Its remote, pristine environment is the calling card of Frankland River, a sub-region of the vast, sprawling Great Southern region of Western Australia. It is, as you might imagine, bloody miles from anywhere. No noise, no fumes, no industrial eyesores - in fact very little to distract the senses from the pure air and even purer Riesling. Serenity, you say? Sip a beer in a kayak on the Frankland River and you'll get it. Just to give you a sense of it, we're here: a…

This is exciting. Something new, from 6,000 years ago. Zorah is many firsts: our first Armenian producer, our first taste of the Areni Noir grape and our first bit of ancient-world amphora action.Now don’t go worrying that we’re getting all hip on you; it fits with CellarHand because this is a cracking wine with provenance and pedigree. It’s grown a stone’s throw from where the world’s oldest wine cellar, dating back to 4,000 BC, was recently discovered. It’s made by Italy’s Alberto Antonini, who in…

Alsatian winemaker André Ostertag refers to it as “a quest for terroir wines at the end of the world”. It’s also an adventure in friendship, a project initiated by four mates sharing their love and views of wine. It’s a Franco-Chilean alliance – all of them have lived, or are living, in France. In addition to Ostertag, the quartet comprises estate manager Julio Donoso, a Chilean photographer who lived in exile in France, plus fellow photographer Álvaro Yáñez and entrepreneur Javier de la Fuente. Together they…

It’s simply not right to talk about Marlborough without mentioning its beauty. As wine regions go, it’s far from alone in being picturesque. But this is beauty as context, an in-your-face blessedness that hits you the moment you get there. Its key export, Sauvignon Blanc, seduced the world by projecting a similarly blatant, sunshiny charm. This easy appeal is often overlooked but shouldn’t be. The wine proved that some people can’t have too much of a good thing. That’s how Mike Allan from Huia Vineyards feels about…

Photo copyright: Werner Gamerith / Austrian Wine Marketing BoardJancis Robinson refers to Emmerich Knoll as “one of the Wachau’s nobility”. “Let us not forget just how tremendous the best Wachau winemakers such as Emmerich Knoll are and how brilliant their best wines are,” she warns. OK, Jancis, we won’t forget. In fact, we’re going one further – we’ve decided to remind everyone else. The best way to do so is to produce evidence from past and present. As well as memorable back vintages, CellarHand has…

Matt Harrop shows off Macedon with these new releases – and they’re a jubilant celebration of region and variety. What strikes you with both the vineyard blend and single-site incarnations of Chardonnay and Pinot is the composition. The big picture is pleasure, for sure, but the detail is spot on.Good winter and spring rainfall set things up nicely in 2013, and then Macedon’s settled, dry spring and warm summer sealed the deal for wines that are inviting, generous and neatly structured.The team from this James…

2010 BAROLO & BARBARESCO OFFER“If one thing is crystal clear it is the fact that 2010 Barolo is a genuinely great vintage.” That’s the unequivocal verdict of Jancis Robinson’s resident Italy specialist, Walter Speller. This distinctly cool vintage, which followed a hot 2009, was tricky at the time; a very wet winter was followed by a rainy and cool spring which affected flowering and fruit set. The first half of the summer remained distinctly cool, eventually demanding that growers hold their nerve for as long…

“There’s much more to it than the liquid in the glass. A profound sense of belonging on the land or in the trade; pride at working beside family members; the satisfaction of nurturing business relationships, of building a legacy. It’s about connection.” So wrote Max Allen in The Australian late last year. His piece, written to accompany James Halliday’s Top 100 Wines of the Year, looked at the people who really make Australian wine what it is. The name Max singled out as the archetypal…

Heiligenstein, Uhlen, Reiterpfad, Hermannshöhle, Grillenparz - all such evocative names. If you're into Riesling, they're also names to make the mouth water, calling to mind complex, ethereal, thrilling wines. Here, in the third of three videos shot at CellarHand's recent single-site tasting in Melbourne, some of the most famous Riesling makers on the planet take you to the exact birthplace of their wines. When all's said and done, it's all about the vineyard... http://youtu.be/SU2elGBFzAc

Diversity in Riesling? You bet. This is the second in a series of three videos we shot at our recent single-site tasting during Riesling Downunder. The breadth and quality of the wines was, predictably, exceptional. And it was great to taste the wines in context - learning from their growers about the traditions, climate and geography from which the wines were born. These brief interviews star the likes of Erni Loosen, Steffen Christmann, Cornelius Dönnhoff and Willi Bründlmayer. The video takes in their regions and…

Several of the world's best Riesling makers came to Australia in February 2015 for Riesling Downunder. As a sideline to this celebration, CellarHand hosted a tasting in Melbourne and Sydney featuring one vineyard each from some of these tremendous producers, including Dönnhoff, Frankland Estate, Dr. Loosen, Georg Breuer, Wittmann, A. Christmann, Heymann-Löwenstein, Koehler-Ruprecht, Stadt Krems, Gunderloch and Bründlmayer. We asked each of them what it was about Riesling that made this grape so goddam wonderful... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1FpR7_Oyg

Riesling Downunder has come and gone, and what an event it was. A three-day celebration of all things Riesling, with hundreds of members of the public, trade and media involved. It's been a particular delight for CellarHand, as proud distribution partners of event founder Frankland Estate and co-sponsor clos Clare. We were fortunate to play host to 12 producers from Austria, Germany and Alsace whose wines we import into Australia. It was important to justify this mammoth journey for them, so we crammed as much as…

by Ed Merrison Tom Barry’s marital contract is pretty much written in Riesling. That’s how much he loves the stuff. When he and wife Olivia tied the knot a couple of years ago, they did so in one of Australia’s most lauded Riesling sites and went head-to-head in noble-grape competition. “We got married in the Florita vineyard with Thai food and German Rieslings from our birth year,” Tom recalls. “It’s a famous German tradition that you compare the vintage of your birth.” That meant 1986…

Vintage 2013 marked the 10th year since the first plantings went in at Burn Cottage, and it’s hard to fathom the trajectory of this beautiful vineyard over that time. In next to no time it’s become one of the most eagerly anticipated releases on the CellarHand calendar, and now it's the turn of the 2013 Burn Cottage Pinot Noir. Aussies are the first to get a sniff of these lovely wines, available now. Read all about them here. As always, demand is high and quantities…

by Ed Merrison McLaren Vale winemaker Stephen Pannell has won the highest prize in Australian wine for his 2013 Adelaide Hills Syrah. It’s the second time he’s taken out the prestigious Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy at the Royal Melbourne Wine Awards, which he first snagged 18 years ago with the 1995 Eileen Hardy Shiraz. His is the first Adelaide Hills wine to win the award and breaks a seven-year drought for South Australia, which once dominated this competition to unearth Australia’s best one- to two-year-old dry red…