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The bleeding edge of the work from a former fashion model turned winegrower — full of soul, and deliciousness!
About this Wine
The best oyster months of the year are here, and this is one of our favorite matches for them.
Sierra Reed has explored the world of wine through making it. From Beaujolais, to Germany’s Rheingau, to Paso Robles in California — all of which have informed so much of her approach. In 2022 Sierra took over management of the Spring Creek Vineyard, and has since entered into a lease agreement for the property. She is desperately trying to purchase the exquisite site, situated just 2km from the beach at Torquay, perched on a limestone bench drawn by the Spring Creek below.
The vineyard was planted in the 80s to Semillon, and upon taking it over she grafted half of it to Riesling and Gamay. Those grafts have yielded fruit in both 2025 and 2026, but in minuscule quantities, so we’ll see them a bit further down the track.
Every one of Sierra’s wines comes with a cuvée name. This one is simple, as the wine represents the many ongoing lessons she is learning in the transition from micro-négociant to estate grower: a vigneron in its truest sense.
The label subtly depicts the fossilized sea snail shells found throughout the vineyard. It wasn’t too long ago (in the grand scheme of things) that this vineyard was the sea floor, and the saline minerality that shines through the wine melds with shellfish and other salty foods the way fine Champagne does — without the bubbles (or the indigestion!).
Food Pairings
Conserved salty fish, oysters and all shellfish, clam/lobster/crawfish/crab boils, snappy fresh veggies.
Tech Notes
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The Adelaide Hills is a vibrant agricultural bounty, and drinking Murdoch Hill’s chardonnay is like scoring the best produce at the farmer’s market!
About this Wine
It’s hard to keep a proper Aussie chard out of the mix. The diversity of styles and the genuine quality across the country continue to grow at a remarkable pace. We truly believe Australia is the greatest chardonnay producing country in the world — full stop. And we’ve sold all the over-priced (and properly priced) stuff from France and the US in our previous three-Michelin-star restaurant life.
Michael Downer, custodian of the Downer family’s estate in the Onkaparinga Valley of the Adelaide Hills, has rapidly become a beacon of modern Australian chardonnay.
The farm’s origin story is a familiar one — running sheep and horses first, then putting in some vines in the 90s during the last boom phase for the Aussie industry. Fruit was sold off for a good while until Michael ambitiously converted an old shed into a small winery. He started purchasing fruit from local growers, and worked around the world: Barolo, Burgundy, and just down the street with Shaw & Smith and the late Taras Ochota.
Michael’s approach is not simple, but might be best explained as one that sits between those two mentors — Ochota and Smith. The wines all have a shimmering luster: pristine fruit and precision like the cut of a diamond, filled with joy and pleasure that satisfies every drinker. The estate, now expanded beyond the farm in Woodside to a late-80s Petaluma planting in Lenswood, churns out a plethora of offerings: Syrah, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, a blend reverently dubbed “Cabernets”, Sangiovese, and fun, playful blends that move in and out of the range as each vintage’s growing season allows.
This estate chardonnay is a blend of the two vineyards. In Woodside, lower elevations bring a base-line note that develops both texture and the undeniable pleasure that comes from drinking great wine. The Lenswood property brings detail and precision, with a racy acid line that somehow feels akin to twisting and turning an all-wheel-drive German sports car through the curvy roads of Lenswood itself. Was that one too much? At least it doesn’t smell like a new car…
Food Pairings
All fin fish — halibut, salmon, snapper — grilled or cooked more gently. Hard salty cheeses, and believe it or not, a killer match for a cheeseburger!
Tech Notes
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The real deal: an old vine, natural, organic approach to preserving some of the oldest grape vines in the world.
About this Wine
There is no vinous time capsule greater or more revered than the ancient vines of the Barossa Valley. Rasa’s mission is to preserve that in a unique and special way.
Andy Cummins has held many roles across the Australian wine industry, most notably as Assistant Head Winemaker to Stephen Henschke in the Eden Valley. Rasa is in some ways the iconoclast, and seeks to preserve the old vine heritage of grapes other than Shiraz.
All of the wines from Rasa are sourced from super old vineyards farmed either biodynamically or organically. If there wasn’t a viable option for the fruit they would likely be pulled up — a travesty in Andy’s eyes, and we couldn’t agree more. Each wine is a blend, and named for native flora found throughout the Barossa.
The 2022 Dusty Miller is sourced from two vineyards in the Barossa Valley town of Bethany, and is 55% Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, 45% Riesling. The harvests are picked and kept separately, and treated quite differently. For the Muscat, Andy kept the wine in contact with the skins for 12 weeks, while the Riesling was pressed immediately with no skin contact. Both were blended and held in used oak barrels for 10 months before bottling unfined, unfiltered and unsulfured.
One of our favorite quotes about “natural wine” is that “wine is about as natural as a Christmas tree farm” — but if there were ever a producer in Australia that held true to the ideals natural wine alludes to (synthetic-free, organic and regenerative farming that focuses on restoring carbon to foster plant growth, healthy relationships with growers and vineyard workers, and a winemaking process that neither adds nor takes away a thing), this is it.
The wine is highly aromatic, copper-toned in color, and jumps out of the glass with exotic aromas. This is the benefit of the skin contact, or “orange wine”, process: it heightens all of the aromas and provides a sturdy savoriness on the palate that cleans up whatever you’re eating. And a fun fact — Andy’s sister Lily is the artist who creates the beautiful labels after tasting the wines. Lily also did the cover and related works throughout How to Drink Australian.
