Home > Wines We Love > 2021 Dal Zotto ‘L’Immigrante’ Barbera

Light on its feet with gorgeous red fruits and serious winemaking detail. Barbera made with ambition — this is what happens when a vigneron becomes genuinely obsessed with an overlooked grape. This is the Barbera you get the good glassware out for.

Producer
Dal Zotto
Region

King Valley
RRP

$85
Vintage

2021
Variety/Varieties

Barbera
Alc./Vol.

13.7%

Cherries, raspberries and plums up front, with savoury notes of cured meat, cinnamon and autumn leaves running through. The palate is bright and a little tart, all strawberry and fine, silky tannin, finishing long and savoury. Light on its feet, but with real presence.

Barbera is Piedmont’s most planted red grape, yet it’s forever cast as the middle child — overshadowed by nebbiolo, which makes Barolo and Barbaresco, and dismissed alongside dolcetto, whose name literally means “the little sweet one.” Michael Dal Zotto became fascinated with the variety after working vintages in Italy alongside the region’s powerful, patience-demanding Barolos; barbera’s willingness to be drunk young, and its knack for holding onto natural acidity even in warm conditions, made him see real potential for it back home in Victoria’s King Valley — itself a region shaped by generations of Italian immigrant winegrowing families, the Dal Zottos among them.

Dal Zotto makes two barberas, built as genuine opposites: an everyday drop matured for under a year in old oak, and this one, L’Immigrante, hand-selected from lower-yielding vines and fermented with around a third whole-bunch fruit for extra layers and dimension. It spends twelve months in larger-format oak followed by another twelve in smaller barrels, building structure and savoury depth well beyond the entry-level wine. Where the everyday version is a midweek pour, this one is built for the nights that call for truffles.

Tasting note

A seductive perfume of cherry, raspberry and plum meets equally pronounced savoury notes — bresaola, cinnamon, clove, autumn leaves — with a light ruby colour edged in garnet and orange, and a nose that carries a shy berry note under leather and smoke. The palate catches you off guard: bright, tart strawberry fruit arrives first, before savoury elements of miso and dried mushroom take over, trailing into black pepper, dried herbs and a long, parmesan-like finish. It feels light-bodied on first impression, but there’s real frame here — a taut acid line and fine, smooth tannin holding everything together, with a dry finish that has you reaching for the next glass before you’ve quite decided to.

When to drink it

Don’t let the “good glassware” line fool you into thinking this one needs a fancy meal to justify itself. It’s a light expression of red, and it drinks beautifully all on its own — no food required. It’s something that can be contemplated, or not — up to you. That said, if you do want to put something alongside it, its acid and fine tannin will happily handle richer, truffle-tinged dishes too. Or throw it at some pizza! It’s also the wine to pour for the Barolo-loving father-in-law or uncle at the table who has absolutely no idea barbera can get this good — let him figure it out for himself.

Themes of this wine

Barbera

Barbera is Piedmont’s workhorse red, the most widely planted grape in the region despite living permanently in the shadow of nebbiolo’s Barolo and Barbaresco. Its calling card is a rare combination: naturally high acidity that holds up even as sugar ripens, paired with soft, approachable tannins, making it a grape that rewards both easy, youthful drinking and, in the right hands, more serious ageing. Outside Italy it remains uncommon, but its resilience and adaptability are drawing growing interest from producers in warmer climates.

King Valley

Tucked into Victoria’s high country north-east of Melbourne, the King Valley owes much of its wine identity to Italian immigrant families who settled the region from the 1950s onward, bringing Old World varieties with them long before “alternative varieties” became a buzzword in Australian wine. Elevation across the valley varies significantly, from warmer valley floors to cooler, higher sites, giving growers real flexibility in what they plant and where.

Whole-bunch fermentation

Including a portion of whole grape clusters — stems included — in the ferment is a deliberate way of adding complexity beyond straightforward fruit character. Stems contribute their own tannin structure and can lift savoury, spicy and aromatic layers in the finished wine, generally at some cost to overt fruitiness. Used at around a third here, the technique is a key part of what separates this more serious, structured barbera from Dal Zotto’s lighter, everyday version.

