The Taste of Tasmania food festival in Hobart

The 18th annual Taste of Tasmania was held at Princes Wharf on Hobart’s Sullivans Cove from 28 December 2006 to 3 January 2007.

More than 250,000 people passed through the gates over the seven days, making this the largest showcase of food and wine in Tasmania. They sampled everything from gourmet cheeses and hand-crafted wines to espresso coffee and berry desserts at 71 stalls. There were ten new stalls at the event and Persian, Indian vegetarian and Spanish dishes were offered for the first time, as were the wines of new and little-known producers like Nandroya, Hillwood, Bishops, Bellingham, Josef Chromy and Drew.

On average each stallholder served 600 dishes a day and 13 tonnes of food and 350 cases of wine were part of the daily delivery to the venue.

The Taste of Tasmania is a key event in Hobart’s Summer Festival. It offers free admission, live performances and a New Year’s Eve fireworks display.

Attendance at the Taste of Tasmania festival was well up on previous years. Surveys showed that, on average, people attended the event around 2.5 times, with many coming every day. The food festival is obviously popular with the locals but, coinciding as it does with the end of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, a variety of international accents and languages can be heard in the crowd.

Hobart’s Summer Festival producer, David Laskey, encouraged those in a position to promote local produce to apply to be stallholders next year. “What is vital is that any prospective operator’s stall uses and promotes Tasmanian produce,” he said.

The Taste of Tasmania is an established celebration of the lifestyle that the island has to offer.

There was a record crowd for the 2007 Taste of Tasmania
food festival in Hobart. ©T CHANGE