A light breeze of floral & herbal aromas drifting across from a summer meadow. Quite exquisite. Michael Schmidt on '18 Pettenthal GG 2018 Gunderloch Fritz’s Riesling RRP $23 Fritz's Riesling grows in a very small and special part of Rheinhessen called the Roter Hang, a name meaning “red hill“ due to its red-slate soils. The Roter Hang is located between the village of Nackenheim and the village of Nierstein, 20km south of the city of Mainz. The red colour comes from a high proportion of…

Rieslings from Christmann are like balm. Though they are never loud, there is something subtle and true about them that gets under your skin. Anne Krebiehl MW, The Wines of Germany 2018 A. Christmann Riesling RRP $39 The Pfalz Riesling is produced from the first few picks of grapes in our classified sites. These are always harvested at the perfect degree of ripeness limiting the amount of fruit acid to a moderate level. The wine unites the minerality, finesse and elegant fruit of the sandstone…

“It’s more like gardening than farming. Everything has to look perfect!” says Philipp Wittmann as he leaps from a vineyard wall to clip a stray vine tip before it grows unruly. This isn’t vanity, though. Handsome though he is, Philipp is all about performance. It’s his duty to coax every vine into the most beguiling wine it can be. Organically certified since 1990 and biodynamic since 2004, Philipp’s parcels of his beloved Rheinhessen are a haven where nature thrives. Limestone rules around his home in…

You’ll recall how Dönnhoff pulled it out of the bag in ‘17. It was a vintage the family had practically written off, after spring frosts decimated the crop. Uneven ripeness across the parcels meant even more passes than usual for the pickers, but the late-season weather yielded a superb if depleted haul from these superb sites in the Middle Nahe. So how did ‘18 measure up? It was a year of abundance, with extreme rainfall in May and June setting things up for a bumper…

The whole idea of Burgundy is a convoluted one and the more you delve the more apparent this becomes. Inheritance laws play a big part in this. In the case of the Boisson family Bernard says ‘Je suis mort’ with a twinkle in the eye followed by a belly laugh by which you can’t help but be reminded of another Chardonnay and Pinot Noir great from closer to home who’s a great soul but doesn’t suffer fools - one G. Farr of Geelong. What M.…

“Enjoy how much better value it is than so many red burgundies.” That’s what Jancis Robinson wrote about the 2017 edition of Dominique Piron’s top cuvée. Morgon is Piron’s patch, and the president of Inter-Beaujolais – the body tasked with extolling the virtues of Gamay in its homeland – expresses it to the max. “They seem to have had a string of good vintages in Beaujolais, and I think I like the playful and fruity 2018s quite a lot,” wrote The Wine Front’s Gary Walsh…

Biodynamically farmed for 22 years now, Domaine Ostertag is one of those places whose virtues are so simple, strong and enduring that you kind of forget to mention them. Conviction and constancy hold sway in the family's farming. They follow the season, follow the vine, follow nature - and thus the spirit and the vital wines flow. We're due a recap on what this looks like. With André taking a step back to heal from Parkinson's - a disease that's afflicted him for more than…

We're entering the third year of our relationship with the super-talented husband-and-wife team at JmSélèque. And the start of a new decade seems like a good time to introduce the latest instalment of Jean-Marc and Oriane's excellent wines. The Solessence trio that underpins the range have quickly established themselves as staples among grower-conscious fizz lovers here in Australia. Their combination of freshness, character and assured balance give them the thrill factor we should all expect from Champagne. The other non-vintage wine here is the latest…

by Ed Merrison “You seem immensely calm, Geoff,” I said after listening to a bloke who’d spent the previous Friday watching his car, tractors and shed go up in flames as fires tore through the Adelaide Hills and scorched a third of his “spiritual home” – the vineyard he planted with his late father Henry and his own bare hands, 37 years ago. And Mr Weaver, Hills pioneer and stalwart of humbly hand-farmed Australian wine, responded with trademark equanimity. “I don’t think there's much point…

First and foremost, this is a massive thank you being with us this year as we’ve celebrated a pretty significant milestone: CellarHand’s 20th Anniversary. This is also our opportunity to wish you the best for the festive season, with a chance to spend some hugely happy times with those who mean the most to you. In honour of this send-off to 2019, we’ve put together a list of 20 wines that’ve moved us in our 20th year – wines to toast your accomplishments this year…

Jancis Robinson, the world's most revered wine writer, made a whistle-stop visit to Australia in spring 2019. She came to attend a Chardonnay symposium in the Yarra Valley, promote the eighth edition of the World Atlas of Wine and discuss the range of glassware she co-created with British product designer Richard Brendon. During her trip she spent a couple of days in Sydney and Melbourne with CellarHand, signing books and tasting a range of wines from our portfolio to showcase her universal glass. She also…

We're heading into the festive season and there's a fittingly epic amount of good wine to celebrate in this month's missive. We have three A-list annual releases from Victoria from Wantirna Estate, Mount Mary and By Farr. Getting in on that action is Tasmanian biodynamic star Stefano Lubiana and its three 2017 single-block Pinots. Another cool-climate kid - Shadowfax - is celebrating twin-gold success for a pair of Pinots at the Royal Melbourne Wine Awards, at the same time as releasing the 2017 Little Hampton…

This release is your last chance be able to tell the inevitable bandwagon-jumpers: I was into Wantirna Estate before they got big. Because they’ve expanded - or didn’t you hear? After decades of huffing and puffing, banging heads and tripping over each other in the cramped ‘70s-built winery, they knocked up a new little annexe in time for vintage 2019. When this Yarra pioneer set out, there was no real template for the small-batch winery. The gravity-fed set-up that materialised was all very well but…

KOOMILYA - A DEDICATION by Stephen Pannell After working 39 vintages, including nine in Europe, I've spent plenty of time in vineyards and wineries to ponder: Why do I love wine? Why do I love making wine? What is it exactly that makes a great wine? I think that all great wines obey a set of rules, and the most important of these is that wine should have a sense of place; the best possible expression of where they are from. Put simply, a wine…

The relatively cool 2017 season was a wonderful one in the Yarra Valley – and one that played perfectly into the deft hands of the Middleton family, whose striving for supremely elegant wines of beguiling detail knows no bounds. We’ve enjoyed a string of excellent vintages from this icon of the Yarra. It’s possible that this is the most effortless the four famous wines have ever appeared. They will delight those fortunate enough to get their hands on them – either now or far into…