Explore Further

Deep Dive

Australia’s Best Barbera

The northern Italian grape variety barbera has been a resident of this country since the 1960s, arriving here via a detour in California. A serious attempt to get some traction in the 1970s by a fabled Italian winemaker didn’t quite get the kettle boiling, but some steady growth at the end of the century – followed by a little bit of decline – has seen the grape chip out its own niche in the local wine landscape. While its home is the relatively cool region of Piedmont, its ability to thrive and retain acidity in hotter areas makes it a fine prospect for Australia’s wide range of climatic conditions. With makers continuing to explore a wide range of possibilities for this variety, we thought that a second Deep Dive into the subject was in order.

Wine 101

Barbera

Barbera is the middle child of the Piedmont red grape family, with nebbiolo the elder and dolcetto always given youngster status. Barbera is in fact the most planted grape there, outstripping nebbiolo by a large margin, and it is grown throughout the country. It’s potential in Australia is immense, too, with it holding acid well and delivering very gentle tannins and plenty of flavour.

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Tom Morrison came to winemaking through a vineyard gate on the Bellarine Peninsula in 2017, and has never quite looked back. Wilkie Wines, launched from the 2021 vintage and made in a small facility on a hill overlooking Bacchus Marsh, is a solo operation drawing fruit from Geelong, Heathcote, Bendigo and the Riverland – a range that spans skin-contact whites, chilled reds, pét-nats and more serious structured wines, unified by a preference for wild fermentation, minimal intervention and a refusal to filter. Every label carries a painting by his cousin Kate Lewis – artwork drawn from shared family life – and the whole project is named for their grandmother, Wilkie. The result is a label with a distinctly personal warmth and a winemaking sensibility that is restless, curious and increasingly confident.

Producer
Region

Bendigo Riverland
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

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Tom Morrison came to winemaking through a vineyard gate on the Bellarine Peninsula in 2017, and has never quite looked back. Wilkie Wines, launched from the 2021 vintage and made in a small facility on a hill overlooking Bacchus Marsh, is a solo operation drawing fruit from Geelong, Heathcote, Bendigo and the Riverland – a range that spans skin-contact whites, chilled reds, pét-nats and more serious structured wines, unified by a preference for wild fermentation, minimal intervention and a refusal to filter. Every label carries a painting by his cousin Kate Lewis – artwork drawn from shared family life – and the whole project is named for their grandmother, Wilkie. The result is a label with a distinctly personal warmth and a winemaking sensibility that is restless, curious and increasingly confident.

Morrison studied agriculture at the University of Melbourne and spent time on the family farm before landing a vineyard job on the Bellarine in January 2017. From the first day something clicked. “I was in awe of the complexity of growing grapes and wanted to learn it all,” he says. “Pretty soon I began to obsess over the winemaking side. Every lunch we’d come in from the vineyard and I’d corner the winemaker, Darren Burke, armed with the questions I’d penned the night before. I wanted to make sense of this combination of feel and science.” The cellar hand job came up and he took it, completed a Graduate Diploma in Oenology at Charles Sturt University, then started picking leftover grapes from around the posts after the machine harvester had passed to make his own wine after hours. A vintage in California followed. “From my first day of work at a winery in 2018, I was under a bit of a spell,” he says. “I knew instantly that I had to put in the work to get myself into a position to one day do this for myself. It really was that simple.” Wilkie Wines launched in 2021.

“In my early 20s, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to pursue something in the arts, commerce, or science. Winemaking, especially running your own label, allows you to do all three at the same time, so I never had to choose.”

The education has kept going since. A vintage at Gut Oggau in Austria in 2023 and at Cantina Giardino in southern Italy in 2024 have each left a direct mark on the wines. Gut Oggau’s method of separating a wine into its component fermentation streams – different vessels, different methods – then recombining them to show the full range of what the fruit can become became the conceptual engine behind the Bush Series, the experimental offshoot label Morrison launched in 2023. “Each year, the wines will differ greatly,” he says. “The goal is for the constant development and experiences as a winemaker to be mirrored in the wines.” The Tin Hut pinot gris amber – the first Bush Series release – was directly inspired by that method, splitting and recombining fermentation styles and vessels to capture what he describes as the full expression of the grape. Cantina Giardino, meanwhile, sent him back to Australia with an ambition to push skin contact on white grapes further than he had before.

