Three of Campbell Mattinson’s images have been shortlisted in the World Food Photography Awards 2026 – the world’s premier food/wine/drinks photography competition. Campbell Mattinson received this news while shopping for peanut butter at his local supermarket and, immediately, fell to the floor right there and then – which turned out to be fortuitous in itself, because he saw on the bottom shelf a butter that he’d never before bought/tried, (Fix & Fogg Everything Butter), and which he has subsequently come to enjoy (too) frequently.

Mattinson’s three shortlisted images are variations on the images included on this page. The above image – of model Shin Yie Mon – has been shortlisted in the Food Influencer section. The image itself was accidental: the idea was to create a vibrant, poppy, 70s-ish theme image on a bright summer’s day, featuring a pastel-coloured ice-cream. The original idea was well executed but the above image jumped out for its difference. The image is titled It’s Cold At First but it’s also possible that Shin Yie’s facial expression is a reaction to the fact that she’d accidentally stuck her nose into the ice-cream. Haven’t we all. Mattinson said, “I sometimes wish I could stick my whole head into an ice-cream.”

Mattinson’s second shortlisted entry was also in the Food Influencer section for his simple shot of a cup of coffee sitting in the early morning sun. Indeed this image is titled Morning Sun. The image is pictured below. Mattinson, a wine critic, is better known for being under the influence than as a a Food Influencer, but “credit doesn’t come my way too often these days, so I’ll take whatever I can get!” (Mattinson said).

Mattinson’s final shortlisted entry is a colour version of his image of Georgian winemaker Iago Bitarishvili (black & white version below). This image was created for the article here, and has been shortlisted in the Louis Jadot Wine Photographer of the Year – People section. Mattinson titled this image Natural Born Pillar, in reference to Iago’s (high) standard in the Georgian wine community.

“I’d like to crack a half-funny here but the truth is, I’ve been dedicated to photography for a large number of years and a bit of recognition is not just humbling, it’s touching. Also, I love the image of Iago. I mean, I loved him, and I love the shot. So I’m super happy that this image in particular made it through.”

The complete gallery of shortlisted entries in the World Food Photography Awards 2026 is available to view here.

Campbell Mattinson is available as a photographer for hire. Go to the Contact page or see more work at Mattinson Photography.

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• Grange La Chapelle 2021 was the first time Penfolds’ flagship Grange shiraz had ever been blended with another producer’s wine — a 50/50 mix of French Syrah from Domaine de La Chapelle (Hermitage, Rhône) and Australian Shiraz from Grange vineyards (Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley). This 2022 release is the second in this new (controversial) luxury line.

• The Grange La Chapelle project stems from a long-standing friendship between Penfolds’ Chief Winemaker Peter Gago and La Chapelle’s Caroline Frey.

• The inaugural 2021 Grange La Chapelle vintage was globally unveiled in Paris (Monnaie de Paris) on 9 February 2025. The 2022 was shown more widely to media around the world.

• Quantities of the 2022 Grange La Chapelle are extremely limited — only very small allocations worldwide, with select sales through hand-selected merchants and direct to consumer channels in Australia and the USA.

• Grange La Chapelle 2021 introduced Paul Jaboulet’s classic La Chapelle Hermitage to American oak for the first time. This 2022 continues this theme.

• Grange La Chapelle 2021 introduced Penfolds Grange to French oak for the first time.

• Grange La Chapelle is aimed at collectors of luxury items.

• Campbell Mattinson scores the 2022 Grange La Chapelle 97/100, noting “The length of the palate is exceptional, the aftertaste is so minerally, so rock-strewn. It feels as though there’s some alcohol warmth but otherwise this wine is not short of magnificence.”

Maybe it’s because of the disastrous financial performance of Penfolds’ mothership company, Treasury Wine Estates (the TWE share price is now two-thirds lower than it was three years ago, from AU $15 to AU $5). Maybe it’s to help bring in some much-needed cash following the two billion dollar gross overspend on American wine assets Daou and Frank Family Vineyards. Or maybe it’s just so that it can be poured at the upcoming Wine Paris 2026 and, with a bit of luck, have some fresh new scores out of 100 to brag about. But whatever the reason, Penfolds has rushed the second release of its Grange La Chapelle wine to market – ahead of its own embargoed schedule – and suddenly released the latest edition of its most controversial wine.

The $3500 Grange La Chapelle 2021 has now been followed by the $3500 Grange La Chapelle 2022 (2600 euro). As with the 2021, the 2022 is a 50/50 blend of 100% shiraz from each producer. The wine is matured in a combination of new American oak (Grange) and new/used French oak (La Chapelle). The La Chapelle component is of course from the Hill of Hermitage in the Rhone, France, while the Grange component is from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra, in Australia.

Accompanying this 2022 release is a press release that’s littered, arguably appropriately, with a set of fanciful quotes that say a lot without saying anything. Penfolds winemaker Peter Gago said, “If 2021 introduced Grange La Chapelle then 2022 welcomes La Chapelle Grange – interchangeably, assuredly, sensitively, convincingly.”

La Chapelle winemaker Caroline Frey said, “Grange La Chapelle is a conversation between two hemispheres. With this second vintage, building on the foundation laid in 2021, the identity of the wine is firmly established, carried by the singularity and magic of the 2022 vintage.”

Peter Gago said, “The right things happened at the right times across the two disparate growing seasons. This 50:50 blend has woven a majestic Syrah/Shiraz exemplar. One for the ages.”

The press release itself – more coherently – says, “Embodying Australian boldness and French finesse, Grange La Chapelle 2022 is a wine that speaks two languages fluently yet tells one compelling story.”

That compelling story is that a market exists for exclusive wine play things, and so exclusive wine play things must be concocted. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

The 2022 Grange La Chapelle was shown to Australian wine media at the general Penfolds tasting held on a cold, wet day in Adelaide in the middle of 2025. Any note on this controversial wine has been embargoed since. It was served that day as wine umber 20 of 23 wines. Penfolds Grange 2021, that day, was served as wine thirteen.

Straight from my notebook:

Penfolds Grange La Chapelle 2022

The first words to come to mind: it’s noticeably and impressively harmonious. It has melded. Plums, black cherries, cream, flings of aromatic herbs but not exaggeratedly so. Aromatically there’s a pan juices note, like roast lamb and rosemary. The palate itself has a gentle saltiness. The finish is creamy but also spicy, peppery, earthen and herbal; it’s fine-grained, and in both sensation and in shape it has a feel of difference to the other Penfolds wares. The length of the palate is exceptional, the aftertaste is so minerally, so rock-strewn. It feels as though there’s some alcohol warmth but otherwise this wine is not short of magnificence. It’s arguably a better wine than 2021 Grange, or it is if intrigue is a measure you value.

97/100.

More Penfolds content here.

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Few things in our lives have quite the power to unhinge us quite like a telephone call. The best moments of my life, and the worst, have often occurred down the invisible line. I thought of this yesterday, after I’d received an email from Bridget Mac, the creative force behind the esteemed wine name, Werkstatt. Bridget Mac learned recently, after she’d picked up her phone, that the prized jewel of her 2025 vintage – her 2025 Werkstatt Mount Gambier Pinot Noir – had been destroyed in a winery accident. Bridget Mac only makes one red wine each year, and this was it. The value of the loss was in the vicinity of $150,000, which for a tiny producer is a monstrous sum. Mac described herself, because of this news, as being “gutted”. The wine itself had only been collected, in tank, two days prior to the accident. It was collected in this tank because it was due to be bottled the following week. This tiny window of time was enough for an errant forklift to puncture the tank. The sight of all those litres of beautiful red wine gushing from the tank, and onto the concrete floor, was eventually mirrored by the blood rushing away from Mac’s head when she heard the news.

“The person who reversed into my tank with the forklift, called me (I was at home). I almost fainted, and needed to sit down. It was an intense feeling, learning that your work and art was on the floor, and (in the) drain of the winery.”

There’s a moment, in the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, when the character Hedda takes an unpublished manuscript – a manuscript so prized by its authors that it is described as their “child” – and tosses it into the fire of a open fireplace. There was no back-up copy. In all the books, poems, plays and scripts I’ve read in my life, that moment ranks as one of less than a handful that made me gasp out loud. I thought of this Hedda Gabler moment when I heard of Bridget Mac’s story. I’ve not met Bridget Mac. I’m not properly familiar with her wines. But something beautiful, and irrecoverable, and unique – that Bridget had invested her heart and soul into – has not only been lost, but has been taken from our experience of the world.

There is no back-up copy.

I didn’t shed at first. But then I went to the GoFundMe page that has been set up to help Bridget Mac’s wine business survive. The first words that come out of a person when they first open the vein are often the most telling. When Bridget Mac began to write for the GoFundMe site she started by saying, simply, this: “I am crippled with grief”.

This event, to get into the pragmatics, has put one of the brightest wine businesses in all of our brown land in jeopardy. Mac, who was a visual artist in Berlin for a period and who, originally, was inspired by the beauty that is great German riesling – before working, in Australia, for Lethbridge, and Jim Chatto, and Mel Chester no less – is considered one of Australian wine’s fastest risers. Very few people can make wine of such beauty that it stops people in their tracks; Bridget Mac’s Wersktatt riesling regularly has that ability. Indeed Mike Bennie, who never hands out high scores easily, has reviewed ten of Bridget Mac’s Werkstatt wines on The Winefront site over the past few years, and every single one of them has scored stellar.

“I make small batches with intense care,” Bridget Mac writes. At this point it’s worth noting that the word Werstatt translates to workshop, which to me says something of the bare exposed bones of this winemaking project. “This wine was by far the most substantial amount I have made to date, and easily the most costly to produce. I was hoping to finally break even, pay myself a wage, and share this special vintage beyond the core fans and restaurants who already love it,” Bridget Mac writes.

The GoFundMe page to help the Werkstatt winery survive is here.

The Australian wine community likes to think of itself as a generous collective soul. If ever there was a time to prove it, now is it.

The night that Peter Fraser won Halliday’s Winemaker of the Year Award – in 2015, for the 2016 edition of the book – was the night that defined the person and the legend. As a little known winemaker he had put the little known winery Yangarra on the map, and had earned this highest of acclaims in the most emphatic of ways. At times of great loss, and of great victory, there is almost always a moment, a stunning moment, when an insight into the true character of the person is afforded. Victory, and loss, are the defining moments of life, not for the victory or loss themselves, but for what they reveal. On the night when Pete Fraser received his first, great, industry-wide recognition for his winemaking prowess, he stepped up to the award’s microphone, gave thanks to the people he needed to thank, and then held the award mantle aloft and announced to the crowd: This one’s for Jeremy.

If you blinked, you missed it. Most of the crowd assembled would not have known who Jeremy was. I remember this moment though, and will never forget it, because Jeremy was Jeremy Pringle, who had lost his life suddenly and tragically the year prior. Jeremy Pringle was many grand and great things, but in wine terms he was a fringe blogger. An important and thought-provoking fringe blogger, but fringe nonetheless. The Halliday awards of course are at the centre of the mainstream. That Pete Fraser should mention Jeremy Pringle in the headspin of his most acclaimed moment spoke more in deed than any words could.

Peter Fraser, who had spent his formative years in the Army Reserve, left no one behind, and had everyone’s back. He saw you.

Yesterday, November 27, 2025, Peter Fraser, who was born in January 1974, died suddenly and tragically at his Clarendon home, in McLaren Vale.

This news does not merely sadden the Australian and world wine community. It breaks our hearts open, and sheds liquid in volume. Today, we bleed, for good, for proper, for Pete. There is shocking news and then there is news that shocks so hard that it’s hard to focus or work or walk or go on. This news of Pete Fraser’s passing is the kind of shock from which you never quite fully recover.

Peter Fraser has a partner, Tessa Hume. He has two kids. He loved horses and animals of all kinds. His best wines celebrated quietness in a way that, ironically, made us all want to shout about them.

Which, now, is what winelovers the world over, on hearing of Pete’s passing, will now want to do, from a different angle. If ever there was a day to stand on the rooftop and shout at the sky, today is that day.

Vale Pete. We loved you. We love you. We loved what you did, and who you were, and what you saw, and what you shared – at our table, and beyond.

There are eleven of Marco Lubiana’s wines reviewed on The Winefront site, dating back to the releases from the 2018 vintage. They are all either pinot noir or chardonnay, and of these eleven wines a remarkable nine of them have scored 94/100 or above. That’s a stunning hit rate, or run of form, for a new wine label – though of course, Marco is the son of Stefano Lubiana, where Marco also works, and so the vineyard sources Marco has access to theoretically include vines that were planted over 30 years ago.

Marco Lubiana’s wines, then, are grown in the Derwent Valley, on the Derwent River, on a dry, north-facing site of complex geology. Twenty percent of his latest (2024) pinot noir was grown on the new high density planting at the tough, boney, high(est) section of the Lubiana estate.

I’ve admired Stefano/Steve Lubiana’s wines since I first visited the estate in late 1999. Steve Lubiana is one of the more important producers in all of Australia: for the quality of his wines, for his leadership (among others) in the development of biodynamic viticulture in Australia, and for the way he has put the Derwent Valley on the world wine map.

But I’d never, for all this, tasted the wines of Marco – until, recently, I sat down to the Marco Lubiana Derwent Valley Chardonnay 2024, and the Marco Lubiana Derwent Valley Pinot Noir 2024.

I loved them both, mostly for their quality but also for the difference to the Stefano Lubiana wines. I’m tempted to say that there’s more of a push into the realms of the experimental with Marco, though that wouldn’t be quite fair to Steve, who has always been innovative, and has always striven for more. But Marco, as a young/new wine label, has a bit more freedom to explore.

This is evident in Marco’s 2024 Chardonnay, which is mineral and light, elegant and textural, but also has that free-flowing, unfettered feel that is often associated with the words “low fi”. It’s complex, honeyed and spicy, so there’s no shortage of flavour, but it’s a wine of such youthful good looks that it doesn’t require adornment; it tastes like a wine that’s been allowed to run barefoot through the long grass, in the most skilful of ways. Mike Bennie scored this at 95/100 on The Winefront and I’m in the same territory. It’s a belter.

I’m a sucker for whole bunch influence in certain styles of red wine – when intelligently applied – and so Marco’s 2024 Pinot Noir too is precisely to my liking. This is a sappy, sinewy, smoky pinot, high in tension and spice and also in juicy, red berried fruit. It puts on quite a show from the outset and, most importantly, keeps the party going all the way through the sinew and bone of the finish.

In short, this was my first experience of Marco Lubiana’s wines, but it won’t be my last. These are quality wines at heart, but they come with extras.

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Reviews of Marco Lubiana’s latest 2024 releases are available on The Winefront site here (subscriber).

Last month I went to a photography festival in a wine region (the Alpine Valleys). I had my photographer’s hat on rather than my wine hat, though I did visit Mayford. While I was there though I started to wonder: is this something that should be replicated in other wine regions?

Article and images here.

Campbell Mattinson travels to California to see what the Californian wine industry is doing to up its sustainability game.

Earlier this year I spent five days travelling from Los Angeles to San Fransisco – following California’s Central Coast regions – to look at ongoing efforts to make the Californian wine industry more sustainable. This was a trip about the long game rather than, so much, about the here and now. The route we took included: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria Valley, Los Alamos, Paso Robles, Santa Lucia Highlands, Monterey, San Benito County and then out of San Francisco. I’d never visited the US before. I didn’t know what to expect. From the first day of the trip I found myself quite dramatically inspired; by the end of it I was moved, such was the profound impression made by the lands we moved through, and the people we encountered. This 10-minute video gives some idea of the what, the how, and of the impact of this trip.

When Peter Dredge was seventeen years old he was resting by the side of an athletic track in Adelaide when he was hit in the head with a discus. He spent five months in hospital as a result. By the end of those five months he’d lost the hearing in his right ear, his sense of balance, and his dreams. Until that point he’d been hellbent on a career as an AFL footballer, and on studies in sports science. Both these dreams were now lost. Nearly thirty years later his school friends still describe Dredge as having been an “unbelievable athlete”. He’s over 190 centimetres tall but had played as a damaging midfielder; he was, at the time of the accident, the prototype of the future. When he was able Peter Dredge returned to school and studied his year twelve over the course of two years. These years were the dark years during which his sense of hope cast no discernible light. “I listened to a lot of morose, trip-hop music during that time,” he now says. The epicentre of this music were the bands Portishead and more especially the band Massive Attack. The epicentre of Massive Attack was the artist and band member Robert Del Naja. Del Naja paints extraordinarily emotional works in which colour feels both discordant and harmonious at once, as if the colours themselves would laugh if they weren’t crying. Del Naja himself is colourblind. Dredge’s school friends finished high school a year or two earlier than him and so by the time he was ready to step into the adult world he felt not just dreamless but empty. This is where the story of Peter Dredge stops being an unfortunate story and becomes an Australian Story. His mother had a connection to Brian Croser and in passing Croser had enquired about her son Peter’s health. In the dark recesses of Peter Dredge’s hope there was a desire to study science of the sports variety. Croser arranged for Petaluma to give him a summer job in its lab. Peter Dredge did not become a winemaker by accident. He became a winemaker by having an accident. He “inflicted” Massive Attack on the cellars of Petaluma all that first summer. Dredge himself of course could only hear the music out of one ear. Dredge is not deaf and his hero Del Naja is not blind but the existence of an impairment is a void into which the world rushes at ferocious speed. From his first days as a winemaker Dredge has been “manic in my desire to work as many harvests around the world as I can. I’ve tried to fit as many wines and as many vintages into my life as possible”. Dredge calls himself a “first generation winemaker” and when he says this he means that every inch of his wine knowledge has had to be learned, gained, fought and clawed. Nothing in wine has come to him for free. When you go to the new Tolpuddle cellar door they tell you their origin story and in it they credit Peter Dredge – who has nothing to do with Tolpuddle – as the one who steered them towards that vineyard’s magnificence. The manic aspect of Peter Dredge’s time in wine has developed a kind of spiralling aura that is part real and is part mythical. When Dredge set out to create his own wine label, ten years ago, he travelled to Bristol in the UK and bought an artwork by Del Naja and then negotiated for the right to display it on his wine labels. This artwork is from a collection known as Del Naja’s “Headz Series”. Peter Dredge, cut from the rock of a head trauma, has included an image from this Headz Series on most of the wines that he’s released under his own name since. The name he uses as his brand is the nickname he acquired at his first job post his acquired head injury. The name is Dr. Edge. It’s both a play on his name and a stab at a truth. Wine is the doctor who helped save Dredge. The edge is where Peter has lived ever since. Dr. Edge is a name that you might even laugh at, if you weren’t crying.

The wines Dr. Edge makes are, like Del Naja’s colours, both discordant and harmonious. Last weekend I tasted a good many of them, forty-six wines in total, ten years of work in the life of a man and his lands. I picked up a Riesling and wrote: Is this even Riesling? I picked up a Brut Nature sparkling wine and wrote: I am speechless. I tasted a pinot noir that had been fermented and matured in concrete only and felt as I drank it that I was holding my ear to a shell and could taste the sound of pinot waves crashing. On all three occasions it was the purity that did me in. The purity in Dr. Edge’s wines, when they are at their best, is like a scream in a dark night. There is though something other in his wines; a hand. This hand promotes the impression in the best of Dr. Edge’s wines that something that has never before been spoken is in the process of being said. It’s as if in his winemaking Dredge can hear or sense things that we can’t. His wines then plunge you into the purest of cold streams before reaching in via textures and flavours to help you out. Dr. Edge’s wines would enquire, if they could, to your son’s health. They are lithe, racy wines that feel as though they have a fitness. If Dr. Edge’s wines were footballers they would hold their shape as they ran amok on a wing. They are wines, like Peter Dredge himself, that act is if there is no time to lose. They are wines, like Peter Dredge himself, that act as if life is so fragile that you must grip it with your heart and with your sorrow and with all the broken legs and ears and arms that you have either at your disposal, or have hidden in your closet.

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Dr. Edge’s best wines are his chardonnays, and his sparkling wines, and his pinot noirs, and his rieslings. The pinot noir that was fermented in concrete only was (subscriber only) reviewed on The Winefront site in the reviews here. The Brut Nature NV was reviewed on The Winefront here, though it’s arguably a better and more compelling wine than this description implies (which Gary Walsh himself would agree with). The Riesling that rocked my world was the Dr. Edge South Riesling 2020 and then too, also, the Dr. Edge Riesling 2022. The Dr. Edge Tasmania Pinot Noir 2024 – which is the current release – may have a touch more oak than some would like but is, to me, a magnificent Pinot Noir. Gary Walsh reviewed it on The Winefront site here; I would have been (easily) a point higher.

There are 51 reviews of Dr. Edge’s wines in The Winefront archive.

I saw Georgia but for five days. I’ll love it forever, and will forever wish to return. This is a photo-essay of a brief journey into Georgian wine.
As they say in Georgia, “we are the oldest wine culture in the world, and the newest”. The former because wine has existed in Georgia for 8000 years. The latter because the wine world is still discovering its rightful place as the home and heartland of wine.

Photo Essay on Georgia is here.

The thing about elegance is that it allows you to stop and it allows you to breathe. In that sense elegance is an enabler. This thought came to me at a stand-up tasting in Tbilisi in Georgia recently, where fifteen or maybe twenty producers had a set of wines there for us to taste. I was probably twenty wines into this tasting when I stepped to the table of Ori Marani. I’ve never tasted a wine of this producer before. The first wine was called Ori Marani Canon du Coach Olympique 2024. It’s a sparkling wine made by Ori Marani’s winemaker, Bastien Warskotte, with Chinuri, Goruli Mtsavne and Shavkapito grapes. The first words of my short note were: elegance has entered the building.

It was only then that I realised that elegance had been hitherto absent. Bastien Warskotte is originally from Champagne. He makes wine in Georgia because it’s the home of wine and also because Georgia is the homeland of his partner, Nino Gvantseladze (pictured). Nino is Ori Marani’s General Manager. The other words I wrote about the Canon du Coach were: Pure, dry, tannic, intense and elegant. Savoury quaffability. It’s not going to change your life but it is a ripper drink.

I only tasted three Ori Marani wines but every one of them was a hit. They are made using traditional Georgian techniques but, perhaps, with a Champagne sensibility. I particularly liked the Exile on Caucasus 2023, matured in both qvevri and old oak and made with the (white) rkatsiteli grape. The 2022 of this is available in Australia so you’d imagine that this 2023 will follow. Nino described this wine as “entry level” but it presents as classier than that. Again it’s elegant. This wine gets the mix of chalk, fruit, savouriness, juice and texture so very right and does it so very well. It’s a meaty white, with fruit, with energy.

The wine that really pulled the Ori Marani room together for me though was called, I think, Demain c'edt Loin Shavkapoti 2023. I say I think because finding details on these wines is difficult (bottle below). Shavkapoti is the key word here, as it’s the grape variety. My notes say 12% alcohol, super fresh, super drinkable, frisky red, cherries with a keen savoury/spicy edge. Not stemmy. A wine for drinking not thinking in a way but so very distinctive, not to mention more-ish. The red wines of Georgia can be inky and intense but this is more lightness and verve.

It would be hard to find an individual who has had more influence over the fortunes of a nation’s wines than Georgian winemaker Iago Bitarishvili. He has, in many ways, both introduced and then carried Georgian wine in general into the hearts and minds of wine lovers the world over. He’s done this by making great, single-minded, single-vineyard wines – as deep in character and in tradition as they are in flavour – as a starting point, but also by being the first vigneron in his country to be certified organic in both the vineyard and in the winery, and then by taking his wines into the lap of the world. One hundred percent of Iago’s production is exported.

Iago’s vineyard, it’s worth pointing out, is only two hectares in size. It’s a garden vineyard, planted to 60-year-old chinuri vines. It has been suggested to Iago many times that he could increase the size of his vineyard, and therefore of his production, and that there’d be a willing market for the extra. His response? “It’s enough work already, I think.”

All of Iago’s wines are fermented and matured in buried qvevri. He makes a ‘no skin contact’ chinuri (which is still matured in buried qvevri) but in general his (white) wines include skins, stems, juice and all. Iago believes that the inclusion of skins and stems in the qvevri is important, not least because the “cap” of the ferment then sinks more more slowly through the juice of the wine – over the course of its five to seven months of maturation. “I don’t just include skins and stems for the sake of tradition,” he says.

“I always say that we mature our wines for five or six months but in 2023 it was seven months, so sometimes it’s seven. Why seven in 2023? It depends on the season, on the temperature. In 2023 there was still snow outside, so it wasn’t time to open (the qvevri).”

Iago never blends his qvevri; they are bottled (and usually numbered) separately. “The qvevri are different sizes, different microflora, different temperatures.”

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About the photos here

I visited Iago Bitarishvili at his cellar near the village of Mtskheta in the Kartli region of Georgia. I was on a trade/media trip and there were many wines (both Iago’s and five other producers) to taste through, plus of course a generous supply of cheese, fruits and breads to enjoy. The people of Georgia are nothing if not great hosts. I had probably two-minutes to problem-solve the situation and see what kind of photograph I could conjure. Iago himself is photogenic but it was the middle of the day and there were lots of people around; isolating Iago in both space and light took a bit of thought.

My first instinct was to silhouette him. Silhouetting is one of the easiest photographic techniques but in general I’m terrible at it, courtesy of the fact that I’m a slave to exposure and detail. I put the camera on burst and took about 20 shots in a hurry, and as I did I said to Iago, “I’m currently doing everything wrong, in the hope that I fluke something,” which made him smile. Here are two examples of these silhouetted shots, colour and black & white. I like the colour because it highlights the amber nature of the wine.

I then asked if we could go into his cellar. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights, but I asked him if all lights could remain off. I then asked if we could slither the front door of the cellar open a fraction, so that we could work with the shaft of light created. This created this:

And then I just stepped in closer and tried to really highlight the magic of Iago’s eyes.

For the record I was using a 24mm f1.4 lens for all these shots which, I know, is not ideal for portraits and is nuts but nonetheless I used it deliberately.

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Iago reviews here.

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I visited Georgia last week – the home and indeed birthplace of wine – and came away raving about the water.

That’s not quite true because Georgia’s wine landscape is endlessly fascinating. But I had a moment with the water – or more accurately, the mineral water – that got me quite excited.

The moment started with a mineral water made under the brand Nabeghlavi, and was prosecuted by a mineral water branded as Borjomi.

Mineral water, when I was a kid, was a bit of a thing in our family, both immediate and extended. We’d travel to Hepburn Springs in central-ish Victoria and fill up dozens and dozens of soft drink bottles with the natural mineral water that flows there, and bring the stash home. The truth is that these bottles didn’t travel so well; the water went brown and rusty if you didn’t drink it fast enough. But this water was not just water-with-a-slight spritz to it. It was water, natural, but it had a flavour to it, mineral-like.

I loved it. In hindsight it was probably a bit metallic but I loved the character of it, the other. Now in my everyday life I buy and drink a lot of water that is bottled under the name “mineral” water that is, to taste, essentially indistinguishable from soda water. There’s nothing really minerally about them. I find this perpetually disappointing, if not depressing. If I want soda water I’ll buy soda water. I want mineral water to be different.

On my first afternoon in Tbilisi in Georgia I found myself, to my shame, at a ‘tourist trap’ restaurant. I was ill, and hadn’t slept in 24 hours, and so instead of diving into the local wine culture, I instead ordered a soda water.

This order made the waitress hesitate. There was a minor language difficulty. Soda water? Yes soda water.

The bottle that she then produced was so impressively packaged that I had to check the front label to make sure that it was water and not alcohol. It was Nabeghlavi Georgian Natural Mineral Water.

It had me hooked from the first sip. It had flavour. It was soft. I took a picture of the bottle so that I wouldn’t forget its name. Nabeghlavi water is common in Georgia – it’s sourced from the Meskheti Mountain Range – but, even so, it’s a beautiful mineral water.

I wouldn’t be writing this note though if it wasn’t for the mineral water served at lunch at Wine Factory N1 in Tbilisi the next day. This was the Borjomi. There’s a still version of the Borjomi and there’s the mineral water version. Both are from the Borjomi Valley, a “volcanic spring rich in minerals”, but the still version is unremarkable. The mineral water version though is a revelation.

Oh my giddy aunt. Talk about character. Salt, chalk, chamomile tea; it’s a natural mineral water of its own design. I came across the Borjomi a few times over the course of a week and every time I thought: wow. Indeed it’s so wow that it would be polarising. Yes, a polarising water. From a natural volcanic spring.

Character in general is in plentiful supply in Georgia. Borjomi Mineral Water typifies it. I’m not sure that I’d want to drink this water every day but if I was at a restaurant and it was available, I’d drown myself in it.

The legend of the Applejack Vineyard in the Yarra Valley started in the most unlikely of ways. Indeed, it started with a stroke of bad luck. The vineyard itself was planted by Australian viticultural legend Ray Guerin in the heady vineyard-planting days of 1997, and because Guerin was involved it was planted on a perfect east-facing, steep-sided site both above the valley floor and at a density above conventional. So it had the best possible start in life – in planning and execution terms – and needless to say, given that it’s a cool site, it was appropriately planted to pinot noir and chardonnay only, and with significant clonal diversity in play.

This vineyard is cool because it’s in the Upper Yarra, or more specifically: because it’s at Gladysdale, which is nearer to the upper reaches of the river that carved the valley out. It’s often quoted that the Applejack Vineyard sits around 300 metres above sea level, but Giant Steps’ own website lists it at 180-260 metres, the range being top-to-bottom of the vineyard slope. Elevation is a quirky guide at the best of times: higher is often assumed to be cooler, but isn’t always so. In any case – and this is the important bit – if you taste through the entire range of Giant Steps’ single vineyard wines in their order of lowest (altitute) to highest (altitude), the Applejack wines sit in the middle of the range or, put differently, at neither elevation extremity.

In short, in Yarra Valley terms, Applejack is a Goldilocks site.

If you drive through this terrain or, even better, cycle through it, you’ll notice a few things immediately. It’s treed, it’s foresty, it’s undulating and, in part, it’s seriously steep. When I was at my absolute peak as a cyclist, I was a climber. All I wanted to do was to ride up hills and mountains. I weighed 58 kilograms at the time, which is 18 kilos less than now. I mention this because there was only one pitch that ever got the better of me as a climber, and lead to the ultimate shame of me getting off the bike and walking. That pitch had a gradient near 30 percent, on loose stones. It was in the Upper Yarra.

So sites around here, no matter how close they are to one another, can be vastly different in aspect and/or orientation. Gum trees can also play a key, cooling part: which is where the word Applejack comes in. It’s a beautiful, evocative word in itself, but Applejack is also a (rare) species of eucalyptus tree, unique to Victoria. Whether or not there are Applejack gums growing near the Applejack Vineyard I’m not 100% sure; it would be pretty damn special if there were.

Here’s where the legend part of the Applejack Vineyard’s story starts to form. If you ask Google, or chatgpt, or the general AI universe, to tell you what the first vintage of Giant Steps Applejack Pinot Noir was, it will spit out 2014 as the answer. This is plainly not correct. The first vintage of Giant Steps Applejack Pinot Noir reviewed on The Winefront site was 2010, and Winefront has also reviewed the 2011, 2012 and 2013 releases (and of course every vintage since, including the latest 2024). The reason AI thinks that 2014 was the first release is because Phil Sexton, who founded and was the owner of Giant Steps at the time, bought the Applejack Vineyard in 2013. The 2014 was the first with Giant Steps as the owner of Applejack, but it wasn’t the first Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot released.

Far from it. Sexton was no doubt well convinced of the quality of grapes coming off the Applejack Vineyard before this, but the events surrounding the release of the Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012 sure wouldn’t have hurt.

OK. Finally, now, we get to ground zero of the Applejack Vineyard legend. When the 2012 release – which doesn’t exist according to chatgpt, but which was made by Steve Flamsteed – was but a pup, it was entered into the Pinot Noir Class of the Melbourne Wine Show. It went through all the rigours of judging and came out on top, and was therefore awarded the mantle of Best Pinot Noir of Show. It was also awarded a special James Halliday Best Pinot Noir award, at the same show. For good measure, it won the award for Best Victorian Wine.

As great as these achievements are, they would be consigned to the realms of history if it weren’t for one little-known fact: normally, at the Melbourne Wine Show, when you win your varietal category, you then go into the judging for the Jimmy Watson Trophy, aka Australia’s most newsworthy wine prize. So when Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012 came out top in the Pinot Noir class, it was suddenly within touching distance of the Jimmy Watson Trophy itself. No Pinot Noir had ever won the Jimmy Watson Trophy at this stage, it’s worth pointing out. So it was on the cusp of history.

