Translation missing: en.Monastero Suore Cistercensi AKA "The Nun Wines" are back! + Cantina d'Arcy + Minim Wines Tasting this weekend on Saturday 3-6PM: Monastero Suore Cistercensi AKA "The Nun Wines" are back! + Cantina d'Arcy + Minim Wines Tasting this weekend on Saturday 3-6PM
Monastero Suore Cistercensi
The Monastero Suore Cistercensi are a community of around eighty Cistercian nuns living and working at their monastery in Vitorchiano, roughly ninety minutes north of Rome in the district of Lazio. Their Trappist order follows the Benedictine principle of ora et labora, prayer and work, and for the sisters the labour of farming is an act of contemplation in itself, a way of living in harmony with nature rather than possessing it. The estate supports the community through olive groves, fruit trees, jams, preserves and, of course, wine, with the surplus helping fund new religious communities in places without a monastic presence.
When the sisters first moved into the abbey in 1957, the land was buried under stones and brambles, all of which they slowly cleared by hand to make it workable. Vineyards were planted alongside the olive and fruit trees and for the next few decades the wines were sold mostly in bulk. The turning point came in the early 2000s, when sales had dropped and the cellar was full of unsold wine. It was at this moment that Giampiero Bea of Paolo Bea (whom we also stock) got involved as a consultant. Rather than push the sisters to change what they were doing, Bea recognised the character already present in their wines and encouraged them to trust their volcanic terroir and their traditional methods. The cellar was reorganised, bottling brought in house and the wines slowly entered the natural wine world.
Today wine enthusiasts around the world wait on the release of each vintage of the "nun wine" that has built up a properly cult following. The 5 hectares of vineyards are tended by five or six sisters year-round and harvested collectively by the whole community, with farming carried out organically using only sulphur and copper, permanent grass cover between the rows and cuttings left on the ground to nourish the soils. Sister Marta oversees the cellar, where fermentations happen only with native yeasts and the wines are made with as little intervention as the sisters' hands allow. The "winery" itself remains strikingly humble, little more than a toolshed filled with old steel tanks, fibreglass vats and glass demijohns, a quiet reminder that the strength of these wines comes not from technology or precision but from healthy farming, patience and a profound sense of place.
After the disastrous 2023 vintage, when extreme weather and mildew wiped out almost the entire crop and no wines made it to Australia at all, 2024 marks a welcome return. Compared to the hot and concentrated 2022, the 2024 growing season was cooler and more balanced, with timely rainfall helping the vines hold their freshness, and the resulting wines are bright, energetic and saline, full of the volcanic minerality that defines this place.
We have 3 of these organic cult nun wines to go around: a white, an orange and a red. The '24 'Coenobium Bianco' is a blend of Trebbiano, Verdicchio and Malvasia, harvested together and co-fermented without added yeasts or temperature control, aged on its fine lees in steel and fibreglass and bottled just before the next harvest without fining or filtration. The '24 'Coenobium Ruscum' is a blend of the same three grapes with the addition of Grechetto, this time left on its skins to ferment for two weeks or more, drawing out all of the colour, flavour and texture the fruit will give. Finally, the '24 'Benedic Rosso' is made from roughly equal portions of Ciliegiolo and Sangiovese, given a 15-day natural fermentation without any forced stabilisation. This is a great chance to try some fantastic organic, low-tech wines from a community working the vineyards with love and care, so pick some up before they sell out!
--------------------
Cantina D'Arcy
Cantina D'Arcy is the project of Tom Myers, a New Zealander working out of Barolo and one of the most exciting young arrivals to land on our shelves in a long time. I got the chance to taste these with our rep last week and was completely blown away. So much of what gets pushed hard on social media either fails to live up to the noise on the day or lands on our shores at prices that take the gloss right back off, but on this occasion the wines absolutely live up to every word. For me they're a direction in Nebbiolo that is far more exciting than traditional Barolo, drinking beautifully now, floral and silky with the kind of detail and finesse you'd expect from the best of ethereal Burgundy and only rarely see in Piedmont. Over the last fortnight I've tried plenty of Barolo and Nebbiolo across a wide range of price points (many more expensive than these) and Tom's are the wines that have stuck with me the most.
Tom is one of those rare people whose name kept coming up in Burgundy and Piedmont for years before any of us tasted a wine with his label on it. Introduced to the importer by Olivier Lamy, he's spent the last decade working harvests alongside the cream of the world's great growers (Comte Armand, Marquis d'Angerville, Giuseppe Rinaldi and Dr Loosen among them) while also consulting on viticulture to the likes of William Kelley. By the time he turned up at Place of Changing Winds for the winter pruning back in 2015 he already knew exactly what kind of wine he wanted to make. Piedmont is notoriously closed to outsiders, but between 2016 and 2019, while splitting his time across Burgundy, Piedmont and Australia, he was finally able to lease a single hectare of mostly old vines in the Preda Cru via an introduction from the Rinaldi family, sat right between the famous sites of Cannubi and Vignane at the end of the Bussia Valley. The first wines came out under the Cantina D'Arcy label (named after his maternal grandmother) from the 2020 harvest, and we're only really starting to see them properly land in Australia now.