“The brutal thing about grape growing is that the amount of effort you pour into it doesn’t see an immediate effect. Vines really make you learn patience.”

That ambition produced his most instructive near-miss to date. Inspired by Cantina Giardino’s practice of leaving greco and fiano on skins in sealed amphoras for up to a year, he left his 2025 greco on skins for 330 days – but in stainless steel rather than the porous terracotta the Italians use. “The issue is that the amphorae they use are porous, so they breathe a little, allowing oxygen in to soften the tannins leached from the grapes,” he explains. “There’s no breathing through a stainless steel wall. So when I finally drained the Greco from its skins, it was the most tannic wine I have ever tasted – red or white.” The flavours were remarkable, but the texture was, as he puts it, eye-watering. “I’ve never had such a dry mouth with liquid still in it.” The wine is now ageing, the tannins slowly relaxing. “In time it should be a special wine.” The lesson was hard won and worth it.

In the winery, Morrison always works with wild yeast and bacteria and never filters. “It can make the job a lot harder, especially when the wild microbes don’t want to play ball,” he says, “but when you get it right, it’s well worth it.” He describes the Wilkie Wines style as a “jumbled combination of influences – more conventional winemaking from university study and working at medium-large wineries in Geelong and the USA, mixed with natural winemaking techniques picked up from peers and working at smaller wineries in Italy and Austria. Textured, bright and intriguing – those are the words I look for when I’m making a wine.”

Climate change has pushed him toward Mediterranean whites, and he speaks about them with genuine enthusiasm. “I’d love to make a pinot noir and chardonnay every year, but they can be hard to come by,” he says. “Instead, I’m loving working with the Mediterranean whites at the moment – greco, fiano, falanghina. They hold their acid so well and are so versatile. Fiano is my new chardonnay. It can be picked early for a tart sparkling base, or later for a rich, broad, generous aged white. It can really do it all.” For the warmer-season challenge of building richness without losing acidity, his toolkit has evolved: full malolactic fermentation – a natural process where sharper malic acid converts to softer lactic acid, adding texture and roundness – more lees work, longer ageing in neutral oak, and a touch of deliberate oxygen exposure to bring nuttiness and complexity. For chilled reds, the golden rule is simpler: “They shouldn’t see any time in oak and need a driving acid line and a lick of sweetness. That’s why they’re generally better as blends – taking features from different grapes to make a new wine style.”

He also manages a tiny shiraz block – barely enough to make a barrique worth of wine – which he has been nursing back from conventional farming and some harsh chemicals since 2023 through gentler organic practices and more careful manual canopy management. The progress is slow by nature. “The brutal thing about grape growing is that the amount of effort you pour into it doesn’t see an immediate effect,” he says. “Vines really make you learn patience.” Seeing the once-bare vines with full bunches and tasting the flavour of the season in the wine – that reward, he says, will never get old.

What keeps him going beyond the project itself is the restlessness of the craft. “In my early 20s, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to pursue something in the arts, commerce, or science,” he says. “Winemaking, especially running your own label, allows you to do all three at the same time, so I never had to choose. The driving force to continue is always to make wine that is better than last year’s. It’s addictive.”

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Scott Cosgriff is a former human rights lawyer turned winemaker whose Tampopo label – based halfway between Melbourne and Ballarat – makes small-batch, acid-driven wines from fruit sourced across Victoria and NSW. The range spans sangiovese, pinot noir, chardonnay, vermentino, a skin-contact riesling called Holus Bolus, a rosado, and a traditional-method lambrusco under the Radio Tampopo sub-label. Maceration times across the range run from three days to 150, which tells you something about the breadth of curiosity at work. The philosophy is food-first, unhurried, and rooted in the idea that wine can be both an everyday staple and something irreplaceable – accessible without being ordinary.