Or it would have been, except that it was disqualified from the Jimmy Watson Trophy judging. This disqualification was for the best possible reason. To qualify for the Jimmy, you need to have produced a minimum of 250 dozen. This rule exists so that people can actually buy the winning wine but also, to prevent producers from creating specific Made To Win The Jimmy Watson wines. That is, to win the prize, the wine has to be a genuine commercial release.

Which the Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2012 most certainly was. It’s just that, from a steep, cool site, they’d only been able to produce 100 dozen that year. So it was disqualified from the Jimmy Watson Award judging because it was the real deal, from a special place, and rare not by design, but by nature.

Talk about bad luck.

And then the Pinot Noir that had come second to the Applejack wine in the Pinot Noir class – elevated to the trophy judging so that a varietal pinot noir could still be represented – went on to win the Jimmy Watson Trophy itself, and create history. The wine that did this was Yabby Lake’s Block 1 Pinot Noir 2012 – which is a magnificent wine too.

This result meant that the winner of the Jimmy Watson Trophy that year, which was made with pinot noir, did not win its own Pinot Noir class. In 100 years time, when people look back over these results, there will be much head-scratching.

All this though, among those in the know, was enough to make people sit up and take special notice of Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir. Indeed one of the people who took notice of these events was Mel Chester, who has been the head winemaker at Giant Steps since 2021 but who was not associated with Giant Steps at the time of the events surrounding the 2012 release. But – in a beautiful irony – she was a judge at the Melbourne Wine Show that year, and had bought and followed Applejack Pinot Noir religiously between then and the time when she became its maker.

Results like this are one thing, it should be pointed out, but prosecuting them is quite something else. The legend of just how outstanding the Applejack Vineyard’s grapes are began to form courtesy of the events outlined above, but the story has really got a rev to it because of the wines this vineyard has subsequently grown. The 2023 release won Halliday Wine Companion’s Wine of the Year in 2024. Eight of the past ten releases of the Applejack Pinot Noir have scored 94 (gold medal standard) or higher on The Winefront. The past four vintages of Applejack Vineyard Chardonnay have scored 95 points or higher on The Winefront. The soil type of the Applejack Vineyard is listed on the Giant Steps website as “grey-brown clay loam”. A more potent description of this soil is, as Chester calls it, “caramel clays”, which works for its colour and evocation but also because it’s suggestive of the flow of soil in the Yarra, where both red dirt and dead grey loam sites can be found. Applejack still has some of the red in its clay, or is Goldilocks not just in elevation but in soil. I mention this only because the above results are rare air off the back of a rare patch of vineyard land.

Or, put differently: we are witness to the formation of a modern Australian wine legend.

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• The latest Giant Steps Applejack Pinot Noir 2024 has been reviewed and scored on the (subscriber) Winefront site.

• Giant Steps’ Bastard Hill vineyard is also worth reading about.

• All the 2024 wines from Giant Steps are reviewed and scored on the (subscriber) Winefront site here.

It’s not a good sign when you finally reach your destination and your wife – instantly – turns to you and says, Sorry.

And then, three hours later, she turns to you again and says, You’re a good sport.

No offence intended but the place that we had spent those mostly-lost, eyes-agog three hours – called Sun World, in the Ba Na Hills behind Danang in Central Vietnam – isn’t exactly my cuppa. After all, Sun World doesn’t just call itself a theme park, but a fairy-themed one. And yet here’s the thing: in among all the weirdness of Sun World there was a small exhibit of great intrigue.

This exhibit was a wine cellar.

FULL STORY HERE.

My Personal Top 5 Wines from the Penfolds Collection 2025 have already been listed, Penfolds Grange 2021 has been reviewed, and all the individual Penfolds 2025 wines analysed and scored to the (subscriber) Winefront site. But there’s always overview commentary around the annual release that doesn’t fit anywhere else. On the eve of the release of Penfolds Collection 2025 on August 7, here we go:

1. BABY FRENCH GRANGE
Given that Penfolds Bin 389 is the bedrock on which many Australian wine cellars have been formed, lovers of Australian red wine are well aware of both Penfolds’ prowess with the cabernet-shiraz blend, and its faith in this blend to create great, cellar-worthy red wine. The wine that jumps out of the Penfolds Collection 2025 then is FWT 543, made with cabernet and shiraz/syrah, and grown in Bordeaux and Languedoc regions of France. So Penfolds has started a journey to create a French Bin 389. The inaugural release is good but not great. Subsequent releases are likely to be better, as vineyard sources are refined. But the first wine of the Great French Cabernet Shiraz lineage has been made and (tomorrow) set loose.

2. MAGILL SHIRAZ
You’ll see a lot of high scores for the current 2023 release of Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz, rightly or wrongly. What I’m more certain of is that Magill Estate Shiraz is not the wine that it should be. One day the kind of revolution that we’ve seen with McLaren Vale grenache, and that we’re now seeing with Barossa Valley shiraz courtesy of winemakers like Agricola Vintners, Eperosa, Sami-Odi, Alkina etc and others, will come to Magill Estate, and then it will really be a single vineyard wine from the home of Penfolds worth celebrating. Penfolds has a house style that must be continued, but the small-run, small-vineyard Magill Shiraz is an exciting opportunity staring everyone in the face, as yet unrealised.

3. PUT A CORK IN IT
At the Australian media event – at Magill Estate in Adelaide – held to showcase the Penfolds Collection 2025, chief winemaker Peter Gago was briefly herded into offering an opinion on screwcap-sealed wines or more accurately, where cork-sealed wines are currently placed in terms of world preferences. Australian wine consumers do, of course, on average – quite rightly – prefer and insist on screwcap. “Cork is coming back for fine, cellared, wines,” Gago said, not wanting to make a major deal of it. “With improvements in cork yes, it’s coming back. But each market is serviced accordingly.”

4. GRANGE LA CHAPELLE
Earlier in 2025, Penfolds Grange and La Chapelle from Hermitage released a 50/50 blend of the two wines from the 2021 vintage, called Grange La Chapelle 2021. At the 2025 media tasting it was confirmed that there is a follow-up 2022 release. This second release of Grange La Chapelle has been bottled and preparations for its release are well advanced. Grange La Chapelle 2022, matured in both American (Grange) and French (La Chapelle) oak will be released in 2026.

5. 2023 VINTAGE
Many of the wines from the Penfolds Collection 2025 are from the 2023 South Australian vintage. This was a cool, late vintage as a general rule, which has produced gently reductive, fractionally more restrained wines. The results of the 2023 South Australian vintage are nothing like the 2002 and 2011 vintages, where significantly leaner-and-cooler wines were often the norm. But 2023 certainly hasn’t produced blockbusters.

6. THE BURIED VINES
This won’t be news to those familiar with growing conditions in the Chinese province of Ningxia, and it’s certainly not the exclusive practice of Penfolds or of the growers it works with. But for the second year running Penfolds has released a wine under the CWT 521 bin label (Chinese Wine Trial). CWT is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Marselan grape, the latter grown in Ningxia. Weather conditions in Ningxia in winter are so severe – often dropping well below -20°C – that, if left unprotected, grape vines would either be severely damaged, or wouldn’t survive the winter. To keep the vines alive and well-enough during winter then the vines are bent down and ‘buried’; in straw, soil or sometimes in plastic. If the CWT wine lives on to be an annual ongoing release to the point where the word Trial becomes redundant, perhaps it could be known at the Cold Winter Temperature wine.

7. THE WHITE GRANGE
When Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay was first introduced – in 1998, with the 1995 vintage – it was nicknamed The White Grange. It’s occasionally still referred to with this moniker but it’s time to bring it back, in spirit at the very least. In pure wine quality terms Yattarna Chardonnay is good as “The Red Grange” pretty much every year, and that’s definitely the case with the latest release 2023. After nearly 30 years of releases, Yattarna has well and truly earnt its stripes. Yattarna is a great Australian wine, white or otherwise.

8. PENFOLDS PINOT?
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but Penfolds Pinot Noir is never anything to write home about and yet here, with the latest 2024 release, suddenly it tastes varietal, fresh and more-ish. In the moments after I first tasted it you could have bowled me over with a screwcap. I scored it at 94/100 but really it’s probably more in the 93 or so area; I wanted to encourage it. It’s $55. It’s grown in Tasmania. It tastes like a good pinot. And it should mature OK too.

9. PRICES
Time to crunch some numbers. I made a point of looking at the RRP for each of the 22 Penfolds wines that I tasted this year, noting whether or not its asking price had changed. On 19 of the 22 wines tasted, there was no price change. That’s not unheard of but it’s also not usual. Indeed the only wines to have changed in price are Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz, which has risen from $165 to $180, and Penfolds RWT Shiraz, which has risen from $200 to $220. Penfolds FWT 585 Cabernet Blend (from Bordeaux) has gradually moved down from $125 to $100 over the past four years.

Penfolds Grange has remained static at $1000 per bottle for the past four vintages, which is the longest no-change streak since the 2008-2011 four-vintage price streak (at $785).

10. PENFOLDS ST HENRI SHIRAZ
There’s a lot of talk, a lot of tasting, a lot of debate and a lot of words written. After all that, just buy St Henri. More often that not, it’s the one. And of the red wine releases of the 2025 Penfolds Collection, the 2022 Penfolds St Henri is again the one year.

The Winefront (subscriber) site has a great collection of St Henri reviews, going way back, and is your best source of St Henri information, arguably.

 Go forth. Release date of Penfolds Collection 2025 is tomorrow (August 7).

• These are Campbell Mattinson’s personal selections of The Penfolds Collection 2025.

• I’ve been tasting the top-end Penfolds wines every year for 25 years, drinking them for 35 years, and have tasted verticals back to the 1950s.

• The surprise is that a Penfolds Pinot Noir has made it onto this list.

• These are not “the best” wines; they are the wines I would personally choose/buy.

• St Henri Shiraz is the only Penfolds wine from last year’s list to again make it onto this 2025 list.

• The Penfolds Collection 2025 is released on August 7, 2025.

Given that this is a personal selection from The Penfolds Collection 2025, and that I’ve tasted the collection in its entirety every year for nearly 25 years, and that I’ve been lucky to taste close* to every Penfolds red wine in its history, you might think that my personal selection from the 22 wines that make up this year’s collection might not change from year to year. I’ve been drinking some of these wines for 35 years and for a long time the iconic Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz was a bedrock of my personal cellar. I have my long-term favourites, you could say. And yet when I sat down to select (only) five for this year, only one of these five has carried over from my Top 5 of 2024. Penfolds is renowned for its “house style” but even so, vintage variation is real, and the stand-outs from year-to-year are different.

Nothing proves this point more starkly than the first wine in this list.

Penfolds Bin 23 Pinot Noir 2024 (AU$55)
If you’d asked me, prior to tasting any of this year’s wines, to ‘guess’ what my top five selections might be, Penfolds Bin 23 Pinot Noir 2024 would have been the last wine I would have guessed. Last by a mile. Pinot Noir from Penfolds has had its minor moments over the years but in general it’s been more of a slightly-lighter, slightly-stewier dry red style of pinot noir, sans charm. This 2024 release, made entirely from Tasmanian grapes, weighing in at 13.5% alcohol, is expressive, varietal, structured and delicious. I’m not sure what they did differently, or whether its quality is a one-off, but this is the best Pinot Noir ever released under the Penfolds name.

Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2023 (AU$220)
They don’t call it The White Grange for nothing. And in all honesty, if you’re really into the top end of the Penfolds wines or if you really want to splash out on the best of the Penfolds best, then Yattarna Chardonnay is where the smart money’s going. In my review on The Winefront I started with the words “Terrific power, concentration and length” and ended with “This is a beautiful, beautiful chardonnay. Wonderful texture, flavour, length and everything.” They’ve been making Yattarna since 1995, it now has a long, proud and glorious history, and right there in the glass, it’s the duck’s guts. It ages well too.

Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 (AU$130)
I cut my wine teeth at a time when Penfolds Bin 407 was the same price as Penfolds Bin 28, which was how they were for an era. Now that they are AU$130 versus AU$50, it hurts to still love drinking Bin 407 so much. Truth is though that Bin 407 is a much better wine, more consistently, than it once was, and this 2023 release proves this again. My description on The Winefront starts with “That beautiful combination of mint and blackcurrant, olives and cedar, woodsmoke and violets, with bay leaf and redder berried fruit notes pushing through as it breathes”, and concludes with “Penfolds at its best.”
Plus, there are just so many hits in the line of Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon releases now.

Penfolds FWT 585 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Petit Verdot 2022 (AU$100)
Given the history and classification of Bordeaux, it can be hard to know what to make of a Penfolds wine, made with Borderaux-grown grapes, matured in American oak (and French). It does your head in a bit. But over the course of tasting and re-tasting this wine, I slowly admitted to myself that I liked it very much. It's a wine of creamy, curranty flamboyance but also of rusty, ferrous character. It’s French, it’s Penfolds, it’s American oak and it works.

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2022 (AU$135)
Last year I said that St Henri Shiraz is the Betamax of the Penfolds range; it’s the alternative wine-style route that never became the main Penfolds way, but arguably should have. St Henri is not matured in new oak, is matured in large old vats, is an open expression of great Australian shiraz fruit flavour, and has an epic ability to charm the socks off you once it’s had the chance to age. Of all the wines in the Penfolds range, St Henri Shiraz is also the only one to make it into my personal list now two years in a row. The long chains of spicy tannin evident in this 2022 release; the near-exaggerated swirls of roasted spices, nuts, orange peel and leather; and the emphatic finish, all make for a fantastic edition of Penfolds St Henri Shiraz.

(If you really want a comprehensive guide to Penfolds St Henri Shiraz, subscribe to The Winefront and sink your teeth into this treasure-trove.)

These are my five personal picks of The Penfolds Collection 2025. I wasn’t tempted to put Penfolds Grange Shiraz 2021 into this list, even though it’s an excellent addition to the Grange lineage. It is interesting though to compare Grange 2021 to Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2021 – the latter of which is, despite being scored the same, the more enjoyable and indeed impressive wine.

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Penfolds Bin 95 Grange Shiraz 2021 review.
Penfolds Mattinson 10-Star Winery entry.
All The Penfolds Collection 2025 wines reviewed and rated by Mattinson on The Winefront.
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• I said above that I’ve tasted close* to every Penfolds red wine ever made. Penfolds make a lot of wines at the ‘consumer’ end of the market, every year, that never feature in these tastings, and I have unfortunately missed out on tasting many of these wines over the years. There’s the odd wine each year that is, for one reason or another, missed: the 2021 Quantum didn’t make it to my bench this year, for instance. But I have tasted the premium collection annually for close to 25 years, and I have tasted full verticals of all the major Penfolds wines, going back to the 1950s.

At the end of 2023 Treasury Wine Estates – owner of (deep breath) Penfolds, Wynns, Wolf Blass, Pepperjack, Coldstream Hills, Devil’s Lair, Seppelt, Saltram, Beringer, 19 Crimes, Castello di Gabbiano, Stag’s Leap and more – coughed up AU $1.6 billion to buy a winery that only started in 2007. As if Treasury didn't already have more wineries and wine brands than it knew how to handle.

This was either one of the strangest over-spends in corporate history or the winery, or wine brand, or wine location that it bought must be something stupendously special. From nothing other than its land value to AU $1.6 billion in 16 years is – in the wine industry, no less – an eye-watering rate of value build.

The winery that did all this value-building is called Daou. It sits atop a mountain and each morning, or most mornings, the winery staff drive into the mist at the bottom of this mountain and then wind their way up above the clouds, to where the winery, cellar door and vineyards rest. This mountain is in Paso Robles, in California, in the Adelaida AVA; it sits roughly half-way between Los Angeles and the Napa Valley, amid the Santa Lucia Mountain range, not far from the coast of the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Los Padres National Forest. If you were to stalk these Santa Lucia lands day and night you might encounter bobcats, deer, mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, elk and wild boar, for all are active in these parts, as indeed are hawks, owls and woodpeckers.

The winery is called Daou, the mountain on which this winery sits is now called Daou Mountain, and the people who established it in 2007 are brothers Georges and Daniel Daou. The Daou brothers grew up, or at least started their life, in Beirut. In 1973, during the Lebanese Civil War, a missile hit their home. This story is neither apocryphal nor near-miss; from this blast, shrapnel shot into the lungs of Georges, and put him into a coma. He stayed in this coma for two days. Daniel suffered permanent nerve damage to his face. On the events of this blast, Georges was quoted in Wine Enthusiast magazine as saying, “I went to bed as a child, but I woke as a man”.

The family fled to France and then, later, the brothers moved to the US, to San Diego, to study engineering. They did this on the last of their family’s money. This all proved to be rich fertiliser for the soil of the American Dream. They saw an opportunity in healthcare information technology. They started a company, called Daou Systems, and grew a fortune, and cashed out. From the earliest days of their early teenage years, in France, the brothers – particularly Daniel – had fostered a love of wine, vineyards and land. They built Daou Vineyards.

Atop a mountain.

And on this mountain they did not build a castle but instead built a winery and grew vines in deep calcareous clay soils, on beds of limestone; light-coloured clays that crack when it’s dry and look when they do like the rubble of a house, in there below the green leaves, just down from the fruit.

And once these vines had grown and been proven they built a wine, a flagship, a legacy. Which the brothers called Daou Soul of a Lion.

This name and this wine – made with tannic, bomb-proof cabernet sauvignon – is a tribute to their father, who got the Doau brothers out of the bombed-out house in Beirut and took them to France and made possible the dream that an Australian company named Treasury has just bought out.

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The main logo or display of the word Daou, which gets more or less elaborate depending on the tier of wines it sits on, is the one-word of Daou, written in red lettering, placed on a white-paper label. Up to the point when Treasury walked in the door Daou and Penfolds held no connection; now, on a shelf, they look like brothers.

Daou, it is said, is – according to the press release issued at the time of Treasury’s acquisition – the “fastest-growing luxury wine brand in the United States”. Treasury, it is said, has been looking for some time for an opportunity to create another Penfolds. Daou is this chosen one. Daou – who wrote, I’m told, the book on direct marketing and who understand, in the way only the new-super-rich can, the mind of the luxury market better or as well as anyone – has already conquered the luxury market of the United States. The best or most sought-after wines of America have generally, historically, been hoovered by the American market itself. Treasury wants Daou to break this historic precedent. Treasury wants Daou to be the American wine, set sail from the height of its mist-skirted mountain, that breaks the shores of the Pacific, and conquers the luxury world.

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Every year, for the past few years, the viticulturists at Daou have set clouds of lacewing insects free – using drones as their distributors – in an attempt to control, via native and natural predators, the spread of leafhopper pests. I know this because I arrived at Daou on a media tour bus one warm-but-rapidly-cooling Spring evening recently. The focus of this trip was the myriad topic of sustainability, in a Californian context. At Daou that evening we drank wine – most of which was enthusiastically oaked, shall we say, though the ‘standard’ cabernet was a gorgeous drink – and talked as a group about the birds and the bees or, more accurately in this instance, the owl boxes installed around the Doau vineyards (a barn owl family can eat up to 3000 rodents per year, according to the UC Davis) and raptor perches, both of which help keep gophers and other rodents from causing too much damage. Daou also employs bee hives and – such a cute name – ‘bug hotels’ to, again, help eliminate pesticide use. Daou has SIP (Sustainability in Practice) certification. In 2024, Daou turned over to 100% renewable power for all Daou operations – vineyards, winery, and hospitality (using both on-site solar and renewable power from the grid, with the aim to “build out” its on-site solar). Daou is in the midst of organic certification for all its estate vineyards.

There are a lot of environmental targets in both California and the world at large that are aimed at 2040 or even at 2050. Daou, the fastest-growing luxury wine brand in America, plans to be Net Zero by 2030. It’s now trialling electric tractors, driven by remote control.

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The slopes of Daou mountain are so steep, they feel powerful. It would be a good place to land a helicopter, or for mountain lions to mate, or to build a fortress. The vibe of the place is that it’s a playground for the rich, the famous, the aspirational and the arrived. The Paso Robles area, pre Daou, was largely known for its wines made with Rhone grape varieties. It still is. Daou, on its unique patch, bought in cabernet, put it on top limestone, and scooped up a pool of treasures. There’s an argument in wine, ultimately and especially at the top end, that you’re drinking a destination. The destination is, crucially, both literal and figurative. Daou is the destination. Treasury has arrived. This is where we are. A bomb blast, a story, a dream and a billion. Drink in the view.

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Footnote: Treasury Wine Estates paid AU$1.6 billion for Daou in 2023, and AU$434 million for Frank Family Vineyards in the Napa Valley in 2021. Treasury Wine Estates has therefore dropped over AU$2 billion on California wine assets in the past four years. That’s a hell of a wager in anyone’s language, or currency.

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Mattinson in California.
More Californian wine reviews from this trip here.

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Daou Soul of a Lion 2021 review.
Daou Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 review.
Daou Dessert Red 2019.

Mockingbird Hill Dr Bain Clare Valley Riesling 2024
$25, 11.5% alcohol, screwcap, Clare Valley.

There were 60 rieslings entered into the riesling category of the Royal Queensland Wine Show last week. This Clare Valley Riesling – under the name Mockingbird Hill Dr Bain Clare Valley Riesling 2024 – came out top.

It’s a wine made by the Pinnacle Drinks people, which means that it’s a wine made by and for Dan Murphy’s and BWS stores. So effectively a home brand wine has beaten the top dogs (or at least, those who entered) to take out the best riesling award at one of Australia’s premier wine shows.

That was enough for me to track down a bottle.

There’s a ‘basic’ or ‘regional selection’ Mockingbird Hill riesling, which retails for $12. The award-winning wine is $25, and carries the Dr Bain name. Dr J. W. D. Bain is believed to have planted some of the first grape vines in the Clare Valley, way back when. In any case, if you see a Mockingbird Hill riesling for $12 it’s likely that it’s not the award-winning wine.

We’re talking here about a riesling from the famed Watervale sub-region of the Clare Valley.

It’s a piercing wine, and a textural one, and a lengthy one. It’s the kind of riesling that provoked the term “line and length”. It tastes of metal, lime, lime leaf, bath salts and something floral, like lavender talc. It has a citrus-sorbet aspect; it’s ultra lively but it has that textural thing going on. I think that’s what it won; it’s not a one-trick pony. It’s citrussy side is piercing and persistent but it also has the texture to give it some presence.

I personally wouldn’t drink it right now, and not just because it’s winter. It needs another six months in the bottle to soften a fraction. It’s be excellent in summer. So pop this Mockingbird Hill Dr Bain Clare Valley Riesling 2024 on the Xmas/summer holidays wish list.

93 points.

One of the best wine moments of 2024 was when the 2022 release of Ansted & Osicka Balgownie 1970 Block Cabernet Sauvignon hit the desk. The 2024 release is now here. It seems as if, in all likelihood, we are on borrowed time with this vineyard, which makes each of these releases precious. Maybe this is the last. Maybe it’s not. If it is, it’s a mighty way to go out.

Mighty in a minor key. It doesn’t overplay anything, and yet every note is clear, deep and resonant. It tastes of currants, earths, smokes, roots and leaves; it’s sweet-fruited and savoury; it has mint top notes and licorice down below. It’s a beautiful wine, full stop, structured and generous; intent of tannin; meaningful. For now or for the long haul. It does its land, its history and itself proud. 96 points.

Paul Osicka Heathcote Grenache 2024
$35, 14% alcohol, screwcap, Heathcote.

Grenache, so the long the grape that would rush up to you at a party and lay a hard smooch on you, has taken a turn over the past decade or two and, in the process, stolen so many hearts. It has done so in the most time-honoured – but least expected – of ways: via a meaningful glance, from across a crowded room, sustained for longer than can be humanly ignored.

Grenache, at its best, is light. It has a twinkle in its eye. It speaks to the unspoken, unpopular truth that joy is better when mimed than when spoken.

In this context, Paul Osicka Grenache is a wine that I’m following, courtesy of the fact that it’s grown on a fascinating, hand-planted vineyard and that Simon Osicka is such a totemic figure in Australian wine or, at least, he is to those in the know. He’s the kind of softly-spoken bear who makes people stop, when he talks, and yearn to listen. He is, in essence, grenache-like.

To the wine in question.

It’s so light. In colour, and in weight. And yet it wants for nothing. Indeed it’s as beautiful a young red wine as you could hope to encounter, for its sheer expression, and fragrance, and joy. There’s more to wine quality, and life, than beauty, but it sure is a good thing to be around, and in this instance it’s more than skin deep. This grenache tastes of blood oranges and red cherries, fennel, roses, pomegranates and the most beguiling array of woodsy spices. It’s just so chipper. It tastes like that one essential moment of your life, probably but not necessarily in your childhood, when everything felt or seemed good, just before the wind changed. I can barely think of a better way to spend $35.
94 points.

• The first Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay was the 1995 release.

• Yattarna is known as ‘The White Grange’.

• The 2011 Yattarna Chardonnay sourced grapes from Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills.

• All French oak, 64% new.

• Yattarna translates to “little by little, gradually”, which is what the quality of Yattarna has done, consistently, in an upward direction over the years.

Fifteen years ago I sat down one evening to a meal with Peter Gago – chief winemaker at Penfolds – at the restaurant at Magill Estate on the outskirts of Adelaide. We were drinking the 2002 Cellar Release Grenache from Penfolds, I recall, among other wines. I don’t recall a lot about this dinner but I do recall that Gago, at one point, became defensive – in his unerringly affable way – about Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay, and specifically around how long Yattarna could or should be expected to perform in the cellar. His argument was that people expect too much of chardonnay. His argument was that chardonnay doesn’t demand to be cellared and that even the very best examples often aren’t genuinely long term propositions. I pushed back a little against this argument but obviously his reasoning was sound and valid. The reason that Gago’s tone was gently defensive though was because of this: the early vintage releases of Yattarna Chardonnay (1995 was the first release) hadn’t necessary aged well.

Times indeed have changed dramatically since that night – for chardonnay generally and for Yattarna Chardonnay specifically. The best Australian chardonnays can and do now age, and well. On Tuesday I was lucky enough to drink a glass of Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2011, and a more perfect example of the age-worthiness of this wine you never will find.

What a wine. Fourteen year old Australian chardonnay. Straw yellow. Rich, fresh, lengthy. Lanolin, grilled peach, meal, flint, creme brulee and mint. Velvety mouthfeel. Both rich and exquisite. Outstandingly fresh and outstandingly beautiful. It tastes like a six or seven year old wine, not a fourteen year old wine, and yet it’s complex and generous and persistent and boasting all the things and all the feels.

—

There are 21 vintages of Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay independently reviewed on The Winefront site, including a review of the rare Penfolds V Chardonnay NV.

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Also consumed on the day was a glass of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996.

It’s been twenty years between drinks of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996

In late 2007 I sat down to a glass of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 for review on The Winefront. With wines like this – which are both rare and expensive – opportunities to taste them are often a ‘one moment only’ situation, in that the wine will head off into the cellars of collectors around the world, never again to be seen by wine reviewers such as myself. When I tasted this wine in 2007 it was of course eleven years old already, which was a pretty good time to assess it. The special bin or just plain special release wines of Penfolds have a long-established history of cellaring, often magnificently, for decades. But then there’s also the old adage of Australian wine cellaring: seven out of ten wines are at their drinking best between seven and ten years, or thereabouts.

The full review from 2007 is on The Winefront, but my conclusion back then was: “Its delicacy really surprised me. This is fast heading into ethereal territory, and can be drunk from now – and will enter its long peak from about five years on. It makes complexity look easy. It’s a treasure.”

I noted too in that review that this Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 is a single block wine, made with a single variety, from a single region, and that it was grown on some of the oldest living cabernet sauvignon vines in the world. Penfolds is a commander of many different things and part of what it does is street cred, single origin, old-est vine wines as well as anyone in the world.

Yesterday, as luck would have it, I sat down to a glass of Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 again, with lunch. It’s not quite twenty years between drinks of this wine but it’s very close to. I was just typing into my phone, as I tucked into my Wagyu, but what I wrote was: “Clear saltbush notes. Mahogany, leather, redcurrants, salted olives and mocha, with whispers of resin, or perhaps the latter is just the flavour of redcurrant, leather and cream combined. The tannin is still both firm and ultra-fine, the texture is still luxurious, and both the acidity and fruit are still pulsing and pushing long. This is now a fully mature Penfolds wine with ample meat, texture and length.” My initial review on The Winefront had a drinking window out to 2035. Would this wine go another ten years?

What I didn’t write in my note, but took home in my mind, was how at-ease this wine is in its world. It’s still in full health. Another ten, another twenty years; stored well, cork permitting, I can’t see why not. This was never a huge wine but it’s nearly 30 years old and there’s still a substance and a wit to the story it tells. Nothing seduces quite like fruit and oak. But finesse endures, and this wine was always a wise investment in exactly that.

—

Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet Sauvignon 1996 is 13% alcohol.
It was “made from the same 110-year-old patch of vines from which came Max Schubert's 1953 Penfolds Grange Cabernet.” These vines were presumably 100-years-old in 1996.
A review of Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1953 is here and is worth a read.

—

I also had a glass of Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2011 on the day, which was quite a revelation too.

• The 2022 calendar year was the wettest year on record in the Hunter Valley.

• It’s incredible that the wettest year on record resulted in a great following summer for red wine in the Hunter Valley: 2023 is now considered one of the all-time great Hunter red vintages.

• 2023 was a cool, long, low-yielding vintage. It was one of the latest Hunter Valley red wine vintages on record.

• This 2023 vintage of Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz was matured in 100% French oak, but only 15% of that oak was new.

• The Graveyard Vineyard, and the fruit it grows, does all the talking.

• This release is 13.5% alcohol, and is $500 per bottle.

Given that Brokenwood is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery and that I have a long history with Brokenwood’s Graveyard Shiraz and that the 2023 ripening season in the Hunter Valley is somewhat heralded – not to mention Gary Walsh’s scoop review of this wine on The Winefront – I was pretty keen to take a look at the Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz 2023. One wintry Friday in June then I opened a bottle, pre-lunch, and let it air for an hour or two.

What struck me, from the first sip, is how far Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz has come stylistically. Graveyard Shiraz is now more under- than over-stated. This particular release is both a silken wine and a grainy one, which is a good combination in my books, and while there’s ample palate flavour and weight the emphasis really is on the finish. Indeed we’re essentially in peacock’s tail territory here. Iron, blood, plum, earth, blueberry, pepper and assorted nutty-twiggy spice characters all get a chance to strut their stuff. But it’s the way this wine extends its hand out to you on the finish, and pulls you further into its world, that makes you think that there’s a sleight, or a magic, or a certain special something in our midst. 96 points.

RRP$500.

Every now and then a wine comes along with greatness tattooed across its heart. Cullen Diana Madeline 2023 is one of those rare wines. I sat down to a glass of this late one night – too late to be starting a fresh bottle – and thought, from the first sip, that something well out of the ordinary was going on. I wasn’t really intending to drink that full glass at that time, I thought it was just a teaser and that I’d return for a proper look the next day or night. But the glass disappeared. Because every sip delivered flavour, and brought confirmation, and shoved unwanted information out of my brain, and left an impression. If you took this wine to a Tarot reader they would foresee classic status in its future.

The chains of tannin here could guard a nation. The fruit is an army, bright, eager, drilled and deep. The nose is a flight, a dove-like flight, spread out, seeking interraction. The herbal notes here are not sweet but nor are they bitter; they are the woodwinds to the brass, string and percussion of the fruit and tannin. This is a wine and that’s all it is. But it stands as a defender of land and family. It feels strong. It feels patient. And it feels irresistible. But mostly, ultimately, in the most beautiful of ways and as all the best wines do, it feels like a sheer act of manifest resistance.

Cullen Diana Madeline 2023. $160. 98 points.
Winefront review here.

This time last year I was swanning around Greece and drinking Ouzo every day. I’m partial to anise. I don’t or didn't however know much about Pastis, which is both anise based and one of – if not the – most popular spirits in France. The Pernod Ricard empire was founded on it. Kasia has written an article on Pastis which tells you all you need to know about Pastis but just as importantly, or perhaps even more, are her pastis recommendations at the bottom of the article. Kasia not only knows her pastis, but she describes and reviews it beautifully. She’s got me heading to the shops.

Kasia’s article on Pastis is here.

• Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2021 is released on May 7, 2025

• It will cellar for decades but if you’re going to drink it now, a long decant is advised.

• It is one of the best ever releases of Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz. Maybe even the best.

• Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz can be absolutely glorious once it’s had the time to mature.

• The Hill of Grace vineyard, or the oldest vines growing in it, were planted in 1860.

• The Hill of Grace vineyard is 4kms from the Henschke winery, and is 8 hectares in size.

• The Hill of Grace vineyard is farmed organically / biodynamically.

It’s both sobering and inspiring to note that the classic 1962 vintage of Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz was grown on 100 year old vines. As in, the vines were already 100 years old way back in 1962. This is the bleeding obvious but it remains worth pointing out. Australia is home to some of the world’s oldest soils, most ancient cultures and indeed to some of the world’s oldest producing grape vines. Hill of Grace Shiraz doesn’t have exclusive access to Australia’s oldest vines in the wider sense but it is certainly grown on some of them.

I tasted that 1962 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz in 2012. It was 50 years old at the time, and it was glorious. I wrote of it, in part, “Outrageously aromatic. Spadefuls of old, developed sweetness. Earth and saddles. Sweet hay. Lines of mineral. Beefy, substantial, almost licoricey mid-palate. Honey. All manner of dried herbs and seeds. A tremendous old beauty.”

That 1962 Hill of Grace Shiraz was rolled out on the release of the 2008 Hill of Grace. The 2008 was an anticipated vintage, and there was talk on its release around whether it was up with the best ever releases of Hill of Grace. There was similar talk when the 2015 was released. I haven’t tasted every release of Hill of Grace Shiraz by any stretch but of the ones I’ve tasted I’d rank these as the best of them: 1986, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016 and now 2021. The notable omissions in that roll call are the 1991, which I don’t list simply because I’ve not tasted it, and the 1998, which was a great vintage in the Barossa/Eden valley region but was not a great Hill of Grace. Notable additions to this form guide would be to add both the 1988 and 2018 releases, both of which outshine their relative vintage reputation.

Which brings us to the latest edition of Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, the 2021 vintage. I spent a few days tasting it recently. By ‘a few days’ I mean that I opened a bottle at home, allowed it to breathe for a few hours, and then assessed and reviewed it. Two-thirds of the bottle were still intact post reviewing, so this bottle remained on my desk. I kept on tasting it over the next couple of days. My final little session with the wine involved me pouring a glass and then walking out into the backyard of the suburban house that I’m renting as an office. This house has a decent back lawn. I walked out onto this grass with bare feet. I then stood in the middle of the backyard, where the Hills Hoist clothesline had once been. With grass between my toes then I stood and drank a few sips of few-days-open Hill of Grace Shiraz. I’d been “looking” at this wine for three days but this was the first time that, instead of spitting and writing, I’d swallowed it.

The wine had changed since I’d reviewed it. I haven’t yet adjusted my review, though I may. The wine had not changed drastically, but it had changed enough. Some people are rightly sceptical of these two-days-later assessments, and think of them as an exercise in oxidised-wine-assessment. Other people think these long-haul assessments should be the norm. Some days, when I taste a premium wine two days later, the oak has risen up in the wine, and the fruit has given up. It’s illuminating; it’s like seeing how much iceberg there is beneath the surface or, indeed, how little.

I reviewed the 2021 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz on The Winefront. Mike Bennie also reviewed it, and his views are interesting. My review in part was: “This is a super Hill of Grace release but it’s also an interesting one. Indeed it may even be polarising, which is not something often said of Hill of Grace. It’s ripped with dark berried fruit, it’s alive with roasted spice, campfire, undergrowth and earth, it shows enough toasty oak to give it something extra and it lays fine-grained tannin down in the most authoritative of ways. It’s also exceptionally long – and structural – through the finish, which is the main reason it qualifies as an outstanding release of Hill of Grace Shiraz. The extra interest comes in the wine’s truffle-like top notes. These notes give the aromas an exotic edge.”

I had a little more to say, and then scored the wine 96/100 points.

94/100 is the start of “gold medal standard”. 96/100 is a “high gold”. I had from the first day of tasting it pegged the 2021 Hill of Grace Shiraz release as outstanding.

But I realised, as I stood out there on the lawn, drinking this beautiful wine from a vineyard that’s been doing its thing for longer than any of us, that I was wrong to call this release polarising. Sometimes, stuck at the desk, tasting wine, every day, for weeks on end, you get to the point where you need to get out more. Out there in the open air, away from the devices and electronics, this release seemed miraculous. The tannin on this wine. I noted it from the start but I can’t emphasise the structural integrity of this wine enough. It’s like the bamboo that they make scaffolding out of in Japan. There’s strength and there’s charisma and there’s purpose and there’s wonder. I don’t really want to join the chorus of near perfect scores but I am well prepared now to admit this: I don’t think that I have ever tasted a Hill of Grace Shiraz, on release, that is as impressive as this 2021.

—

Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2021
$1000, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, Eden Valley. Released in 2025.

The wine I tasted last week had nothing to do with that Landaire, but it made the same kind of impression. It’s called Smeaton Estate Stella Chardonnay 2023. The full review is here, but to save you the click I say in this review “forget the descriptors. The result is a wine of brilliant intensity, character and length, and that’s all you need to know.” I scored it 96/100.

I only learned, a long time after I’d sung the praises of that original Landaire Chardonnay, that it had been made by Michael Downer of Murdoch Hill fame. Top level wine almost never comes out of nowhere; elite vineyards and elite hands are always involved, whether you know it (or them) or not. In the case of this Smeaton Chardonnay; it was grown on a vineyard that has been supplying top-end Adelaide Hills producers for nearly 30 years. Every now and then they (Jan and John Smeaton) keep some of their best grapes and bottle them under their own name. The 2023 Stella Chardonnay was made by none other than Con Moshos, who we know thanks to his exceptional work at Petaluma, among other locations.

This is a beautiful chardonnay. It’s a wine that, in the glass, seems to celebrate the variety itself or indeed to celebrate its own existence.

Smeaton Estate website.

Every now and then we get to peer under the covers and see what’s happening in the cellars of Australian wine lovers. This insight – which is invaluable – usually comes via the once-every-three-years release of Wineark’s Most Collected Wine List, which analyses, itemises and then ranks the wines that its cellarage clients have in their collections. Given that Wineark has over two million bottles in its care, in facilities around Australia, this list is arguably the best guide we have to what is happening in the sphere of collectable Australian wine. There are subjective lists of the best wines, and there are tailored lists of the ‘best performers’, but the Wineark Most Collected Wine List is the most objective and therefore the most valuable.

• Wineark List of Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2023 article here

• Wineark List of Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2019 article here

• Wineark List of Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2016 article here

Wineark’s list, or its method, isn’t perfect though. It has a bias towards, by its very nature, wines with a larger production volume, which is why there are some (iconic) small wineries that don’t favour its promotion. The wines of Penfolds, for instance, will always feature highly on any list of collectible Australian wine, no matter what method you use. But because the wines of Penfolds are made in large volume, they and other high-volume producers have a significant advantage in this list.

Even with this caveat, though, the Wineark list is always fascinating. This is why I was so interested when, at the end of 2024, John Cuff of Wineark revealed that they were taking this peer-behind-the-curtain a step further. For the first time, Wineark has released a list of the most collected wines of that year alone. All other such lists have a massive legacy aspect; this new list is as now as any such list we’ve ever seen.

This list tells us which wines were the favourites of wine collectors in 2024. Or it kind of does, anyway.

Obviously, volume of production is important again here too. If there was a lot more Giaconda Chardonnay available then a lot more Giaconda chardonnay may well have been cellared, for example. So this Most Collected Wines of 2024 list has the same caveat as the total wines in storage list. i.e. wines that are made in greater volume have an advantage. Advantage is one thing but a wine still has to be coveted, or seen as worth collecting, to make it onto this list. If a small-volume wine makes it onto this list it’s an even greater achievement, arguably. Cue Savaterre Chardonnay – more below – whose appearance on this list is extraordinary.

In 2024, 195,000 new bottles of wine were put into Wineark’s 15 professional wine storage facilities, spread across five Australian states.

Notable highlights from 2024’s most cellared wines:

● A white wine was the most collected of the year: Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2021

● The producer with the most bottles collected in 2024 was Penfolds

● There was a 15% increase in the number of bottles placed into storage from 2023 to 2024

● The Barossa Valley was the most cellared region. 23.4% of the wines put into Wineark’s cellars were from the Barossa Valley.

● Margaret River was the second most cellared wine region, 14.8% of the wines put into Wineark’s cellars were from Margaret River.

Wine Ark’s John Cuff noted that “Over the years, we’ve observed a marked increase in the appetite for age-worthy chardonnay. However, I fully expected a red wine to take the top spot this year. There are over seven chardonnays in the Top 25 wines added in 2024, including four in the top 10.”

This is arguably the biggest take-home message of this list. The quality of Australian chardonnay has been the talk of the town over the past 10 or even twenty years and the message has well and truly been absorbed, and franked. Chardonnay is, slowly but significantly, becoming a dominant player in the cellar habits of Australian wine collectors.

These Wineark figures for 2024 also highlight a preference, among Australian wine collectors, for boutique and family wineries. Cuff noted, “It’s been a tough year for the wine trade. It’s heartening to see that the vast majority of wines purchased and stored at Wine Ark this year were produced by smaller, family-run wineries. While iconic names like Leeuwin, Giaconda and Pierro Chardonnay dominate the Top 10, I was truly blown away to see the 2022 Savaterre Chardonnay from Beechworth rank as the seventh most cellared wine of 2024.”

It can’t go unremarked that –given that everyone is talking, everywhere, of the general depression of world prestige wine markets – that Wineark somehow managed to see an increase in the number of wines going into its storage. “There was a 15% increase in the number of bottles placed into storage from 2023 to 2024,” Cuff says. “Whether this reflects clients taking advantage of discounted parcels from retailers and wineries, or a shift toward purchasing larger volumes at lower price points to save for later.”

Below are the results in full.

TOP WINES ADDED TO WINEARK’S CELLARS

1. Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 2021

2. Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2018

3. Grosset Polish Hill Riesling 2024

4. Mount Mary Quintet Cabernet Blend 2022

5. Tolpuddle Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023

6. Giaconda Estate Chardonnay 2022

7. Savaterre Chardonnay 2022

8. Pierro Chardonnay 2023

9. Standish Lamella Shiraz 2022

10. Lake’s Folly Shiraz Merlot Petit Verdot 2022

TOP FIVE PRODUCERS ADDED TO CELLARS

1. Penfolds

2. Rockford

3. Tyrrells

4. Lake’s Folly

5. Mount Mary

TOP FIVE VARIETALS ADDED TO THE CELLARS

1. Shiraz

2. Chardonnay

3. Pinot Noir

4. Cabernet Sauvignon

5. Cabernet Blend

MOST COMMON VINTAGE ADDED TO THE CELLARS

1. 2022

2. 2021

3. 2023

TOP REGIONS ADDED TO THE CELLARS

1. Barossa Valley

2. Margaret River

3. Hunter

4. Yarra Valley

5. McLaren Vale

Langi Shiraz is historically important. But in many key respects, its most important time is now.
__________________

Adam Louder grew up around the corner from the Mount Langi Ghiran vineyard. He started working there in 1998 before heading off to work multiple vintages in Margaret River, Bordeaux and the Napa Valley. When the job of head winemaker at Mount Langi Ghiran became vacant in 2016 people said to him that he should apply, that he’d be perfect. His reaction though was simple: no way. “I don’t want that responsibility”, he thought. Given the experience Louder had gained to that point this initial reaction spoke volumes. It said that he knew just how special the Mount Langi Ghiran place was and, perhaps, that he didn’t want to be the one who stuffed the great and glorious history of Mount Langi Ghiran up.

It was an appropriate reaction. Mount Langi Ghiran and the (relatively) nearby Craiglee hold a special place in the history of Australian red wine. These wineries helped introduce pepper to the palate of Australian shiraz. As someone said on the day, recently, when 28 vintages of Langi’s Langi shiraz, spanning 40 years, were opened and tasted: when Langi first made its mark, “there was South Australian shiraz, there was Hunter shiraz, and there was peppery Victorian”.

From the 1980s onwards therefore Mount Langi Ghiran has held a totemic position.

This is both what scared Adam Louder off, and drew him in. Gradually though, as the job of head winemaker sat vacant, the magnetic force of Langi began to lock on. “I started to think that I’d be an idiot if I didn’t go for it.”

The next step is obviously history, though the important point to remember from this is that Louder, who grew up around the corner but then travelled via the cape to come home, now thinks – in his own, measured words – that he was “supposed to be here. I was meant to be here.”

“All I’m trying to do,” he now says, “is honour the site.”

It’s interesting to also note here, in this light, that Langi’s Langi shiraz went through a keen “whole bunch” period from early in this century onwards, but that under Louder’s guidance there have been no whole bunches used in Langi Shiraz from the 2019 vintage onwards. “Whole bunches are a tool. I’m prepared to use it, but only if the wine or the vintage really needs it”.

Many of these “whole bunch influenced” releases of Langi Shiraz were highly regarded and reviewed, of course. Personally, I loved many of these releases and, largely against the tide of those assembled at the recent tasting, loved many of the wines made during the winery’s peak whole bunch era, as aged wines. I loved the 2008, 2009 and 2010 releases, for instance, the latter of which was 100% whole bunch. All these, for me, are stunning wines.

It takes quite some courage, and confidence, and resilience, to change such a winning formula.

The thing of course is though: at some point, in the life of a great terroir, both the bride and the groom, winemaker and land, must be stripped bare.

Louder, in many ways, now walks this truth. Langi Shiraz is not a trick. It’s grown great, and it’s made by a local.  This is the course Langi’s founder Trevor Mast set and held for as long as he possibly could; this is the course being set and held by Louder.

Louder, who talks softly, and who is introspective, notes that “a lot of people don’t like the isolation of the Grampians. Personally, I love the isolation”.

When I first met Louder, at the winery a handful of years ago, I suggested to him that he must be happy with where Langi Shiraz was at, in general. I expected him to nod and to agree. He didn’t.

“I’d like the wines to be gentler,” he said, back then.

At the recent tasting, Louder said: “I like to see pepper in the wine but what I want to see are blue/black berries, loaded with baking spices, with fine, long tannins. What I hope to see is a well-structured, medium-bodied red wine.”

The backbone of Langi’s Langi Shiraz is the estate’s old block, which was planted in 1969. I often wonder where Victorian wine would be if it weren’t for the vineyards that were planted in the 1960s; they sit like lights on the hill, as guides to everything that was to come. Although Langi’s start is, officially, the 1981 vintage release – which was Trevor Mast’s first – the vineyard itself is one of Victorian wine’s guiding lights.

Langi Shiraz hasn’t been made exclusively off this block through the course of its history but for the most part it has, and all recent vintages – thanks to Louder – have been sourced exclusively from this original block. Langi Shiraz is back to basics now. It is exposed, in the ring, in the glass. The original vineyard. No whole bunches. An isolated place. A winemaker, once reluctant, now determined.

If you can manage it, taste the 2021 Langi release. It tastes, in short, exciting. Langi Shiraz has been on a journey but it has come back to its essential self. The alcohol levels are no doubt higher than everyone would like but the flavour, the length, the style and the intent are all, right now, beautiful.

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2021 Mount Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz – Winefront review.
Winefront notes on Mount Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz dating back to the 1981 release – available here.

I spent a few hours at the famous Tahbilk winery yesterday, principally to taste through the new Centennial Releases (to be reviewed on The Winefront shortly). Along the way I passed through the nearby township of Nagambie itself. Bright day, bright clouds, incredibly dry summer. Nagambie is about a 90 minute drive from Melbourne, perhaps a touch more than that, though it’s a pretty easy drive, highway most of the way. This ad hoc gallery is of the Tahbilk estate and the Nagambie town, in illogical order.

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The light was fluky, because of the cloud cover. I need/want bright light for the style of image that I’m chasing, the brighter the better, and so I kept having to wait for the sun to come back properly out. As I was standing there a local resident approached with the opening line, “What’s so special about Nagambie that makes you want to photograph it?”. We had a chat; he was disappointed when I said that I was taking images for fun; he hoped I was doing a book. He’d bought, he reckoned, a place in town for $300,000 seven years ago that is now, by his valuation, worth a million. He told me of all the damage that had been done to Nagambie’s old buildings, in the name of progress, though he reckoned the (disused) cafe above is still pretty original. “There’s a lot of wine in that building,” he said, apropos of nothing. I asked him what the below structure had once been and he reckoned wheat storage. It reminds me a bit of the Oxley building at Milawa.

Apparently the “Ford” sign above relates to an old service station but also, according to this bloke, prior to that it was a Ford car dealership.

• Grange La Chapelle 2021 is the first time Penfolds’ flagship Grange shiraz has ever been blended with another producer’s wine — a 50/50 mix of French Syrah from Domaine de La Chapelle (Hermitage, Rhône) and Australian Shiraz from Grange vineyards (Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley).

• The Grange La Chapelle project stems from a long-standing friendship between Penfolds’ Chief Winemaker Peter Gago and La Chapelle’s Caroline Frey.

• The inaugural 2021 Grange La Chapelle vintage was globally unveiled in Paris (Monnaie de Paris) on 9 February 2025.

• Quantities of the 2021 Grange La Chapelle are extremely limited — only very small allocations worldwide, with select sales through hand-selected merchants and direct to consumer channels in Australia and the USA.

• Grange La Chapelle introduces Paul Jaboulet’s classic La Chapelle Hermitage to American oak for the first time.

• Grange La Chapelle introduces Penfolds Grange to French oak for the first time.

• Grange La Chapelle is aimed at collectors of luxury items.

Penfolds Grange and La Chapelle, two of the world's most famous shiraz-based wines, have had a baby. It's called Grange La Chapelle. The Hill of Hermitage and various South Australian vineyards combine here to create a – controversial – super-blend wine like no other.

The new wine, from the 2021 vintage, costs $3500 per bottle. Elon Musk and his ilk now have something new to buy, each year. The wine means that there is now a new Grange, and a new La Chapelle. It is 50/50 of each. La Chapelle will accordingly get to experience American oak, presumably for the first time, via the American-oaked Grange (100% new), and Grange likewise will mingle with the French oak-ed La Chapelle (20% new). Quantities are limited. Hurry to avoid disappointment.

Penfolds Grange La Chapelle 2021 is 14% alcohol. It’s off the Hill at Hermitage, on the one hand, and vineyards in the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley on the other. 2021 is the first release but Grange La Chapelle is expected to be released every year from now.

The 2021 Grange La Chapelle is released today. The 2022 has already been bottled. The 2023 is still in barrel.

Caroline Frey, winemaker at La Chapelle, said of the new Grange La Chapelle: “By uniting two iconic wines, this collaboration achieves something truly groundbreaking. As a vine grower, as a winemaker, it’s so magical, I would have never even dared to imagine it. No one in the world has ever blended two such legendary terroirs. It's like Picasso and Dalí painting on the same canvas – an idea so extraordinary it almost feels too incredible to be real.”

Peter Gago, chief winemaker at Penfolds, said of Grange La Chapelle: “Via one variety this wine fuses two hemispheres and two winemaking cultures. France and South Australia, Syrah and Shiraz, La Chapelle and Grange. Truly, a blend waiting to happen. Emotionally, a wine beguilingly alluring. Ultimately, harmony and classicism redefined.”

The Penfolds press release noted: “A long-standing friendship between Caroline Frey, chief winemaker and vigneron, La Chapelle and Peter Gago, chief winemaker Penfolds Grange enabled this unexpected union to showcase what this varietal can achieve aromatically and structurally - coalescing different geographies, different soils and different winemaking cultures. Caroline and Peter both acknowledge that after many conversations, the time was right to work together.”

The 750ml RRP of Grange La Chapelle 2021 in Australia is AUD: $3,500. In France the 750ml RRP of Penfolds Grange La Chapelle is €2,600. The official website for Penfolds Grange La Chapelle 2021 is grangexlachapelle.com .

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The 2022 Grange La Chapelle is discussed and reviewed here.

The last time I worked in a real job with real staff, real hours and real superannuation there was a manager in the next office who bought and drank – when it came to wine – nothing other than the wines of Stonier. This was the mid-to-late 1990s. At this time the space under my bed was chocked full of wine, as was the space at the bottom of my wardrobe, as indeed was all the spare cupboard space in this work office. All I wanted to do at the time was talk, think, drink and collect wine. To help scratch this itch then I’d wander into the next office and talk to this bloke about Stonier. He loved Stonier Chardonnay. He loved Stonier Pinot Noir. But what he loved most of all was Stonier Cabernet Sauvignon – because, as he quite rightly pointed out, it tasted different to any other cabernet that he could find.

Stonier cabernet was pretty thin, as a general rule. It’s long disappeared from the Stonier stable, and from its vineyards. The thing is though, if you liked pinot noir back then, or indeed light-bodied reds, there weren’t a great deal of options, or not in general wine retail. In fact whenever I think of light-bodied reds from this era I think of two wineries mostly: Stonier and Scotchman’s Hill. In the wine shops that I frequented at least – which were not top-end outlets – they were the best of the widely-availables, so to speak.

All this is of no consequence save for one legacy fact: to certain people, above a certain age most probably, there’s a great deal of affection for the Stonier name, as a wine producer. Stonier introduced cool climate chardonnay and pinot noir to a great many. It either has a place in the history books, or in our hearts, as a result. Stonier was a gateway to the wonderful landscape that we now enjoy.

The star of Stonier – which is on a great site, on the Mornington Peninsula – has never stopped shining, though it’s probably wanted over the years for a bit of extra polish, or love. Despite the outstanding efforts of a long line of excellent winemakers, Stonier is no longer one of the first wineries mentioned when talk turns to the best producers of its region, or not routinely anyway, courtesy mostly of the fact that other or newer wineries in the region have performed so well. Quality-wise Stonier’s wines have always remained up there, though. Every day – just to peer behind the curtain for a second – winemakers email me to enquire whether I’d like to visit them. One of the first wineries I ever visited, with a wine writing hat on, was Stonier, over 20 years ago. Tod Dexter was the winemaker then. One of the joys of my current wine life is the opportunity to re-visit places with a lot of time elapsed in-between. Time is depth and depth is meaning. When Stonier’s new winemaker – Julian Grounds – emailed me about a visit, it was time to say yes. I haven’t been to the place since that Tuesday morning 20+ years ago when I tasted with Tod.

I’d never met Julian Grounds, or not properly, though I should have done so. In 2018, in one of the most shameful/embarrassing moments of my life, I was booked on a trip to visit the Craggy Range winery in New Zealand, where Julian was the winemaker. My house at the time was a 3.5 hour drive from the nearest international airport. I arrived at the airport for this trip, only to discover that I’d left my passport at home. There was no time and no way to recover the situation. Instead, then, I drove to the viewing carpark just outside the airport, and – at what should have been my departure time – watched the Qantas jet take off and disappear over my head.

That is one helluva hollow feeling.

Julian Grounds is an unusual winemaker for, likely, many reasons, though the two reasons that come to my mind are these: he went straight to winemaking direct out of school, which very few people do, and (partly) as a result ended up in senior winemaking roles at an unreasonably young age. As he says himself, “I was always much younger than everyone else”.

The other unusual thing about Julian Grounds is that he is unusually good.

He was dux of his winemaking class, and he was dux of the Len Evans Tutorial. He grew up in WA, and his first winemaking job was at Leeuwin Estate. The potted version of his resume makes for beautiful reading: Leeuwin, McHenry Hohnen, Wignalls, Medhurst, Giant Steps, Craggy Range, a stint in Oregon in the US, and now head winemaker at Stonier. He’s made a lot of top-end Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in his time. The journey wasn’t necessarily in that order and I’ve probably left details out, but basically he has worked at A Grade winery after A Grade winery, and generally with A Grade people as well. “I was fortunate enough to have Flamo (seminal winemaker Steve Flamsteed) as a mentor early on,” he says, “and he taught me that it’s all about the sum of the parts”.

I could have put all the above details together and drawn this conclusion a time ago. But the words that sat clear in my mind, as I tasted through Julian’s first batch of releases from Stonier, were these: this is not Julian Grounds’ first rodeo.

The Stonier wines taste as though they are being made by someone who knows exactly what they are doing and, more than that, by someone who knows – already – exactly what he has been put in charge of. He just seems to get Stonier. I drank, as I eluded to above, more than my fair share of Stonier Pinot Noir back in the day, and when I picked up the ‘standard’ 2024 Stonier Pinot Noir that Julian Grounds has produced, I was struck – unexpectedly – by how evocative it is. The main goal of wine is the same goal as the jumbo jet: it’s meant to transport. There are better wines in the Stonier range but this is the wine, as I tasted through them all, that excited me the most, because it told me that the winemaking hands in charge of Stonier now are not just sure, and safe, but they have a feeling for things beyond and behind the numbers. There are various vineyards – all now managed/controlled by Stonier – but Stonier should taste like Stonier.

Because, when a winery manages to taste of itself and like no one else, it provokes the opposite feeling to the one I felt on watching the jet disappear over my head: you do not feel hollow, you feel amplified.

Before Julian served me that standard 2024 Stonier Pinot Noir, he said, “This is the wine that will be people’s most common connection to Stonier.

“I don’t want it it be fragile, but the suggestion of fragility is important,” he said of Stonier Pinot Noir. “Pinot needs to have an air of vulnerability. It’s what makes people want to keep coming back because they want to know what’s going on.”

I don’t like to say a great deal when I’m tasting in the company of winemakers. Cards are best played close. But I probably gave my pleasure away, on hearing the above. Julian continued:

“There’s not a single part of this wine, even though it’s larger volume, that is homogenised. It’s 35 different ferments. It’s 2-3 tonne open fermenters. The end is larger, but everything is treated small.”

This, no doubt, is good news for all the old lovers of the wines of Stonier and, indeed, for all the new devotees these beautiful wines will attract. Indeed it’s not just a new winemaking regime; it’s new ownership. For the first time in a couple of decades, Stonier is out of “corporate” ownership and is back in the hands of individuals, where it belongs. To wit: the 2024 Stonier Reserve Chardonnay has a production of 220 dozen. It used to be 2000 dozen. There’s no reason why a 2000-dozen-make wine can’t be fantastic, as many producers annually prove. But the message in the shift of these numbers is pretty clear.

Julian: “I am making these wines to sell to people. They have to have flavour. It’s not an ego exercise. I want the drinking of these wines to be an enjoyable exercise.”

That, they most certainly are.

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Reviews and scores of the current Stonier wines are on The Winefront site.
Stonier Reserve Chardonnay 2024
Stonier KBS Vineyard Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Hillcrest Vineyard Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Merricks Chardonnay 2024
Stonier Merricks Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Reserve Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Hillcrest Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024
Stonier Pinot Noir 2024

Given that McLaren Vale has become a superstar with red grenache it’s fascinating to also see white grenache examples from the region. Indeed not just from McLaren; from anywhere where grenache either is or has the potential to be grown well.

I’ve never been a “difference for difference’s sake” kind of person, and have long been irritated by the wine media’s obsession with “what’s new”, rather than with what’s good. The magazine commissions I’ve lost over the years for refusing to beat the drum of some “hot new variety” that isn’t, in fact, very good, are numerous. Grenache Blanc though is a variety that I’d be happy to write about any time. Thistledown, Yalumba, Willunga 100, Moorak, Aphelion and Yangarra – to name but a few – are all making delicious wines with this variety and looking at the wine on my desk right now – Maxwell Grenache Blanc 2024 ($22) – it’s clear that Maxwell in McLaren Vale is right up there with the best of them. This wine – which spent time in old, neutral oak – is super textural, and yet dry, and yet chalky, and yet grapey, with salt notes laid into grapefruit, honey, wax and apple. It isn’t a white wine that you drink “on your way to a red wine”; it’s a white wine that you want to settle in with. Track it down, you should.

Flavour never goes out of style but it’s arguable that in the high-quality Australian chardonnay stakes the race is on to pack in more. Indeed most of the best Australian chardonnays of the past few years have been brimful of it. This chardonnay from Suckfizzle in Margaret River is exactly in that mould, and both because of that and because of its line and its complexity it’s a ripper. It tastes of grapefruit and green pineapple, struck match, citrus and brine, and the thing really is that the acidity itself seems injected with flavour, as does the creaminess of the mouthfeel, as does the smoky sizzle of the aftertaste. Add to that a finish that is a beach of citrus, brine, smoke, lemongrass and kelp, and what we have here is a wonderful wine. 96/100.

Penfolds Grange, the golden goose of Australian wine, is on a run of excellence never before seen in its history, or certainly not seen in the past 50 years. This does not mean that Penfolds Grange is a better wine now than it ever was; that’s simply not true. But it is now more consistently excellent. Penfolds hasn’t made a lesser Grange Shiraz since the 2000 release (88/100, The Winefront). Yes, the 2003 Penfolds Grange (93/100) and the 2011 (92+/100) are both silver medal offerings in our view, but they still rate as good wines. The more compelling point though is that the past nine releases of Penfolds Grange Shiraz have all scored 96 points or higher. In the 1990s, there were five Penfolds Grange releases with a score of 93 or lower, followed by the infamous 88-point 2000 release. If the 2021 Penfolds Grange (released this time next year, from a vintage that is considered excellent) warrants a rating of 96 points or higher, it will be the tenth Penfolds Grange in a row to achieve such a rating.

That, simply, is incredible.

Indeed, of the past 21 releases of Penfolds Grange, 17 releases have scored 95 or higher on The Winefront. All these scores are Winefront scores, it should be noted. Winefront never rates a mention on the Penfolds site, for instance, because Winefront is not a lenient scorer. This adds yet more weight to the above achievements.

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The 2020 Penfolds Grange Shiraz is “not a show pony, and is not a wall of sound, but it's Grange being Grange, authoritative, settled, the ants served crushed, the fruit deep”. The seasonal conditions of the 2020 vintage were not considered ideal, but in the end these conditions have done Penfolds Grange 2020 no disservice. Indeed, if you enjoy the more traditional style of Grange, with a bit more measure to it, and a greater emphasis on complexity as opposed to out-and-out thunder, then this season may indeed have done the wine a favour.

I’ve reviewed pretty much every release of Penfolds Grange Shiraz, all the way back to the 1952. All the historic reviews of every vintage of Penfolds Grange are on The Winefront here. The full review of the 2020 Penfolds Grange Shiraz is reviewed on The Winefront here. The asking price for the 2020 release is $1000 per bottle, as it has been for the previous two years. If you’re in the market for a recent vintage, to drink or to keep, auction is likely your best source. Auction price estimates at Langton’s for 2019 Penfolds Grange are $630-$810. The 2018 Penfolds Grange has a price estimate of $630-$900. Plus, of course, commission. Auction is your best bet for recent vintages because Penfolds Grange is rarely a good short-to-medium term investment. You generally lose a bit as you walk out the showroom door, so to speak. Long term though, at least historically, can be a different matter.

For all this quality, and these scores, and these prices, only one thing more need be said. When you drink a bottle of Grange, you’re drinking more than a bottle of wine. Other Australian wines, at least in their youth, compare incredibly favourably for quality, and even more favourably for value. But, in many (most) Australian social circles, no wine-related sentence quite compares to: we opened a bottle of Grange.

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If you stand back and look at the success of Penfolds, historically, it comes down to three key ingredients, with an extra cherry or two on top.

1. Penfolds makes wines that a large number of wine enthusiasts are loyal to. This is an historical statement rather than, necessarily, a statement on where things are now. Historically, Australian red wine consumers have been loyal to Bin 28, Bin 389 and St Henri Shiraz, principally, with Bin 407 not far behind, followed by Bin 128 perhaps. For decades, these wines have been the backbone of Australian wine cellars. Indeed in the 2023 edition of Wineark’s Most Collected Wines list, Penfolds St Henri Shiraz came in at number two, and Penfolds Bin 389 at number three. The only reason neither of these wines makes it to the number one spot is because …

2. Not only does Penfolds make the wines we are loyal to. It makes the wines we love to collect, and/or love to covet. Penfolds Grange is the number one collected wine in Australia, right now, as of course it has been for decades. When I say we, I mean the Australian premium wine buying community. There’s a big difference between a car driver and a car enthusiast, and there’s the same difference between a wine drinker and a wine enthusiast. In the enthusiast realm, Penfolds traditionally has had both Saturday night covered, and the significant anniversary/achievement. This is why Penfolds is not just the golden goose of Australian wine; it occupies a space of its own. In Wineark’s Most Collected Wines list, seven of the top 20 wines are made by Penfolds (Grange, St Henri, Bin 389, RWT, Bin 707, Bin 28 and Bin 407).

