Translation missing: en.2025 Crawford River Riesling Release + The Wanderer + MEET THE MAKER: Thick As Thieves Friday @ 5-7PM + De Fermo from Abruzzo Tasting This Saturday!: 2025 Crawford River Riesling Release + The Wanderer + MEET THE MAKER: Thick As Thieves Friday @ 5-7PM + De Fermo from Abruzzo Tasting This Saturday!
Crawford River
Crawford River are one of the true icons of Australian wine, built from initial plantings made back in 1975 in the then little-known region of Henty in southwest Victoria. Founders John and Catherine Thomson saw real potential in the geology and geography of this overlooked corner long before anyone else did, John soon enough heading off to study Viticulture and Oenology at Charles Sturt, and the estate has stayed family owned and run ever since, now into its second generation with daughter Belinda Thomson holding the reins. The farming is quietly exemplary, no herbicides, pesticides or fungicides, organic compost and mulched pruning canes to feed the soil, and sheep grazing the rows after vintage. The site itself does a lot of the talking, a natural amphitheatre on a gentle north to north-west slope, cooled and lengthened by the Southern Ocean, with duplex soils of gravelly loam and clay running over ironstone and ultimately a limestone base, all of it conspiring to give wines of intense flavour with the acidity and balance to age for decades.
We're thrilled to get our hands on the much-anticipated '2025 Riesling', their flagship and one of the benchmark Rieslings in the country. It's drawn from the heritage 1975 and 1976 blocks on twin gravelly, ironstone ridges along with a 1977 block sitting closer to the limestone, hand picked and whole-bunch pressed before a wild, cool ferment to dryness in stainless and eight weeks on fine lees to build texture. A spring frost made for a tiny, selective crop, but the dry season that followed has delivered a wine of remarkable concentration and crystalline purity, all wrapped around that mealy, mineral intensity the site is famous for. As Belinda puts it, balance, purity and length combined, a joy. The only catch is that we ever only receive 24 bottles of this a year, so it really is a big deal, get in quick before they're gone!
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The Wanderer
The Wanderer is the passion project of Yarra Valley vigneron Andrew Marks, the man behind the winemaking at the iconic Gembrook Hill up in the Upper Yarra. He named the label after his restless curiosity to wander beyond the family vineyard, a curiosity that took him to Burgundy in 2006 to develop his craft in Puligny-Montrachet alongside Etienne Sauzet, and more recently has seen him knock out more than ten vintages in Spain's Costa Brava making a mesmerising small batch Carignan he tags 'El Wanderer'. Somewhere between running Gembrook Hill and the Melbourne Gin Company he still finds the time to craft these small batch beauties.
We picked up three of the wines we tasted from the range. The 'Yellingbo Chardonnay' is a beautifully elegant, fine-boned Yarra Chardonnay, all restraint and detail. The 'Macclesfield Pinot Noir' comes off red volcanic soils and rests in a couple of large seasoned French oak barrels for eleven months, a very pretty and elegant style. Finally the 'Upper Yarra Pinot Noir' is a single vineyard wine off red volcanic soils on a north-east aspect, leaning on a portion of whole bunches for aromatic lift and ageing in large-format French oak with a touch of new, all red fruits, soft spice and flowers. Anyone who loves the Gembrook Hill wines should absolutely give these a try, so get your hands on some while you can!
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Thick as Thieves Tasting
Friday 19th
5pm-7pm
Join us this Friday evening as the legendary Yarra Valley winemaker Syd Bradford of Thick as Thieves takes us through his fantastic wines.
Thick as Thieves started as a humble operation back in 2009, with Syd buying in grapes and renting facilities to make his wine, before purchasing the Cypress Ridge vineyard in the Yarra Valley in 2012, from which he's gone on to produce some genuinely compelling wines at great prices. These have become a real staple of the store and tend to sell out shortly after we get them in, so this is a great chance to meet the man behind some of the Yarra's best.
These are the wines that Syd will be pouring on the night:
Thick as Thieves Arneis 2025
Thick as Thieves Chardonnay 2025
Thick as Thieves Pinot Noir 2025
Thick as Thieves 'Lusatia' Pinot Noir 2025
Thick as Thieves 'Abbey' Gamay 2025
Come down on Friday evening and meet Syd, don't miss out!
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De Fermo Tasting
Saturday 20th
3pm-6pm
Join us this Saturday as we taste through the wines of De Fermo from Abruzzo on Italy's Adriatic coast.
De Fermo is the project of Stefano Papetti Ceroni and his wife Eloisa de Fermo, a pair of former Bologna lawyers who turned their shared obsession with wine into a life on the land. The estate sits on Eloisa's family farm in the Pescara hills near Loreto Aprutino, a property that's been in her family for some 250 years and where viticulture has been documented as far back as the 9th century. Stefano was smitten on his first visit and, after stumbling on a long abandoned cellar buried beneath the family house, took it as a sign too strong to ignore, taking over the estate with Eloisa and bottling their first vintage in 2010.
The whole farm is run holistically and biodynamically, certified not long after they converted in 2008, with 17 hectares of vines growing alongside olives, vegetables, legumes and grazing land as part of one living system. Montepulciano and Pecorino lead the plantings, with a parcel of Chardonnay that Eloisa's great uncle, a real Burgundy lover, planted back in 1926, most of it trained low to cordon royat for tiny yields and properly concentrated fruit. These are some of the best terroirs in all of Abruzzo, stony, steep slopes just south of the legendary Valentini, and in the cellar Stefano keeps things gentle and traditional, spontaneous ferments, minimal sulphur, no filtration and ageing across big wooden botti, tonneaux and concrete with not a stainless tank in sight.
These are the wines that we'll be pouring on the day:
De Fermo 'Concrete' Bianco 2022
De Fermo 'Concrete' Rosato Montepulciano 2024
De Fermo 'Don Carlino' Abruzzo Pecorino 2024
De Fermo 'Launegild' Colline Pescaresi Chardonnay 2022
De Fermo 'Le Cince' Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo Montepulciano 2023
De Fermo 'Concrete' Abruzzo Montepulciano 2022
Come down to the store this Saturday and try these for yourself. See you there!