Producer
Region

Geelong Murray Darling
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

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Scott Cosgriff is a former human rights lawyer turned winemaker whose Tampopo label – based halfway between Melbourne and Ballarat – makes small-batch, acid-driven wines from fruit sourced across Victoria and NSW. The range spans sangiovese, pinot noir, chardonnay, vermentino, a skin-contact riesling called Holus Bolus, a rosado, and a traditional-method lambrusco under the Radio Tampopo sub-label. Maceration times across the range run from three days to 150, which tells you something about the breadth of curiosity at work. The philosophy is food-first, unhurried, and rooted in the idea that wine can be both an everyday staple and something irreplaceable – accessible without being ordinary.

The name comes from the 1985 Japanese film by Juzo Itami, and the connection runs deeper than a clever label. “The presiding spirit of Tampopo is the film of the same name, which I think plays with two distinct ways we orient to eating and drinking: the everyday – intimate, rustic, low-stakes – and the transcendent – technical, rare, rarified,” says Cosgriff. “I want my wine to live in the same duality: I’m motivated by the idea of wine as a staple, and also the idea of wine as a unique expression of place, time, culture and intention. Something special, without being a luxury.” The circular labels on the main range are subtly unique bottle to bottle – a Rorschach test of sorts. “My intention is to try to reflect that every moment is different; that the connotations or perceptions we have about a place – or a person or an idea or a wine – are the result of layers of moments and experiences. You can taste the same wine on two occasions but your experience will not be identical.”

Cosgriff describes Tampopo as “tiny wine” – and means it as a compliment. “I like to work at a small enough scale that each vintage is defined as much by how it looks in the glass as by the memory of the people who helped me harvest, how I fit what on the ute, what else was happening as summer turned into autumn, what I was listening to when I labelled the bottles.” The label came to life in a Sydney garage, built through years of bottling days with friends, cups of tea and music. “The spirit of Tampopo came alive during that time,” he says. “Feeling responsible for and imprinted in every part of it, but rarely alone in it.” His path to wine traced through restaurants worked during university, a stint as a translator at a Japanese law firm, and a 15-year legal career focused on refugees and human rights – punctuated by vintage stints in Gippsland, Oregon and the Mornington Peninsula, and eventually a masters in enology and viticulture. The first commercial vintage was 2018. “When it came time to commit to the name, I just kept coming back to Tampopo. After a certain number of years I realised: I’m never not going to want to do this, and have since organised more of my life around doing it.”

In 2024, he moved back to Melbourne and relocated the winery setup down the Hume Highway – holding onto favourite NSW fruit sources while the Victorian pipeline began to fill. “I held on to some of my favourite fruit sources, like the Sangiovese from Hilltops, because I love the fruit,” he says. “The pipeline is now also beginning to fill up with wines from Macedon and Heathcote. The attractions include the diversity of plantings, the proximity to home base, and the cool climate credentials of some of the sites.”

The winemaking is defined by a deep curiosity about extraction – how the interactions between juice, skins and stems shape a wine’s form and flavour. “I think about it whenever I make a cup of tea, or coffee in an aeropress,” says Cosgriff. “Steep? Stir? What effect is the temperature of the water having?” In his twenties, working a vintage in Oregon, he was given responsibility far beyond his experience – tasked with press decisions across 15 different ferments of premium single-vineyard pinot noir. “That was an experience that left me enthralled with how wine is shaped by decisions about skins.” The Holus Bolus skin-contact riesling – where juice is left in contact with grape skins during fermentation to extract colour, texture and tannin, in the same way red wine is made – has been made over multiple vintages and Cosgriff’s confidence with it has grown. “The more I’ve made it over the years, the more confident I have become with lengthier periods of maceration. I find that the wines become finer, less phenolic. Less overtly ‘orange wine.’“

The technical approach is minimal: wild fermentation driven by a pied de cuvée – a small quantity of actively fermenting wine used to carry native yeasts through each ferment across the vintage rather than relying on commercial strains. No acid additions; early picking to preserve natural acidity instead, even if wines can seem lean at first. “Sometimes the wines can seem a little lean early on, but fill out with time, while holding their focus.” Lees management is a preoccupation – “I often think it is lees time that gives the texture and savouriness I am looking for.” No filtration. Sulphur used in most wines, mostly between 40 and 80ppm total, but with genuine respect for what a well-timed addition can achieve. “I think there is something remarkable about what a judicious, well-timed sulphur dioxide addition can do to sculpt a wine into something that will sing a tune for many years.”

