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Did you know riesling could be dry? Australia is making some of the greatest dry rieslings in the world (no sweetness!) and none greater than the Rieslingfreak himself.
About this Wine
Before you say you don’t like riesling…this one isn’t sweet! Riesling is one of the world’s most versatile grapes, making luscious dessert wines, bone-dry, super tart styles, and everything in between. And this one, as many in Australia, is on that super dry side.
As the name implies, Rieslingfreak is deeply passionate about the expression of riesling. And not just one or two styles and regions: Rieslingfreak really probes the variations and diversity of the grape across South Australia’s top producing riesling regions, like Clare Valley, Eden Valley, and Polish Hill River.
Rieslingfreak was established in 2009 by John Hughes, who grew up on a family vineyard in the Clare Valley, and is driven by the riesling grape’s versatility. He noted his passion for riesling in his university days, where he always had a bottle or two to share, and soon gained the nickname the “Riesling Freak.” He worked at the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) for a decade before launching his winery, and hasn’t looked back.
The Australian wine industry has recognized Hughes as a peak producer of his eponymous grape, and his wines graces the lists of the top restaurants in the country, with always a careful attention to the terroir and balance of each wine. The No. 44 from Eden Valley is sourced from five different Eden Valley vineyards each year, the proportional blend of these vineyards used changing to best represent the vintage and encapsulate the beauty of Eden Valley riesling at its best. The wine is designed to provide complexity and generosity – a wine that is good to drink now.
Food Pairings
Oysters, crudo with citrus, all other seafood, a lemony salad. Bright and acid-driven is the way to go with this wine, though aromatic food (think: Thai, Vietnamese) is always a win too.
Tech Notes
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Pick out your favorite episode of their YouTube channel Bottle Shock and send it to your friends…that should be enough to impress them, on top of the delicious, affordable, ethically made juice in the bottle.
About this Wine
We have had the pleasure to spend time with Brendan and Laura Carter over the past few years, and there isn’t a more dynamic, ambitious and passionate duo in the wine industry right now. Brendan and Laura met at university and launched Unico Zelo with a few barrels in a shed in 2012. They have hustled ever since to create a winery that in many ways has become emblematic of Australian culture: playful, sustainable, and delicious.
They are based in the Adelaide Hills, with grape sources in Riverland as well. Drought-resistant grapes are the name of the game for them: the grapes they use require about 25% of the water of more traditional French grapes (like cabernet sauvignon, syrah, chardonnay, and pinot noir). Fiano and nero d’Avola in particular have been a big part of their story. And their sustainability measures go beyond water and grape selection; they’ve been a certified B Corp since 2019, meeting the highest standards for social and environmental impact.
They’re also on a mission to democratize wine…educate on it, and make it a bit more fun! To that end, they have an YouTube channel called Bottle Shock with an impressive following, where they pull back the curtain on their inner workings. They’re all about honesty, and have recently discussed early vintage failures, unpopular opinions on marquee wine regions, and issues plaguing the Australian wine industry. This same plucky gamefulness is on display at their distillery/winery/wine bar in the Adelaide Hills, where customers can do blind flights around certain themes (or just have a bee and relax).
“Ever had a wine that tastes like you're drinking a laser?” is the lead-in on Unico Zelo’s website for the Alluvium Fiano. The vineyards they source this from are just around the corner from their Gumeracha winery in Birdwood (Adelaide Hills). All grapefruit pith, perfectly ripe pineapple, guava, kaffir lime and jasmine tea, a crushed rock.
Food Pairings
Slightly meatier seafood works really well here, like grilled swordfish with caponata, and herby halibut, or striped bass on a bed of veggies. Fiano is originally a coastal grape, so traditional coastal cuisine works a charm.
Tech Notes
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Considered one of the great chardonnay vineyards of Australia, and with 8 years of age to boot. This has to be one of the great drinking experiences available from Australia right now.
About this Wine
“Yarra Valley” and “chardonnay” -- a combination that is music to Australian wine drinkers’ ears. The heralded cool-climate region adjacent to Melbourne has become well-known for the prestige white grape, increasingly from vineyards in the high-elevation southern reaches.
