Jin Maekawa

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  • Jin Maekawa

    Jin Maekawa is an Osaka-born, Limestone Coast-based winemaker whose Maekawa Wines label – released for the first time at the end of 2025 – arrives at an interesting moment: while much of the new wave in Australian wine looks to alternative varieties and making ‘natty’ wines, Maekawa has turned toward the classic reds of the Limestone Coast with fresh eyes and genuine conviction. The ‘VDT’ wine is a sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon blend from Padthaway and Coonawarra; the ‘RC’ a shiraz and cabernet from Robe – traditional varieties, traditional regions, but made with the sensibility of someone who came to wine through hospitality rather than inheritance, and who has no interest in making them the way they have always been made. Both are built for the table, deeply personal, and designed to remind you of a good time rather than demand your full attention.

  • 2024 Bloomfield Petit Verdot

    How do you make a daggy grape variety like petit verdot interesting again? You hand some over to Bloomfield’s Lauren Hansen – who will turn it into a juicy, bouncy, vibrant delight of a chillable red wine via the magic of carbonic maceration – that’s how.

  • Mitchell Sokolin

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an American sommelier and French intellectual Gilles Deleuze walk into a natural wine bar … Sommelier-turned-winemaker Mitchell Sokolin channels his formidable intellect and love of silly puns into his Eleven Sons label. Using fruit sourced from various vineyards across South Australia’s broader Limestone Cost region – with some Pyrenees touriga nacional thrown in the mix, too – Sokolin crafts a tight lineup of wines based on chardonnay, semillon, pinot noir, pinot gris, and syrah, with a grüner veltliner on the way, plus a savagnin for his collaborative label with Shane Michael, Limestone Cowboy. Made using methods from “the natural playbook”, as he puts it – spontaneous ferments, no additions beyond a touch of sulphur at bottling, no new oak – with a cheerful disregard for traditional approaches to any given variety, the Eleven Sons range is as thought-provoking as it is drinkable.

  • Lauren Hansen

    A lot of winemakers who grow up in wine-growing regions romanticise their old stomping grounds, and often deliberately work towards returning to their home regions when starting their own labels. Not so much Lauren Hansen, who grew up in the Limestone Coast region and sought to escape it – only to find that her career drew her back. Hansen’s own label, Bloomfield, celebrates the Limestone Coast through a mix of unusual varieties – currently grüner veltliner, petit verdot and mencía – and allows her opportunities for unfettered winemaking expression. As of early 2026, Bloomfield is no longer a side-hustle. It is the whole job.

  • Peta Baverstock

    Peta Baverstock’s is a sparkling wine specialist, with her Cuvée-Co Wines label an expression of classic styles, from traditional method vintage sparklings to col fondo prosecco and sparkling shiraz. Based on the Limestone Coast, she sources broadly from the zone, including Mount Gambier, Padthaway and Wrattonbully, working only with small parcels of fruit.

Anna Hooper

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