Climate change has pushed him further toward later-ripening and Mediterranean varieties. “When grapes need to be harvested during hot weather, not only are you faced with a fast-moving target for picking decisions, you have the headache of higher ambient temperatures in the winery, which can accelerate ferments well beyond my comfort levels,” he says. “So climate change is a factor that has pushed me in the direction of later ripening varieties and Mediterranean varieties. Riesling fits into the former camp, and when you love acid and refreshment like I do, there’s just nothing better than seeing vermentino or sangiovese come into the harvest window still boasting serious natural acidity.”

At the heart of all of it is something simpler than winemaking. “Simply put, I really value sitting down to share a meal with people I love,” he says. “It is an ancient, human thing – both ceremonial and completely ordinary, and wine can be such a delightful part of it. Ultimately what inspires me most is remembering how much bigger than me this tradition is.” The temporal dimension of wine – what time does to a wine in barrel, in bottle, and in the glass – is the thread that runs through everything Tampopo makes. “I like working with the mystery of time,” he says. “I have such close, studied, intimate relationships with the wines I’ve made over the last decade, and I take as many lessons from times when I have been glad I didn’t do something, as the times I’m glad I did. In a world of instant gratification and hot takes, in wine I find that giving something time is often a prudent thing.” The vision from here is refinement, not growth. “I don’t feel energised by the idea of expansion. I feel energised by the practice of fine tuning.”

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Ray Chen is a New Zealand-trained winemaker whose Victorian label Rongo Wines draws fruit from single vineyards across the state – currently the Strathbogie Ranges and the Yarra Valley – and is built around a single governing idea: wine as part of a food experience, specifically the food Chen grew up eating. The current range spans a skin-contact riesling, a straight riesling, a syrah, a rosé and an aglianico, all unfined and unfiltered, all made with a researcher’s instinct for exploring what different winemaking approaches can reveal from the same source of fruit. The name Rongo refers to the Māori god of cultivated food – an anchor in Chen’s New Zealand heritage and a deliberate statement about where wine belongs: at the table, alongside something worth eating.

Producer
Region

Strathbogie Ranges Yarra Valley
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
Alc./Vol.

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Ray Chen is a New Zealand-trained winemaker whose Victorian label Rongo Wines draws fruit from single vineyards across the state – currently the Strathbogie Ranges and the Yarra Valley – and is built around a single governing idea: wine as part of a food experience, specifically the food Chen grew up eating. The current range spans a skin-contact riesling, a straight riesling, a syrah, a rosé and an aglianico, all unfined and unfiltered, all made with a researcher’s instinct for exploring what different winemaking approaches can reveal from the same source of fruit. The name Rongo refers to the Māori god of cultivated food – an anchor in Chen’s New Zealand heritage and a deliberate statement about where wine belongs: at the table, alongside something worth eating.

Chen’s winemaking background is unusually broad for a small-batch producer. She completed an undergraduate degree in viticulture and oenology at Lincoln University in New Zealand before a Masters in Wine Science at Cornell University, added a WSET Diploma, and built vintages across New Zealand, the US, France and Australia, encompassing winemaking, R&D and buying roles. Her creative north star is Paolo Bea – the Umbrian natural wine producer whose multiday skin macerations on white varieties, extended barrel ageing and uncompromising commitment to site expression have attracted a devoted following globally. That influence shows in how Chen thinks about variety and technique: not as fixed categories but as starting points for exploration.

