Vininspo! podcast

Andreas Wickhoff spread his wings and travelled far and wide before coming home to roost in the Danube Valley, not too distant from where he grew up in rural Steiermark. As general manager at the Bründlmayer estate in the Kamptal, he keeps the flame burning at what Jancis Robinson has called “a beacon for Austrian wine”. Not an ounce of his worldly, cosmopolitan background, hospitality training and Master of Wine education is wasted as he goes about pursuing and portraying provenance and excellence in wine.

I first met Andreas in Melbourne a year or so after Willi...

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The simplicity of La Collina’s label is almost as enchanting as the complexity of the liquid inside the bottle. A slender figure, arms stretched out straight on either side, effortlessly bearing evenly weighted scales. An elegantly compact statement, perfect in form, strong and enduring. The silhouette and the Syrah.

I’ve long admired the Bilancia wines from afar without having visited Hawke’s Bay or met Lorraine Leheny or her husband, Warren Gibson. I rectif...

The Vininspo! podcast will resume regular broadcasting next week, back with a Bilancia bang when Lorraine Leheny joins me from Hawke’s Bay.

I’m taking a little breather and leaving you in the capable hands of Reinhard Löwenstein, and an article penned as a Substack post in November 2025. Read it here.

If it sometimes feels like we’re peering into the abyss, it’s worth lifting our gaze to these towering cliffs of slate, where all is substance and possibility…

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Kate McIntyre got a taste for the wonder of travel young. Her earliest memories were formed beneath the dreaming spires of Oxford, and the exoticism of Europe cast an unbreakable spell. It’s hardly surprising, then, that she imagined a leading role that wove this rich tapestry together. And while the key was quite literally on her doorstep, she has unlocked a world of curiosity as a Master of Wine, educator and self-styled in-house style ju...

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I met Bree Stock in Melbourne a decade and a half ago, and boy, has she gone a long way since then. Some 8,000 miles away now, she’s appended a pair of powerful initials to her new surname, become an authority on the wines of her adoptive home and fomented a mini-revolution in grape-growing in one of the most revered regions in the US.

Brisbane-born Bree was back from a first stint in the Pacific Northwest when ou...

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With his teetotal forebears and country-town upbringing, Kym Milne wasn’t an obvious candidate for clocking up airmiles and accolades as one of the world’s most influential flying winemakers. But a thirst for travel, a nose for opportunity and a mild-mannered approach to collaboration have taken him from Bordertown to the furthest frontiers and back again.

Kym and I crossed paths only recently, when we judged together at the 2026 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show. I’d been told to look out for him by one of his...

Ernst Loosen is one of the most recognisable global figures in wine. This indefatigable ambassador for Mosel Riesling pops up all over the place to spread the gospel according to this most versatile of grapes. Dr Loosen has managed to pull off something special as a brand and a domaine: quality at scale and a range of grand-cru bottlings that faithfully express some of the planet’s most breathtaking sites without costing the earth. There’s plenty there to admire, but as a fan of German precision, I wanted to put a more practical question to Erni this time.

Dubious logic first led Scott Wasley to Spain. First, he figured planes jetting into Sydney for the 2000 Olympics would, once emptied of their sporting spectators, be offering cheap flights back to Europe. And second, he was drinking a slightly stale dry Sherry when that fateful miscalculation fuelled his travel plans with sommelier pal Peter Healy. An Iberian adventure was the seemingly inevitable upshot.

What wasn’t remotely inevitable at that stage was that Scott would go on to found Australia’s foremost importer of wines from Spain and Portugal. Based in Melbourne, The Spanish Acquisition hasn’t exactl...

The best way to enjoy this episode is to watch the video, which comes complete with subtitles, maps and other visuals. I urge you to watch it; you'll find it at edmerrison.substack.com. Don't forget to follow along with happenings on Instagram, too: @vininspo.wine

So, when Bryan Adams was getting his first real six-string, Guillaume Michel’s grandfather Louis was kissing goodbye to his last oak barrel. Two pivotal moments during the summer of ‘69 right there; one led to a cheesy soft-rock catalogue, the other to a library of flinty, pure Chardonnay. I know which repe...

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Jane Thomson still gets grossly underestimated. Her substance, strength and sensitivity—not to mention a grasp of behavioural psychology that is so rare in the industry—make a mockery of those who dismiss her Fabulous Ladies’ Wine Society as mere froth and bubbly.

When I interviewed her last month, Jane had just returned from New York, where she was a delegate at the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) at the United...

