“As debut wines go, this takes the cake. It’s a stunner.” That was The Wine Front’s Campbell Mattinson commenting on Pip Farr’s curtain-raising Gippsland Pinot Noir. Eight vintages later, Pip seems to have turned her dual-Pinot label into something of a cult classic. And she’s still taking the cake every time. The Farr family has long been happy to let their wines do the talking, and Pip seems to have taken this to new levels with a level of reticence that only highlights the eloquence…

  Welcome to the CellarHand newsletter for May 2021. A bit of a short-and-sweet edition this month, it nevertheless includes three urgent and mouthwatering releases. The most complete of these comes from the Smith Cullam clan of Frankland Estate, whose suite of single-vineyard wines is out now. From 2020, that means Isolation Ridge and Poison Hill Riesling, while the Syrah success story continues with Isolation Ridge and SmithCullam 2019s. Rounding out the review is the benchmark Cab Franc blend, Olmo's Reward, from 2018. From Victoria,…

The career-best form continues for Frankland Estate. The Smith Cullam clan - led these days by Hunter and Lizzie Smith, plus Lizzie's winemaker husband Brian Kent - followed up their Trevor Mast Trophy-winning 2017 Syrah with a benchmark-setting pair of '18s: Isolation Ridge and SmithCullam (the latter a large-format barrel selection of the former). 2019 was the best of these past vintages for Syrah, and here comes another raising of the bar. The Riesling release, meanwhile, comes after the 2019 Isolation Ridge took out last…

Arguably the most innovative grape project in Australian is back. The Chalmers family’s Dott. series is itself a metamorphosis of the #bucketwine trials. Dott. began with a set of three wines from varieties making their “commercial” – if such tiny-batch craftmanship qualifies as such – debut from the 2017 vintage. The grapes were Malvasia Istriana, Pavana and Schioppettino. The second coming comprises those three wines in their 2018 incarnation, as well as the first release of Ribolla Gialla. from the 2020 harvest. To recap, this…

Every Burn Cottage release is a landmark. This estate strutted onto the Central Otago stage with such style and swagger in the late noughties that it immediately made a mark. It was also so respectful of nature and place that it was championed by its peers. It was more start-up than upstart, with characterful hard-rocking American Marquis Sauvage as visionary owner, a guru-like vineyard architect in Ted Lemon, and biodynamic viticulture as its cutting-edge tech. By vintage 2018, it has well and truly come of…

We hope you enjoyed a very happy Easter and have returned fresh and not without an appetite for further wine exploration.  The major new-arrival hype is around Germany, whose stellar 2019s have landed. Short on crop, long on quality, many of the wines didn't survive to see the sun rise on this newsletter. What remains is well worth jumping on before said sun sets on Germany ‘19 altogether. Biodynamic brothers-in-arms Wittmann and A. Christmann have a small amount of estate Riesling remaining. Their peers in…

Langhorne Creek is one of Australia's oldest wine regions, and also one of the best-kept secrets in our viticultural treasure trove. Its magic has long been known among astute producers who've turned to it for succulent, fresh fruit presence. Its cool maritime climate is predominantly shaped by the onshore southerly winds blowing directly from the Southern Ocean across Lake Alexandrina. Summers tend to be long, dry and warm with reliable afternoon breezes retaining natural acidity in the ripening grapes. The Heartland story began in the…

I love the way Stephan Reinhardt of Wine Advocate evokes Eva Clüsserath’s style. It captures the essence of the wines and, like the liquid itself, sets the mouth watering. Who could resist diving into this: “The wines show remarkable elegance and purity and are neither weighty nor too powerful but smooth, open-hearted and true reflections of the particular terroir.” On the heels of a cool, wet March, summery temperatures in April led to early budbreak along the Mosel. Eva’s vines reacted with vigorous growth, which…

Here we go, the second release of this cross-continental Riesling collaboration between two tireless, fearless pioneers. These estates have been pushing boundaries and flying the Riesling flag for decades. They don’t stop. The first release allayed any concerns that this was just a marketing novelty. Nick Stock declared the inaugural release a “Blazingly good Riesling collaboration!” and placed Wolta Wolta in the Top 100 Australian Wines of the Year. “This is a mind flip,” he wrote, "showing perfectly placed reduction and such completely ripe fruit.…

March already, hey? Well, here’s wishing an awesome autumn to you all! New Zealand leads the way this month, with the 2018 Burn Cottage Moonlight Race Pinot Noir out now. It’s the first estate-grown version of this wine that’s been a winner since making its debut in 2014. The new release is layered, complete and balanced, with superb density and finesse. Then there’s biodynamic duo Jason and Anna Flowerday of TWR with Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer joining Toru on the 2020 vintage. Coincidentally, Anna used to work with Rob…

Guillaume Michel has been living it for so long that it seems it was aeons before it became a cliché: “Great wine is made in the vineyard.” Let’s go back 50 years. That's when Domaine Louis Michel et Fils ceased using oak barrels. The point was that nothing should speak over the sound of Chardonnay speaking with a chablisien accent. Or rather singing in the dialect of each specific terroir. Across 25 hectares of vineyard, Guillaume has seven people working full-time in the vineyard. “If…

“As I wrote last year, the style at this important 19-hectare domaine is pure and understated, minimal wood influence meaning that it is the grapes — and the climats that shape them — that are front and centre at all times, and positive evolution is taking place.” So wrote Wine Advocate’s Burgundy specialist William Kelley following his tasting of the Domaine Matrot ‘18s. And that’s what you’d want isn’t it? A light shone pure and unadorned on the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes growing in…

The road that took us to Dominique Piron was a long one. We love Beaujolais but it hadn't been easy to unearth a producer that brought together all the pieces of the jigsaw: Good roots, devotion to fruit, transparency of terroir and titillating interplay of flesh, tannin, acidity and minerality. Then we found Dominique Piron, which traces its roots back to 1590 and which made a spectacular debut in the CellarHand portfolio with its 2013 wines. The wines have been on an excellent trajectory, with…

Happy newish year! Yes, we had a hiatus in January - a traditionally slow news month in the wine world following the end-of-year excess. And then February sees us plunge straight back into the deep-end with a pair of A-list domestic releases alongside a host of international arrivals. At home, we have the 2018 release from the de Pury family’s iconic Yarra Valley estate, Yeringberg. Over from WA, it's the Langworthys of Yallingup making a splash with the 2019 single-vineyard Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from…

Here it is, release number five. In that brisk half-decade this tiny-batch husband-and-wife outfit has taken out trophies for pink, white and red wines, and Julian Langworthy has been named Winemaker of the Year. Such bountiful talent – and the huge sense of confidence and fun embodied by Julian and Alana Langworthy – means Nocturne never got to enjoy life as a dark horse or best-kept-secret. No; this is a shining, strutting thoroughbred that wine-lovers among the trade and general public punted on from the…