The label’s food-pairing ambition is not merely marketing – it runs through the winemaking decisions in a practical way. “Wines that complement and amplify the food experience, shaped by the flavours of the food I grew up with” is how Chen defines the style. She thinks about wine in the context of a full meal, and specifically in the context of Asian cuisines where the flavour registers – umami, fermented, aromatic, high-acid – ask different things of a glass than a western European food tradition might. Riesling, with its natural acidity and aromatic lift, is a natural fit. Skin contact – leaving the juice in contact with the grape skins during fermentation to extract colour, tannin and aromatic compounds – adds texture and grip that gives the wine something to do alongside more complex flavour profiles. “Acidity is a key focus,” she says, “and the natural high retention in the Strathbogie Ranges is critical in providing backbone.” The challenge is disease pressure: once skins stay in contact with juice for extended periods, any unsound fruit becomes a problem. “Disease pressure is always a tricky point and sometimes requires fairly intensive manual sorting to ensure clean fruit going into ferment.”

The most distinctive element of Chen’s approach is her practice of making multiple wines from the same vineyard – adjusting fermentation temperature, maceration length, vessel choice and secondary fermentation to reveal different facets of the same fruit. The two rieslings from the Elgo Vineyard in Strathbogie are a direct expression of this: one skin-contact, one not, from the same vines in the same season. The syrah and rosé come from the same Yarra Valley site. “By adjusting elements of the winemaking process I try to reveal different facets already present in the fruit,” she says. The goal is never to force a direction. “The goal is always to draw out what is already present in the fruit rather than forcing the wine in a certain direction through heavy interventions.” The R&D instinct that Chen has brought from her professional life sits comfortably alongside that philosophy – systematic curiosity, applied to the same raw material year after year.

The pH and sulphur question is one she takes seriously despite a broader minimal-intervention framework. “Though my approach leans towards minimal intervention, having the right balance of pH and SO₂ is absolutely critical for longevity and keeping the wines alive.” It is a useful illustration of where Chen sits – not in the zero-zero camp, but not in the heavily manipulated one either. Curious, technically grounded, and ultimately led by what the wine needs. “The biggest lesson has been to stay curious and keep refining through experience and practice, while also having the patience to let the wines develop and come into their own.”

The ambition from here is more space to experiment – more varieties, more small trials, a premium tier eventually – while keeping everything small-batch and hands-on. Mediterranean and Alsatian varieties are the ones she is most drawn to long-term, which sits naturally alongside the food-pairing philosophy. For now, the day job remains, and Rongo continues alongside it: a label built at the intersection of a researcher’s mind, a deep love of eating well, and a conviction that wine makes most sense when it is part of something larger.

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Kaden Boekhoorn came to wine through a decade in specialty coffee, drawn by the same fascination with how place and process shape flavour. Passage Wines, launched from the 2024 vintage, is a small Gippsland project focused on distinctive parcels from Baw Baw Shire’s cool volcanic hills – currently a pinot gris and a syrah, both from dry-grown sites where Boekhoorn spent five years learning to farm before making his first commercial wines. The approach is minimal intervention with a strong emphasis on site, patience in the cellar, and wines built for texture and longevity over immediate impact. Passage sits in the thoughtful, grower-producer tradition that Gippsland has quietly built for itself.

Producer
Region

Gippsland Victoria
RRP

$
Vintage
Variety/Varieties
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Kaden Boekhoorn came to wine through a decade in specialty coffee, drawn by the same fascination with how place and process shape flavour. Passage Wines, launched from the 2024 vintage, is a small Gippsland project focused on distinctive parcels from Baw Baw Shire’s cool volcanic hills – currently a pinot gris and a syrah, both from dry-grown sites where Boekhoorn spent five years learning to farm before making his first commercial wines. The approach is minimal intervention with a strong emphasis on site, patience in the cellar, and wines built for texture and longevity over immediate impact. Passage sits in the thoughtful, grower-producer tradition that Gippsland has quietly built for itself.

