Steve Lubiana

Coming Up

In Granton, Tasmania, Australia, at Stefano Lubiana, Steve Lubiana built his reputation on refusing the easy scale-up. The work was set up for premium wine rather than bulk production, with sparkling wine given particular weight from the start. As Lubiana put it, “I didn’t want to make bulk wine, I wanted to do premium wine… especially sparkling.” The line is plain, and so is the method behind it: deliberate decisions, no excess, and the patience that serious wine work demands. Since 1990, Steve Lubiana has held the roles of vigneron and proprietor at Stefano Lubiana, while also serving as winemaker of Stefano Lubiana Wines. That continuity matters in winegrowing because it keeps vineyard and cellar under one set of hands across seasons. With Lubiana, the role is not just administration or label ownership; it is long-term responsibility for how the estate speaks in bottle.

Where They Are Now

The vineyard still sits ahead of the cellar in Steve Lubiana’s method. If a wine needs more acidity, the answer is not to reach first for additive correction. As Lubiana said: “We’d taste the wine and think this may need more acidity, but we don’t go: ‘Let's add tartaric to it’. We go back to the vineyard and find how we improve acidity; how do we get acidity in that wine… in the vineyard!” That is a working rule, not a slogan: solve the problem at the source, in the vines that made the wine. That approach gives the wines their internal logic. Vineyard decisions and cellar decisions are linked, and the cellar does not flatten what the site has already established. The result is a measured rhythm of work in which balance and precision are built in, not layered on after the fact.

Signature

Steve's signature wines include Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir and Sasso Pinot Noir. Together, they show the line he has kept to: wines shaped by site, handled with restraint, and marked by consistency rather than volume.

In Their Words “We’d taste the wine and think this may need more acidity, but we don’t go: ‘Let's add tartaric to it’. We go back to the vineyard and find how we improve acidity; how do we get acidity in that wine… in the vineyard!” “I didn’t want to make bulk wine, I wanted to do premium wine… especially sparkling.”