Enter: Caroline Mooney. There’s not much Caroline Mooney doesn’t know about the Yarra Valley: its seasons, its topography, the captivating vistas, the colorful personalities, and the extraordinary winescape of the upper and lower reaches of the valley. Caroline was raised in the area by Leo and Mary Mooney of the Yarra Valley Dairy, and it’s the only place she could imagine calling home to her one-woman winery.
Caroline started in the wine industry working a vintage with the Hardy’s Tintara team in McLaren Vale in 2000. “This ould test my resolve, sharpen my sense of calling, and set my course on a way forward,” she recalls. Following this first vintage, she enrolled at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga to study Wine Science. Inspired and up for the challenge, she returned to the Yarra Valley and took up a cellar hand position with the Yering Station winemaking team led by Tom Carson, working her way up to Assistant Winemaker by 2004 and Winemaker in 2007.
In 2008, she left Yering Station to pursue her own winemaking goals with Bird On A Wire (named after the Leonard Cohen song).
The magic of Caroline’s wines is in her choice and interpretation of vineyard. She exclusively works with single sites across the Yarra whose growers are dedicated to farming exemplary grapes, evocative of place. And then the winemaking showcases what is unique about those sites: whether it’s producing a leesy, stony chardonnay, a supple and heady syrah, or a plump, expressive marsanne. Caroline isn’t influenced by trends; she has a laser-sharp focus on expressing grape and place in a vibrant, structured, and flavorful way. And she makes a point of releasing her wines with age on them, so all the possible complexity comes through.
And the chardonnay site is exemplary: The Willowlake Vineyard A1 block in the Upper Yarra has been the home of Bird On A Wire Chardonnay since 2009. 41-year-old block. Soils are grey/brown clay loam with mudstone throughout. North to south rows with a northerly aspect. Considered one of the great chardonnay vineyards of the Yarra Valley.
Food Pairings
This wine is versatile and can stand up to some richness: chicken and morels, dole beurre blanc, even a great shrimp and grits.
Tech Notes
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The vines used for this wine are so old that they don’t require any trellising -- their arms are so thick they can hold themselves up!
About this Wine
How many wineries are owned by two Masters of Wine? Not too many, but that’s the origin story of Thistledown. Giles Cooke and Fergal Tynan met in a bar the night before they began the first year of the Master of Wine course – that was 1998. Both subsequently passed the exam and eventually came to work together, founding Thistledown in 2010, with the first proper vintage in 2011.
Both share a degree in history, a love of Australian wine, and the cause of the underdog. Both also shared a frustration that, in many markets, Australian wine was stereotyped as big, alcoholic, and unsuited to excellent restaurants. Both knew that this didn't have to be the case and set upon a journey to create wines of elegance, detail, and balance.
The grape that they’ve chosen to accomplish this mission is grenache. The grape of France’s Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf du Pape, grenache is often blended in those regions, but is the star of the show these days in Australia. Though the Australia of 15+ years ago made rich and syrupy grenaches, the revolution of grenache winemaking has been decisive: today’s best Aussie grenaches are fresh, detailed, complex and long. And Thistledown has been at the forefront of that revolution.
Fruit for Thorny Devil comes from some of the finest vineyards in McLaren Vale. Old bush trained vines and sandy, mineral strewn vineyards ensure that this is amongst the most delicious of grenaches, with characteristic McLaren Vale perfume and spice, beguiling texture, and complexity that unfolds, layer by layer.
Food Pairings
Grenache is incredibly versatile, having the transparency and red fruit of lighter grapes like pinot noir and gamay, but a bit more density, akin to syrah and cabernet sauvignon. To us the perfect grenache pairing is cassoulet, something meaty and hearty that needs both a wine to match its depth, but also lift it up.
Tech Notes
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A world-class cabernet site that’s a stone’s throw from white sand, crystal clear water, and world-class surfing? Yes, this wine is paradise in a bottle.