Kaden Boekhoorn came to wine through coffee – and not casually. He spent close to a decade working in specialty coffee at a high level across Australia, the US and Japan, chasing small producers, distinct origins, and the particular flavours that place and process produce. That sensibility – the idea that where something is grown, and how carefully, shapes everything in the cup – translated directly when wine found him. “What drew me to wine was the idea that you could see how place, farming and fermentation shape flavour,” he says. “In coffee you quickly see that, and wine isn’t so different.” Passage Wines is his first commercial venture, launched from the 2024 vintage: a small, site-focused Gippsland project built around two wines from Baw Baw Shire – a pinot gris and a syrah, both sourced from dry-grown, cool-climate vineyards and made with patience and a light hand. The style is texture and structure over fruit weight, aromatics over impact, and wines built to open up over time rather than announce themselves immediately. “I’m less interested in overt fruit or heavy winemaking signatures and more interested in aromatics, texture and structure – wines that show well early but continue to open up and reward over time.”

The turn came through the coffee bar he managed – Aunty Peg’s in Melbourne – where Bill Downie, Patrick Sullivan and Ryan Ponsford were regulars. “Listening to the way they spoke about wine, vineyards and food reignited a sense of curiosity for me,” says Boekhoorn, “which eventually led to my first visit to Gippsland.” That visit was to help Downie bottle his 2019 single-vineyard Baw Baw Shire wines. He began spending more time in the region – helping Ponsford at his Willow Grove and Bull Swamp vineyards, working through the seasons, learning to prune, net and pick. “Spending more than five years in that environment has had a strong influence on how I think about wine,” he says. “There’s a strong focus on farming well, paying attention to site and being patient in the cellar rather than trying to force a style. Producers like Bill Downie, Ryan Ponsford, Xavier Goodridge, Patrick Sullivan and Bass Phillip have shown that Gippsland can produce wines with real character and individuality.” Between Gippsland seasons, he travelled through the Rhône, Burgundy and the Jura before completing a vintage with Camille Thiriet – a Burgundy-based producer working in less-celebrated villages with the same quiet ambition that drew Boekhoorn to Gippsland. “Someone like Camille Thiriet working in villages like Corgoloin and Comblanchien is a good example of that mindset,” he says. “I’ve felt something similar in coffee, where some of the most exciting coffees I’ve tasted come from producers working in emerging regions. A lot of interesting things tend to happen on the fringes – and Baw Baw Shire very much feels like that.”

The two Passage wines debut from vineyards where Boekhoorn learned his trade. The pinot gris draws from two Baw Baw Shire sites – the north-facing Willow Grove vineyard on grey dermosols, and the south-facing Bull Swamp vineyard on red volcanic soil – each dry-grown and bringing different characters to the blend. The syrah comes entirely from Bull Swamp: old vines planted in 1981, own-rooted and dry-grown, north-facing. Boekhoorn also farms a small pinot noir block near Warragul himself – around a barrel and a half per year – tending it by hand on weekends without tractors, implementing cane pruning where appropriate, layering vines to replace missing sections, and working with an agronomist on soil health. “The site only produces around a barrel and a half a year, so it isn’t really farmed for commercial outcomes,” he says. “Instead it’s been a place to experiment and learn. Even at this scale you still experience the same pressures – weather, disease and the constant need to make decisions that affect the quality and longevity of the vineyard.” The owners, he notes, have said the vineyard is in the best shape they’ve seen it.

The hard lessons have come too. In the first year farming, he lost the chardonnay block to downy mildew after heavy Christmas rain; the pinot noir from that same season later went volatile in barrel and was tipped out. “Losses like that are pretty shit,” he says plainly, “and I have a lot of respect for the people who do both sides of the job – growing the grapes and making the wine.” But the rewards of patience have reinforced his approach. “One of the most rewarding parts is seeing the wines wake up after winter and slowly come together through élevage – the period a wine spends maturing in vessel before bottling. By summer they often feel like quite different wines to what they were earlier on. Having patience and belief in that process has been greatly rewarded – the cycle of things is quite beautiful.”

