Marion's Vineyard celebrates 40th anniversary of opening its cellar door

That was until Marion and Mark Semmens began selling wine and offering tastings from their vineyard's doorstep one winter afternoon.

The Deviot vineyard 40 years anniversary since becoming the first winery in the state to officially sell from its property's cellar door this month.

Marion's Vineyard - which began planting in the late '70s - was one of the wine regions first to bottle its produce on site and sold Tasmania's first bottle from a cellar door, a cabernet sauvignon, on July 26, 1983.

Mrs Semmens, the winery's matriarch and a born Cypriot who grew up in Melbourne, reflected on selling the first bottle as a culmination of her and her late American husband's shared dream as young travellers in the 1970s.

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"My husband and I met on the SS Canberra," Mrs Semmens said.

"He was travelling to Australia, I was coming back from time in the United States - I had decided I wanted to live in California.

"When he went back, I stayed while I waited for my visa and he sent me a letter in Greek to propose. He went to a restaurant and asked them to write it; I don't think he ever knew what it said, but it worked.

"Him growing up in the Bay Area and me falling in love with Napa Valley, we wanted to start a vineyard ourselves.

"It was all those things that every little Cypriot girl wants to do."

The couple, on a trip home to see family in Australia in the late 1970s, went on a fortuitous holiday to Tasmania where they would eventually settle.

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Travelling with their young family, they came upon the future site of Marion's Vineyard - at the time a "goat track" of an orchard filled with brush and rocks.

"We told the people who owned it: 'We're gonna start a vineyard and have a cellar door and have music events and all the things that we're used to in California'," Mrs Semmens said.

"And we did."

Years of hard work followed to transform the vineyard, and planting its first crop in the early '80s thanks to funding from odd jobs and building much of the vineyard's infrastructure by hand, the first bottles were produced.

"We applied for a licence and the licensing board was so impressed that someone wanted to start a cellar door," Mrs Semmens said.

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"They told us we could sell our wine wherever you want on our property day and night."

The couple had brought the idea for a cellar door over from the United States - although it had been employed on mainland Australia - and the first cabernet sauvignon was sold for $10 Australian dollars on June 26, 1983.

Mrs Semmens saved the bottle's label, glueing it and the ten dollars to a post above the cellar door.

"You never give away your first dollars," she said.

In years since, the vineyard has evolved, now being run by Marion and Mark's children, Cynthea and Nick Semmens.

What hasn't changed is what Marion calls the "magic".

"It's a beautiful place; It's got this magic about it," she said.

"It's got a soul of its own and people, before we did a lot of infrastructure, felt that magic still."

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