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There’s a moment in our interview where Stephen Wong talks about playing twin tracks of his life in tandem, a micro-focused intellectual yin and an expansive, warmly hospitable yang, perhaps. Had the yin lacked the yang, perhaps he would have remained a respectable barrister and had his life mapped out for him, just as it was for his Singaporean boarding school classmates. As it happened, chance encounters with Central Otago winemakers and a st...

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Felicity Carter is in demand. It would probably be better for us wine-lovers if she weren’t—but if anyone is fit to report on a wine industry in crisis, it’s this globe-trotting journalist who’s made it her business to cover the business of wine from all angles..

Australia-born Felicity resides in Germany, where she served for many years as the editor-in-chief of Meininger’s Wine Business International. She joined the publication when it had 800 subscribers and, harnessing a team of correspond...

“1663 is just a number,” Philipp Wittmann tells me, and in some ways it is. But also, 350-plus years of growing fruit in your village is likely to give you some kind of edge. The Dönnhoff family’s farming roots in the Nahe are shallower—a mere 270 years—and it’s true that it was Cornelius’s father, the preternaturally gifted Helmut Dönnhoff, who shot this estate to fame. Cornelius and his friend Philipp are among the world’s best growers of white wine, and their ideas have all the cut, clarity and refreshment factor of their Rieslings.

This fantasti...

I don’t remember when I first became aware of Eyrie’s existence. It just isn’t possible to interact with Pinot Noir obsessives without this domaine coming to your attention. It owes its existence to a pioneering pinotphile who bet the farm on the entirely untested potential of the Dundee Hills to grow wines whose long-lived beauty would resonate across the globe. The Willamette Valley is now one of the stars around which the Pinot world revolves, and The Eyre Vineyards lies at its core.

Vininspo! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and suppor...

Giuseppe Vaira is one of those tireless torchbearers whose faith in his region is matched by an exemplary work ethic, the uniformly beautiful results of which constantly justify and fuel that belief. It’s a virtuous cycle that has seen many people fall in love with the Langhe through these wines.

The first time I met him was at the family winery in Vergne when I was taking time off from an assignment at a trade fair in Milan. He’d just landed home from a trade trip in steamy Singapore, jet-lagged and jaded from pouring Nebbiolo in 3...

Pioneer stories always draw me in. No matter how niche the thing—and Nelson might still be considered niche—sticking vines in the dirt with no grounds for belief that your venture will bear fruit is a leap of faith to marvel at. Judy Finn says they got by on “hard work, high hopes and a dollop of common sense and cunning”. It seems a sense of humour—and of the absurd—played a part.

Judy co-founded Neudorf Vineyards with her late husband Tim, back in 1978. She tells me the place was suffused with the pioneering spirit when they ar...

The smiling faces of Marcus Satchell and Lisa Sartori are synonymous with Gippsland food and wine. Anyone who’s taken off from Melbourne Airport in recent years will have seen them beaming down from a billboard above the freeway. Their flagbearer status has been earned from a buzzing cellar door championing local produce and from the array of award-winning wines that Marcus—or Satchy, as everyone knows him—has produced from an unprecedented array of fruit sources across this scattered region.

For Marcus, there is both a general and specific side to Dirty Three. In the former camp...

The Vininspo! podcast is still on holiday. Here instead is a spoken version of a relatively recent story you might have missed. (If you’d prefer, you can read it here.)

This is the story of Kerri Thompson, whose highly acclaimed Wines by KT label is a fitting tribute to her love of the Clare Valley.

All the context is in the story. As a Riesling tragic, I had long been a fan of KT’s work—and of the Clare Valley, whose Riesling trail I could happily cycle every day for the rest of my lif...

The Vininspo! podcast is on holiday. Here instead is a spoken version of a relatively recent story you might have missed.

This is the story of Sarah Fagan, chief winemaker at TarraWarra in the Yarra Valley.

All the context is in the story (which you can read here if you’d prefer). Speaking of context, the story came about because I was invited to TarraWarra in October 2024 to taste its latest releases and also to taste from barrel the various components that would go on to make the ’24 wines—the first TarraWarra wines authored by Sarah...

I first heard Ginny Willcock speak about wine in Adelaide back in 2013 when I attended Savour Australia as a freelance journalist for Business Insider. This event courted wine-buyers, writers and opinion-shapers from across the globe in an attempt to reset the image of Australian wine. On an afternoon where delegates were assigned breakout sessions, I ended up in a fancy Cabernet Sauvignon tasting fronted by Gin, with Sue Hodder of Wynns also on the panel. Sue was great value, too, but Gin blew me over like a gust of fresh air. We were there, after all, because the world’s...