About this Wine
It’s the club’s first Margaret River wine! Though not Western Australia’s most historic region, it has surged on the scene in the last fifty years as a beacon of quality in the state, especially for its trusty duo: cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay.
Corymbia is the husband-and-wife team Rob and Genevieve Mann, bringing together historic pedigree, rigorous scholarship, and a creative approach to make some of the best cabernet in Western Australia.
The Mann family’s winemaking history in the Western Australian wine industry dates back to 1906 with several generations of the family fulfilling significant industry stewardship positions, most notably within the Houghton Wine Company where Rob’s grandfather Jack completed 51 consecutive vintages as winemaker. In fact, it’s Jack’s observation, that the red gum tree (Corymbia calophylla) is a harbinger of excellent soils for growing grapes, that gives Corymbia its name.
Rob and Gen are both qualified winemakers and have between them 40+ vintages of winemaking experience in senior roles, both within Australia and abroad. Rob has held the role of senior winemaker at Hardy’s Tintara, Cape Mentelle and most recently at LVMH’s Newton Vineyard in the Napa Valley, and has also spent time working in Italy as well as consulting to a number of other wine companies. Gen has worked in senior winemaker positions at Hardy’s Tintara and Howard Park and has spent time working in France, California and South Africa.
The two have worked throughout the world to absorb as much knowledge as possible and bring it back to Western Australia. Gen and Rob believe that the combination of cabernet sauvignon and Margaret River is one of the world’s great place/variety combinations, and have worked tirelessly to set up their vineyard in Calgardup, planted in 2002 on Keenan gravelly loam less than 5km from the ocean. The site is sure to become one of the most heralded in Margaret River, just as Corymbia has become one of the most noted wineries in Western Australia in its short lifespan (founded in 2013). For fans of cabernet sauvignon – that expresses both profound depth and drinkability – it does not get better than this.
Modest in alcohol and aged in only used oak (no new oak flavor), this is a cabernet that is charting its own course in terms of purity and finesse. As fresh and vibrant -- yet layered and concentrated – as the pristine coastal location of its origin. Perfumed and aromatic with violets, deep red currants, and coastal herbs. The palate is intense, vibrant and medium bodied with saltbush and kakadu plums framed by the vineyard’s typical graphite-like structure.
Food Pairings
This wine is the star of the show; we like to pair it with a simple Steak Frites and let it shine over a few hours out of a decanter.
Tech Notes
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Eight perfect Robert Parker 100-point scores should do it.
About this Wine
Thrust into the international wine spotlight (thanks to eight perfect 100-point scores from the world’s leading wine publication – Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate), Greenock Creek remains an iconic standard-bearer for powerful, long-lived Barossa Valley red wines.
Despite these accolades, Greenock Creek, established in 1984, sees their work as just beginning.With the 2018 arrival of Alex Peel as chief winemaker, they’ve sharpened their focus and responded to the land and seasons with a range of small but telling tweaks in the vineyard and cellar.
They’ve improved the health of their vines and soils. They’ve adopted drip irrigation to prevent water stress, and they’ve adapted pruning, training and trellising to promote natural freshness in the wines. They’re also realising the fruit’s potential – that is, texture, structure, purity, intensity, complexity and freshness – through a range of more precise practices in the winery.
Additional fermenters mean fruit is always picked when perfectly ready, and cooler ferments allow more nuanced flavours to develop in the wines. They’re pressing the grapes more softly, refining the feel and clarity of the wines. And they’ve become more deliberate about suiting oak to the vintage and vineyard.
The mission of Greenock Creek has always been to dig deeper into the Barossa Valley and that goal is more fully realized every vintage. While most wines in their arsenal are single-vineyard, the creation of a general Barossa Valley wine -- combining fruit from their own vineyards at Seppeltsfield and Marananga with sites at Moppa, Tanunda, Lyndoch and Rosedale -- has allowed for a more accessible entry point to the range.
Food Pairings
Though Greenock Creek’s style has gotten fresher and brighter over the years, the layers and fruit of this wine can still stand up to heartier fare. Think: a rack of lamb, barbecue ribs or steak au poivre.
Tech Notes
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