3. Penfolds started as a family company but it’s had a corporate persona for pretty much ever. It was a big family company, and then it was swallowed by a corporation, and then it was swallowed again, or something like that. Corporations are generally faceless, soulless, heartless operations, and the ownership of Penfolds ticks all those boxes. But somehow, along the way, Penfolds has been staggeringly successful at selling both wine, and a story. Max Schubert was an employee, that’s all he was, an employee. And yet the brand became him. Max Schubert’s story, specifically his Penfolds Grange story, is unquestionably Australian wine’s best story, and certainly its most valuable. Corporations almost never have personal stories; Penfolds does. It’s a freak. The legacy of this story is immense of course but it extends further than Grange. What this story did, or does, is it makes or made Penfolds seem like a winemakers’ company, rather than merely a company.

4. The cherry on top. Penfolds has never been shy of marketing its wares. This isn’t a recent addition to the Penfolds arsenal. Penfolds, culturally, historically, expansively, creatively, is an aggressive, effective, brilliant marketer. It makes wrong steps, it makes right steps, but it is always stepping out and doing.

5. At its best, Penfolds is brave. It never rests. It pushes. It reaches. It dares. It dreams. Peter Gago said recently “we’re innovative, we’re traditional, we’re all of the above”. Ever since Ray Beckwith gave Penfolds commercial advantage, if not earlier, this has been, for both good and ill, true.

I started drinking Penfolds wines in the 1980s. I’ve covered them professionally for nearly 25 years. Once, I’d commonly hear myself say, “I love Penfolds”. I may even, once, have been proud of them as the Aussie company who took on the world. At some time, at some stage, I stopped saying this, because I stopped feeling it. The above summary is off the top of my head, and is meant as an overview only. I mention the above because I think Point 1 has taken a beating over the past decade, in Australia at least; that Saturday night loyalty to the wines of Penfolds is nothing compared to what it once was and is, to an extent, lost. The world is a much bigger place than the Australian domestic market of course. But it’s always precarious when you lose your base.

A similar thing is and has happened to the story of Penfolds. Chief winemaker Peter Gago is a best-in-class winemaker, and a best-in-class storyteller. And yet the freak quality of Penfolds – that it’s both a corporation, and a human story – has gone backwards over the past 20 years. It no longer comes across as a winemakers’ company. The wines themselves are in great shape, more consistently excellent than ever, but the story of Penfolds has become about head office, about luxury for luxury’s sake, and about wine scores. The score is a story, for sure, but it’s everyone’s story and because it is, it eventually wears thin.

Wine drinkers are one thing. Wine enthusiasts want something real to connect to. Again, the story base of Penfolds has been eroded.

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The red wines of Penfolds grab the headlines but the white wines of Penfolds, specifically the chardonnays, are the ones the people in the know gravitate to. The 2023 Penfolds Reserve Bin 23A Chardonnay is another star (reviewed on The Winefront here). Indeed when you look at the history of this wine (19 prior vintages of Penfolds Reserve Bin Chardonnay reviewed on The Winefront) it’s a pretty formidable history. Since the 2005 release, 16 releases of Penfolds Reserve Bin Chardonnay have achieved Winefront scores of 95 points or higher, and if not for some splitting of hairs another couple of releases could be added to that tally. This wine retails in Australia for circa $120. This isn’t just pedigree in the making. This is chardonnay pedigree, laid out and laid on.

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My review of the latest release of Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2021 notes that “this release will not blow anyone away but it will charm the socks off most. It’s the heart of the Penfolds range.” I’ve reviewed 58 vintages of Penfolds St Henri Shiraz, back to the 1956. Lovers of Australian shiraz come and lovers of Australian shiraz go, but real lovers of Australian shiraz – at least until recently – love Penfolds St Henri Shiraz, in story, in style, and in the glass. It’s a wine of historical significance, it sees no new oak (and never has), and indeed it’s aged in large format oak. In a way, St Henri Shiraz is the Betamax of the Penfolds range; it’s the alternative route that never became the main route, but arguably should have. The 2021 release is another beautiful wine.

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The 2022 Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Sauvignon is “a commanding Bin 389”. Spoiler alert, I gave it 95/100 on The Winefront, but I could easily have reached higher, not because it’s bolder or more beautiful than usual, but because it does everything right and because it does so in such fine style. It’s the 46th vintage of Penfolds Bin 389 that I’ve tasted. The Penfolds range of red wines grows apace but some of these old faithfuls of the range are in as good a form as ever.

Penfolds Bin 28 2022 and Bin 128 2022, though, while both solid wines, now get a bit lost in the overall Penfolds range. The same style and quality can be found elsewhere.

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The “problem” with all this consistent excellence at Penfolds is that there’s now no room, it seems, for surprises. Everything is graded to within an inch of its life and so there’s never a stand-out for value or a wine that really turns your head or anything that screams character. I’d love to come away from a Penfolds tasting with a BUY THIS IT’S AMAZING VALUE line running through my head, or for a “St Henri is off the charts this year” realisation, or a “this release is completely different this year” message. Reviewing the Penfolds wines now is like running the same news item every day. Everything is pretty much exactly as its asking price dictates. Given that the asking price is generally high; there’s no news in that, and no fun. What I’m saying is: Penfolds never throws its customers a bone anymore, not even to those who helped build it.

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It might help to know what will actually be released by Penfolds as part of the 2024 Collection (released from captivity on August 1, 2024). These wines are all reviewed and scored on The Winefront here. The bare list is:

Champagne Thiénot x Penfolds Avize Blanc de Blanc Grand Cru 2014
Champagne Thiénot x Penfolds Ay Blanc de Noirs Grand Cru 2014
Penfolds Bin 51 Riesling 2024
Penfolds Bin 311 Chardonnay 2022
Penfolds Reserve Bin 23A Chardonnay 2023
Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2022
Penfolds Bin 28 Shiraz 2022
Penfolds Bin 128 Shiraz 2022
Penfolds Bin 138 Shiraz Grenache Mataro 2022
Penfolds Bin 149 Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
Penfolds Bin 150 Shiraz 2022
Penfolds Bin 169 Cabernet Sauvignon 2022
Penfolds Bin 21 Grenache 2022
Penfolds Bin 23 Pinot Noir 2023
Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 2022
Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2022
Penfolds Bin 600 Cabernet Shiraz 2021
Penfolds Bin 704 Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 2022
Penfolds FWT 585 Cabernet 2021
Penfolds CWT Bin 521 Cabernet Sauvignon Marselan 2022*
Penfolds Howell Mountain 2021
Penfolds II Cabernet Shiraz Merlot 2022
Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 2022
Penfolds RWT Shiraz 2022
Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2021
Penfolds Grange Shiraz 2020
Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021

*CWT is the first Penfolds wine to be made exclusively from grapes grown in China.

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I’ll add a few more thoughts and my personal Top 5 of the 2024 Penfolds Collection shortly. In fact I made it a new post – personal Top 5 picks here.

Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 has now been added to Australia’s most expensive wine list.

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VIDEO
The Penfolds 2024 Collection has now been tasted and reviewed. Just for the sake of it I decided to also record a video on the Penfolds wine tasting process itself. This isn't a video of reviews, it's a behind the scenes ramble of what does and doesn't work in the tasting of the Penfolds wines, for me. Every reviewer of course is different. If for nothing else, watch the video (or part of it) to see the golden footage of the wine tasting/review process in action.

It’s not often that an Australian sangiovese makes me sit up straighter, though I’ve had my moments with both Castagna and Fighting Gully Road over the years, and perhaps with Syrahmi too. I also enjoyed Gentle Folk’s 2023 ‘village’ sangiovese. But this new Gentle Folk Onkaparinga Sangiovese 2023 ($70) from – in the words of the winery – “the boniest and highest section of the Turnbull Vineyard in Charleston” in the Adelaide Hills, is certainly a step up on the village, and more importantly: is a beautiful wine.

Interestingly, this vineyard is now over 25 years old. Sangiovese’s moment in a media sense in Australia was the early 2000s-ish, which means that this vineyard (planted 1998) is from that era. No one much talks about sangiovese any more, for a variety of clonal and general quality reasons, but the best examples now are clearly a whole world better than the wines that gathered attention back then. The irony of fashion.

The best examples of Australian Sangiovese now are better because the quality of the fruit is better, no doubt, but also because the makers of these wines are aiming for a more appropriate ideal. For appropriate read: less forced.

I digress. What I love about this wine is how assertively medium weight it is, and how assertively savoury, in the context that it feels a) satisfying and b) fruitful. It tastes and smells of potpourri crushed, fennel rolled, red cherries squished, mace, rust, twigs and more. It uses acidity to keen advantage, and places tannin through the back half of the wine like slips of paper in a book. Everything seems fine. Everything seems deliberate. Everything seems as though its requirements have been met. When I say medium-bodied, I should note that if anything this sits on the light side of that ruling. It’s not light, but it’s not much more.

As a result, it’s mouthwatering.

Gentle Folk Onkaparinga Sangiovese 2023 is sealed with a DIAM (5) cork. Only 123 dozen have been released. It is a beautiful drink, truly.

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A few days after James Halliday announced his retirement from wine writing he called me from his hospital bed, eager to talk about his final writing project. James and I have discussed this final project many times but still I was humbled and disbelieving that he’d called. This project will be a book about his journey in wine, through the lens of a series of great, unrepeatable wine dinners. The life James Halliday has had in wine is incredible. Indeed, in its own way, it’s historic.

The announcement of James’ retirement, it goes without saying, was a day that I never wanted to arrive. I said on social media, on the day of the announcement, that no one has given more to the wine community, which anyone who knows anything about anything knows to be true. But there are a couple of other reasons why I never wanted this day to arrive, and the first is that every week, of every year, as I read the words that James has written, I learn something new, or I see a new angle, or I gain a new insight.

The other reason is yet more personal. James has been the ‘head’ of Australian wine for all the time I’ve been involved in it. I’m tethered to him. He’s my marker and my guide. When I heard that James had announced his retirement I felt sad but more than that, I felt empty.

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James Halliday was effectively the Halliday guide’s chief editor from the guide’s inception until 2020, though he mostly operated under the title of author. There have been three chief editors of Halliday in four years: Halliday, Tyson Stelzer (2020-2022) and myself (2022-2024). The chief editor seat is now, fittingly, vacant. Halliday is irreplaceable.

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I like to say that Cape Mentelle saved my life. It was 1993, I was staying at a backpacker hostel in the Margaret River township, and after hiring a bike on a hot December day I’d then drastically over-estimated both my cycling fitness, and my water requirements. Margaret River is not generally considered to be particularly hilly but when you’re unfit and dehydrated and it’s hot, some of those little hills start feeling like Alpe d’Huez. In fact – to briefly digress – it’s often more taxing of your (un)fitness to ride over repeated undulations than it is to tackle out-and-out climbs, because it’s harder to pace yourself. In any case there were no dedicated bike paths back then – unlike now – and I remember beaching myself by the side of the road and sitting down there in the merciless sunshine and wondering whether I was physically capable of making it back to town. Water, if only I could find some water. I struggled on for a bit and then saw a driveway with Cape Mentelle’s name on it. I looked at the cool oasis-like calm of its beautiful old label and nearly went mental, outside Cape Mentelle, with joy.

Not only did they water me but I think they gave me crackers, and cheese. I was a wine drinker then but not a wine enthusiast, but even so I drank through several bottles of various Cape Mentelle white wines in the months thereafter, to pay it back.

It did, then, seem pretty unbelievable when, eight years later, I walked into the Cape Mentelle winery with a wine-journalist hat on. I was with Andrew Wood, of Divine Magazine. We ran through a complete vertical tasting of Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon that afternoon, with both Cape Mentelle founder David Hohnen and then winemaker John Durham, as our guides. This was around the time when the 1997 Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon should have been released, but had instead been withdrawn or withheld due to Brettanomyces spoilage.

This tasting, held in the late afternoon in a small room at the winery, was bathed in golden sun. I remember the near-orange hue of this sun falling on the weathered skin of Hohnen. Hohnen is a tall, slender man; he started both Cape Mentelle, and Cloudy Bay. He’s one of the wine world’s most significant humans. His achievements are one thing but his hands are another; I’m not sure if his hands are large, but the bones of his hands feel oversized, as if they were accidentally sized to imperial rather than to metric. These bone-dense hands make for a handshake of noteworthy strength but, more profoundly, result in the impression that you don’t just shake the hand of David Hohnen, you enter his world.

Cape Mentelle’s cabernets, back then, were muscular, firm, boney and distinctive. They were born of Hohnen’s hands. I used to think that there was something a bit Italian about them, or Aussie Italian anyway. Because of this distinctiveness I remember the style of these wines, and the impression they made, twenty plus years later. This impression was made yet clearer, in the orange light of the afternoon, by the pure, sun-bleached honesty of the discussion around Brettanomyces, and by the tough call that had been made regarding its withdrawal. It was the test of times more than it was the best of times, for the brand, but I drove away from that tasting at the winery in 2001 as invigorated and as respectful of the place as I had done that hot December day on a hire bike.

Cape Mentelle is a rare beast in Australian wine. It’s one of the few wineries who many people – who otherwise have nothing to do with this winery or this brand – tend to care about. It is to Margaret River what Wynns is to Coonawarra or perhaps more accurately what Mount Pleasant is to the Hunter Valley; it’s a winery that the general wine community would like to see doing well. They do because – thanks to Hohnen, though of course he’s no longer involved, having sold the place a long time ago – it’s a natural born flagbearer. If Cape Mentelle is doing well, Margaret River is doing well. These sentiments and statements aren’t quite what they once were, for sure, courtesy of the history of this winery’s ownership. The care has arguably been watered down a bit, if not passed to others. But the pulse of that inherited care for Cape Mentelle still continues to beat.

At some point, I can’t recall the year, I stood on the very top of a stack of barrels at Cape Mentelle with the late Simon Burnell, who worked as a winemaker there at the time. These barrels were stacked outside, and so we had a wide view of the property. I sat down to the latest 2021 Cape Mentelle Heritage Cabernet Sauvignon this week. In fact I sat down to two different bottles of it, in two different settings. With the first of these bottles, consumed in a hotel room, it felt as though I was still standing atop that stack of barrels at the winery, and was still looking down both over the estate vineyards and also over my history of memories of this place. This bottle and this moment wasn’t about Simon Burnell, who sadly has since passed. But I did think of him as I sat and drank a glass, and I thought of him again the next morning when I visited Prevelly. Once upon a time Burnell had wanted the job as chief winemaker at Mentelle. He never got the chance.

What struck me about this 2021 Cape Mentelle Heritage Cabernet Sauvignon was its softness. It has nothing of the feel of David Hohnen’s hands. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, or a criticism; it’s simply a difference. As it turns out I drank the whole bottle of this wine, myself, over the course of three nights. It is accessible. It can be cellared, but it doesn’t need to be. I reviewed the wine to The Winefront site here, though every night when I sat down to another glass of it I wondered if I’d overrated it by a point.

The second time I tasted this wine, or the second bottle, was at the Cape Mentelle International Cabernet Sauvignon tasting. It was served blind, so there was no musing, no memories, and no vistas. This is a stand-up tasting in a crowded barrel hall. The air smells sweet, and of cedar. The light, mostly, is artificial. Cape Mentelle Heritage Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 was wine number eight, of the twenty wines served.

The first thing I noticed about this wine, on this second occasion, was its gum leaf aromas. I was pretty sure, because of this, that it was Australian, but from there the wine had something of an Italianate feel. There was a balsamic note, some leather, some dried herbs, some black olive flavours, and some licorice. The score I put beside it was 93-94. I didn’t put two and two together at the bench that day. But now that I have, it pleases me to know that Cape Mentelle is still Cape Mentelle.

David Hohnen, it turns out, was also at last week’s tasting. In fact he drove an old Chevrolet pick-up truck there, and parked it front and centre at the entrance to the estate, in pretty much exactly the place he would have parked when he owned the place. In-between bracket two and three of the tasting I strolled down to take a look at this pick-up truck, which is a rich chocolate brown with an orange sunset tinge, in parts. I even peered into the cabin. On the front bench seat there was an unlabelled bottle of what looked like a spirit; it looked like moonshine. I wondered if it was real or whether it had been placed there for effect. This Chevrolet is left hand drive. It was shipped over from America, and then restored here. It is an international car. I found out later, via writer Huon Hooke, that David Hohnen has tracked down all the (five) previous owners of this pick up truck, through the course of decades. These owners are spread across America, though most of them are in the south. Hohnen is planning to travel and visit these owners, apparently, to talk to them about their old truck. These are the objects and obsessions of our lives. The personal is political. The liquid is emotional. The wheels of the pick-up trucks continue to go round and round, so long as someone cares enough to drive them. Huon Hooke tasted his first Cape Mentelle cabernet in the late 1970s, either during or just after his time at Roseworthy. This first Cape Mentelle cabernet was important to Hooke, as it helped him know what was possible in Australia, or in Margaret River at least. The connections are everywhere. Hooke tells me that he once asked Hohnen whether he is proud of what he has created. I imagined both Hooke and Hohnen looking back up the grassy rise towards the Cape Mentelle buildings, as if the answer was in there somewhere. I imagined that Hohnen had paused before offering his answer. Hooke tells me that Hohnen, gruff, wise, kind and stern at once, replied, “I don’t do pride.”

A wine that jumped out at me at the Cape Mentelle International Cabernet tasting last week was Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon 2021. We don’t hear a lot about Devil’s Lair nowadays, for whatever reason, though the wines are made by Travis Clydesdale, who I interviewed many moons ago during his stint as winemaker at Mitchelton. Because of this interview I know that Clydesdale had previously worked at both Vasse Felix and Deep Woods Estate, and that as a kid he’d lived (at Nagambie) across the road from legendary Mitchelton winemaker Don Lewis. More recently Clydesdale also worked at Blind Corner in Margaret River. The take-home here is that Clydesdale has been in and around wine all his life, and has a trove of experience.

Add to this experience the vineyard resources of Devil’s Lair itself – which is at the cooler, more kangaroo-strewn, southern end of the Margaret River region – and it all looks pretty good on paper.

It also, it turns out, looks good in reality. The 2022 Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon didn’t just win its category at the most recent Margaret River Wine Show, but also went on to win the Wine of Show award. Then, last Friday, at Cape Mentelle’s celebration of cabernet, the 2021 Devil’s Lair Cabernet – tasted double blind – sat there in a sea of glasses and announced itself, in whispers, as something truly beautiful.

It did so in the best of ways; by way of lightness, and by way of length. It’s a sinewy, perfumed, red-fruited cabernet, and for these reasons and for the extra linger on the finish it stood out, or to me it did. My note read: “Elegant, light, insistent, almost new wave grenache-like. Florals and spices. Some coffee grounds and cedar but with a light hand. Red berries, spices, peppercorns and mineral. Firm-but-long tannin. This is a super wine; light, strict, structured and ethereal at once.”

The list price on Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon is around $50, though the award-winning 2022 is already being widely discounted to $39.95. The fact that we don’t hear much about Devil’s Lair is working in the buyer’s favour here; it’s keeping and driving prices down. I haven’t (yet) tasted the 2022 but if you can find the 2021 in that price territory then by golly it’d be worth jumping on. It was one of my favourite wines in a field of wines at four, five, and ten+ times the price. I give this recommendation with one caveat; the 2021 release is a lighter, more red-berried expression of cabernet than many may prefer, and has pretty keen tannin too.

The thing is, the 2021 Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon is a less-is-more wine. It’s unforced, and it’s elegant. It wasn’t even made to be the top cabernet in its own stable – and that, I suspect, is part of its secret.

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Since this experience, I’ve tasted the Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon 2023.

The first words I wrote at the Cape Mentelle International Cabernet Sauvignon tasting this year were – having just tasted the first wine and the first wine only – “well, job done, I’ve just tasted the wine of the day.” It was a blind tasting of twenty Cabernet Sauvignons from around the world and while there would no doubt be many other stellar wines among them, this first wine was so emphatically good that I doubted that it would or could be topped.

It turned out, when the identity of all the wines was later revealed, that this first wine was Cullen Diana Madeline Cabernet Sauvignon 2021.

“Gumleaf and blackcurrant. Gravelly top notes. Firm tannin. Such command,” my note continued. “Pencil shavings and cocoa. This is the cabernet brief, nailed. There’s flavour to the acidity. There’s firm, muscular power. There’s joy, flesh, freshness and silk.”

We’ve reviewed a lot of Cullen Diana Madeline Cabernet Sauvignon releases at The Winefront over the years, as well as this 2021 specifically. The cabernet vines at Cullen were planted in 1971, which means that the mainstay of this wine – it’s a blend of 91% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% merlot, 3% cabernet franc and 2% malbec – was grown on vines that are now 50 years old. All these vines are of course grown biodynamically. The grapes were picked across two weeks, in five separate hand picks. The alcohol reading is 13.5.

The world’s best wines, across all categories, have been known to get the odd free kick. As in, their iconic status has a tendency to lead to rapturous reviews as a matter of course. I went into this tasting knowing that some of the wines to be served were closer in price to $40 than to $400 or $4000. i.e. just because a wine was at this tasting, it didn’t mean that it was expensive, or well known, or lauded. For one of Australia’s most highly regarded, and awarded, wines to then front up in a blind tasting and lay the law down with such vigor is impressive, and tells us that this emperor is fully clothed.

In the grand world of Margaret River wine the arrival, in the past wee while, of Tim Shand as head winemaker at Voyager Estate is one of the more interesting developments. There was nothing wrong with the wines of Voyager Estate at the time of Shand’s arrival, it should be acknowledged, but two things: Shand brings a Yarra Valley or perhaps even a Burgundian sensibility to this Margaret River range. And secondly, Shand has a history of stepping into a winery and quickly shaking the whole range up.

Tim Shand is a winemaker with a big brain, who likes to make big changes.

The latter is exactly what he did at Punt Road in the Yarra Valley. Punt Road was in a good market position when Shand arrived but within 18 months it was an entirely different beast altogether. He basically made the whole Punt Road range more interesting, and better value. In the process, he made the range seem more confident.

You get the feeling that Shand is in the process of doing exactly the same thing at Voyager Estate. Shand is one of those people who sees a thousand balls flying through the air and just has the knack of knowing which ones to focus on. He sees the wood, in the trees. If he was a writer he would be a master of complex matters, written in simple words.

Indeed in trying to understand the winemaker that Tim Shand is, it’s telling that he felt far more at home in his winemaking journey at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy than he did at Château Margaux in Bordeaux. Shand doesn’t like working to a formula; he likes taking the world in, and responding in the right way. Shand is originally from Perth – Voyager is, in a way, a kind of coming home – but he has also worked with Kerri Thompson (at Hardy’s) and Steve Flamsteed (at Giant Steps). Both Thompson and Flamsteed, it pretty much goes without saying, know everything there is to be known about the maintenance of high standards, and you get the impression that in this respect Shand is cut from similar cloth.

It was interesting, then, that in his first season in charge at Voyager Estate (2023), Shand picked the estate’s shiraz two weeks earlier than most other producers of shiraz in the region. He admits, as a relative newbie to the area, that he watched on nervously (“I was shitting myself”) as those who had far more experience of the region then allowed their shiraz to hang out there for much longer. The resultant Voyager Estate wine though is as good an example of Margaret River shiraz as you could ever hope to encounter, all peppery and soft, herbal and fruit-sweet, yet delicate. It is vindication in a bottle. It is a beautiful wine.

As indeed is the 2024 Voyager Estate Chenin Blanc, which is a wine of such grip, detail, cohesion and finish that it instantly jumps into the top few examples of this variety in this country.

Voyager Estate though is best known of course for its cabernet sauvignon (and/or merlot blend), and for its chardonnay. Shand’s own versions of Voyager Estate cabernet sauvignon are still a couple of years from seeing the light of day, most probably. But the first Voyager Estate Chardonnay at Shand’s hand is now on show.

“This wine,” Shand said when I met him recently, “needs to be the best wine that it can be. It’s seventy bucks and it has to be worth that, wringing wet, every day, every time.”

As good as Voyager Estate Chardonnay routinely is, and always has been, there’s an argument that the excitement surrounding this wine has lessened over the past decade or so. It hasn’t dropped off a cliff; it’s just faded ever-so-slightly. I mentioned this to Shand and he said, “It might only be a half step, but that half step is everything, and it takes a whole lot extra.”

I’ve already reviewed the 2023 Voyager Estate Chardonnay to The Winefront site but suffice to say here that this release does indeed bring some excitement back to the table, or to my taste it does.

What is more certain though is that, with Shand at Voyager Estate’s helm, it is not going to be a case of business as usual.

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Recent reviews of Voyager Estate’s wines on The Winefront – available here.
Previous article on Tim Shand, during his time at Punt Road, can be read here.

Interesting moment. I picked up a glass of cabernet at the Cape Mentelle International Cabernet tasting last week and wrote the words “mace, white pepper, capsicum and a fine mash of dried leaves”. The wine was served blind and I made no mental attempt at guessing the wine’s identity, or birthplace, at the time. But mace and white pepper on the nose of a cabernet sauvignon; the wine or at least its region was fluttering its eyelids at me furiously.

Needless to say, when the wine’s identity was revealed, it was from Hawke’s Bay in New Zealand, a region famous for the white pepper notes commonly found on its syrah. This wine though did not contain any shiraz/syrah and instead was composed of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc. It was Te Mata Estate Coleraine 2021.

My note continued: “Highly fragrant, highly leafy, but not green leaf and not tomato bush. This wine is defined both by what it is and by what it’s not. Palate is long, tense, loaded with herbs and spice notes, its footsteps have a crackle. It’s obviously a cooler, leafier, more peppery style but the long tense light-footed length of this is exceptional, as too is the purity of its blue-red-berried fruits. This wine has its own deck, its own cards, and its own rules, but the end result remains classic.”

Not much I want to add. This wine is a regional statement – of its place – as much or more than it is a varietal one. It’s the holy grail.

Gary Walsh reviewed this wine on The Winefront back in December 2022. He nailed it.

This was in February 2019. I was shooting with a Nikon D850 with a Tamron 24-70 (mark I) lens at the time, both of which pieces of equipment I owned for a brief time only, and both of which I regret selling (the D850 in particular, courtesy of its status as The Last of the Great DSLRs). I didn’t know it at the time, but this vineyard was the Black Springs Vineyard, which has since been employed by the Traviarti, Sentio and Foreign Friends brands, and perhaps by others. The wines coming off this vineyard are uniformly excellent. The top of this vineyard sits at roughly 500 metres above sea level.

Reviews on The Winefront of wines from this vineyard will appear, and be added to, here.

It has to be said that while I regret the unauthorised intrusion – and can’t imagine doing such a thing now – I do like the fact that the ‘birth’ of this vineyard was photographically documented. It has the hallmarks of becoming an important vineyard, if it’s not already.

Indeed I wish more vignerons would get me out to document their vineyard lands. But that’s a matter for another day.

And just to give an idea of the soil structure in these parts – the below picture is from a site more or less across the road. Soil types can obviously change very quickly but the below picture gives some idea of the terrain we are in.

In my early years as a writer I’d practice writing sentences, single sentences, beautiful sentences. The theory was that if I could write a perfect sentence, and follow it with another, making a perfect paragraph, eventually I would have a high-quality story, or script, or novel.

My benchmark then was Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s – the novella, not the film – which was at the time the closest thing to sentence-by-sentence perfection I knew. I followed this approach for a long time. 

Every day, a few sentences, practising. These years were important to my development but eventually I realised that this approach was folly. Style was more important than perfection. And voice – unique in the true sense of the word – was more important than both perfection and style combined.

That is, competency and even indeed beauty are great in themselves. But beyond a certain level, they are a given. Having something to say, about something, is where the real magic lies.

This is relevant in a wine context too. A lot of wines, even among the upper echelons, are the equivalent of sentence-by-sentence perfection. Among these there are also a great many with a clear and overt style. Wines that are perfectly grown and made, and have a true sense of their own style, are a wonderful thing. But unless they really have something to say, about somewhere or about something, then it’s hard to say that they are really at the pinnacle. 

This is why those wines that have a unique voice, and say something about somewhere, are so unique, and so prized. Lots of wines – even single-vineyard wines – show clear regional character, and high quality, but that special, I-can’t-get-this-from-anywhere-else impression remains tantalisingly out of reach.

For a long time now, I’ve had Tyrrell’s 4 Acres Shiraz – a wine rarely seen outside of the captivity of its direct cellar door sales – as the unofficial chairperson of this Unique Voice Club, or at least of the Australian chapter of it. Tyrrell’s 4 Acres Shiraz tastes of the Hunter Valley in its own special way. There is no other Australian shiraz quite like it. It’s light. It’s lacy. It doesn’t hit you between the eyes; it gets under your skin when you’re not looking.

Now, or at least over the past handful of years, another Australian wine has stepped into this unique territory. It’s another wine that is lighter than you expect, and more transparent – in a great way – because of it. It’s Vasse Felix Tom Cullity Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s made (by winemaker Virginia Willcock) with cabernet sauvignon and malbec. 

Vasse Felix is one of the Margaret River originals – it was founded by Tom Cullity in 1967 – but the first release under this name didn’t come until 2013. I was lucky enough to taste every release of this wine recently – vintages 2013 through 2020 inclusive. What struck me most about this tasting was not that every release, thus far, has been outstanding, but that these wines are unique. They taste of Margaret River, they taste of cabernet sauvignon, and they taste of malbec. But as much as anything, they taste of themselves. 

When Virginia Willcock interviewed for the job of winemaker at Vasse Felix, way back when, she was asked why she wanted to work there. “You’ve got the oldest vine cabernet and malbec in the region,” she replied, “but I can’t taste them in the wine.”

Needless to say, since then, Virginia has set about changing that. Tom Cullity Cabernet Malbec is the result. Interestingly – in the past – the wines made from these oldest vines on the Vasse Felix estate were often pushed back in Vasse Felix’s own hierarchy because they were seen to be “too light”. It was only once Virginia had clawed deeper into the special-ness of her site – past, perhaps, the perfect sentences phase – that she came to see that this lightness was a part of what made the wine from these oldest vines so unique.

“It’s become a refined, elegant, succulent wine, fine, best on its own because it’s unique,” she says. “I look at the Tom Cullity and I look at the elegance and finesse and I think, it’s different, it’s beautiful, it’s fine-boned, and that’s why it’s stunning.”

It’s often assumed in wine that higher quality means higher intensity of flavour. It often does. But every now and then it’s the opposite: the magic is in the lightness, that unbearable, inherent lightness.

If you want to do yourself the ultimate of wine favours, track down the 2013 and/or 2014 releases of Vasse Felix’s Tom Cullity Cabernet. Boy oh boy, wow, what a pigeon pair these wines are. You bring these wines to your mouth and the world recedes, the traffic fades, you slip into a cloud of elegance and from there the past marches up at you, the journey to now, and from there you’re away, you’re moved, you’re done.

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The latest release 2021 Vasse Felix Tom Cullity Cabernet Sauvignon is a belter too. Mike Bennie has it reviewed on The Winefront here. This isn’t a formal review (or score) but I had a few words on it here.

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Vasse Felix is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

If there’s a producer that’s really jumped out at me in recent times it’s J&S Fielke out of the Adelaide Hills. I was head-over-heels for the 2022 J&S Fielke Chardonnay, which was the full biscuit as far as I was concerned. In fact if you’re of a chardonnay kind of mind it’s hard to think of a better way to spend $40. That 2022 Chardonnay is a wine with pure, classic flavour and a load of personality.

The 2023 J&S Fielke wines were sent to me some time ago, but thanks to a comedy of errors on my behalf the wines have only just landed in my hands now. Both the 2023 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were reviewed on The Winefront site in August. Gary Walsh was positive towards the 2023 J&S Fielke Pinot Noir, but I like it more than he did. Good Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir is a bit few and far between but this release is dry, spicy and long in the best of ways. Indeed it’s a bit light-on, especially in Adelaide Hills terms, and that’s part of its secret, and part of its weaponry. It has a killing me softly aspect to it. It puts reduction to positive effect; it throws florals into crushed spices; it’s a wine of both tension and spark. It’s absolutely worth its $40 asking price.

Everyone who tastes the 2023 J&S Fielke Chardonnay (also $40) seems to love it, and again I’m 100% on board. It is chardonnay in all its glory but the clincher is the finish, which breasts the line and then just keeps on running. Again, there’s character. Again, there are classic lines, and classic flavours. This wine has all the form and structure you could wish for but it also feels free-spirited. Drinking it therefore is a joy.

