Global award for Australian fizzicist

House of Arras winemaker Ed Carr

House of Arras winemaker Ed Carr was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships in London for his contribution to the development and success of the sparkling wine industry.

Carr was the only non-Champenois winemaker to receive the award; an important recognition of the quality of wines from the House of Arras, which sources all its fruit from Tasmania.

Carr said it was a great honour to receive the award among his peers at the ceremony.

“Getting up on stage to accept this particular award is extremely special because to me, it represents the pinnacle of recognition for our wine quality that we could scarcely envisage back in 1995," Car said. "That's why this is so immensely gratifying and exciting.”

House of Arras was started in 1995 as a project to develop a world-class Australian sparkling wine.

By 1998, it was decided that fruit for these wines would be sourced entirely from Tasmania.

Over the past 23 years, this concept has evolved to a range of traditional method sparkling wines based on the concepts of Tasmanian origin and winemaking that includes extensive maturation on yeast lees.

“As we have progressed on this journey with House of Arras, we became increasingly amazed at the longevity of the wines, and are now at a point where we can fully express this age with our current release labels," Carr said.

“Personally, it is extremely satisfying to craft such premium wines and I look forward to releasing future wines which will further express our ever growing resource and expertise of sparkling winemaking.”

Carr is Australia's most decorated sparkling winemaker with more than 34 years’ experience in the Australian wine industry.

Starting at Accolade Wines in 1994, his unmatched expertise in the Australian sparkling wine scene has resulted in the highest accolades at both domestic and international wine competitions. Since its inception, House of Arras has won 86 trophies and 225 gold medals on the wine show circuit.

He has also been crowned Winemaker of the Year twice; once by Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine and the Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology.

The CSWWC is one of the most respected, comprehensive and rigorous international sparkling wine competitions in the world, judged exclusively by renowned fizz experts Tom Stevenson, Essi Avellan MW and Dr Tony Jordan.

www.champagnesparklingwwc.com. You'll find my review of the Arras EJ Carr 2004 Late Disgorged here: https://tasmanianwineonline.blogspot.com/2018/10/arras-2004-ej-carr-late-disgorged.html