Translation missing: en.Maison Lapalus Tasting this Saturday 3-6PM + New wines from Occhipinti + A Few of Our Recent Favourites!: Maison Lapalus Tasting this Saturday 3-6PM + New wines from Occhipinti + A Few of Our Recent Favourites!
Occhipinti
Arianna Occhipinti is one of the greatest natural wine producers in Sicily, and for plenty of people simply one of the greatest anywhere, with a genuine cult following to match. She got her start at sixteen working harvest at her uncle Giusto's COS, went off to study oenology in Milan, then came home to Vittoria in Sicily's south eastern corner and set up on her own. Twenty odd years on the wines are still entirely handmade and there is never quite enough to go around, which is a big part of how they became one of the reference points for what Sicily can do.
She farms old vine indigenous grapes, Frappato and Nero d'Avola chief among them, on the red sand soils around Vittoria not far from the sea. The farming is organic and regenerative and the cellar work is about as hands off as it gets, with spontaneous fermentations on native yeasts, no temperature control, nothing fined or filtered, and only the barest touch of sulphur. The whole point of it is transparency. These are not the big, dark, brooding Sicilian reds a lot of people expect, they're bright, perfumed, spicy and full of energy, delicious the day you open them but with the structure to age properly as well.
We've just brought in a good run of the range. The '24 'SP68 Bianco' is her skin-contact white, snappy and textural and a brilliant first step into her world. The '23 'SP68 Rosso' is the entry point to her reds, a juicy, herbal blend of Frappato and Nero d'Avola with that telltale lick of sea air. The '23 'Il Frappato' is the wine that made her name, pale in the glass but anything but light, full of blood orange, rose petal and Mediterranean garrigue. Finally, the '22 'Il Siccagno' is her dry farmed old vine Nero d'Avola, the serious one, structured and savoury and proof of just how good this often-misunderstood grape can be. If you've ever told yourself you don't like natural wine, these are the bottles that tend to change minds, so don't sleep on these!
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A Few of Our Recent Favourites
A big part of what we do is taste, constantly, through samples and new releases, and we try to be genuinely selective about what actually earns a spot on the shelf. More often than not we've got a particular customer or a particular dinner table in mind when we taste something, and every so often a wine lands that we just know is going to click with you too. Sometimes that means taking just one wine from a producer rather than a whole range, simply because that single bottle stopped us in our tracks.
The wines below are exactly that. They've all come in over the last month or two, they're on the shelf right now, and every one of them has had a great response from the people who've tried them in the shop. They're also the sort of bottles that can slip quietly past in a busy inbox, because they never get a producer feature of their own, so we wanted to give them a proper moment here.
Starting with the whites, the '24 'Keith Tulloch Hunter Valley Chardonnay' ($32) comes from one of the Hunter's most familiar names and has quietly become one of the wines we restock most often, simply because it keeps walking out the door. It's classic Hunter Chardonnay, fuller bodied with a good hit of oak. It's all about drive and power without feeling overweight, and at this price it's almost criminally good. Exactly the sort of white you can happily drink any night of the week.
The '23 'Van Volxem Schiefer Riesling' ($52) comes from one of the leading estates of Germany's Saar, working some of the steepest slate vineyards in the country. Schiefer is simply German for slate, and that is exactly what comes through: a bone dry, racy Riesling with real mineral cut and texture, farmed organically and made with a light hand. Saar Riesling of this pedigree rarely turns up at this kind of money.
The '24 'Marina Coppi 'Francesca' Timorasso' ($65) hails from the Colli Tortonesi in Piedmont, the home of Timorasso, the once nearly-forgotten white grape that has become one of the most talked-about whites in Italy. The estate sits in the village of Castellania and carries the name of the family of cycling great Fausto Coppi. The wine is everything Timorasso should be, textural, mineral and built to age, and a brilliant way into a grape more people should know.
A bit more left-field, the '22 'Max Sein Wein '3 Taler' Sylvaner' ($58) is a properly characterful natural wine from Baden in Germany, fermented with nothing added and bottled without a touch of sulphur. Sylvaner too often gets written off as plain, but in the right hands it is textural, savoury and full of personality. One for anyone who likes their whites a little wild.
Onto the reds, the '24 'Ponce 'Clos Lojen' Bobal' ($31) comes from Juan Antonio Ponce, who has done more than just about anyone to show that Bobal, a humble old Spanish workhorse, can make genuinely thrilling wine. This is the gateway into his range, grown in Manchuela in central Spain and farmed with minimal intervention, all juicy red fruit and fresh, supple drinkability. One of the best value reds in the shop right now, full stop.