Piper Heidsieck’s Hors-Serie Champagne 1982 was left on lees for a remarkable 39 years. It’s from a Champagne vintage of high renown; it’s a vintage often listed as among the Champagne region’s best. It’s a 60/40 blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, though interestingly it only received a 4 grams per litre dosage, which is low. The asking price in Australia is $1000. This is only the second release of a Hors-Serie Champagne – we reviewed the 1972 Hors-Serie Champagne on The Winefront when it was released. This 1982 release has been in Australia for most of the past year. Only a very small number of bottles were imported but if you want a bottle, there are still bottles available.

The thing is that this wine, from a great vintage, was left on lees for most of its life, and was kept in the Piper Heidsieck cellar (of course) throughout that time. What this effectively means is that it’s been given every possible chance to be kept fresh, as the decades have unfolded.

I was fortunate enough to score a bottle. It felt wrong to simply drink and taste it myself, so I’ve been looking for a way to share it. Last Friday I opened this bottle and drank it with dumplings as the accompaniment, and with two of my favourite wine industry colleagues as company. It’s a wine. What is it, forty-two years old? It’s both fresh and honeyed at once, it still has plenty of zip, it’s refreshing, and yet of course it’s rolled with complex flavour. It doesn’t offer a mind-bending experience but with every sip you’re impressed. There are of course a lot of famous wines out of France from the 1982 vintage but this Hors-Serie has taken time in its stride so effortlessly that you’d be hard-pressed to find another 1982 vintage wine in such spritely good condition.

I walk into a bottle shop in Athens and say to its owner, I don’t know much about Greek wine. Tell me, please, what should I buy?

‘Where are you from?’ he replies.

‘Australia.’

‘Where?’

‘Melbourne.’

‘Jim Barry,’ he says.

This of course was not the answer I was expecting. But I know instantly what he’s referring to.

Fifteen or so years ago Jim Barry wines of the Clare Valley – or Peter Barry specifically – took cuttings of the Greek/Santorini grape variety assyrtiko, propagated them up, and since 2014 have made varietal assyrtiko. There isn’t a lot of assyrtiko grown outside of Greece, and so among those enthusiastic about Greek grape varieties, the Barry’s work has not gone unnoticed.

There are a lot of new (and not so new), hard-to-pronounce grape varieties in play in Australia now. Viticulturist Troy McInnes, for instance, has 26 different grape varieties to look after at the Chalmers Heathcote vineyard, including but not limited to falanghina, garganega, greco, malvasia istriana, nosiola, pavana, pecorino, refosco, ribolla gialla and schioppettino. Indeed the Riverland region, which has a long history of ‘different’ varieties, is in the process of being revolutionised as it slowly embraces this difference. It’s not alone; there are new or non-mainstream varieties being trialled or re-imagined in most Australian regions.

In general, as someone who drinks/tastes wine for a living, I’ve taken the release of wines from these ‘new’ varieties glass by glass. That is, I keep the tasting and assessment process simple. I look for the usual quality cues of line, length, power and perhaps presence, and then ask myself simple questions like: does the wine taste good, does it make me want another glass, and is there anything distinctive?

If I can respond positively to these questions, then I’m happy to award the wine a positive score. Reference points – as in, what the best example of each variety tastes like in its homeland – are important but less crucial to my assessment. I prize individuality over orthodoxy.

I’m aware though, as I taste the wares of these new or newly appreciated varieties, that some of them have gained this new interest thanks to climate change. As in, they are an attempt to outrun it. Assyrtiko is one of these varieties, in a way: its homeland of Santorini is a hot, dry, windy – and exquisitely beautiful – moonscape with extreme exposure to the elements; any variety that can thrive there is surely suited to a heating up of our climate.

The Barry’s work with assyrtiko has though an extra importance. As in, it’s a variety that is not just climate-change-ready. The way it combines texture, fruit intensity, minerality and herb notes in a context of mouth-watering acidity is unique-enough to make it noteworthy. It’s a fine wine, of its own design. Drinking it is a genuine marriage; not just one of convenience. In assyrtiko, genuine excellence can be found.

A couple of hours after the wine shop experience above, I plonked myself down at a nearby wine bar. I’m still in Athens. It was mid-afternoon. The streets were busy but my wife and I were the only ones in the bar for the entirety of our time there. The bartender put his cigarette down and asked me what I’d like to drink. ‘I want Greek white wine. Dry. I’m not fussed with the price, I just want it to be good,’ I said.

‘I will show you two wines. You choose,’ he said.

He then put two small glasses in front of me. The first was perfumed, floral, acidic but with a slip of fruit sweetness. It was good in an ok kind of way. The second was dry, dramatic, like tonic water flowing through sand and rocks. Volcanic sand and volcanic rocks. I put the second glass down and smiled, I thought, on the inside. The bartender exhaled cigarette smoke. ‘You made the right choice,’ he said. I hadn’t said anything. He then poured me a glass and left the bottle on the counter. It was assyrtiko, from Santorini.

We sat there then, without speaking. It was bright outside but dark inside the bar. I drank the glass and had another; so too did my wife. The way the bottle shop owner had responded when I said that I was Australian. The way he had instantly thought of Jim Barry. The way thisnbartender had known my choice without me having to say. I felt as though I’d stood for a moment at the well of both these gentlemen and peered into the very depths of them. I felt as though I’d glimpsed an immense, essential pride in them both; pride in their nation, pride in their grapes, and pride most of all in their culture.

I had cause and time to reflect. Perhaps I need to add another layer to my assessment of such varieties, I thought. Varieties are not just grapes, squeezed to make juice. They are culture. They run deep.

—

A version of this article was first published in Halliday Wine Companion.

The 2024 edition of Tahbilk's famous Marsanne is an excellent release. It's a $22 'classic', worthy of the cellar. The question is though: does anyone care? FULL STORY HERE.

This list wasn’t written by me; it was supplied by Tourism Tasmania. But I’m always looking for lists like this when I’m about to travel so I thought I’d publish this list of the “best new Tasmanian restaurants”. When I visit some of these places I’ll add updates. Feel free to add your own suggestions and/or comments. The list.

In front of me I have a glass of Chatto Intrigue Pinot Noir 2023. It’s a high quality drink, structured and taut, light, insistent, spicy, beautiful. I have, too, a glass of Chatto’s Isle Pinot Noir 2021. This is deeper than the Intrigue above but in the same mould; it has a similar emphasis on structure and spice, and feels generally unafraid of the world; it feels confident. Both of these wines and indeed most of the wines I’ve ever tasted from Jim Chatto over the course of many years lead me to think that everything he touches, in a winemaking sense, usually turns to gold. His wine are like pristine streams running through a ravine; he sets up clear frames for his wines, and within these frames he lets the wines run wild.

This note though is not about the above wines, or indeed Jim Chatto. It’s about the Chatto Isle Pinot Noir 2023, which is the current release. Isle is a vineyard selection from the Chatto’s farm at Glaziers Bay in the Huon Valley, Tasmania. In general terms, Isle is the most coveted of Chatto’s annual set of Pinot Noir releases.

This 2023 release though. When I first opened it, it had me stumped. It felt light but too light; it tasted of capsicum; there was flavour but it seemed to jump around a bit. I came back to it a couple of times over the course of an hour, with the same impression. Gary Walsh had already reviewed this wine on The Winefront site; at this point I thought I’d probably just move on, without comment. I went out for a bike ride. I showered up, made dinner, and then sat back down to a fresh glass. It was hard to believe that I was looking at the same wine. The wine had grown.

There’s a frame of sulphur to this wine, which isn’t unusual. There’s a character like liquid roses and violets. There’s a mineral or graphite-like edge, which holds hands with the sulphur. There’s a cotton thread of raspberry. I’d usually describe a wine like this as tasting of cranberry, because it’s a handy descriptor, especially with pinot, for wines that come across as pale and crunchy and, most especially, tangy. I’m tempted to go with that here because this wine is all those things, but here this character is something darker. It’s cranberry, black edition. There’s also a spray of garden herb notes but they are so neatly tucked within that they’re like leaves pressed into a book.

I ended up thinking that Gary Walsh’s description of this wine was absolutely spot on. He described the wine perfectly. I pretty much agreed with his score too, for a while. I’m now though in 95 point territory. I think this is a gorgeous wine, its red notes shaded with black, its mineral characters wrapped in silk. There is too that lacing throughout of herbs. If I was in the market for a $90 Pinot Noir, and I knew where some of this could be sourced, I’d be in. It’s up with the best of Australian pinot.

For the past twenty years Sarah Fagan has been the not-so-secret winemaking weapon of De Bortoli’s Yarra Valley outfit. You name it, she’s made it; she’s the kind of winemaking asset that every wine producer would love to have. I went out to meet Sarah Fagan at her new winemaking home – TarraWarra Estate – recently and along the way stopped to briefly visit a couple of other Yarra Valley wine producers. One of these producers, when I said that I was going to visit Sarah Fagan, said, “Good luck going for a job interview with Sarah Fagan as one of the other candidates.” It says everything of the regard Sarah Fagan has hard-earned over the years.

Now that these events have transpired though it seems, suddenly, like a match made in heaven. Indeed it’s hard to think of a better place, at a better time, for Fagan to walk into. TarraWarra Estate is a significant producer; it’s part of the Yarra Valley establishment, or at least of the modern version of it. But its wine range, while always very good or better*, is in need of a fresh set of eyes.

I say this because, in Yarra Valley terms, the wines of TarraWarra Estate prior to Sarah Fagan’s arrival have sat generally at the beefier end of the Yarra Valley spectrum. Put it this way: TarraWarra Estate, which is on a beautiful patch of hillside land, faces north, and the wines have been reflective of this aspect. As a result, wine quality at TarraWarra Estate has never fallen backwards but nor has it kept pace.

Sarah Fagan will change that. Indeed she arguably already has, though given that she’s only one vintage in the best is no doubt yet to come. It will be a monumental surprise if TarraWarra Estate isn’t well and truly back at the top end of quality town within the next few years.

This, given the long term standing of TarraWarra Estate, is pretty exciting for both the Yarra Valley and for quality Australian wine in general.

The first shoots of this change can already be seen. Sarah Fagan didn’t make the 2023 TarraWarra wines but she did finish the wines and put them into bottle. TarraWarra usually makes both a Reserve and a ‘standard’ chardonnay and pinot noir; Fagan has put all the best wine into the standard release, and shelved the Reserve range. All the 2023 TarraWarra Estate releases – reviewed on The Winefront here – feel as though the ‘drinkability factor’ has been ramped higher. They are wines that you just want to hook into.

The bigger change though will be seen with the 2024 releases, which was Fagan’s first vintage in charge. None of the 2024 wines, when they are released, will have an alcohol percentage greater than 13.5. This is a headline in itself. This is the start of a fresher, brighter era at TarraWarra Estate.

The first sign of this is already on the market. It’s the TarraWarra Estate Pinot Noir Rose 2024, which is so much paler, spicier and friskier – and more savoury – than previous releases. It’s not just a beauty in itself; it’s a harbinger.

As indeed is news that TarraWarra Estate has taken a long term lease on the Swallowfield vineyard at Gembrook in the Upper Yarra, and – to boot – has also taken on Chris Beard as its viticulturist. Chris Beard is ex Mount Mary. So TarraWarra Estate has taken on Sarah Fagan as its winemaker, and Chris Beard as its viticulturist, and added a prime Upper Yarra vineyard as a key plank of its vineyard resources. It has also lured Samantha Isherwood into the role of General Manager, which in a behind-the-scenes sense is equally significant, courtesy of Isherwood’s extensive wine industry experience and general high regard. Combine these facts and it is clear that an across-the-board revolution has taken place at TarraWarra Estate.

All of which is aimed at an improvement of the wine in the glass. “We still want flavour,” Fagan says simply, “but we also want energy, and longevity, and freshness.”

It’s time to put your seatbelts on. TarraWarra Estate is ready or take-off.

—

TarraWarra Estate Pinot Rosé 2024: Review on The Winefront here.
TarraWarra Estate’s 2023 releases: Reviewed on The Winefront here.

—

• On re-reading this article it occurred to me that the tone of this piece is disrespectful to the previous long-term TarraWarra Estate winemaker, Claire Halloran. This was certainly not the intent. Claire Halloran put TarraWarra Estate on the wine map, and she did so by consistently producing high quality wines. Indeed Claire Halloran’s work didn’t just put TarraWarre Estate on the map; her wines helped forge the high standing of the modern Yarra Valley. Her work is historically important, and should continue to be acknowledged as such. The point that now is a good time for a fresh set of eyes, and that Sarah Fagan is the perfect fit for this time, remains valid.

I knew Fiona MacDonald for 10 or maybe even 15 years before I knew that Jacki MacDonald was her sister. Jacki was the most famous of the three MacDonald sisters, courtesy of her time at Hey Hey It’s Saturday, but Fiona was a tv star in her own right, courtesy of her time in the 1980s on shows such as Wombat and It’s a Knockout. I knew Fiona MacDonald though because she’s worked for, and loved, Henschke Wines for pretty much my entire professional time in wine. Fiona was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in 2021 and has since waged an incredible battle. Today, 3 October 2024, Fiona’s family announced that this battle had come to an end, and that her time with us was now over.

I never saw Fiona MacDonald’s battle with MND as brave, even though it no doubt was. I saw it as true. It was true to Fiona MacDonald. It was bubbly, it was honest, it was open, it was generous, it was energetic and it was unifying. It brought people together, and it brought out the best in them. If you want to know why Fiona MacDonald has been the go-to publicist for Australia’s premier wine family, the Henschkes, over all of these years, then Fiona’s journey with MND provides all the answers and more. You never needed a spotlight to illuminate the work of, or the person, that was Fiona MacDonald. She carried her own spotlight inside, and shed it everywhere she went. She was a carrier of the light. Put simply, Fiona MacDonald made every room and every one brighter. The Australian wine industry will miss her dearly, one and all, as indeed will Australia at wide.

Fiona’s final message to the world, posted on social media by her sister Kylie, finished with the words: “I carry your love and laughter with me.”

I knew Fiona MacDonald for 10 or maybe even 15 years before I knew that Jacki Macdonald was her sister, as I say. I found out one cold afternoon while sitting in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven car, on my way to Henschke. I was rhapsodising on how good Fiona MacDonald was at her job, and how good she’d been for Henschke. A colleague, sitting beside me, looked at me and said: You know who her sister is, right?

The answer was that no, until that moment, I didn’t. I didn’t have to. Fiona MacDonald, I later found out, was immensely proud of her older, more famous sister. Immensely proud. But Fiona MacDonald was a star human being in her own right, and for this and for all the light she cast on us, not to mention the gorgeous sound of her own laughter, she will be remembered.
__

Fiona MacDonald’s incredible It’s A Big Lap for MND raised – and continues to raise – funds to support research into MND, with the goal to find a cure. So far over $220,000 has been raised. Donations can be made here. In October 2023 the ABC’s Australian Story ran a feature on Fiona MacDonald. It’s worth watching.

Southern Light Vineyards is a name you need to know. It is because the initial wines are good – they were grown on the highest vineyard at Main Ridge, on the Mornington Peninsula – but also because this endeavour is the baby of Joval Wines, and Joval doesn’t do anything by halves.

Eventually there will be a few tiers to this range; Southern Light Vineyards owns three vineyards, two of them in the Yarra Valley, the third on the Mornington Peninsula. All the wines will be either chardonnay or pinot noir. So far, all we’ve seen are two wines from the elevated 5.5 hectare Ghost Gum vineyard at Main Ridge in Mornington. 2021 was the first release; 2022 is the current.

These wines are made by Anthony Fikkers, who not only gives the impression of being smarter than your average bear, but is also ex Giant Steps, De Bortoli (Hunter), Maddens Rise and Mac Forbes, among others. Fikkers ran his own brand for a period too, which memorably featured (among other wines) the Fikkers Two Bricks label. Fikkers not only knows his way around cool climate viticulture (he has both winemaking and viticulture qualifications) but he’s also seen first hand, over a longish period, both the right way to do things, and the wrong way. Crucially, he also knows what it’s like to put it all on the line under his own name.

Given that Southern Light Vineyards is owned by Joval, it will no doubt be ambitious. If you could tailor-make past experience to help realise these ambitions, you’d reckon that Fikkers is pretty much the perfect fit.

The Joval group, if you’re not aware, is owned by the Valmorbida family. This family has incredible experience in wine (and food) retail, wholesale, distribution and production. Some of this experience is outlined, quite fascinatingly, here. Joval own both the Mezzanine and Red+White wine distribution companies, and again if you’re not familiar, read the list here and weep.

If there’s one advantage Southern Light Vineyards will have, it’s stellar distribution.

This is of no relevance here, but when I was 18 years old – and I’m now 56 – I went out with a woman who worked at a company called Conga foods, which I think was owned by the Valmorbidas. This woman took me to my first ever ‘wine tasting’, at the Mitchelton winery. She also introduced me to Panetone, which Conga imported. I have no idea where Conga fits among the various arms of the Valmorbida family but in any case, I digress.

Joval have done it all in the food and wine space, pretty much, though there’s a slight difference with Southern Light Vineyards. Here, they are not buying an existing winery or brand or stock. Here, for the family’s first time in wine, they are building everything from the ground up: own vineyards, own winemaker, own winery, own label, own distribution. I once lived next to a fanatical fly fisherman and he said to me, one day, that the proudest moment of his life – outside of his family life, of course – was when he caught a trout off the back of his own property, using a fishing road that he had fashioned himself, and a lure that he had designed and made with his own hands. Southern Light Vineyards is an endeavour all the greater than catching a single fish, of course, but suffice to say: it all runs deeper when every step is your own decision, and your own investment.

In other words, this is the first time that this significant wine and food family has gone for absolute gold in a wine production sense. It’s got legacy written all over it.

 “We really value aspect,” Fikkers says. “Southern Light Vineyards is all about aspect. It’s about light, morning light. I wouldn’t say that we value aspect above everything else but it is really important to us. It’s important for quality, but it’s also important for style. We value morning sun rather than hot afternoon sun. The vineyard at Main Ridge, for instance, is in total shade from about 3.30pm onwards.”

I’m not sure if I tasted the 2021 Ghost Gum Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines. I’ve now though tasted the 2022 Ghost Gum Chardonnay, and 2022 Ghost Gum Pinot Noir, a couple of times, with food and without. According to Fikkers, who as I say has extensive experience making wines in the Yarra Valley, “2021 was the first time that I’d made wine from Mornington. In 2022 we really sharpened the wines up; I’m much happier with them.”

Formal reviews of the 2022 releases are available on The Winefront site via the links above. What I’m happy to report here though is that the 2022 Ghost Gum Chardonnay is looking seriously good right now. As a friend – who has been in the wine business for a long time – said to me about this wine, “I was shocked at how good it is.” All the above story is one thing, but in the glass this wine is the goods. Drink the 2022 Ghost Gum Chardonnay and you’ll see why I’m keen to, in a way, get in first in drawing attention to this Southern Light Vineyards project.

I may have been a little harsh on the 2022 Ghost Gum Pinot Noir on The Winefront, time will tell. I raised my score by a point after tasting it a second time. It’s a complex and brooding wine, and it will age well. I have a feeling, when this wine hits its peak, Ghost Gum and Southern Light Vineyards will be much better known than they are now.

Since this article was published the 2023 Southern Light Vineyards Ghost Gum Chardonnay has been released. It’s a beauty.

It’s pretty amazing that one of the best new wines on the Australian wine landscape started off as an accident, was initially hidden by its maker from the winery owner, and is so challenging to most wine drinkers that it can’t be ordered from the winery’s website; you have to talk to someone from the winery first, who explains what you’re in for, and only then are you allowed access.

It’s enough to draw comparisons with the early days of Penfolds Grange – which wasn’t an accident, but which was also (famously) hidden behind false walls after Penfolds’ management ordered that its production be stopped, and which was also challenging to most of the drinkers who first got to taste it.

The wine I’m talking about here is made by the Crittenden winery on the Mornington Peninsula, in the tiniest of volume, and is called Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile. I’d love to claim this comparison between the early days of Cri de Coeur Sous Voile and Grange as my own because it’s so apt, so well made and so romantic, but it’s Halliday tasting panel member Jane Faulkner who came up with it.

Faulkner knows the wine well. She awarded the current 2017 release a whopping 97/100, and has championed it from its first release, just a few years ago.

The reason Crittenden Cri de Coeur Sous Voile (sous voile means under a veil, the veil in this case being a cover of flor yeast) is an accident is that it only came about because of the famous albarino mix-up of 2009. In the lead up to that year a number of Australian wineries had albarino vines growing in their vineyards, or they thought they did, and had been releasing wines under the name of albarino over the preceding few years. Then it was discovered that the vines, the whole lot of them, were not albarino and instead were the Savagnin variety. A funny feeling then came on the Australian industry at wide, where no one really knew what to do with all this not-so-exciting savagnin; it was like being told that you’d been dating the wrong twin, without you knowing it.

Or something like that. In any case Matt Campbell, who makes wine at Crittenden with Rollo Crittenden himself, took a barrel of the suddenly-unwanted savagnin and, of his own volition, made sure that no one looked after it, so to speak. That is, he didn’t sulphur it, and let it evaporate over time inside the barrel, and left it that way for years. During this time a protective layer of flor yeast developed on the surface of the wine. And that’s where the magic begins.

This winemaking technique is not new; indeed it’s inspired directly by the great Vin Jaune wines of the Jura region of eastern France. Both winemaker Matt Campbell and us drinkers were also lucky, or luckier than Max Schubert had been with his Grange, in that when Rollo Crittenden, who had the power to knock this experiment on the head, was eventually shown the wine he ‘got it’ instantly, and has been a key driver of its annual production ever since.

What this treatment of the savagnin grapes has done is create a nutty, wild, sherry-like wine that, from there, goes its own way, by its own design. I was lucky enough to taste through every vintage so-far released recently – 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 – and all of them left me salivating. They are released at 4-5 years of age, and every one of them so far has been both distinct and wonderful. The 2013 and the current 2017 releases are though, for me, particularly striking.

So much so that, if you were asked to present to an international grand jury on the glory of fine Australian wine, you would be mad not to request that Crittenden Cri de Coeur Sous Voile be one of your key exhibits. It’s that good or, at least, that distinctive.

The Crittenden winery, it’s important to point out, makes a range of high quality wines, and although I want to jump up and down right now and say that the Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile is now, against all odds, the best of the estate’s wines, the truth is that it has some stiff competition. Crittenden is a fantastic winery. But wow, regardless, this Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile takes the Crittenden winery and gives it a life on a different map. This wine is not only different, and stellar, but it also has the ability to stop you in your tracks, and make you think. It’s like a piece of art; it asks questions of you, as you ask questions of it.

Which doesn’t mean that you’re going to like it. But Crittenden’s Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile is an Australian wine that everyone should try at least once – if they’ll sell you a bottle.

—

This article was first published in Halliday Wine Companion Magazine in January 2023.
Mike Bennie ran through a full vertical of these wines on The Winefront site here.

One dark day in October 2020 news broke through to the wine community that Taras Ochota had died. Taras had sent me his wines a couple of times but I’d never met him, and his story had never been mine to tell. That is, other than via the glass, I had no personal connection to him, either real or pretend. And yet I always remember the moment that I heard that news; it was like hearing that one of the world’s navigating lights had been turned off. It felt wrong in both concept and in fact. This news was sad, obviously, but it was also unsettling. I’d never stared long and hard at Taras Ochota, but I had glanced at him, frequently, as had so many. These glances, textured like sun, had burned something onto us, and into us. Life would be lesser without him, but greater for him.

I don’t know Amber Ochota either, but I can’t imagine – given the above – that it was an easy decision to continue to make the Ochota Barrels wines. Anxiety is a beast, and for all manner of reasons, the position Amber finds herself in has anxiety written all over it, even though of course, it shouldn’t. Life’s not fair like that.

In any case, this Ochota Barrels Where’s The Pope Syrah 2024, which I bought at full retail price, is a cause for any and all involved to rest that bit easier. It is, truly, a gorgeous wine to drink. It’s a light-ish wine but it’s meaty, it’s peppery, it’s cherried and it’s tense. I drank it on a Wednesday night, and it made the life ahead seem that bit brighter, not to mention, greater.

There’s a need in wine, both in Australia and elsewhere, for fresh, unique images to be taken, recorded, crafted and published. When we look back on the past 100 or so years of Australian wine, the images that we have to look on are both invaluable, and enriching. I’m not sure that enough of it’s going on right now. There is of course a great deal of social media photography going on and as a collective it’s a wonderful thing; hopefully it somehow manages to survive, and be passed on. This little photoblog here – most easily accessed from the above PHOTOGRAPHY drop down menu – is my little ongoing contribution.

It’s not often that I come across a wine that is genuinely different. This wine is genuinely different. A container load of the grapes that were used to make this wine were submerged in the ocean prior to them being fermented. As in, the grapes were actually sunk into the ocean, at sunset. Just to emphasise that point a third time, I’ll quote from the L.A.S winery website:

“‘Marea’ means tide in Italian and to our knowledge this is the first wine in Australia whose hand-picked grapes were immersed into ocean water following techniques used by the Ancient Greeks. The idea was sparked by the encounter of two Italian girls (Maria & Teresa) who met working at L.A.S. Vino and had a dream to create a wine that reflects the beauty of the ocean surrounding Margaret River.”

Not all of the grapes used in the making of this wine went through this process; more than 50% of the end wine was made using more commonplace techniques. The end wine, or the taste of it, though suggests that all the above remains of absolute relevance.

It is because the wine tastes of the sea. It tastes of vermentino grapes too: it’s citrussy, and grippy, and underpinned by a genuine fruitiness, and sprayed with fragrant herb notes. There’s some aniseed-like flavour in this wine too, though there’s also salt, and seaweed, and a generally briny feel. A long time ago I sat and drank a couple of bottles of Lemon Ruski on a beach somewhere in Western Australia, and tasting this wine invoked the fullness of that memory, via its salty, citrussy, saltbush-y feel. This wine didn’t invoke the sweetness of that Lemon Ruski: it invoked its lemons, and the beach itself. I drank a half-glass of this wine and started craving hot fish and chips, with vinegar.

I have no real interest in putting a score on this wine, and have no idea what it would be if I did. What score an experience, and an invocation?

L.A.S Marea Vermentino 2022 is $45, if you can find it.

I'm not sure that I've ever seen anything quite like the new Elanto vineyard on the Mornington Pensinula. This is wine ambition written in a mass of close-planted vines. Elanto Vineyard's first wines, too – more importantly – put this new Mornington Peninsula producer on the map. Full story here.

Wine is at its best when there’s both history and freshness involved. The history adds a depth; the freshness adds a glint. Whether we like it or not, we’re all drawn back ceaselessly into the past, and yet we’re all here in the present, as fresh as we can manage. If wine was a bike, it would be a tandem. It pairs to food and to land but it also pairs us to the past, to a partner, to a comrade, to a time.

Ansted & Osicka is a new wine venture but the people behind it – Tobias Ansted and Simon Osicka – are seasoned, and are friends. Tobias for a time was the winemaker at Balgownie Estate. The founding winemaker at Balgownie Estate, which was founded itself in 1969, was Stuart Anderson. Stuart Anderson is his own kind of legend of Australian wine. Stuart is a legend for the best of reasons – for the elegant, long-lived, magical wines that he both created and indeed pioneered – and for yet a better reason again: for the people he’s helped, and for the wines he’s inspired.

Tobias Ansted was the winemaker at Balgownie Estate between 2001 and 2008, a position he now describes as “a privilege”. I met him there one hot day a long time ago. When I walked into the winery he was sitting on a basic chair in the middle of a concrete floor, with a tray of eggs and eggshells in front of him, which he was cracking and separating for fining. We talked openly, not on eggshells. He was a young man then with all his best wines ahead of him. Simon Osicka, likewise, has known the vineyards and people of central Victoria all his life. His father Paul Osicka started a winery in 1955, the first in the Heathcote wine region. Simon now runs it and makes it. Simon Osicka, I always like to note, is a person who had the wider world and certainly the wider Australia at his winemaking feet but who, instead, decided to turn back and re-invest in his roots.

These, in short, are good wine people.

Tobias and Simon hang out in Heathcote and chat about wine. Tobias makes the wines at Tellurian now. They reckoned, over a glass, that they’d make a pretty good tandem. If you have to stop and think about pretty much anything in life, then you probably shouldn’t do it. When Tobias and Simon heard that there were some grapes available from Balgownie’s 1970 Block of Cabernet Sauvignon, they didn’t have to stop and think.

Some vineyards, to the right kind of wine people, are as exciting as a toy shop.

“We started without any real plan beyond that this would be an excuse to hang out and talk about wine some more,” Tobias says.

The wine they have created together is a gorgeous example of history and freshness, in a bottle, ready for the glass. It’s one of those ‘if you know, you know’ things, but suffice to say that the Balgownie 1970 Block of Cabernet Sauvignon is a vineyard that is historically important to Victorian, and to Australian, wine. The fact that some of its grapes fell into the hands of two people who get its value, deep down and long term, is just one of those things that makes you want to sit down, and say an agnostic prayer of thanks.

Sometimes, out there in the wine lands, with no one much there to see, a bright light is turned on. If we’re lucky, we get to sit in the fall of that light, and drink it.

Ansted & Osicka 1970 Block Balgownie Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 is a balanced wine, well composed, quite minty, a little raisiny perhaps and yet through the length of it the fruit feels berried and fresh, like an old oar in water. This wine will cellar beautifully and, indeed, is beautiful now.

RRP is AU $60.

Kudos to Balgownie Estate for allowing this to take place.

Links:
Formal review and score of this wine on The Winefront site.
Ansted & Osicka
Balgownie Estate

• Scarpa was founded around 1900 by Antonio Scarpa in Nizza Monferrato, originally as a modern enological facility producing Barbera and other wines.

• Scarpa has vineyards across Monferrato and the Langhe (including crus in Verduno Monvigliero, Neive Canova, La Morra).

• It has over 25 ha at Poderi Bricchi plus ~5 ha in Barolo/Barbaresco crus, total around 30+ hectares

• It was managed between the 1970s–2001 by Mario Pesce (organic pioneer, traditional approach), and is now now run by Martina Barosio and Maria Piera Zola (since 2001).

Every now and then someone stands up at lunch and makes the mundane seem extraordinary. This happened recently with Aldo di Filippo, who was in Australia to represent Piedmont producer Scarpa. The early wines had been served when Aldo stood up and said, “At Scarpa, we don’t want structure. We don’t want complexity.”

I smiled on hearing this, I admit, and I did because I’m human. I’ve been writing about wine for nearly 25 years and in all that time I’ve never heard a winery representative emphasise any such thing; the usual message is, of course, exactly the opposite. This though is the kind of thing you can say when all you’ve ever known, for all your wine existence, is structure and complexity. In Piedmont, if you’re half decent, structure and complexity are a given. The focus, then, is allowed to shift to the philosophy of what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, onto why.

“We are in no rush,” Aldo continued. “You may like the wines. You may not. That's Scarpa. We don’t search for structure or for complexity, because all we search for is to express Scarpa. We do this with finesse, and we do this with elegance.”

Scarpa’s history dates back 125 years. Only four people, in all that time, have held the winemaking reins. It has 30 hectares of land at Monferrato, and five hectares in the Langhe. It grows nine varieties, and makes 14 wines (and vermouth).

Here was Aldo’s other message: “Scarpa does not do long macerations, and does not use barriques.

“We make our wines, in this way, to maintain the heritage of our region. We don't think about what might be easier to sell. We don’t care about what might be quicker. That’s why we say 'we can wait'. That’s why we say, we are in no rush. We try to keep secondary oak flavour out of the wine. We don’t want structure. We don’t want complexity.”

I think, when he repeated this line, that I may not have been the only one in the room to smile, covertly. Aldo said, “We don't need sales. We don’t need to shift stock. It's only, for us, about people understanding Scarpa. It’s about representation.”

—

All the Scarpa wines tasted at this lunch were reviewed to The Winefront site, though it’s worth re-stating that these wines were tasted over lunch, and so pretty quickly, and with the inherent distraction of food and service and people. That said, the Scarpa Verduno Pelaverga 2022 – grown on vines planted in 1970, and matured completely sans oak – is a great introduction to the Scarpa way of thinking, not to mention the quality of its fruit. Similarly with the Scarpa Freisa Monferrato 2019; this is just such a jolly, joyous wine, unencumbered and strict at once. Both these wines are sub AU $70, and while not screaming bargains, they’re reasonably priced for the character on offer. A step up from both these wines is Scarpa La Bogliona Barbera 2018 (AU $132), which shines a torch straight into the heart and mind of Scarpa.