You'll find extensive show notes below to help clarify any details in this wide-ranging conversation. In the meantime, I'd love to count on your ongoing support to make this and other Vininspo! work possible. Here is where you can follow and share what I do.

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Instagram: @vininspo.wine

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Website: www.vininspo.wine

The epithet “worthy” used to get bandied around newsrooms to describe stories about meritorious subjects that were too… worthy to be truly interesting. Optimistic, spiritual, caring and inclusive to a fault, Sue Be...

It’s weird and fitting that the first serious comment on a wine blog I wrote came from Stephen Pannell. The lack of preceding remarks speaks volumes about the anonymity in which I was operating; the fact that the most decorated winemaker of his generation deigned to pipe up says a lot about how much he cares.

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I was in a hotel room in Milan when Steve’s message popped up i...

While Italian footballers are known for their histrionics, Trembath & Taylor has scored goals and won fans while sparing us the theatrics. Arguably Australia’s foremost importer of Italy’s wines plays the game with no shortage of passion, but has passed it on to a legion of converts in a refreshingly low-key manner.

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The rock-star billing of Brunello, Barolo, Barbaresco et al makes it hard to believe that the wines of Italy were playing to tiny...

The first time I met Corrina Wright, she was done up in Viking garb and grinning like a Cheshire cat. It was Melbourne’s inaugural Game of Rhônes tasting, a celebration of all things Grenache, Shiraz et al, and one of those too-rare wine events where a cheerful disposition is de rigueur. But even Corrina’s resting b***h face is probably a big, warm smile. Injustice and inanity are enough to wipe it off, but only for as long as it takes for her to speak up, pitch in and set it straight.

Vininspo! is a...

Some people don’t even believe there’s a vineyard there, let alone the site that spawned a second coming for one of the country’s most hallowed cool-climate regions.

Reg Egan was working as a lawyer when he decided to plant a vineyard in the Yarra Valley in 1963. The site he chose was not far from his Melbourne practice—so close, in fact, that he was sure he’d have to sell it in the medium term. He had a contingency for that, which didn’t work out as he’d expected. That’s a fascinating anecdote covered...

Julian Langworthy first struck me as the embodiment of happy-go-luckiness. A healthy irreverence, ready quip and loud laugh were standard issue, and he seemed to be breaking and losing more trophies than anyone else was winning.

I was the Victorian chair of Wine Communicators of Australia when Julian’s 2014 Deep Woods Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon won the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy at the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards. No wonder he looked like the cat that got the cream at the awards lunch we organised; Australia’s most prestigious wine trophy came with a $20,000 cheque to do whatever he l...

I vividly recall my first meeting with Kathleen Quealy. I had tasted and delighted in her Pobblebonk field blend of Friulano, Riesling and Pinot Gris, and followed it up with the Rageous red, an unlikely marriage of Sangiovese, Shiraz and Pinot Noir. Among the Mornington Peninsula’s calm little sea of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, these outlandishly named, labelled and assembled interlopers smacked of anarchy.

Rocking up at Balnarring Vineyard felt like landing in the outskirts of an Irish country town where time stands still. A charmingly ramshackle, take-us-as-you-find-us backyard of ambling hens, drying washing, bicycles and br...

Not starting with an end in mind has led this English-born, multi-award-winning writer to unearth profound connections down labyrinthine rabbit holes.

Max Allen is too young to be deemed a national treasure, but that’s what he is. In a field where the esteem in which commentators are held is generally a measure not of perspicacity or originality but of perceived influence on potential sales, Max’s gift—and thirst—for meaningful storytelling is a rare and precious thing.

Max is an award-winning journalist and author who earns a crust as drinks columnist for the Australi...

It makes sense when you meet Steve Lubiana that he was up to his chin in grape skins from the moment he could walk, snapping at the heels of his winemaker dad. There’s barely a moment when Steve isn’t playing with plants, fermenting stuff or pouring drinks to try with food.

I first met Steve and his wife Monique, who is just as much a part of Stefano Lubiana, in Milan, of all places. They were looking at equipment at a wine industry fair that I’d been sent to cover for an Australian technical magazi...

I told Gwyn Olsen when I first met her that I somehow expected her to be stern. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that—apparently, it’s how she’d come across in photographs in the wine press. In reality, she is anything but; sharp, warm and witty, I was intrigued by how her mind worked, and how that feeds into what she creates.

I first heard of Gwyn during what seems like her breakthrough year of 2014, when she was named Young Winemaker of the Year in the now-defunct Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine. She was also n...

Geoff Weaver is a man from another time—a world of steam trains and horse-and-cart milkmen—yet his pristine, cool-climate white wines hold their own with the best of the modern Australian wine scene.