Food Pairings
What doesn’t this go with!? Roasted autumn veggies, pork chops with baked apples, spicy curry, funky cheeses, white-sauced pizza, cured meats, anything pickled. Perfect for anyone having a hearty meal who isn’t into red wine.
Tech Notes
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Chilled or unchilled, this wine is as friendly as the Aussie and American sommeliers who made it!
About this Wine
The Granite Belt is one of the most extreme growing regions we’ve ever stepped foot in. 1000m in elevation, just three hours inland from a climate akin to Miami, yet it comes with extreme frost pressure in the spring and fall! Intense sunlight, and the topsoil — well, it’s a bit of granitic sand on top of the second largest monolith in Australia.
Glen Roberts and Robert Richter happily embrace all of the extremes in the town of Ballandean, where they’ve established their winery and distillery, Bent Road. It is here that they act as the glue for a community of growers and makers who defy all odds to make beautifully compelling wine. It is that spirit of community that led them to craft this wine, uniting sommeliers from Brisbane and New York City in the process.
This is the debut vintage of a collaboration that is already on the docket for the 2027 harvest. Saperavi — one of their calling card grapes, which turns the intensity of the Granite Belt into a lively and fragrant wine — is blended with Shiraz. This wasn’t done simply because there is a lot of Shiraz available, but because it is another dimension of the collaboration that underpins the blend: take the old and the new, the familiar and the not, the near and the far, and put them in the same room so we can learn and grow. And drink the result!
The lightness of this red lends itself to a chill, but not too cold. Think cold cellar temp, around 45–50°F. Though it’s not a requirement!
Food Pairings
BBQ anything, cured meats, roast chicken, and red-sauced pizza. And a proper parma!
Tech Notes
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A true standard-bearer for the very best of farming and agriculture.
About this Wine
Another Adelaide Hills wine! It truly is one of the great hotspots of viticulture in Australia. Visit, and you’ll see instantly that it’s all happening there. Visit Ngeringa, and you instantly feel that it’s next level.
The farm has been managed organically, and biodynamically, since 1980. It is a full circle ecosystem — much more than the monoculture that most vineyards are. Erinn and Janet Klein are the proprietors and keepers of this pristine farm, which started out as a botanical farm for the health and skin care products Erinn’s parents produced. When they sold the business, Erinn bought the farm and planted a vineyard. It’s grown over the years, and is a pinnacle example of what an uncompromising dedication to building a healthy and vibrant ecosystem can achieve.
Biodynamics, for those not super familiar, focuses on farming methods that increase soil health, create a more efficient and powerful cycling of nutrients, and set up a support system for the vine itself that allows it to weather turbulent seasons, pests, and many other challenges in ways that conventional farming with synthetic chemicals simply cannot.
At Ngeringa (pronounced ner-ING-ah) grapes are handled as gently, and as little, as possible. Preserving all of the work that has gone into the farming is the goal, so heavy processing and winemaking techniques are set aside. Instead, the fruit is left to ferment naturally and simply. The Pinot Noir from Ngeringa is always a brightly fragrant example. It’s open and easy to drink, but the bounty of red flowers and berry fruits that jump out of the glass captures you instantly. It’s hard to find wines with as much energy and vibrancy as those from Ngeringa. And it most certainly starts with the uncompromising approach that Erinn and Janet take in the vineyard and on the farm.
Food Pairings
The classic pairings for pinot noir will work beautifully here: leaner cuts of beef, roast duck, pork loin. Though a simple and delicious ratatouille might be the best match!
Tech Notes
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You’ll never see this wine again!
About this Wine
Seppeltsfield is truly one of the great, historic estates of Australia, and celebrates its 175th anniversary this year.
Josef Seppelt moved his family from eastern Europe in the 1840s, escaping religious persecution, and arrived in Adelaide. In 1851 he harvested his first crop, in spite of his original efforts to grow tobacco as he had done in Silesia (modern-day Poland). Fortified wine exports to the UK were a growing business in South Australia, and the Seppelt family quickly became a major player in that industry. Check out this video for a recount of this incredible history.
Today, Seppeltsfield bottles four different fortified Tawny wines at various age statements — 10yr, 15yr, 21yr and 100yr — a plethora of table wines, and apera. Apera, short for aperitif, is a traditional Australian fortified akin to a dry style of Sherry from Jerez, Spain. The wines are beautifully aromatic and substantial in body, but can bend and flex to a broad range of foods.
DP 116 — an old moniker noting that the solera’s duty has been paid — is made entirely of Palomino, the grape traditionally used in Sherry. It spends many years in barrel, aging under a naturally occurring veil of yeast known as flor. The flor metabolizes various elements of the wine, and then the wine is fortified with neutral spirit to kill off the flor and allow it to gently oxidize. These styles of wine are some of the most aromatically complex made on the planet.
Seppeltsfield has recently decommissioned a few soleras, and this sadly was one of them. The US stock these were sourced from are the very last bottles in existence, and we are so excited to share them — they truly are a historic example of a very Australian drink!
Food Pairings
The classic pairing: Iberico ham, marcona almonds, hard salty cheese. We find it goes with soooo much! From hearty soups and stews (French onion soup is a fun one for this!), roasted artichokes, dry-aged beef, grilled swordfish, or the most subtly sweet desserts.
Tech Notes
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