And of course, the wines are complex, even at the welcome level, and structural.

—

Scarpa also has accommodation. It’s here if you want to see it. In a most Italian moment, Aldo spoke of this accommodation. He said, ‘The style of the villas is, I think you would say, country chic.” He then paused, but only very briefly. “Chic, but with soul,” he added.

This is the story behind the Giant Steps Bastard Hill Chardonnay 2023 and the Giant Steps Bastard Hill Pinot Noir 2023.

For the past twenty years the Bastard Hill vineyard has been a crying shame of Australian wine. It’s a great vineyard, steep, unlikely, born of rainforest, a literal pain in the neck. The crying shame is not that it’s been used and abused but rather, that it’s not been used, and not been abused. It’s been written off by its big company owner as too hard to work, and too hard to sell. The oxygen of every great endeavour is imagination and this vineyard, save for the visionaries who planted it in the mid 1980s, has been starved of it. As a result the Bastard Hill vineyard, named for obvious reasons, has been left to sleep out there on its steep mountain slopes as the bastard child of the companies formerly known as Hardy’s. As a result this should-be-great vineyard has been kept hidden away, myth-like, talked about but not seen, and rarely tasted, like a giant, an unlikely giant, a sleeping one.

This vineyard, in the upper reaches of the Yarra Valley, planted in 1986, was the future before we knew what the future was. It’s steep, cool, individual and hard, so hard in fact that this great vineyard site is, at nearly 40 years old, probably still most widely known for its contribution to the 1990s glory days of Eileen Hardy chardonnay.

And yet everyone who gets it knows that this place is one hell of worth it.

And yet everyone who gets it knows that this vineyard has, simply, been waiting for someone to love it into greatness.

It’s hard for the lay person to know exactly what a vineyard needs to kiss it back to life. But every lay person knows how it feels, and what it means. In 2022, the owners of the Giant Steps winery – the US-based Jackson Family Wines – did what the locals told them to do and walked up the hill and bought the Bastard Hill vineyard. What the vineyard saw when it opened its eyes to its new custodians was something it had not seen or known in a long time, but had always desperately needed. What the Bastard Hill vineyard saw, in the people now charged to tend it, was excitement.

This excitement is not of nothing. Indeed, now, in 2024, suddenly, it seems foretold. Every great story needs a sentry. It now seems as if this vineyard on this mountain had scouted ahead and waited there for its destiny. The Giant Steps winery has bought the sleeping giant.

We’re here, Giant Steps said.
The bastard land, finally, was allowed to wake.
Now we make, it said.

And now they have. Giant Steps’ preparation for this moment has been long and specific. It’s been about lands, little lands, slices. Terroir is best measured in coffee spoons; in mornings, evenings, and afternoons. Tarraford. Sexton. Wombat Creek. Primavera. Applejack. And the vineyards honoured but along the way lost: Arthurs Creek, Tosq, Nocton, Lusatia. Phil Sexton, Steve Flamsteed, Jackson Family Wines and the ruler of Giant Steps now: Melanie Chester. These lands and these people and the teams by their side; these carriages and creators of history; these shoulders. It’s taken a river to reach the source of it.

Two wines, a sleeping giant, a small step, a giant one. A bastard of a hill, and a dream. There are moments in wine that take time itself, and add a shiver to it.

—

I tasted a wine earlier this year, blind, at a big tasting. Beside one of these wines I placed an asterisk. The wine turned out to be Giant Steps Bastard Hill Chardonnay 2023. The asterisk always means: I want to know more.

—

At this tasting I wrote: “Fine, long and chalky. Bony but not underdone. Elegant. Unreal. What is this? It’s something.”

—

Mid winter, the past two years, I’ve sat and tasted with Melanie Chester, the single vineyard wines of Giant Steps, pinot noir and chardonnay, sans of course Bastard Hill. When I taste with Chester she always credits her team. She credits her predecessor, Steve Flamsteed. Every good idea or decision is always someone else’s. It’s what the best people do; they don’t hoover the credit, they shed it. Because they can.

—

This time last year I asked Chester to explain her art of chardonnay winemaking. She said, “Every berry for Giant Steps is hand picked. It’s all sorted in the vineyard. We cool overnight, and then press super gently. All the chardonnays are whole bunch pressed. We check the baumé, then dump it all to barrel, and let it ferment naturally. We don’t add anything, but we are across every single barrel, and I mean fully across every barrel. We make sure that every barrel goes through healthy, which is why I think our wines are so fresh and textured.

“We let everything oxidise up during fermentation, and then we handle everything reductively from there. We lock them up and let them rest. Our house style isn’t reductive.”

—

The visionaries who planted the Bastard Hill vineyard were David Paxton and Ray Guerin. Guerin also planted the Applejack vineyard. Guerin is known and recognised for his work on many different vineyards, in various Australian states, but if he’d only ever worked on these two sites, he’d still be indexed under the word ‘wow’.

—

Now we drink. Two boxes arrived on my doorstep this morning, each from the 2023 ripening season. In these boxes, among others, were the two Bastard Hill wines. It was cold out, as I opened them. I shivered. Vineyards have the turning circle of a ship. When you run a vineyard like Bastard Hill, if you run it well, your sleeves are never rolled down. There’s replanting, there’s fencing, there’s more tribulation than triumph. We’re only now at the end of the start, or at the start of the future. Some roads are so long that it’s best to just sleep through them. Now though, we’re awake. We’re growing. And finally, we have something.

—

end.

__

Formal reviews of all the 2023 Giant Steps single vineyard wines have all now been posted on The Winefront. These include reviews of the 2023 Giant Steps Bastard Hill Chardonnay, the Giant Steps Bastard Hill Pinot Noir 2023 and the Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2023.
The Giant Steps 2023 Single Vineyard wines will all be released on 21 August, 2024.

—

Footnote: The last time I tasted a wine from the Bastard Hill vineyard, prior to a few months ago, was a wine called Hardy’s Bastard Hill Chardonnay 2013. There’s a note of it on The Winefront site but I’m happy to quote it here: “It’s hard to go past this wine. It has presence. It has fruit flavour too, plenty of it, wrapped in a blanket of spent matchsticks and smoky oak, the runs of oatmeal and spice kept secondary by the pour of stonefruit. (This is a wine of) fundamental and emphatic quality. 95+ points. Whomever made this wine should feel proud. I bet it’s still drinking beautifully.

Giant Steps is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

Oakridge 864 Funder & Diamond Chardonnay 2022 is a rockstar chardonnay. It’s the best chardonnay that I’ve tasted so far in 2024 but it’s better even than that: it’s an Australian classic in the making. It’s not released until September 2, 2024 officially though there’s priority (August) access to the wine via the Oakridge site. It’s a wine of powerful fruit, powerful oak, and extreme length. My tasting note concludes with the words “this wine lays down the law in the most certain of terms.” This wine won the Halliday Wine of the Year title and a more worthy winner you will not find.

The asking price for Oakridge 864 Funder & Diamond Chardonnay 2022 is $100. The recommended price of Oakridge 864 Chardonnay has been $90+ since the 2018 vintage.

Chardonnay is Australia’s strongest or best performing grape variety. Australian chardonnay stacks up best against the best wines of the world. Every year now Australia produces a score, or scores, of great chardonnay wines. If you were going to create a “one variety cellar”, and you wanted it to be the best of Australia’s best, this cellar should be stuffed full of chardonnay.

No one of course would or does do this. But it’s a thought.

In this context though, the ability of Oakridge 864 Chardonnay to consistently stand tallest, or among the tallest, in the Australian chardonnay forest is noteworthy. In times past the holy duo of Australian chardonnay has been Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay, from Margaret River, and Giaconda Chardonnay, from Beechworth – both single vineyard wines. These two wines are still, now, as good or better than ever. But the landscape of Australian chardonnay gleams so brightly now that a significant number of wines, from both high profile and lesser known producers, warrant a place at the top of the Australian chardonnay canopy. Even so, if you wanted to keep the message simple and make the holy duo a trinity, then Oakridge 864 Chardonnay is the wine you’d add to the fork.

On The Winefront, we’ve reviewed 20 vintages of Oakridge 864 Chardonnay since the 2004 release. Seventeen of these have scored 95 or higher. Winefront is not a high scoring masthead. The Winefront has never scored an Australian chardonnay above 97 points. By comparison, The Real Review has scored 30 Australian chardonnays at 98 points or higher; Halliday Wine Companion (at last count) had, in its history, scored 102 Australian chardonnays at 98 points or higher*. I mention these scores not to elevate or denigrate anyone’s scoring – Philip Rich/Wine Companion got this wine 100% right – but simply to illustrate that Oakridge 864’s record of 17 chardonnays, since 2004, with a score of 95 points or higher on The Winefront is ‘out there’. Oakridge 864 Chardonnay is a wine generally made from a micro-climate. Such extreme high-end consistency shouldn’t be possible.

The above run of scores doesn’t include the soon-to-be-released 2022 vintage of Oakridge 864 Funder & Diamond Chardonnay. It will be reviewed on The Winefront shortly. It is safe to assume though, for now, that its rating will be high. It’s a brilliant wine and, in 2024 terms, simply the best.

—

* I know these tallies courtesy of the analysis included in the outstanding 2023 Australian Chardonnay Year in Review article, by John Humphrey.

Oakridge is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 has been made to commemorate the 180th birthday of Penfolds. That's a fair innings, and this is (more than) a fair wine. I guess it could have been priced at $180, to keep it neat, but what's an extra grand between business colleagues. The blend is 57%/43% in cabernet's favour. It's grown on Penfolds Block 10 (Cabernet Sauvignon) and Penfolds Block 5 (Shiraz), both of which are in the Coonawarra region. It was matured for 15 months in French oak. 100% of this oak was one-year-old, which means that none of the oak was brand new. The wine is cork sealed, and comes in a blond wooden birthday box. It’s 14.5% alcohol.

The main point of this wine is its quality, and perhaps too that it’s an ultra-limited release that has been produced to mark Penfolds’ 180 birthday. Given the general new-oak style of Penfolds’ top wines though, it’s hard not to concentrate on this wine’s no-new-oak persona. This is a super premium, and indeed gorgeous, red wine from Penfolds, and it’s been made without any brand new oak.

My note on Penfolds Bin 180:

Minty, long and lingering, bold-fruited but elegant, strung suitably with tannin, the styling classic, the quality likewise. This is an exquisite red wine. Red, blue and black berried fruits run in a constant, irrepressible stream, picking up tannin and momentum as they run, without slowing, through to a finish that is so long, it has a beauty of its own. Call it a commemorative release, or a special bin, the nomenclature doesn’t matter. This is a Coonawarra cabernet-shiraz blend of the highest quality. It doesn't just express the region; it understands it. With this Bin 180 commemorative release, Penfolds hasn't just made a wine; it's made history.

Rating: 97/100.

This is the best Penfolds special release since the Penfolds Bin 170 Kalimna Block C Shiraz 2010. That Penfolds special release wine was priced at AU $1800.

Full coverage, reviews, scores and comments on every wine in the 2024 Penfolds Collection is available on The Winefront here.

Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 now goes to the top of Australia’s most expensive current-release table wines list. It’s been produced mainly in 750ml bottles, but as a 1.5 litre magnum as well. There’s also an ultra-rare 3 litre bottle version, though only eight of this 3 litre version have been produced (yes, only eight of the 3-litre bottles).

Release date: Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 was released on 1 August 2024.

A wine from Mudgee has won the Best Grenache Award at the 2024 Sydney Royal Wine Show. All the award winners from the show are worth celebrating but this grenache award is the standout news. Grenache at the quality end of the market has become, over the past decade, one of the hottest and most closely-followed grape varieties in Australia. The quality at the top end of Australian grenache has, in this time, gone through the roof. This means that competition in the grenache class is incredibly stiff.

The McLaren Vale wine region dominates the grenache headlines, followed by the Barossa Valley, followed by Langhorne Creek, the Clare Valley, Heathcote, and a range of West Australian regions. I’ve probably left a region or two out but the point is: Mudgee in general doesn’t figure in grenache calculations, or conversations.

Huntington Estate’s win here – given that the Sydney Royal is one of the biggest and most prestigious wine shows in Australia – is therefore a major victory for both Huntington Estate, and for the wider Mudgee wine region. It strikes a blow. Wine regions are nothing if not a battle for footsteps, eyeballs and tastebuds; this wine, from a place unexpected, will attract all three.

It’s an eye-catching result.

The first thing I did, this morning, on reading this news, was call in a sample of the wine. I’ll review it on The Winefront as soon as I can. Huntington Estate Special Release Grenache 2023 is a wine grown on vines that were planted in the late 1990s. It saw no new oak, which is always a good thing with grenache. It saw some whole bunches, which is usually good too. Interestingly, the oak it was matured in included some American oak.

Update: The Winefront review of Huntington Estate Special Release Grenache 2023 is here.

The Champagne house Mumm – operating here under the name Mumm Central Otago – has released an AU $80 pinot noir from New Zealand’s most famous pinot noir region. It’s 14.5% alcohol, was matured in 50% new French oak, and comes in a hefty/heavy bottle. It’s a complex wine, well-framed by tannin, with undergrowth and cherry-berry flavours sitting pretty on the palate. Cedarwood oak is a bit too heavy-handed for my liking and the finish isn’t overly persistent, but it’s a decent representation of what Central Otago does with pinot noir. It’s a good drink. That said, roughly half the asking price is, arguably, a case of ‘paying for the name’. If you wanted me to put a score on this I’d be in the vicinity of 91-92/100.

The 2025 edition of the Halliday Wine Companion is my second (and last) as its chief editor. Over two years, I've had four main decisions to make. This is how I used them.

This 2025 edition of the Halliday Wine Companion book is the first edition of the book since James Halliday announced his retirement. James Halliday’s absence from the judging process was both sad and clear. We do, simply, hope that we’ve done him proud.

Every year, in every edition, the wines look after themselves. They perform where it matters; in the glass. The performance of this year’s Wine of the Year – Oakridge 864 Funder & Diamond Vineyard Chardonnay 2022 – was and is pretty incredible; in a field of stellar wines, it managed to street them.

Over the past 20 years Oakridge 864 Chardonnay has re-arranged, relentlessly, the hierarchy of Australian chardonnay. This is a giant killing wine, and the 2022 is a killer release.

Every wine in this book is a part of this edition’s story, and of the story of a year in Australian wine. The award winners are a crucial part of this, but they are just a part; there’s a lot more to be gained from this book than a mere concentration on the winners. But at launch time, the winners are a focus, so let me pass a few minor comments.

The winner of an individual wine category is never accidental. The wines go through the process, they are judged and re-judged, when a wine wins, it can’t be anything other than worthy. When you see a wine like Giant Steps Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir win Best Pinot Noir two years running (for its 2022 and 2023 releases), it’s more than cute, and more than a quirk. Penfolds Grange doesn’t enter wine shows anymore but it was set on its stellar course courtesy of a few stunning show results in the 1960s. Giant Steps winning Best Pinot Noir in a hotly contested field two years running; it’s not just significant, it means something. This wine has left the pack, and has been set apart. It’s no longer in the ranks of just another.

Similarly, Yarra Yering. There are only 11 people in Australia who can say that they’ve ever been named as the Halliday Winemaker of the Year. Sarah Crowe is one of these few, having won it in 2017. In 2020, she lead Yarra Yering to the Halliday Winery of the Year title. With the release of this 2025 edition, she’s added something yet more extraordinary again, by winning two varietal categories in a single year. Categories are immensely hard to win, and two in one year: wow. Shiraz of the Year and Best Other Red & Blends. Yarra Yering’s list of achievements under Crowe’s reign has done many things for its reputation, and one of them is that it’s moved this producer yet deeper into the realm of the best of the best.

This edition is my second, and last, as its editor. Halliday’s team of tasters is so exemplary that there isn’t really much of a role for the editor. The only real place I could exert any kind of influence, overtly, was/is in the choosing of the Hall of Fame winner, and the Winemaker of the Year winner. There is some editor discretion or judgement used in the Winery of the Year too (won this year by Giant Steps, with Melanie Chester at the helm), though this decision places heavy emphasis on the scores and reviews that have come from the tasting team.

So I had two main decisions to make in my first year as editor. And two main decisions in my second. Four decisions in two years. This is how I chose to use them:

Winemaker of the Year 2024: Kate Goodman (Penley Estate)
Halliday Hall of Fame Winner 2024: Prue Henschke (Henschke)
Winemaker of the Year 2025: Liz Silkman (First Creek and Silkman Wines)
Halliday Hall of Fame Winner 2025: Sue Hodder (Wynns Coonawarra Estate).

I’m happy with that. I’d take these people, and the above wines, to the world. They are great Australian wine people, all of them, and they make great Australian wines.

—

This book, every year, is an incredible achievement, and a credit to all those involved. Special thanks to the Halliday tasting team: Jane Faulkner, Dave Brookes, Jeni Port, Philip Rich, Mike Bennie, Shanteh Wale, Toni Paterson MW, Marcus Ellis and of course, forever, to James Halliday. Special thanks also to tasting manager Katrina Butler.

And now, quietly, I leave the building.

Yarra Yering won Halliday’s Best Shiraz award for its Dry Red No.2 2022, reviewed on The Winefront here.

Yarra Yering won Halliday’s Best Other Red & Blends award for its Dry Red No.3 2022, reviewed on The Winefront here.

Giant Steps Applejack Pinot Noir 2023 is reviewed on The Winefront here.

Full Winefront review and score at: Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz 2022
Brokenwood is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

—

STORY: From the Graveyard to the Cradle

The night before my daughter was born, in July 2002, I went to a tasting of Graveyard Shiraz. I remember this because my wife went into labour as I was getting ready to leave. The tasting was held to launch the 2000 vintage of Graveyard Shiraz, and because Brokenwood was so confident of the quality of this release, it had organised a Graveyard Versus The World style of tasting, over dinner, at The Prince Hotel in Melbourne. This dinner would feature big name shiraz from around the globe, as well as both the latest Graveyard Shiraz and back vintages, as well indeed as back vintages of Penfolds Grange. Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz is the only red wine from the Hunter Valley on the top rung of the Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine. As soon as I heard that my wife had gone into labour, it was obvious that I’d have to miss this tasting. This as I say was 2002, before streaming services; you couldn’t pick and choose when you watched things back then. The back vintage of Grange in the tasting was, though, the 1986; one of the best vintages of Penfolds Grange ever. They were saying then that the 2000 Graveyard might be the best ever vintage of Graveyard too.

When I say that my wife had gone into labour, I should point out that she was 39 weeks pregnant at the time. That is, she was a week overdue.

Anyway, it was raining, I remember, as I headed out to the tasting. I remember thinking how apt it was that it was a tasting of Graveyard, because if I lost this gamble, and missed my daughter’s birth, then I would indeed need a graveyard of my own, because I’d be a dead man. I say this not because my wife is vindicative, or would hold it against me, because she’s not, and she wouldn’t. But I’d be a dead man in my own eyes, so much self respect would I lose.

Just before I left, I’d re-looked at the invitation to the event. I told myself that I was looking for a contact phone number to call in my cancellation. On the invitation were details of the wines that would be tasted. There was a 1986 Henschke Hill of Grace too. And a 1991 Wendouree.

‘How far apart are your contractions?’ I heard myself ask my wife.

‘Eight minutes,’ my wife replied. And then she added, ‘You can probably still go.’

A 1991 Eileen Hardy. A 1994 Guigal Brune et Blonde. A 1994 Wynns Michael.

‘It’s out of the question,’ I said.

‘I’m probably still hours away,’ she said.

A couple of years before this, the chief winemaker at Peter Lehmann Wines at the time, the much-loved Andrew Wigan, told me that all three of his kids were born in the car, or at least not in a hospital, because each time the babies had come so quick that they’d never quite made it there in time. I chose this moment with my wife, as she stared at the clock to see if there was any time-change in the rate of her contractions, to tell her this story. I then added, ‘The Barossa’s not a very big place either.’

I also knew that Stuart Bourne, who was the winemaker at Barossa Valley Estate at the time, never even made it out of the house, so fast had his partner given birth.

‘Take your mobile,’ my wife said. ‘I’ll probably be right.’

I looked for the number again, so that I could cancel. There was a 1998 Jaboulet La Chapelle on the list too.

I’d noticed, of course, that my wife kept using the word probably. Even so, I asked, ‘You think I should go?’

‘I’ll hold on,’ she said.

‘It would feel very odd,’ I said, ‘to just go to a wine tasting while you are in labour.’

‘I’ll hold on till morning,’ she said.

—

Earlier this year I sat down to a tasting of top-class shiraz at, by pure co-incidence, the same Prince Hotel. Twenty-two years had passed since the night of the above events. The wines that I was tasting this time were served blind, which means that as I tasted each wine I didn’t know what it was. But I had been involved in the organisation of this tasting and so I knew what all the possibilities were. I knew that there was a Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz among them, and I knew that it was the 2022. I worked my way through the wines and then reached a wine that smelled of the Hunter Valley. It was a cool wine, possibly a bit reductive, not at all in-your-face, perhaps even a bit reticent, though its quality was clear. I leant away from my laptop and took the wine in properly, not writing anything, just taking it in. I looked around the room. It was full of other wine tasters, most of whom I’d known for 20-odd years, or for about as long as I’ve now known my daughter. It was only then, in that moment, as I looked at the faces of these people that I’d grown older with for the past two decades, sipping as I was at this Graveyard Shiraz, that I drew the somewhat spooky connection between this venue, and this wine, and this kind of tasting. I sat there then, remembering that cold, wet night in 2002 when I was so desperate to be a part of the world of wine that I’d risked missing the birth of my daughter. It was only then, I think, that I realised, as in deep down and properly, how incredibly and profoundly stupid I’d been to take that risk.

—

I don’t go to the Hunter Valley very often. But I was in the Hunter Valley in February 2022, which is when the grapes for the Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz 2022 were picked. It was soaking wet in the Hunter Valley while I was there, and the wonder in the air was whether this was it, the end of vintage, or whether the clouds would part and it would clear up again. On the ground it looked more like a semillon year than a shiraz year. I remember the exact date of this visit to the Hunter Valley because while I was there I received a phone call, informing me that my daughter had been in a car accident. She was ok, but that phone call changed me and the life of our family.

You follow some wines. And some wines follow you.

—

I wrote an article, in 2002, about the Graveyard Versus The World event, and how it had taken place while my wife was in labour. I titled this article From The Cradle to the Graveyard, which sounded good but was wrong; it should have been the other way around. In this article I outlined the making of Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz 2000. It was a quote from a press release of the time. ‘(The grapes were) hand-picked perfectly ripe at just over 14 degrees Baumé, with excellent acidity and in perfect condition. The 12 acre vineyard was in great balance, with a yield of 1.75 tonne per acre. After a four day cold soak, the wine underwent a warm, five day fermentation in open 2-tonne fermenters, before being transferred to 80% new oak (70% French, 30% American) for a period of 18 months.’ I quote this here because the new Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz 2022 is made – by Stuart Hordern and his team – similarly, but is raised different. None of us are ever exactly the same river. The 2022 Graveyard spent time in 100% French oak, but none of this oak was new.

—

When my daughter was born, I was an avid reader. Around that time I read a book called Cry of The Damaged Man. I remember a few things about this book but mostly I remember one single line from it, which runs through my head all the time. ‘Time is never wasted, even when it’s wasted.’ Over the years this line has morphed quite radically into something new, in my head. When I think on this line now I often say it to myself as, You never get away with anything, even when you get away with it.

—

In 2006 I visited Brokenwood and then rushed, between a tasting and dinner, back to my hotel and wrote this about the Graveyard Vineyard:

The guts of the shiraz part of the vineyard was planted in the energetic summer of 1968, but in 1992 the cabernet and the merlot part of it was ripped out and the best clonal shiraz money could buy was sunk down into the red clay volcanic crumbling ironstone dirt. The push, then, was to finally produce decent quantities of Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz.

But this planting didn’t work. The old green vines kept working but not the new modern ones. And not just for a season – for over a decade. The new shiraz, the clones, were a disaster of mediocrity. The years 1992 to 2005 were spent in a long slow persistent wait that ended with bulldozers. Not a single grape of the 'new' vines ever made it into Graveyard. And so they started again, with new new vines going into the ground. Added to the old vines. This time they did not plant clones, but instead planted cuttings from old mother vines – from the oldest shiraz vines on the Graveyard block and also from Kay’s historic Block 6 in McLaren Vale and from the 1972 plantings at Seville Estate in the Yarra Valley.

And so then this is where we are now. With a wine from a Graveyard vineyard that is now stronger than ever, courtesy of cuttings from the vineyard’s mothers.

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Over the years Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz has moved closer to its roots. It’s no longer a thick-ish wine with thick-ish oak on top, or it’s not if the new 2022 release is anything to go by. You could say that it’s become more Hunter than ever, and more expressive of its home. There’s something immeasurably child-like and innocent, and therefore magnetic, about terroir when it’s expressed in pure terms. Nothing cuts deeper than a truth told in a child’s voice. There are something like 30 vintages of Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz reviewed on The Winefront, though of the past several releases we’ve missed a few. We’ll catch up one day. The Brokenwood website suggests that this 2022 is the 33rd release from this vineyard. Back in 2006 I wrote this of Brokenwood: ‘It’s part of Brokenwood history that three separate tractors were bogged in one vineyard in one afternoon. There are photographs of folks picking grapes with their feet sunk shin-deep in mud.’ If it’s not wet in the Hunter Valley it’s hot. Or it’s both hot and wet. The Hunter Valley is of course the cradle of Australian wine. I drank my first ever Graveyard shiraz on the night before my daughter was born. I drank the most recent 2022 Graveyard Shiraz in my last public duty as editor of the Halliday guide. James Halliday once part-owned Brokenwood, and helped plant its first vines. Sometimes it feels, when I swirl a glass of Graveyard Shiraz, that I don’t just swirl a wine; I swirl a universe.

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30-odd Winefront reviews of Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz.
Brokenwood is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

The Buttery Chardonnay tag is here.

It’s tempting to call the Mitchelton winery the lion who never roared – except that it once did.

In the early 1990s, fresh from winning the famed Jimmy Watson Trophy with its 1990 Print Shiraz, Mitchelton on the banks of the Goulburn River in central Victoria was pumping out 300,000 dozen bottles of wine each year, 250,000 of these as part of the Thomas Mitchell range and 50,000 under the Mitchelton name itself. It was a stable, independent, and important winery with Don Lewis – a charismatic and authoritative winemaker – at the helm, where he’d been since the winery’s first vintage in 1973.

Back then, the winery boasted one of the great “go to” wines of its era: Mitchelton Blackwood Park Riesling. They made 20,000 dozen of that wine alone each year. It was a crisp wine with, more often than not, a hint of orange peel sweetness and if they still made it in that style it would be a monty with spiced Asian cuisine.

But they don’t make it in that style anymore and indeed, the landscape is altogether changed. You could now argue that the Mitchelton lion has been dozy for a very long time.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang at the winery in 1990 and in both 1994 and 1995 the Mitchelton cellar door, restaurant, extroverted ‘tower’ and grounds won the Victorian Winery Tourism Award, but it was around this time that momentum behind the Mitchelton brand was lost. Mitchelton was bought by Petaluma; both were bought by the Banksia Group; which in turn was swallowed by Lion Nathan. None of these acquisitions were disastrous – the place still looks beautiful today, and the wines are still good – but in corporate hands Mitchelton didn’t attract the investment an asset of this class demands. The place stagnated, and drifted backwards.

Over the past five years, visitor numbers to the extravagant Mitchelton estate – only an hour’s drive north of central Melbourne – have dropped significantly. And in 2011, the winery only produced 5000 dozen bottles of wine under the Mitchelton name. Mitchelton had slipped off the radar.

But it’s about to do something about it. And not something paltry – something big. Last year Mitchelton took the great leap backwards and returned to private ownership. Mitchelton, the great grandiose neighbour of humble Tahbilk, is stirring. This is where the story gets good.

“One of the interesting things is,” new winemaker Travis Clydesdale says, “that I grew up in Nagambie in a house across the road from Don Lewis.” The same Don Lewis who spent 40-odd years making the Mitchelton wines.

“Straight out of high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I was helping bang in some vineyard posts at Tahbilk when I was offered work as a cellar hand and it’s all kind of lead from there.” Travis studied winemaking before moving to Margaret River, where he worked at Vasse Felix and Deep Woods Estate. He loved Margaret River and would have been happy to stay – except that kids and family made him want to return home.

“We moved without knowing where we’d work. But I was literally halfway across the Nullarbor when I got a call from my dad saying that there was a job going at Nagambie, at Mitchelton, back where I grew up.”

Travis’s dad didn’t know about the Mitchelton job by accident; he’s worked at the Mitchelton cellar door for the past 30 years. “In some ways I fell into winemaking but in other ways I’ve had aspects of the wine industry running through my veins all my life. Don Lewis lived across the road. Dad worked in the cellar door. Mum works here at Mitchelton too, and she’s been here for 25 years. My brother’s a chef and he did his apprenticeship in the kitchen here at Mitchelton. My brother’s a builder and funnily enough he’s working on the renovations to the cellar door. The place has a corporate history but it’s in private hands now and it really feels like a family place now.

“And one of the special things I guess is that Don Lewis, who now lives across the road from the winery, has always treated this place like a kind of second home and I’m not sure that ever sat well with the corporate owners. But most nights these days you’ll see him walking his dog through the vineyard.”

Mitchelton never lost its soul but its soul is being reinvigorated regardless. At its best, Mitchelton is ambition writ large – it’s hard to describe the enormous sweep of the winery roof, for instance, except to say that it’s probably visible from the moon. Everything here is on a grand, white-walled scale. In the 1970s and 1980s the Mitchelton buildings appeared one part impressive, five parts preposterous. Time has caught up with these buildings though and the strange thing is, they now seem far less ridiculous; this is architecture that has aged magnificently. You could argue that all the place needs is a good old-fashioned spruce up.

Though it’s about to get a lot more than that. The cellar door is being completely reconfigured and redecorated – it’s due to be finished in December this year – but the biggest change to the estate is the addition of a 60 room luxury accommodation complex. The restaurant will be overhauled too (overseen by three-hatted chef Paul Wilson, ex Melbourne’s Botanical) with more emphasis drawn to its exquisite riverside location. Plans – as yet undisclosed – are afoot for the tower too, a day spa with-a-view possibly in the works. Concerts on the property will be back on the menu too. These new constructions will happen in 2013. Life, it’s breathing back into this place. Fair to guess that visitor numbers, in two year’s time, will be through the roof.

But the wines are due for more attention too. One of the great strengths of Mitchelton is that it’s never been a fruit salad vineyard; it’s always played to the grape varieties it should be good at. It’s a warm site trapped in the horseshoe-shaped arms of the Goulburn River – which acts to cool the land down, especially through summer nights. Rhone whites and reds are predominantly the go here and ever since the vineyard was first planted – in 1969 – they always have been. Shiraz, mourvedre, marsanne, roussanne, viognier, grenache and (breaking the Rhone mould) a bit of cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. Plus, of course, riesling.

“We’ve just changed the Blackwood Park riesling back to a label that people will be more familiar with – green with yellow – and while the (white) label we had it in wasn’t bad, since going back to something resembling the old label sales have turned around. People keep coming up to us and saying. I remember this wine – as if they thought the wine wasn’t made anymore.

“There’s a reserve of largely untapped loyalty to Mitchelton and its wines and we think that if we do things right, we can tap back into it. It’s a good story for us but it’s a good story for the industry. The Ryan family (the new owners) are actually investing in this place. I’m sick of staring at the bottom of the barrel – it’s great to look up and see something interesting going on.”

Mitchelton’s new owners, the Ryan family, also own the caravan park at Nagambie. “They’re not just investing in Mitchelton,” Travis says. “They believe in the area.”

In terms of the wines themselves. “The vineyard’s in pretty good shape and so too are the wines, though I reckon you can see the accountants a little too much in the vineyard and the oak the wines have been matured in,” Travis says. “We plan to freshen things up there, move more to puncheons rather than barriques (i.e. 500 litre barrels rather than 225 litre barrels).” Mitchelton has always produced woody wine styles and while this won’t entirely change, a more deft hand on the oak handle is in store.