I’ve got to know Geoff pretty well over the years, thanks to my role with his distributor, CellarHand, which gets a mention in this conversation as the importer of Mosel estate Dr Loosen.

I have interviewed him a couple of times before, once about his love of his vineyard in Lenswood, which was damaged by the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires that ripped...

Rob Mann has gone a long way to get back where he started; he's a forward-thinking high-achiever with a strong sense of self who's working extremely hard to efface any notion of ego or fashion from the wines he grows.

His wines are produced under the Corymbia label, which he runs with his wife, Genevieve. Gen is a gem; she shies away from the limelight but is an exceptionally intelligent, sensitive winegrower. She was a scholar at the Len Evans Tutorial the same year as me; it's always a pleasure to talk and taste wine with her...

Crawford River is off the beaten track—on the road to nowhere, as Bee Thomson puts it—yet lovers of elegant, soulful, deftly balanced wines make a beeline to this second-generation label because they know precisely what it stands for.

Much of the credit goes to Bee’s worldly parents, John and Catherine Thomson. John was the visionary who planted the vines in Condah in what is now southwest Victoria’s Henty region in 1975.

In one of Australia’s chilliest pockets for grape-growing, there wasn’t much besides the sparkling varieties planted by Karl Seppelt in the ’60s...

This is the story of Gembrook Hill.

All the context is in the story. It’s a long article, addressing perhaps my frustration with the shallowness of much so-called storytelling around wine.

This is just a second-generation estate in a wine region whose modern era only dates back 60-odd years.

And yet there is so much richness of consideration, camaraderie, aspiration and endeavour wrapped up in it.

Please let me know your thoughts on the piece and this format of delivering it.

In the meantime, thanks for tuning into Vi...

This is the story of Vaughn Dell and Linda Morice, written towards the end of 2024. If you’d prefer to read it, you can do so here.

All the context is in the story. It’s dear to my heart; I hope you’ll listen.

Please leave a comment to share your thoughts on the piece and this format of delivery.

In the meantime, thanks for tuning into Vininspo!—I look forward to bringing you most podcast episodes when I get back from a short break.

Please check out edmerrison.substack.com to s...

I got to know David Lloyd when he was living on his beautiful Eldridge Estate in Red Hill, a few kilometres up the road from where I live on the Mornington Peninsula. A fellow journalist on a trade magazine I’d been freelancing for suggested I contact him because I was scouting around for some vineyard experience. David was a good bloke, excellent winemaker and could do with a hand, he said.

This all turned out to be true. The reason David could do with a hand, I discovered, was that his wife, Wendy, was in the ad...

Kim Chalmers wears many hats, not least in a family business that serves as vine nursery, grape supplier and wine estate with vineyards in two separate geographical indications (GIs). She’s also wife to a winemaker and mother of two daughters, as well as serving on numerous committees. “History is made by those who turn up,” she says—and she turns up every time, full of enthusiasm.

Bruce and Jenni Chalmers are the green-fingered parents who started growing all kinds of things in New South Wales before hitting upon grapes when the wine industry was booming. The nursery...

There’s no challenge too steep for this brainiac entrepreneur viticulturist who likes to do things differently—and he’s certainly not done with redefining world-class New Zealand.

Ambition is something Steve Smith can’t get enough of. He saw it in revolutionary viticulturist Richard Smart, who taught him to think. He saw it in Robert Mondavi and other doyens of the Napa Valley. He saw it in Sir George Fistonich, who wanted to turn a winery in receivership into the most decorated in New Zealand. And he would have seen it in himself long before—aged just 36 an...

Tim Shand is not one to follow the flock. In a world where yes-men get ahead and homogeneity wins widespread acceptance, his contrarian nature hasn’t always gone down well. But an impulse to challenge conventional wisdom and see through mediocrity has made him stand out from the crowd in the long run—and earn a shot at fulfilling a prodigious potential.

I got to know Tim well when he was chief winemaker at Punt Road in Victoria’s Yarra Valley. Among notable achievements there, he won the highly prestigious Trevor Mast trophy for best Shiraz at Melbou...

His 19th-century forebear sold a bank to buy vineyards, so deeply did he believe in the beauty and promise of a red slab of ancient slated desert sand above the River Rhine.

Make no mistake: Johannes Hasselbach is fully invested—even if there was a time when he might have wondered what on earth his great-, great, great, grandfather was thinking when he sold the family bank in 1890 to buy vineyards in Germany’s Rheinhessen.

Carl Gunderloch, from whom this esteemed estate in Nackenheim takes its name, must have been utterly captivated by the Roter Hang...