly from the Tasting Trail), with beanbags spilling onto the manicured lawns.

"So many people say, 'oh yeah, we're following the Tasting Trail map, where should we go next?'," Bron says. "We really love it. It gets people to out-of-the-way places."

Driving on, skirting coastal towns such as Ulverstone and Penguin, the Bass Highway guides my journey west. Past Wynyard, the land flattens, the grass greens and I'm engulfed by some of Australia's best dairy country - the Circular Head region at Tasmania's north-west tip produces around 50 per cent of the state's milk. It's a rightful home for La Cantara Artisan Cheeses.

The final stop west on the Tasting Trail, La Cantara isn't far from the remote coastal point known locally as the Edge of the World, and for Genaro and Rosselyn Velasquez, it must have felt like it.

The Venezuelan vets arrived in Australia in 2014 and found their way to Tasmania's north-west as share farmers. In 2019, they leased a robotic dairy at Smithton's edge. With no background in cheesemaking, they set about turning the milk from their herd of 90 cows into cheese.

"We knew how to make Venezuelan cheeses, but they were very basic," Genaro says. "Our original plan was to just do Venezuelan cheeses, but that was because we didn't really know much about other cheeses."

Today, visitors can tour the dairy, where the Velasquez's cows wander in and out of the milking shed at will as the cheesemaking goes on in the small factory and maturing rooms around them.

Tours conclude with tastings in the nearby Smithton visitor centre, sampling cheeses inspired by Venezuelan and Spanish cheesemaking traditions, including one rubbed with olive oil, smoked paprika and ground pepper, and cheeses soaked in Tasmanian wine and Venezuelan rum.

"We wanted to do something that would encourage people into the area," Genero says, and it does indeed feel like yet another reason to turn right instead of left out of Devonport.

Even as you graze your way along the Tasting Trail, you'll want to stop at some point for a meal. Here are four excellent choices.

Pam's Bottles and Cups: The bright bubble-gum colours are a breezy welcome to this tiny diner-cum-wine-bar in Devonport's lanes. The $45 Feed Me menu is absurdly good value. pamsbottlesncups.com.au

Ghost Rock Wines: After a wine tasting, walk a handful of steps to Ghost Rock's excellent, produce-driven restaurant looking over the vines to Bass Strait. There's accommodation at the stylishly designed three-bedroom Vineyard House beside the cellar door. ghostrock.com.au

Communion Brewing Co: On a fine day, the windows fold back and the sea breezes blow in at this craft brewery inside one of Burnie's first car-dealership buildings. There are burgers, wings and parmies, and Communion donates 100 litres of water to a charity for every beer sold. communionbrewing.com.au

Hursey Seafoods: Unpretentious and unadorned, this Stanley restaurant is all about fresh seafood - the catch needs only cross the road from Hursey's own fleet of nine fishing boats. hurseyseafoods.com.au

Getting there: The Spirit of Tasmania car ferry sails daily between Geelong and Devonport. Qantas also flies to Devonport from Melbourne.

Touring there: The Tasting Trail Tasmania website includes detail of the trail's producers, with a detailed map. Held on the weekend of April 11-13, TrailGraze brings the likes of special chef dinners and producer workshops to Tasting Trail stops.

Explore more: tastingtrail.com.au; trailgraze.com

Additional photography: Tourism Tasmania

The writer travelled courtesy of Tasting Trail Tasmania.