And with the vineyard assets at Mitchelton – all 115 hectares of them, much of the vines now 20 and 30 and 40 years old – there’s little doubt that the wines the property produces should be as outstanding as the architecture. “We sit beside a deep, wide, cold river,” Travis says, and boast an estate with lots of mature vines. “I think we should be able to produce something unique.”

[Extras]

The new owners

In 2011 Mitchelton was bought from Lion Nathan by Gerry Ryan OAM and son Andrew. Gerry Ryan founded caravan company Jayco in 1975, is the owner of 2010 Melbourne Cup winner Americain, and the founder of the GreenEDGE Australian cycling team. The Ryans also own The Melbourne Pub Group and production company Global Creatures, which created Walking with Dinosaurs.

How Mitchelton started

In 1967 Melbourne entrepreneur Ross Shelmerdine commissioned legendary Australian winemaker Colin Preece to find the best site for wine grape growing in south eastern Australia. Preece chose an old grazing estate in the Nagambie district for its climate, soil and proximity to water. Ross Shelmerdine called the winery Mitchelton and the vineyard’s first sod was turned in 1969. Don Lewis joined Preece for the first vintage in 1973, and assumed the winemaker’s mantle when Preece retired in 1974. Mitchelton’s winery and cellar door complex – designed by renowned Australian architect Ted Ashton – was opened. The complex came complete with a white 55 metre high tower.

I haven't loved everything that I've seen come out of Eperosa over the past few years but when Eperosa is good, Eperosa is outstanding. I count Eperosa as one of the very best producers in the Barossa Valley, and indeed as one of Australia’s best wine producers. A prime example of why I rate Eperosa so highly is its latest Eperosa Magnolia 1896 Shiraz 2022 ($80). This wine is ripe, generous and exceptionally long, but what really sets it apart is its ingrained finesse, the long, silty run of its tannin, the vastness of the fragrant herb notes littered along its palate, and the way flavour is so thoroughly infused through the bursting spiral of the finish. There’s a real soar to this Barossa Valley Shiraz. It’s not a heavy wine but it’s powerful, purposeful and incredibly persistent. This is the vanguard of the modern Barossa Valley in peak form. 96/100.

The 1896 in the name of the wine refers to the age of the (Magnolia) vineyard, or at least to the vines on which this wine was grown. The Magnolia vineyard is at Vine Vale in the Barossa Valley. The Eperosa wines are made by Brett Grocke, a 6th generational Barossan. The Eperosa wines are both the real deal, and at the forefront of modern Australian wine.

There’s a new wine at the top of Australia’s 2025 most expensive wine list. It’s Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021, a special release made from a special (Coonawarra) vintage. This wine was described on The Winefront as a “cabernet-shiraz blend of the highest quality. It doesn't just express the region; it understands it. Penfolds hasn't just made a wine; it's made history.”

This list, it should be remembered, is not a list of Australia’s best wines. This is simply a list of Australia’s most expensive wines. There are two kinds of wines on this list: those wines which have been created and priced with the express intent of appearing on a list like this. And those wines which are produced either regularly or semi-regularly and have worked their way to the upper echelons of wine courtesy of merit, historical importance and/or demand. This list favours the latter.

There’s nothing “reassuringly expensive” about this list; the list is what it is, the prices are what they are.

If you factor in fortified wines, then Australia’s most expensive current-release wine is not the new Penfolds wine, but is the Seppeltsfield 100 Year Old Para Vintage Tawny. The current release is, as the name would suggest, the 1925 vintage, priced at $1800 for 100ml. This is the equivalent of AU $13,500 for 750ml. All Saints Museum Muscadelle and All Saints Museum Muscat, also aged fortified wines, are both $1200 for 375ml or AU $2400 for 750ml. Drop for drop these are Australia’s most expensive current-release wines.

A list of this nature is really though about current-release table wines. This is where there’s a lot more jostling for position. Penfolds G3, G4 and G5 special (Grange) blends could each be considered Australia’s most expensive wine, at AU $3500 a pop per 750ml bottle, though these are special blends and none of them are current in 2024. Penfolds nonetheless continues to dominate this end of the market: it’s 2024 Collection included Penfolds Bin 707 2022 at AU $800, Penfolds II Cabernet Sauvignon (though this includes Bordeaux grapes) at $500, Penfolds Quantum (which includes Napa Valley grapes: edit, not current)) at AU $1000, Penfolds Grange 2020 at AU $1000, and Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 at $1180. Given that Penfolds Bin 180 – which is a special bottling – is current, it is arguably Australia’s most expensive (table) wine in 2024.

I say arguably because there are always, as mentioned above, lone wolfs out there, priced largely as an attempt to appear on a list like this. I’m ignoring them until I’m convinced otherwise. One wine I’m not ignoring though is Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2008 Museum Release, which is priced at AU $1250. The reason that I haven’t named this as Australia’s most expensive current release table wine is that it’s from the museum; the actual current release Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz is priced at AU $975 (until further advised). I’m splitting hairs but these are the facts and you can build your own price hierarchy.

Two new-ish wines, Peter Lehmann Masterson Shiraz 2018 and Taylors The Legacy Cabernet Sauvignon 2015, both also have a price tag of AU $1000, equal to the asking price of Penfolds Grange 2020. Cullen The Vanya Cabernet Sauvignon has been AU $900 per bottle since the 2020 release (of which only 261 bottles were released). Torbreck The Forebear Shiraz 2019 is $850, as is Torbreck The Laird Shiraz 2019. Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 2022 is AU $825. Neldner Road Kraehe Shiraz 2021 is asking AU $750, as was Wild Duck Creek Original Vineyard Shiraz 2017 on release (in 2022).

I haven’t mentioned Chris Ringland above; I’m waiting to confirm pricing. It’s no longer current but Penfolds Bin 170 Kalimna Block C Shiraz 2010 was $1800 per bottle when it was released a decade ago.

In 2017, on noticing that a bunch of Australian wines had jumped considerably in price from one year to the next, I made a list on The Winefront of Australia’s Most Expensive Wines. This list – available here – names a great many high-priced wines, and yet in 2024 it now looks quaint, and is certainly out of date in terms of current pricing. Not surprisingly, this list has attracted over 350 comments; it’s one of the most ‘popular’ posts in the Winefront’s 22-year history.

Australia’s Most Expensive Wines:

Seppeltsfield 100 Year Old Para Vintage Tawny $1800/100ml ($13,500 750ml equivalent)
All Saints Museum Muscadelle NV $1300/375ml ($2600 750ml equivalent)
All Saints Museum Muscat NV $1300/375ml ($2600 750ml equivalent)
Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 $1180
Penfolds Grange Shiraz 2021 $1000
Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2021 $1000
Peter Lehmann Masterson Shiraz 2018 $1000
Taylors The Legacy Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 $1000
Cullen Vanya Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 $900
Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 2023 $875
Torbreck The Laird 2020 $850

Related:
Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2024
List of Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2023 article here
List of Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2019 article here

Relevant links to The Winefront reviews:
Penfolds Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz 2021
Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1952-2020 inclusive
Seppeltsfield 100 Year Old Vintage Para
All Saints Museum Msucat / Muscadelle NV
Penfolds G3
Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz (reviews of 23 vintages)
Peter Lehmann Masterson Shiraz
Taylors The Legacy Cabernet Sauvignon 2015
Cullen The Vanya Cabernet Sauvignon 2012-2022
Powell & Son (Neldner Road) Kraehe Shiraz 2015, 2016, 2017
Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir 1995-2016 inclusive
Wild Duck Creek Original Vineyard Shiraz 2014, 2016, 2017

To some extent you have to put price aside when you talk about Penfolds. The Penfolds ‘prestige tax’ is pretty high. But the wines in their style are excellent and it’s been demonstrated over and again that the ability of Penfolds’ best wines to improve as they mature is world class. Given that there are 28 wines (included the two Champagne releases) in the 2024 Penfolds Collection it’s not easy to nominate just five. But if someone donated me some reward points these are the wines I would hone in on.

This Top 5 is as promised in the commentary here.

Penfolds Bin 169 Cabernet Sauvingon 2022 (AU$300)
My review of Penfolds Bin 169 on The Winefront opened with the words “This is a wine. Rich in nature but it focusses, from the outset, on nailing the finish.” It concluded with the words “Tannin here is a feature, and a key to its success. Tannin here seems to gather up the wine and carry it on. This is a fantastic example of Cabernet Sauvignon, of the landscape of Coonawarra, at the hand of Penfolds.” Theme here is that it’s a Coonawarra cabernet with structure on its mind. It’s a top-flight Penfolds red and so it’s bold and curranty but it brings iron to the table and it uses it. If you have an anniversary or milestone in the long distant future you’d bank on this wine reaching it.
Penfolds Bin 169 is a wine that’s snuck up on me. Outside of the 1973, which didn’t grab me when I tasted it over 15 years ago, every release that I’ve seen since the 2008 is rated highly, with almost every one of them in 96/100 territory.

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2021 (AU$135)
As I said in the commentary, St Henri Shiraz is (in a way) the Betamax of the Penfolds range; it’s the alternative route that never became the main route, but arguably should have. By that I mean that it’s the no new oak expression of shiraz, principally, but also that it’s the most unforced of the Penfolds reds. Penfolds St Henri Shiraz just simply is. It never jumps out at you, it never rants and raves, it waits its turn and then, before you know it, you’re hooked. The 2021 version is an exquisite example of exactly that. It’s not my highest pointed wine of this year’s releases, but it’s the one that I’d buy in a heartbeat. Review here.

Penfolds CWT Bin 521 Cabernet Sauvignon Marselan 2022 (AU$150)
The price is a crying shame. I wish it was a third of that. And yet still I’m fascinated. This is the first wine Penfolds has made that is made 100% with China-grown grapes. If you want my full review, sure, go here. But here’s the thing: where’s the world of wine going? What will the world of wine look like in 25 or 40 or 60 years time? This is the first time the might of the mighty Penfolds has been put behind a China-grown wine. Maybe it fizzles. Maybe it’s the start of a history we can’t yet imagine.
And, as well, the wine itself does not look out of place in the Penfolds premium range. I gave it 94 points.

Penfolds Bin 704 Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 (AU$125)
We don’t get to see a lot of quality Napa Valley cabernet in Australia. And ok, I am factoring price in a fraction here; I scored this at 94 points, and truth is that I scored many of the other releases in the collection higher. But I love how uncompromised this wine feels, and I love how well it stands up to (Penfolds) wines priced at double or triple its price. This wine is rich, grunty, tannic and assertive, in a svelte way. It blows the table away. The tannin is so ‘at you’ that it almost throws the wine out of whack, which is something that I’d normally penalise but didn’t feel the need to here. This is a Penfolds wine, made with Napa cabernet, that throws its weight around, all soft and heavy at once.

Penfolds Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz 2022 (AU$100)
Every year I play Penfolds Bin 150 Shiraz with a straight bat, and give it the score that it warrants. So I’ve given it some high-ish scores over the years. Personally though, it’s not a wine that I enjoy. Or not until this 2022 version. This is just such a beast of a shiraz that I had to concede defeat and admit that resistance is useless. You can almost hear the resignation written into to my formal review: “This is a monster. Big fruit, big oak, big tannin… It rocks”. It does. If you like your red wines big, this wine shows how it’s done.

That’s my five personal picks of the 2024 Penfolds Collection. Of course my number one pick, if price really wasn’t a consideration, would be the Bin 180 special release, because it has classic written all over it. In fact Bin 180 has inspired me to go digging around for my full set “Penfolds special release” notes, all of which currently sit on The Winefront site but which are not collected in one spot. I’ll fix that. Some of these Penfolds wines are special to Australia, and special to the world.

And I’d slip 2020 Grange in too if I could. But I’ll talk of that another time.

Penfolds Grange is the great Australian shiraz. It’s been made in the same style and to the same template since the 1950s, more or less, though over the years it has become more consistently great, year on year. There’s too much riding on Penfolds Grange now for there to be a miss; the last genuinely poor Grange was the 2000 release, which may well never have seen the light of day save for the fact that Grange’s uninterrupted run has a value in itself.

Penfolds Grange, despite its fame, has never (even from the start) been for everyone, and that’s more true now than ever. Many wine enthusiasts now find its dense, 100% American oak persona a bit too much, and prefer something a bit finer, or lighter, or more varied. This of course takes nothing from the beauty, glory and longevity of Penfolds Grange itself. Penfolds Grange remains one of the world’s most wondered at wines for very good reason. It’s virtually peerless in its combination of story, history and delivery in the glass.

The 2020 Penfolds Grange Shiraz is from a vintage that was drastically hot for a month and a bit, but then turned cooler. Shiraz, which performs well pretty much everywhere and in all kinds of conditions, took this heat and asked the weather gods whether that was the best it had. You might expect a burly Grange from these conditions but the 2020 vintage is not that – even though, as always, it’s substantially and deeply flavoured. There’s something traditional about this 2020 Grange; not in a lighter or lower alcohol way, but in its flavour profile. Penfolds Grange is famous for its “crushed ant” aromas and this vintage has them. It’s sweet with plum, lifted with mint, wrapped in woodsmoke and brushed with vanilla cream. It doesn’t pound you into submission but it does establish, firmly, it’s law.

In short, if 2020 is an important year to you and you need a keepsake wine; with the 2020 Penfolds Grange Shiraz you’re not buying a dud. Long term, it will hold up.

The Winefront’s Penfolds Grange 2020 full review.

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I’ve reviewed pretty much every release of Penfolds Grange Shiraz, all the way back to the 1952. Historic reviews of every vintage of Penfolds Grange are on The Winefront here.

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This time last year I ran briefly through a mini 3-vintage vertical of Penfolds Grange: 1989, 1999 and 2009. My notes are not extensive because it was the end of a long tasting, and the 2019 vintage was the more pertinent wine of the day. But my notes on these three vintages were:

Penfolds Grange Shiraz 2009
Not quite but just about to enter the drinking zone. Salty-soy notes, leathers, earth and berried fruits. Tannin has largely tamed. This looks in excellent shape though it’s still in the primary-to-secondary transition phase, and should be left along a few years.

Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1999
Wonderful. Superb. Drink now or anytime in the next 20 years. Commands the glass. Tannin, developed fruit, myriad flavours. This is an excellent vintage at an excellent stage of its life.

Penfolds Grange Shiraz 1989
Honeyed, sweet fruited, fuly developed. This was the last wine of the day and I should have paid it more respect and attention. But on this showing it’s a drink-up prospect. (My original Winefront review has the drinking window ending at 2018, so this impression may well be accurate.)

If you want more Penfolds 2024 analysis, try this for starters.

One of the great joys in my wine life is when I open up the Winefront page and one of Gary (Walsh), Mike (Bennie) or Kasia (Sobiesiak) have really let rip on a set of wines, such was their love for what appeared in the glass(es) before them. There was such a moment yesterday, when Mike Bennie reviewed the 2023 releases of Callum Powell, aka Agricola Vintners. We are watching a star being born here. Callum Powell was raised in the Barossa; he knows the Barossa and Eden lands, and their peoples, as well as any; both his local landscape and the world at large are now quite clearly his oyster. Mike’s been across Callum Powell’s Agricola wines, on The Winefront, since 2019, but these 2023 releases really seem to be landmark stuff. Read these reviews. A stake has been planted.

Etsu Double Yuzu Gin is a Japanese gin. It’s produced on Hokkaido Island and plays as a fresh, zesty gin, as you’d expect of a gin made to emphasis a variety of citrus (yuzu). This gin is widely available in the liquor supermarkets of Australia.

Review of Etsu Double Yuzu Gin:

It’s a fragrant gin, a bit tart, a bit sweet-sour even, with a coriander-like bitterness to the finish. I drank through a bottle three ways; with soda, with tonic (2 x types), and in a couple of (slightly) different iterations of negroni. Always on ice and mostly without garnish, save for orange peel with the negronis.

The first couple of times I drank Etsu Double Yuzu Gin it was in a negroni, and I didn’t think much of it. There was nothing off-putting but I had it, in my mind, on the '“don’t purchase again” list, simply because it felt a bit bland. I was asking too much of it; it was getting lost in a negroni. I know this now because it came alive with tonic. I didn’t love it with soda so I finished the bottle off in G&T mode only, and was more than happy with it in that form: lots of herbs, lots of citrus, blossomy, fresh, energetic, all good G&T things.

Yuzu itself would arguably be the best garnish but, more practically, I’d imagine that a slice of lemon would be tops, if garnish is your thing.

Bottle was purchased with my own hard-earned.

In my first year as chief editor of Halliday Wine Companion I campaigned for the establishment of a Halliday Hall of Fame. It was overdue. There were initial suggestions that James Halliday himself could or should be the first recipient but discussions quickly swung towards Prue Henschke, There could be no more deserving first inductee.

On Prue Henschke’s announcement as the first Halliday Hall of Fame inductee I wrote:

“If the Hill of Grace vineyard could talk, you’d reckon that it would thank the world and perhaps even the Lord for bestowing the force-of-nature that is Prue Henschke upon it. The same applies to all of the Eden and Barossa valley vineyards under Henschke’s care, as indeed it does to the family’s orchard-turned-vineyard at Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills. Prue Henschke graduated from Adelaide University in 1973, having studied zoology and botany. For the past 50 years she has set about improving both the environment of her vines and the environment of her regions. The aim, at all times, has been to grow better-tasting grapes, via healthier vines, in an improved landscape. Prue Henschke is someone who could easily have won Viticulturist of the Year, in any ‘competition’ around the world, every year. She could because every year she leaves her world that little bit healthier, and that little bit better. It goes without saying that intellectual rigour is a key to her renown, as is determination, as is hard work. But there’s more to Prue Henschke than the sum of these parts. It’s doubtful that Prue Henschke has ever walked past a problem without stopping first to put it to rights. Her footsteps at all times are feather light; her impact, at all times, profound. On the basis of 50 years of proof, we cannot think of a better person to prepare the ground for those who follow.”

These words appeared in the first edition of the two that I worked on as Halliday chief editor, There aren’t a great many things in my time in wine that I’m proud of and, of course, this moment was not in any way mine, and was Prue Henschke’s entirely. But I am glad that I got the Halliday of Hall of Fame up and running, and that one of the world’s great viticulturists, from a great wine family, was the first to be named.

When I was a kid I lived next to a beekeeper who’d leave jars of honey on top of the side fence for us. These jars would sit there in the glaring sun, atop the fence, golden and fresh, and whenever I saw them glowing there I’d dip a finger straight into their warm, sweet, runny magnificence. I would also, every morning, slather this honey on my cornflakes. I did this for twenty years. When we moved from this house and indeed when the beekeeper died, I kept up the daily ritual of honey-on-cornflakes for another 20 years. Some time in my mid-to-late 40s I decided, finally, to cut out this daily honey intake. I lost ten kilos in three months. It obviously wasn’t the only change I made but honey was the beacon of that change. Shortly after I lost this weight I went to a lunch at the Penfolds winery. Penfolds winemaker Peter Gago noticed my weight loss. He asked me how I’d done it. I refused to tell him for most of the lunch but he and writer Nick Stock kept at me. Eventually, I relented. Sheepishly, I said, I’ve cut out honey.

It was like saying that I’d been living my life as a little kid, and that I’d finally grown up. They found it funny, as did I. I kept this weight off for five or six years, and during these years, occasionally, when I’d see Peter Gago, he’d ask if I was “still off the honey”. It was as if I was a recovering honey-holic. I was.

The weight, I’m sad to say, has now slowly returned; I’m not skinny anymore. I saw Gago again this week and, politely, he commented that, you know, maybe I was on the honey again. Conversation quickly moved on but I wanted to say: I am because honey is home, and we can only stay away for so long.

There’s more to honey, than joy.

This is all relevant to this wine – L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune – in the most roundabout of ways. First, it’s made by a man named Eric Pfifferling, who is or was a beekeeper. My next door neighbour was a beekeeper for the honey but also because he was one of the most serious vegetable gardeners on earth. His whole block was covered in the growing of vegetables. The smell of cow and, more often, horse manure was almost a constant. Every time I jumped the fence to retrieve a cricket ball it was like stepping into a Narnia of cabbage, cauliflower, sunflowers and radish. This next-door neighbour did everything by hand; if he wasn’t gardening, he was welding, or sawing wood, or scrabbling beneath engines. Eric Pfifferling, who made this L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune and who I’ve never met, was or is also a mechanic. Because I’ve never met him, when I drink his wine I think of the wild hair and the wild tendrils of pea-vines of the next-door neighbour of my childhood.

L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune is grown the way my next-door neighbour would have grown it. Organically, growing and picking by hand, no sulphur, no added anything, fermented by the yeast whose culture has been developing there or thereabouts forever, on the trees and the flowers and the wings of the bees, and indeed on the skin of the grapes. A lot of wines are equally as natural, around the world, we all know, but this specific wine has become sought after. It has because it’s a good, interesting wine to drink, with more presence than is usual. It has too though because, to borrow from W.B Yeats, the centre has not held.

By this I mean that the centre of world winemaking has pushed the natural to the margin. Wine though is expected to be natural. It is, like honey, a connection to what’s real. If you leave a row of vines to fend for itself, wine of sorts will still happen, naturally, on the ground. Obviously any kind of dedicated winemaking is a long way from that but this essential truth remains a part of wine’s mystique. Wine is expected to be natural. When the making of wine drifts too far from this then, you could argue, it’s not just disappointing: something has let us down.

W.B. Yeats’ famous line: the centre cannot hold, is not just meant to be cute, or effective for its simplicity. The fact that the centre has not held, or cannot hold, is meant to be moving. It’s meant to be historically, deeply, terrifyingly moving. It’s meant to shake us. It is because if the centre cannot hold, and keep us safe, then what the hell are we meant to fight for, and to hold onto?

W.B. Yeats wrote this line in the aftermath of a world war that had slaughtered a generation. The centre for him related to the fundamentals of society, the institutions, rather than to the fundamentals of wine, or to wine’s institutions. The centre of his society – the institutions – had failed, and proven themselves not worth dying for.

Something that I love about L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune, in combination with its emblematic place in the world of natural wine, is that it’s a rosé. History has come to rest on a rosé. This would be frippery at its most absurd if it weren’t for the style of the wine itself. F. Scott Fitzgerald, if he’d tasted it, might have said that it’s neither within nor without. By this I mean that it sits between rosé and table grenache; it’s too light to be the latter, but it’s a world more than the former.

The 2021 version of this wine is not tannic, but it has feel to it, and weight, which makes it feel tannic or grapey in a delicate way. The colour is interesting too. Pale salmon, but rusty. There’s something about this pink-brown colour that says apples to me, apples in water, a crush of apples, red, yellow and brown, an orchard, not kempt. There’s something about this colour that is suggestive to me of a wild summer dream of a backyard, or to a series of such wild summers, or to sunburn on tanned skin. This wine is made with grenache and a couple of its varietal cousins, which play here as if they’ve known each other since childhood. I’m tempted to say that its appeal is for lovers of dry, earthen, spicy grenache but that’s not quite right. It’s further from the centre than that. I’m also tempted to say that L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune 2021 is for people who want to stop and think about a wine that has made others before them stop and think. But that’s not right either, even though the centre has not held, even though we’ve long-since slouched into Bethlehem, even though the winemakers of luxury brands are unlikely now to be beekeepers or mechanics.

This wine, L’Anglore, although not great in itself, describes an alternative to the mainstay of wine goings on, and does so in textural detail. It sits like a jar of honey on a suburban fence, defiant in the sun and indeed, catching it. Ultimately this wine is just itself, nothing greater and nothing lesser. It lives and it dies on the strength of its delicacy. There is then, in this wine, as there was in the mad neighbour of my youth, a grand humble defiant dignity.

This bottle of L’Anglore Chemin de la Brune 2021 was purchased off the wine list at Osteria Ilaria in Melbourne. It’s imported into Australia by Andrew Guard.

Credit to William Butler Yeats.

Campbell Mattinson writes on this site for free. There’s no where else good to write about wine anymore. If you want to support Campbell Mattinson’s writing in some small way, buy me a coffee here.

Thymiopoulos Young Vines Xinomavro 2021 is a wine worth buying. It’s a Greek red from Macedonia in the Naoussa region, and apart from the price – mid $30s in Australia and sometimes lower – what I really like is the realness of it. It has no oak flavour, a good start. It has quality mid-weight fruit, and quality tannin, but not too much of either, and not too little either. The flavours here – an assortment of red berries – feel fresh, and free, and crunchy and natural. It’s a quality drink. Unadorned and unfettered. I recommended this wine. I wish there were more like it. It’s good value too.

Importer: Deja Vu.
Winery: Thymiopoulos Vineyards
Reviews: Reviews of various Thymiopoulos Vineyards wines on The Winefront.

I have two bottles of grenache in front of me; one from 2022, the other from 2023. They’re both from the same, tiny vineyard in Heathcote. The fact that both of these wines are good is not so unusual; the fact that they are from a young, bush-vine, interestingly-patterned vineyard in Heathcote is more so, especially given that the variety is grenache.

That is, bush vine grenache in Heathcote.

The owner of this vineyard is Simon Osicka, who runs the Paul Osicka vineyard and winery (Paul is Simon’s late father). Simon planted this vineyard by hand. I tasted a barrel sample of the 2021 release a couple of years ago and when I said that it was good Simon breathed a sigh of relief and said, That’s lucky because it wasn’t much fun planting it.

Simon, before he returned to the family winery, was a senior winemaker at Hardy’s in South Australia. He’s worked with a lot of bush vine grenache vineyards in his time, and with a lot of the grapes they grow. This vineyard and the wines it produces pay homage to that, but if the 2022 and 2023 releases are anything to go by, the wines Simon is growing and making here are fundamentally of their own design.

These wines from this small, new, bush vine grenache vineyard in Heathcote are both beautiful, and unique.

The 2022 Paul Osicka Grenache is svelte, rich, complex and more. The herb notes are the thing; they’re complex, they’re harmonious, and they add a Campari-like edge, but they’re tempered by dark chocolate, chicory, blood orange and sweet cherry-plum flavours. There’s something both distinctly Australian about this wine, even distinctly Heathcote, and yet also distinctly Italianate.

It’s a rich Italian-like wine, grown in Australia, using a French-Spanish variety, by a winemaker of Czech heritage.

It’s a similar story with the 2023 Paul Osicka Grenache. This is a lighter and more delicate release, but not at the expense of presence and especially not at the expense of persistence. This release is a nebbiolo in grenache clothing; actually it feels quite Grenache, truth be told, but the tannin framework is in that sleight-of-hand light-but-insistent mould.

I’d buy both these wines, for their own reasons. My personal preference is for the 2023 even though the 2022 is the more beguiling wine.

Full reviews of the 2021, 2022 and 2023 Paul Osicka Grenache releases are on The Winefront.
Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

I published a story on Sierra Reed in Halliday Wine Companion Magazine last year. A box of her latest wine releases have just arrived for review. If it wasn’t for Sierra Reed’s Grampians Shiraz I might never have delved deeper into her story, and yet now I consider her to be one of Australia’s most interesting wine producers, and by interesting I mean that she has the ability to convey something bigger than mere flavours. Her wines take you somewhere. The box she sent included six wines; four whites and two reds. I started with the reds because that’s where I started in the first place.

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The 2023 Reed Wines Knife Edge Shiraz is from the Grampians, as it always is, though it’s now from the vineyard next door, which is grown organically. This release is less about pepper and more about stones; its tannin profile is a roll of pebbles, scattered with red roses, splashed with blue and black cherries, sprigged with mint. This is a wine for enthusiasts. It builds from the tannin up, in a way that more commercial releases from this region wouldn’t dare. It’s reductive, it’s earthen and it’s raked with dryness, but with every step the fruit and the flowers come with it. Brutal honesty. This wine has it.

You can tell a lot about a cook by how they make an omelette and, similarly, you can tell a lot about a winemaker by how they make grenache. Sierra wasn’t handed access to the 150-year-old biodynamically-grown vines of Schlieb’s Garden Vineyard at Vine Vale in the Barossa Valley, she had to use all her wit and smarts, but she now makes a wine named Alexia Grenache each year. This is a win for Sierra and a win for Australian wine. “I would call this Australia’s gamay. It’s a self-regulating vine. The first thing grenache wants to tell you is the soil that it’s on. Which is what gamay does.” This wine is a month on skins, a year in barrel, and is never racked or not until bottling. “This vineyard is where my obsession with sand started. It’s picked in flip flops.”

The 2023 Reed Wines Alexia Grenache is a piece of fine bonework. It tastes like gossip, all juicy details and home truths. The glory of this wine is that it’s the variety in its landscape and that’s all that it is. It’s dry. It’s uncompromised. It’s real. If you want to be convinced of Sierra’s story; drink this wine.

Sierra Reed now runs a vineyard. It’s on the west coast of Victoria, in sight of the surf, at Torquay. It’s an established vineyard (35+ years old), though this year Sierra grafted a deal of it over to gamay. There’s never been gamay grown on the Victorian surf coast before. She’s taken semillon off this vineyard since 2020, though 2023 is the first vintage where she’s had complete vineyard control. “Every time I tasted the wines (from before she had control of the vineyard) I thought to myself, breathe. I thought of the canopy in the vineyard out by the coast there, and how if I could just open it up a bit, this wine could breathe, it could let it in.”

The 2023 Reed Wines Lessons Semillon, aged in (used) large format oak, is a bright, vivid, energetic wine with a softness to the mouthfeel and a keen jalapeño-like chatter to the finish. It doesn’t leave you stranded; it takes your hand and leads you along. It’s not just the wine that can breathe; it’s you. But I’d still expect that it will polarise.

2023 Reed Wines White Heart Riesling isn’t from its usual (Geelong) source; it’s from Mount Alexander in central Victoria. Whenever I encounter riesling that is both lengthy and soft, I know that I’m in good hands. Most Australian rieslings are one or the other. This White Heart Riesling is an off-dry style with complex juice-and-rind citrus flavours. Mineral-and-woodsmoke characters splash over the finish. It’s a delight.

“When you see balance in a glass,” Sierra says, “you know you are with someone who has a high level of understanding. That’s an understanding of wine ahcitecture. Balance is mastery.”

Sierra lived for a time in New Zealand, and has a deep affinity for the Waitaki Valley and for the limestone soils she can see in the wines. It’s where she sources the grapes for her 2023 Reed Wines Siren Riesling. The White Heart Riesling (above) is 11 grams residual; this Siren Riesling is 20. Again we have softness and length but here with an extra kick to the fruit intensity. This wine is something. It soars and it darts and it soars back out again. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a wine from Waitaki. It’s an absolute beauty.

The Alexia Grenache is my favourite of the Reed Wines in front of me, partly because I’m always going to choose a red, though for sheer quality the Siren Riesling is as good. I planned to make this my final comment, but I then tasted the 2023 Reed Wines Frequency Botrytis Riesling. This is 173 grams residual, grown in limestone soils, bottled in 375ml lots. It’s a sensational wine, the kick of (bitter) orange to the finish the perfect foil to the sweetness, the head of citrussy steam it builds more than just delicious.

Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

I once wrote a book about Maurice O’Shea. Today, it’s his birthday, or it would be; he died in 1956. I probably should have stopped thinking about Maurice shortly after I finished writing the book but nearly 20 years later I still think of him when I go on walks. We never met, but we’re close. He was born into an era when all Australian wine was high strength fortified wine. His dad, essentially an alcoholic, died young, of liver disease. Maurice set about turning the Australian wine tide from high strength fortified to lower strength, ‘healthier’ table wine. In the process, Maurice, at Mount Pleasant in the Hunter Valley, became the birth of quality Australian wine. He didn’t just make table wine; he made great table wine; some of it, 70-odd years after he finished, is considered to be our greatest.

My relationship with Maurice is not special, because I share it with all lovers of Australian wine. We are all close to him. If there’s a flame in us, he lit it. Knowing this, today, I woke nervous, because I was scheduled to taste the latest releases, all nine of them. I knew that they were meant to be good, that it was a special vintage (2023), but also that the lands of Mount Pleasant had finally found themselves in a good place again. Maurice’s lands are being tended and loved in the way they deserve to be tended and loved. I was nervous because I was worried what I would feel if I didn’t like the wines, and even if I did, what I would think if they left me cold. There have been years in the past when this has been my reaction. I don’t want, though, to be ‘over’ Mount Pleasant. I don’t want to be ‘over’ Maurice. I want to taste the wines and fall in love - with the wine lands of Maurice - all over again.