The '24 'Girlan Alto Adige Lagrein' ($55) showcases the dark, indigenous red of Alto Adige up in Italy's far north, from a reliably excellent address for the grape. Expect something deep, savoury and earthy with plenty of dark fruit, kept fresh and lifted by that cool alpine air. A great way in if you have never explored Lagrein.
The '22 'Roches Neuves 'Terres Chaudes' Saumur-Champigny' ($86) comes from Thierry Germain, whose Domaine des Roches Neuves is one of the benchmark addresses for Cabernet Franc anywhere in the Loire, farmed biodynamically and made with a deliberately light touch. Terres Chaudes comes off the warmer clay-limestone parcels and is pure, perfumed and savoury, with the structure to reward a few years in the cellar. Serious Loire red from one of its modern masters.
Finally, the '22 'Champ des Treilles Rouge' ($54) is a small biodynamic estate in Sainte-Foy at the eastern edge of Bordeaux, making the kind of honest, low-intervention claret that proves the region can play in the natural space too. It is a classic Bordeaux blend, but savoury, earthy and beautifully fresh rather than heavy or oaky, and it will happily age. Proof that there is a lot more to Bordeaux than the big names.
Every one of these has earned its spot on the shelf, so pick a few up and see which ones speak to you. Don't miss out!
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Maison Lapalus Tasting
Saturday 30th
3pm-6pm
Join us this Saturday as we taste through the wines of Maison Lapalus and one of the most moving stories to come out of the Australian wine community in years.
Maison Lapalus is the project of Gilles Lapalus, based at Harcourt in Central Victoria, a range of fine wines crafted with time and slowly carved from carefully nurtured parcels of vines right across the state. Everything is hand-picked and made with as little intervention as possible, the idea being that each wine reflects its environment and celebrates the natural character of its variety.
On the 9th of January this year, early in what the Chinese calendar marks as the year of the fire horse, fire swept through Harcourt and the coolstore holding everything Maison Lapalus had was completely destroyed. Gilles lost the lot, every wine and every bit of work along with a number of irreplaceable bottles from his own cellar. A month on, the clean-up has turned up little more than a few barrel racks, a blackened tank and a twisted bench, with a handful of barrels charred on the outside still somehow holding a little liquid.
What came next is the part worth dwelling on. The support that flowed back the other way, from family, friends, locals and the wider industry, was beyond anything Gilles could have imagined, and a whole group of winegrower friends simply donated finished wine so he would have something to bottle and sell again. From around twenty samples he crafted four cuvées and built a range he calls Les Vin des Amis, the wine of his friends. The list of donors reads like a who's who of Australian wine: Michael at Bindi, Julian at Castagna, Erinn at Ngeringa, Tobias at Tellurian, Mark at Fighting Gully Road and Ian at Whistling Eagle among many others, with Rob at Hanging Rock and Pat at Little Reddie both opening up their wineries so the wines could actually be made.
The four Renaissance wines run from a white through a rosé to a light red and a more savoury red, each one a multi-vintage, multi-region blend drawn from all that generosity.
Alongside the Renaissance range, we'll be pouring three of Gilles' own bottles that came out of the cellar before the fire and which deserve a proper look in their own right. The Maison Lapalus Roussanne 2020 and the Maison Lapalus 'Apianum' Fiano 2022 are both from his classic range, single variety bottlings sourced from parcels across Victoria, hand picked and given the time and minimal intervention cellar work the range is built around. The Bertrand Bespoke Grenache 2023 is from another label Gilles also makes, again working in the same hands off spirit. With the coolstore gone these are bottles that simply can't be replaced once the last cases sell through, so Saturday is one of the few genuine chances left to taste this side of his work.
These are the wines that we'll be pouring on the day:
Maison Lapalus Roussanne 2020
Maison Lapalus 'Apianum' Fiano 2022
Les Vin des Amis Renaissance White MV
Les Vin des Amis Renaissance Rosé MV
Les Vin des Amis Renaissance Light Red MV
Les Vin des Amis Renaissance Red 2025
Bertrand Bespoke Grenache 2023
Come down to the store on Saturday, taste through them with us and raise a glass to Gilles, the work that came before the fire and the extraordinary community of growers who got behind him. See you there!