The big news this year is that Tom has pulled his single cru Barolo out of the DOCG entirely. The appellation rules require 18 months of wood ageing and Tom didn't want to put 100% of the 2022 in wood, feeling it would strip the fruit of the vibrancy and purity he believed it had. Rather than compromise the wine to keep the label, he walked away from the DOCG full stop. The fruit comes from exactly the same parcel, made in exactly the same way, just without the four letters on the front. It's the kind of move you only make when you genuinely care more about what is in the bottle than what is written on the front of it, and it is hard not to admire him for it. The winemaking itself is pulled straight out of Burgundy: natural ferments, 60-70% whole bunches (almost unheard of for the region), only 14 days on the skins, very little extraction and ageing in large oak with a small portion in tank, no racking off the lees. Almost none of these would normally be associated with Nebbiolo and yet the wine has the perfume, the bright fruit and the impossibly fine tannins to back the decision up entirely.
The '23 'Langhe Nebbiolo' is drawn from three vineyards (Perno in Monforte, Castagni in La Morra and Bricco San Pietro), mostly destemmed with 20% whole bunches, fermented naturally with measured time on skins and gentle extraction, then matured for 11 months in concrete and a further 9 months in large cask. Tom believes this is his finest Langhe yet and the blueprint for the kind of vibrant, perfumed Nebbiolo he wants to keep making, nothing like your average Langhe and absolutely delicious. The '22 'Pre Rosso' is the wine formerly known as Barolo Preda, from that single hectare of old vines high on the Preda hillside with east-facing exposure and the thin Sant'Agata soils that are laced with active lime. With 60-70% whole bunches, just 14 days on skins, gentle handling and ageing in large oak with a small portion in tank, this is far more akin to top old vine Burgundy than your traditional Barolo. Gorgeously perfumed, silky and seductive, with very fine tannins. Drinking it now needs a good decant of two or three hours; otherwise put it in the cellar for a decade.
These wines only come into Australia in tiny quantities each year (just six or seven cases of each cuvée for the entire country) and we have a small handful of each on the shelf right now. Get your hands on one of these while you can!
--------------------
Minim Wines Tasting
Saturday 6th
3pm-6pm
Join us this Saturday as we taste through the new releases from Minim, the project of Tim Mason (also known to many as Tim the Winemaker), working out of Castlemaine in Central Victoria.
Tim never planned on becoming a winemaker. He has no formal training as a winemaker or viticulturist and has never worked harvests at famous European domaines. He studied geology at university and his first love was always cooking. Then came wine, but for years it was only a passing interest and never really clicked the way food did. That changed at a dinner at Garagiste in 2010, where a D'Meure Pinot, an Occhipinti SP68 and a Philippe Bornard Savagnin alongside some of the most creative regional cooking he'd had finally tied the whole thing together. Wines that were vivid, textural and exciting. His focus shifted after that dinner, and his first release came in 2011 with Xavier Goodridge, a Shiraz Grenache made whole bunch in a milk vat under a tree with an old basket press and old barrels, bottled early in one of the worst vintages in recent memory. A weird, faulty, lovely first wine that started something small and real.
Over the years Tim has leaned on a generous run of vignerons (Jean-Yves Du Mont, Lucy Kendall, Gilles Lapalus, Jarad Curwood, Xavier Goodridge and Pat Underwood) to guide his hand and shape his understanding, and a lot of risks and experiments along the way. Since 2019 he's been growing grapes on two vineyards of his own in Metcalfe, committing deeper to regenerative agriculture with every passing season and pulling glyphosate out as step one. Today he makes small wines from great sites around Central Victoria, sourcing from growers committed to soil health and fruit quality, fermenting with native yeasts and building complexity by working smaller volumes through different approaches. Most of the wines age in old casks, some in stainless. Everything is made at Boomtown Winemakers Co-operative in Castlemaine.
I tasted through the new releases last week and have been watching these wines evolve over years now. They started in that edgier natural space with some faults and harsher edges, but they were fun, vibrant and exactly what we wanted at the time, and customers rightly loved them. As Tim's winemaking has matured the wines have evolved with him, shedding those harsher edges for more purity and character, and his love for Sangiovese keeps coming through more clearly with each vintage. They're still fun, affordable and full of the energy of the earlier wines, but there's a much clearer sense of confidence about them now. Where opening one used to come with a little anxiety, these are now bottles I can comfortably rely on in the shop and suggest to pretty much anyone, especially if they're after something fun and vibrant to drink alongside food.
These are the wines that we'll be pouring on the day:
2025 Minim 'Patsy' Fiano
2025 Minim 'Amber' Fiano / Pecorino
2025 Minim 'Simone' Rose Cabernet
2024 Minim 'New Small Rouge' Light Red Syrah
2025 Minim 'Floyd' Nero D'Avola / Syrah
2025 Minim 'Hitch' Young Sangiovese
Come down to the store on Saturday and try a few of these for yourself. See you there!