Today was not about reviewing the Mount Pleasant wines, because my Winefront colleagues have already done so. Today was about saying yay or nay, to myself, in my heart. I wouldn’t have to think much about my assessment; I’d feel it.

I tasted a few, they were lovely, the Old Hill shows a little too much oak but is magnificent, or will be. Both the Rosehills are gorgeous. I moved along the line of wines, all in glasses. And then I got to the Mountain C Light Bodied Dry Red release.

I’m glad no one was there to watch.

Involuntarily, instantly, I broke down, or I did as much as you can over a wine. I often ask myself what I’m doing, why I’m here, why wine. And then this. This is a wine you want to take back in time, and serve to Maurice, and say Mate, look what they’ve done, look what you did. The concept of ‘home’ has always been important to me. For most of my life I’ve known where home is, though somewhere along the line I lost that knowledge; I’ve lived in different houses for long stretches, and places change, and now I don’t really know where home is, or where I belong. What I’m saying is, you bring a well to the table with you. The older you get, the deeper the well. I lifted the glass of this old vine Mountain C shiraz today and the contents of that well were suddenly up at the surface. It was because there, in my mouth, in the form of a wine called Mountain C, was a bloke named Maurice, and the feeling that I’d come home.

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REVIEWS
Mount Pleasant Mountain C Light Bodied Dry Red Shiraz 2023: The Wine Front
Mount Pleasant Rosehill Shiraz 2023: The Wine Front
Mount Pleasant Rosehill 1946 Shiraz 2023: The Wine Front
Mount Pleasant Old Hill Vineyard 1880 Shiraz 2023: The Wine Front
Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz 2023: The Wine Front

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Mount Pleasant has been classified as a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

On re-tasting the wines, maybe 36 hours later, I drew other conclusions. Its history as the birthplace of fine Australian table wine makes Mount Pleasant Australia’s most important wine estate. The best place to start on its range this year is the $45 Mount Pleasant Mount Henry Shiraz Pinot Noir 2023; this wine is the perfect blend of structure and oomph, perfume and delicacy. I tasted all the latest releases without knowing the prices, and the biggest surprise was that the Mount Henry Shiraz Pinot is one of the least expensive wines in the range; it was one of my favourites. Another wine that I perhaps missed on the first pass was the $100 Mount Pleasant Mountain A Medium Bodied Dry Red 2023; this is a wine with the tannin, balance and perfume to drink beautifully with some years under its belt; cigar box tannins are a highlight. It rocketed so far up my ‘most preferred’ list on this second tasting that it may well have topped it. The $65 Mount Pleasant Mothervine Pinot Noir 2023 is the interesting one. It doesn’t scratch the Pinot Noir itch. It’s one of those low(er) points, high(er) pleasure wines; it tastes more like nerello mascalese than pinot noir. The tannin profile of the Mothervine Pinot Noir is exceptional though, perhaps the best tannin profile of any of this year’s releases, and both as a drink and as a point of difference, it’s a beauty. It’s the wine that I’ll be buying.

At the other end of the spectrum, arguably, is the latest edition of the historic Old Paddock and Old Hill line, formally known as $65 Mount Pleasant O.P. & O.H. Vineyard Shiraz 2023. If you called this wine the most traditional of this year’s releases, or the least traditional, you’d be right either way. The coffeed, creamy toastiness of the oak here, coupled with the extra bloom of shiraz fruit flavour, exudes gutsy Aussie red vibes. It turns to size where the other releases turn to execution. There’s spread to the tannin and ample stuffing; in a decade or two it will look the goods, though I doubt that this one will ever match my personal taste preferences. The headline acts of the O’Shea legacy are the wines that he created. Some of these wines were produced in recycled bottled, courtesy of bottle shortages in WWII. Great table wines hadn’t yet then been produced in Australia, and even though a small band of astute wine enthusiasts - very small, given that Mount Pleasant never turned a profit during O’Shea’s tenure - recognised the exceptional character of his wines, it wasn’t really until the 1980s and beyond, when the wines started turning 40 and 50 and 60 (and older) that the clouds really started to part, and the true majesty of the O’Shea legacy shone through. O’Shea’s wines weren’t just the best of their era; they were among the great wines of the world, beautiful in their youth, and exquisite in their dotage. In the (increasingly frenzied) hunt to experience the wines of O’Shea, the more beautiful and enduring detail is sometimes forgotten. This detail is the land O’Shea chose to plant to vines. O’Shea bought an established 40-year-old vineyard in the Old Hill but it was only once he’d lived and tasted through his Hunter Valley region for over twenty years did he give birth to his own vineyards: Lovedale and Rosehill. In the world of Australian red wine therefore Rosehill is our Rosebud; it’s the vineyard destined for our dying lips, or it has the chance to be. I returned to the Mount Pleasant 77-Year-Old Vines Rosehill Shiraz 2023 therefore with special interest. This wine is grown on the vines my mate Maurice planted with his own hands in 1946. You can’t drink a price tag and you can’t drink someone else’s point score; a good story, on the other hand, will enhance the taste of any wine, and this wine has a story. I didn’t drink any of it;I wanted to remain clear-headed. But I did sit and taste it, repeatedly, over the course of a couple of hours. It’s a wine that feels both refreshing and flavoursome; it’s a knowing nod, with a glint. There isn’t a lot of oak in this wine, it’s beautifully balanced and measured, but even so I’d love to see less oak again, and a whisper less toast. I’d love to see more tannin teased out somehow too. I say this because: in this 1946 Vines Rosehill Shiraz 2023, gorgeousness lives. You take a sip and wonder what wine can be, and what it might mean. You take a sip and you’re no longer lost; you’re connected.

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Mount Pleasant Mount Henry Shiraz Pinot Noir 2024 is worth investigating too.

This is the unofficial launch of CampbellMattinson.com as an online wine magazine. This website is about the story of wine, the stories of wine, the best wines, and the best value. It is free. It will place emphasis on words and images and people and wine, and on the land from which it all grows. This site will not sell wine.

I’ve worked for James Halliday on and off for the past 13 years. I’ve been chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion for the past two years. I’ve worked at The Winefront since 2002. The 2025 edition of the Halliday Wine Companion is the first edition since James Halliday announced his retirement, and the last that I’ll work on as either its chief editor, or as a member of the Halliday tasting team.

CampbellMattinson.com is a natural complement to The Winefront site.

If you think that you might like to advertise on this site, I’d suggest that now is the best time to get in.

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A few days after James Halliday announced his retirement from wine writing he called me from his hospital bed, eager to talk about his final writing project. James and I have discussed this final project many times but still I was humbled and disbelieving that he’d called. This project will be a book about his journey in wine, through the lens of a series of great, unrepeatable wine dinners. The life James Halliday has had in wine is incredible. Indeed, in its own way, it’s historic.

The announcement of James’ retirement, it goes without saying, was a day that I never wanted to arrive. I said on social media, on the day of the announcement, that no one has given more to the wine community, which anyone who knows anything about anything knows to be true. But there are a couple of other reasons why I never wanted this day to arrive, and the first is that every week, of every year, as I read the words that James has written, I learn something new, or I see a new angle, or I gain a new insight.

The other reason is yet more personal. James has been the ‘head’ of Australian wine for all the time I’ve been involved in it. I’m tethered to him. He’s my marker and my guide. When I heard that James had announced his retirement I felt sad but more than that, I felt empty.

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James Halliday was effectively the Halliday guide’s chief editor from the guide’s inception until 2020, though he mostly operated under the title of author. There have been three chief editors of Halliday in four years: Halliday, Tyson Stelzer (2020-2022) and myself (2022-2024). The chief editor seat is now, fittingly, vacant. Halliday is irreplaceable.

This article was first published at Halliday Wine Companion. If you want to cut straight to the punch-line: my moment of the year had to do with the Landaire at Padthaway Chardonnay 2021, which won Best Chardonnay at the Halliday awards judging in my first year as Halliday chief editor. My review of the Landaire at Padthaway Chardonnay 2021 on Halliday Wine Companion read: “This is serious business. Indeed the word glorious immediately springs to mind. Toast, flint, grilled white peach, nougat and lemon curd characters come charging at you, first sip until the last, compellingly, authoritatively. Jumps straight out of the box and once it's out, there's no stopping it.” My personal score for the wine was 96/100.

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You never know where your best wine moment of the year is going to come from. This year it came from a sea of 1041 chardonnays, which is the number of chardonnays that we tasted for the current edition of the Halliday Wine Companion book.

The seventeen best of these chardonnays were sent to our annual awards judging. There we tasted them blind. Chardonnay is arguably the variety that Australia does best, and so any one of these seventeen wines could have won our Chardonnay of the Year gong; it became a matter of trying to split superb wine from superb wine.

Spreadsheets are rarely the hero of any story, but the spreadsheet of voting results from this chardonnay taste-off is fascinating. The spreadsheet records all the scores of all the tasters, including my own. Because the chardonnay bracket was so strong, we whittled the seventeen wines down to seven, and then tasted these wines (blind) again. From these seven we selected three, which we tasted for a third time (also blind).

So at no stage did we know which wines we were tasting. In the first round of tasting I had the Hoddles Creek 1er Chardonnay 2021 as my most preferred wine. This wine had enough support from the other tasters to make it through to the second round, and indeed tehn made it through to the final three as well. The other two wines in the final round were Seville Estate Chardonnay 2022, and Landaire at Padthaway Estate Chardonnay 2021.

Padthaway is a quality Australian wine region, excellent for both white and red wines, though it’s generally considered that chardonnay is what it does best. Even so, in 2023, when pitted against the best of Margaret River and the Yarra Valley, Beechworth and Tasmania (among other regions), it’s not unfair to award it underdog status. Indeed these days Padthaway simply, often, doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

Padthaway is one of the regions that I cover for the book, and so it was me who had put this Landaire of Padthway Chardonnay into the awards-judging line-up in the first place. Ironically though, in no stage during the first or second round of voting did I put it forward, and so if it had been up to me, it wouldn’t have made it through to the third and final round.

By the time it got to that final round though, time had passed. Other panel members were obviously onto it already but for me, it was only once the wine had had this extra time to breathe, and to open up, that its beauty really shone through. The only time I voted for the Landaire was right at the end, by which stage it had become the runaway victor.

When its identity was revealed – this was my best wine moment of the year. It was a giant killing moment, against the odds. It was a moment of which both Padthaway Estate and the Padthaway region should feel immensely proud. A Padthaway chardonnay had become our Chardonnay of the Year. An underdog, can, win.

Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

Photography: Filmic Media

It’s pretty remarkable that Tasmania’s Tolpuddle Pinot Noir will become, sometime in the next three years, Australia’s most collected pinot noir. It’s already our second most collected pinot noir – behind no less than Mount Mary, the latter of which has a few extra decades of production behind it but, fair being fair, is made in volume far less than Tolpuddle. Given that 2012 was Tolpuddle’s first release though, this has to be one of the fastest ever rises to the upper echelons of Australian wine in the history of Australian wine collecting. Tolpuddle will go from a non-existent brand to the top of the Australian Pinot Noir collecting tree in just fifteen or so years.

This is just one of many fascinating insights provided by the release of Wineark’s Most Collected Wines of 2023 list. Wineark has almost two million bottles of Australian wine in its vaults across fifteen locations around Australia, which not only makes it Australia’s biggest cellarage but also, arguably, our most important. Every three years Wineark completes a full audit of the wines in its care, ranks them by total number and releases a list of the top 50. There are no judgement calls made, no favours, no nods or winks: it’s all pure numbers, and as a result it’s the best indication we have of what’s happening on the ground in the world of collectible Australian wine.

One of the interesting things about this endeavour is that all wines (in its cellarage) are tallied. If a wine comes in at, say, 250 for one of these audits, and then appears in the top 50 the next time around, the folks at Wineark know exactly how many places the wine has jumped, and therefore what kind of trajectory the wine is likely to be on (i.e. how hot it is in the market). And they can graph it.

This is how we know that Tolpuddle is likely to move to the number one Pinot Noir spot sometime soon. It’s also how we know that Standish The Standish Shiraz, grown in the Barossa Valley, is rising up the collectable charts with a bullet. The Standish now appears at number 46 on the list, having risen 100 places in the past three years.

This is quite an achievement by Standish, given that the list – unavoidably – has an inherent bias towards wines made in larger quantity, and also to those made over a larger span of time. This caveat should always be emphasised: the fact that Mount Mary, for instance, ranks as Australia’s most collected Pinot Noir is extraordinary; this list is biased towards higher volume wines, because it’s based on volume of each wine in storage, and on volume alone. Just to emphasise this point in triplicate: the more of a wine that is made, and the longer it’s been around, the more of it that can or could have been cellared. Penfolds Grange, for instance, is made in sizeable volume every year, and has been produced for over 70 years. It’s no surprise then that it sits at the top of this Wineark’s list as Australia’s most collected wine.

That said, regardless of volume and time, Grange is always going to be up or near the top, thanks to both its general standing, and to its incredible quality. Indeed, given the asking price per bottle of Grange, it’s no mean feat that there are more bottles of it in storage than any other wine. If this list were compiled by estimated value rather than by volume, then Grange would presumably lap the field many times over.  

There is a lot of talk about cool climate wines and of a general drift toward lighter styles, but when it comes to collecting, full-bodied South Australian red wine reigns fundamentally supreme. South Australia has as many wines on this top 50 list as all the other states combined (25 of the 50, with Victoria the next best represented with 10). It’s worth noting too that nine of the top most collected wines are either shiraz-based or cabernet-based, and that a whopping 34 of the top 50 wines on this list are made with these varieties.

Shiraz and cabernet are still far and away the champions of Australian wine collections.

That said, when you look at the list of the biggest movers up the list, five of the top ten are white wines. Chardonnay in fact has more representation on the “biggest movers” list than any other variety, red wines included. Tolpuddle Chardonnay is the biggest mover of all the chardonnays, and now appears on this list for the first time, having risen an impressive 66 places. The chardonnays of Giaconda, Pierro, Lake’s Folly and Mount Mary have also moved strongly up the list.

Top-flight chardonnay, as a category, is on fire in the wine collections of Australia.

There are many more interesting trends and insights to be gleaned by a perusal of this list, and by looking at what’s moved up and what’s moved down. Given that the wines of South Australia dominate the list, it’s no surprise that the Barossa Valley is the most represented individual wine region. But the number two best-represented region is the Hunter Valley, which may be more of a surprise to some, though of course it shouldn’t be.

One other thing to really shine through, looking at this list, is that Australian wine collectors clearly know what’s what. All the wines on this list are rock solid. Australian wine collectors are no fools; this list is proof.

Highlights from Wine Ark’s list of Australia's Top 50 Most Collected Wines of 2023:

● Most popular wine brand: Penfolds (7 entries)

● Most popular wine region: 1st: Barossa (8 entries), 2nd: Hunter Valley (6 entries)

● Most popular single varietal: Shiraz (14 entries)

● Most popular state: South Australia (25 entries)

● White Wine vs Red Wine: 13 whites, 37 reds

● The most collected Shiraz: Penfolds Grange #1 (Multi-regional)

● The most collected Cabernet Shiraz: Penfolds 389 #3 (Multi-regional)

● The most collected Cabernet Blend: Lake’s Folly #6 (Hunter Valley)

● The most collected Cabernet Sauvignon: Moss Wood #5 (Margaret River)

● The most collected Riesling: Grosset Polish Hill #12 (Clare Valley)

● The most collected Chardonnay: Leeuwin Estate #9 (Margaret River)

● The most collected Pinot Noir: Mount Mary #26 (Yarra Valley)

● The most collected Semillon: Tyrrell’s Vat 1 #14 (Hunter Valley)

The Top 50 of Wineark’s Most Collected Wines 2023 is:

1.     Penfolds Grange
2.     Penfolds St Henri Shiraz
3.     Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz
4.     Rockford Basket Press Shiraz
5.     Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
6.     Lake's Folly Cabernets Cabernet Blend
7.     Cullen Diana Madeline Cabernet Blend
8.     Wynns Coonawarra Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
9.     Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay
10.  Mount Mary Quintet Cabernet Blend
11.  Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier
12.  Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
13.  Yarra Yering Dry Red No 1 Cabernet Blend
14.  Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon
15.  Penfolds RWT Shiraz
16.  Giaconda Estate Chardonnay
17.  Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon
18.  Rockford Rifle Range Cabernet Sauvignon
19.  Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz
20.  Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon
21.  Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon
22.  Lake's Folly Chardonnay
23.  Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz
24.  Henschke Mount Edelstone Shiraz
25.  Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz
26.  Mount Mary Pinot Noir
27.  Yarra Yering Dry Red No 2 Shiraz Blend
28.  Torbreck RunRig Shiraz Viognier
29.  Tyrrell's Vat 47 Chardonnay
30.  Tolpuddle Vineyard Pinot Noir
31.  A.P. Birks Wendouree Shiraz
32.  Rockford Black Shiraz Sparkling Shiraz
33.  Tolpuddle Vineyard Chardonnay
34.  d'Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz
35.  Grosset 'Springvale' Watervale Riesling
36.  Rockford Rod & Spur Shiraz Cabernet
37.  Turkey Flat Shiraz
38.  Jasper Hill Georgia's Paddock Shiraz
39.  Leeuwin Estate Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon
40.  Thomas Wines Braemore Semillon
41.  Henschke Keyneton Estate Euphonium Shiraz Cabernet Merlot
42.  Bass Phillip Premium Pinot Noir
43.  Seppelt St Peters Shiraz
44.  Pierro Chardonnay
45.  Standish The Standish Shiraz
46.  Crawford River Riesling
47.  A.P. Birks Wendouree Shiraz Mataro
48.  Cullen Kevin John Chardonnay
49.  A.P. Birks Wendouree Shiraz Malbec
50.  Mount Mary Chardonnay

Wineark’s Most Collected Wines 2023 is available here.

Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

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In 2007 I was on a REX flight between Albury and Sydney when the plane was hit by lightning. We felt the plane jolt; the cabin lights went out; the pilot came over the intercom almost immediately.

‘We’ll need to emergency land,’ he said.

 I was on my way to meet Dave Powell, who at the time was making larger-than-life wines at Torbreck in the Barossa. Instead of continuing on to Sydney, where I was going to meet him, the plane set down at the regional Wagga Wagga airport. I remember standing on the wet tarmac there, as the plane was checked over, and thinking: of all the people, of all the interviewees, my plane gets hit by lightning on the way to see Dave Powell.

Headlines are never far off when it comes to Dave Powell. His winemaking renown began at Rockford but he really made his name as the force behind Torbreck, and while Powell’s relationship with Torbreck may eventually have turned sour, and legally acrimonious, his work there was and is one of the best story-branding creations Australian wine has ever seen. Lumberjacks and woodcutters, lairds and descendants, teamed on the one hand with the imposing figure and personality of the man himself, and on the other with the most gloriously compelling, full-bodied, Barossa-Eden wines.

Powell of course no longer has anything to do with Torbreck, but it remains an incredible legacy.

I’ve been meaning, because of this, to visit Powell for some years now, especially as he’s since moved on to create equally compelling wines under the name Powell & Son. The day I drove out to meet with him recently – at his winery on the top of a hill at Lyndoch in the Barossa – Powell had, as it turned out, had his own drama, having only minutes earlier had a minor bingle in his ute. ‘If I have to stop our conversation suddenly to have an angry phone call, that’s why,’ he said.

Powell then proceeded, as I tasted through his latest wines, to tee off on everything and anything in Australian wine, recent and historic, and while some of his proclamations could easily have been deemed offensive to a member of the media, who he doesn’t have a great deal of love for, his wrath was nonetheless good to hear. Dave Powell has never been shy at prosecuting his case, both inside and outside of the glass, and the rage continues, and the light still burns.

‘Has anything changed,’ I asked after I’d tasted maybe three or four of his latest wines, ‘over the years, in the way you go about making wine?’

I asked this because the wines tasted different; not stylistically, but in temperament. They were still bold, pure and expressive, but they seemed tamed a little.

‘Not really,’ he replied.

‘It’s just,’ I pressed on, ‘that the wines seem, I don’t know, more elegant. They’re still everything they ever were, but it seems as though there’s more finesse here.’

Powell had walked to the open doorway of the stone cottage there. He stood, cigarette in hand, smoke blowing in the wind, his hair mixed up in it. “I feel,’ he said, sucking in smoke, ‘as though I’ve gotten better over the years.’

He exhaled. And then he said something that I won’t forgot. ‘But also, I think, I’m now a bit like I was when I was first at Torbreck, before I started to go off on a bit of a tangent. I didn’t lose my way, I’m not saying that, but maybe I just went a bit too far, and pushed the wines a bit too much. I didn’t notice it at the time.’

I enjoyed hearing him say this. I don’t know how true it is, but I enjoyed hearing it, and I especially enjoying the intimation of wind-blown, chaos-strewn, battle-scarred perspective inherent in it, and I enjoyed it even more as I tasted through the remainder of his current wines, as each of them seemed to confirm it. The wines as a whole, and in a way entirely faithful to both the man himself and the land they were grown on, are beautiful.

Not though that headlines don’t still hover, as I also learned on this visit that Powell and his son Callum have recently split, and that Dave’s wines will now be branded under the name of Neldner Road. For Dave Powell, another new era begins. Indeed if you’re looking for reviews of Dave Powell’s wines in the Halliday database, Neldner Road is the name to search under. There you will find a collection of wines that refuse to go quietly, lightning bolts of their own kind, tempests in a glass.

—

Neldner Road Shiraz 2021 reviewed here.
Neldner Road (Powell & Son) Kraehe Shiraz 2017 reviewed on The Winefront here (subscription).
37 Powell & Son wines reviewed on The Winefront site here (subscription).

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It’s almost amusing. When I ask Virginia Willcock whether she’s a surfer – having worked in Margaret River for over a decade and grown up a leg rope’s distance from South City Beach in Perth – she has an interesting answer. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s girls weren't really accepted on boards out the back, so body surfing was the only thing I got into,” she says.

The irony is that the girl who was kept out of the boys’ club of the surf break is now the general manager and chief winemaker of one of the most important and indeed iconic wineries in Margaret River: Vasse Felix. I think it’s called having the last laugh. “In no way did I ever think I would be GM of such a stunning winery in such a stunning place,” she says.

Virginia has taken the head role at Vasse Felix for all the right reasons. While growing up, her family shared a property north of the Swan Valley (at Bindoon, near Chittering) with three other families. Each family had four kids and so an old shearing shed was converted into a dormitory. The families referred to the property as the Four Fools. There was a hobby vineyard on it and each year the families would make rough-and-ready wine from it – for personal consumption.

 “Sixteen kids, all between 10 and 16 years old. We were allowed to run feral and we just loved it. By the time I was 15 I knew that I definitely wanted to be a winemaker,” she says.

“It was just so much fun. I loved the idea of growing something and then turning it into something else. Something that could be beautiful and would give people enjoyment.”

Back then, when Virginia thought of winemaking, it ran more along the lines of “making wine in a tin shed somewhere in the Swan Valley and loving it.” It’s safe to say that where she’s now landed is a lot more sophisticated.

Since graduating, Virginia has worked as winemaker at Cape Mentelle, Cloudy Bay, Evans & Tate and as chief winemaker at Alexander Bridge. I asked her ­how she went from playing contentedly in a bush vineyard to being head honcho at one of the brightest wine names in Australia.

“I just think I have always wanted better. You get better and funnily enough you still want better. So I guess the re-setting of goals happens every day; it's been a progressive thing.”

Importantly, she still loves the hard labour of winemaking. “I love vintage. Always have and always will. It’s my favourite time of the year. I love how you get to create things. At school my favourite subjects were art and chemistry – mix them together, and that’s winemaking,” she says.

“The first I ever heard of Vasse Felix, I was at Roseworthy [winemaking college]. I became good mates of [winemaker] Steve Pannell – the Pannells being a big part of the Margaret River beginnings. One uni holiday, we came down to Margaret River and met David Gregg at this cute, dinky little winery called Vasse Felix. I think it must have been 1987 or 1988,” she recalls.

“It’s funny how I got the job here, actually. Basically there are five wineries in Margaret River that you’d really love to work for – the ones with the oldest vines. The established brands. The ones that are owned by families or private companies. I had a good winemaking position when I was contacted by an employment agency and asked to submit my CV. I asked them who the job was with and they simply said, ‘Trust us, you’ll want to apply’. So I went through the process and there were four separate interviews, and I was very much given the third degree. Then they finally told me that the job was at Vasse Felix. I just thought it was a brilliant opportunity.”

The Vasse Felix range of wines has never been anything other than high quality, but even so, it’s fair to say that since Virginia took over in 2007, she has methodically but surely revolutionised the place. Arguably, the wines have never tasted better – they’ve certainly slayed them on the wine show circuit over the past 18 months – and there’s now an irresistible vibrancy to them. The wines are more complex too. Wilder. No more added tannin. Lots more use of small, one-tonne fermentations. In short: more modern. More hands-on.

“There are a lot of people doing it really hard in the Australian wine industry at the moment but we feel like we’re one of the only ones not whingeing. We’re happy with where things are at – sales are good, our wines are good, we’re excited about the future,” she says.

“Our story over the past few years – our success, if you like – is proof that consumers shouldn’t ever be underestimated. I’ve had winemaking jobs where we’ve always been trying to second-guess consumers and what they want. It should be the other way around. It’s so much better to make the wines that are exciting to us. So many times I’ve heard sales and marketing people say, ‘Just because you like it, doesn’t mean that people will buy it’. But I think that’s wrong. We’re grown up now. You’ve got to make the kinds of wines that you genuinely love to make. You have to be able to stand up and talk about the wines you’ve made and genuinely believe that it’s a really good wine,” she says.

As the saying goes, the problem with common sense is that it’s not that common. In a world where it seems as though there’s an Exciting New Brand born every minute, what does this mean for the established players? “We’ve changed our thinking away from the short-term and onto questions like: What is Vasse Felix going to be in 50 years? What will it mean to Margaret River? What will it mean to the wine world? It changes your whole perspective on how you should be doing things and what decisions you should be making. The picture becomes clearer.”

While the pointy end of the Vasse Felix range becomes ever more impressive – made up of Heytesbury Chardonnay and Heytesbury Cabernet Sauvignon (now Cullity)– the changes to the estate’s offerings run deep. The range has been simplified – there are no longer ‘export only’ wines – and the ‘standard’ or non-reserve offerings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Semillon Sauvignon Blanc and Classic Dry White are now increasingly made from estate-grown grapes.

When Vasse Felix started life in 1967, it was as a single vineyard in the heart of the Margaret River region, in the famed Wilyabrup sub-region. But over the past 15 to 20 years, in the search for added production volume, grapes had been brought in from a wide range of vineyards, regions and sub-regions.

Vasse Felix is now bringing many of its wines back home. It’s a wonderful thing; it puts the heart back into the wines. “In the past five years, we’ve gone from having 11 hectares of vines in Wilyabrup to having 45 hectares today,” Virginia says. “We’re no longer buying fruit from other regions. We now have 235 hectares of vineyard in Margaret River. This is a really significant change in what Vasse Felix is. 2010 was the first time that Heytesbury Chardonnay has been made from 100 percent estate-grown fruit. Think of what a change that is! We’re not interested in markets or volume for the sake of it – we’re only interested in putting our best foot forward.”

—

Virginia Willcock on … cabernet sauvignon:
“Cabernet is a wine for grown-ups. It’s for people who can handle a bit of structure. For people who can handle wine as they’re enjoying food. It’s perfumed and beautiful, and age-worthy.”

—

Vasse Felix is a Mattinson 10-Star Winery.

In March 2022 I received a call from James Halliday. Out of the blue, he asked me to return to the Halliday Wine Companion fold, where I’d worked on and off for a decade or more. The offer was to return as the Halliday Wine Companion chief editor – of the book principally but by extension of the website too. I’d been away from the Halliday organisation for a couple of years, during which I’d written and published my long lost novel. I had several other projects I was keen to get on with, not the least being an attempt to take The Winefront up a gear.

If the call had come from anyone else, I would have said Thanks but no thanks. But I’m a sucker for James Halliday, and I am for the right reasons. I admire him. I respect him. And I owe him, for starters. But the bond is deeper than that. We come from opposite sides of the tracks, but we see each other. We understand. A lot of things never even need to be said; we both just know what needs to be done, and why, and how.

This is a long way of saying, I’m loyal to James. I love him but more than that, I’m loyal to him. I’m loyal to the Halliday office.

In June 2022 therefore I returned to the Halliday Wine Companion team. The Halliday Wine Companion book is a central and crucial figure in the landscape of Australian wine but more importantly, it’s James Halliday’s – to use his words – “life’s work”. I’m going to try to protect it.

Campbell Mattinson writes for The Winefront.

• Made using a blend of 94 percent shiraz and 6 percent cabernet sauvignon.

• Grapes for the 1983 Grange were grown in the Barossa Valley (Kalimna Vineyard and others), Magill Estate (Adelaide), and the Modbury Vineyard (Adelaide).

• 1983 was a hot, tragic vintage (marked by the Ash Wednesday bushfires) though it was also marked by heavy rain (and floods) around harvest time.

• Many aspects of 1983 were a winegrower's worst nightmare. And yet out of the mayhem and indeed the human tragedy a monumental 1983 Penfolds Grange was produced.

• 1983 Grange is a heavy-hitting release.

• 1983 Grange is regularly included in lists of “Great Grange Releases”.

1983 Grange has always been one of the biggest and burliest of Penfolds Grange relesses. It’s often regarded as a great release, though perhaps a little less so now than it once was. I didn’t taste it on release but I’ve seen it on two occasions since, once at a Penfolds Rewards of Patience tasting and again in 2018. It offers deep, brooding, timeless scents with a whopping slink of malt, licorice and blackberry. In late 2003 – when this wine was 20 years old – this release still tasted very youthful, though it was just starting to come around. It then offered rich licorice flavours, drying tannin, a cigar-box savouriness and oodles of concentrated, muscular power, both tannin and fruit. It also had mint-doused leather characters, sexily interwoven. I called it at this 2003 tasting “a rugged champion of a wine”. When I tasted it again in 2018 it was more seriously advanced. It still though seemed muscular, and sizeable, and tannic, and imposing. Charm has never really entered this wine’s building but for sheer flex 1983 Grange can still impress. 93-94 points.

’We Were Not Men’ is my first novel. It was shortlisted for the Debut Fiction Award at the Indie Book Awards 2022 and for the MUD Literary Prize 2022. I’m grateful.

Assorted related links:

LISTEN: Campbell Mattinson on ABC Radio National.
LISTEN: Campbell Mattinson chatting with Ben Hunter on the Booktopia Podcast.
READ: Herald-Sun article, launch WE WERE NOT MEN.
WATCH: Campbell Mattinson at WAM Festival, speaking Complicated Love.
WATCH: 30 authors in 30 days.
WATCH: ‘Dissatisfaction’, the journey to WE WERE NOT MEN.

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My dad was a chemistry teacher. He taught at the same school for many decades and then went on teaching chemistry for more than a decade after that; he was still teaching chemistry to high school kids until he was just about 80.

But before that, from 1957 to 1966, he was an industrial chemist at Monsanto (454-460 Somerville Road) in Brooklyn in Melbourne. I've heard the word Monsanto all my life. For my first 25 or so years it was always in affectionate terms; it was only later that I became aware of any wider Monsanto conversations.

But I've never, until I finally found it yesterday, seen the building it operated out of in Melbourne. Here it is, now abandoned. It’s such a striking building; I stood in front of it for more than an hour on Sunday arvo, and as I did two other cars stopped to gaze and wonder too. Everyone wants to know what this magnificent old building is, or was.

It’s Monsanto, Melbourne. Built 1941 or so. It’s my dad's first workplace. Back then, he tells me, the suburb of Altona North was just paddocks, and so he used to ride his bike across the lands each morning, from Williamstown to Brooklyn, as a young scared wide-eyed boffin, to quality-check the incoming ingredients for the production of aspirin. This quality-checking was done, believe it or not, actually tasting the aspirin. So my dad, as a young industrial chemist, was an aspirin-taster as his job.

And yes, you could ride your bike across open paddocks from Newport to Brooklyn back then.

(When I told him that I’d visited it recently he asked: is the canteen building still there? [Answer: yes, at the back].)

All photography here is copyright Campbell Mattinson and is available for sale.

Dissatisfaction Film

It won Best Regional Short Film at the St Kilda Film Festival 2020.

[Announced June 21, 2020. Two posts amalgamated for neatness.]

https://www.stkildafilmfestival.com.au