The winemaking is minimal but not ideological: wild fermentation without temperature control, the cellar moving naturally with the seasons, sulphur used where needed rather than to a fixed formula. Wines mature for around 11 to 12 months in mostly used French oak, with a small portion of new oak in what Boekhoorn describes as a seasoning role – present enough to add texture, not so much as to obscure the site. After barrel ageing, wines are racked to stainless steel and given two to three further months to settle before bottling under corks with a negative carbon footprint. Picking decisions have become increasingly critical as seasons feel more compressed. “Recent seasons have felt more compressed, with fruit ripening faster and weather becoming less predictable – drier winters, warmer summers and heavier rainfall close to vintage,” he says. “I’m conscious of wanting the wines to show the vintage, so it’s about finding the right moment – trying not to play it too safe by picking too early, but also not waiting too long. It’s been a bit of a balancing act.”

The vision for Passage is to stay small, deepen connections with the vineyards he works with, farm more fruit himself over time, and eventually plant his own site in Gippsland. “The wine world is already crowded,” he says, “but even with so few producers, Gippsland is already making a strong statement and still feels largely untapped. I can’t think of a more exciting region in Australia to be making and drinking wine from right now.” For a label that only just released its first wines, the foundations are unusually solid – built over five years before a bottle was sold.

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Meg Wallace is a winemaker at Billy Button Wines in Victoria’s Alpine Valleys whose Nacre label – launched from the 2021 vintage – makes a small, intentional range of wines from the region’s Italian varieties, with vermentino and refosco at its current core. Named for mother of pearl, and in tribute to five generations of women in Wallace’s family all sharing the name Margaret, Nacre is a quietly personal project built around the particular parcels and growers she has come to know best. The wines are textural, savoury and handled with a light hand – a label from a region whose Italian variety credentials are still only beginning to be understood.

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Alpine Valleys Victoria
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Meg Wallace is a winemaker at Billy Button Wines in Victoria’s Alpine Valleys whose Nacre label – launched from the 2021 vintage – makes a small, intentional range of wines from the region’s Italian varieties, with vermentino and refosco at its current core. Named for mother of pearl, and in tribute to five generations of women in Wallace’s family all sharing the name Margaret, Nacre is a quietly personal project built around the particular parcels and growers she has come to know best. The wines are textural, savoury and handled with a light hand – a label from a region whose Italian variety credentials are still only beginning to be understood.

Meg Wallace came to winemaking the long way round – through Sydney hospitality, a stint in London, a wine bar near London Bridge, and an unforgettable few weeks in Tuscany that turned a casual appreciation into something more purposeful. Back in Australia by 2011, she moved to rural NSW and began studying winemaking at Charles Sturt University, spending five years alongside Paul Bailey at Tumblong Estates in Gundagai while she completed her degree. The Alpine Valleys found her almost by accident in 2019 – a last-minute vintage position at Billy Button Wines – but she recognised immediately that this was her place. Nacre Wine, launched in 2021 as a small-batch project alongside her winemaking role at Billy Button, focuses on the Italian varieties the region does particularly well: vermentino and refosco in the current range, with barbera and sangiovese also in her sights. The wines are textural, savoury and rooted in the character of the specific parcels she sources from – a small label with a clear sense of what it’s for.

The name Nacre – the technical term for mother of pearl – carries its own lineage. Wallace, whose full name is Margaret, shares that name with her great-great-great-grandmother, her grandmother, mother, aunt and herself, across five generations. Nacre is, in part, a tribute to those women. “The name pays tribute to beauty, purity and strength,” she says. “Timeless elegance and the enduring legacy of women in my family, all linked by the name Margaret.” It’s a quiet but meaningful thread running through the label, and one that sits comfortably alongside the wines themselves – understated, carefully made, nothing to prove.

Wallace works with fruit from dedicated growers across the Alpine Valleys – a region she describes as a treasure trove of obscure varieties farmed by vignerons who genuinely know their land. The vermentino comes from the Ferraro Vineyard in Myrtleford, the refosco from Dalbosco Vineyard in Porepunkah and Greenacres Vineyard in Merriang South. Both are varieties that suit the region’s climate well. “I love the saline and herbal qualities in my Vermentino,” she says, “and I’m particularly drawn to the rustic savouriness of Italian red varietals such as barbera, sangiovese and refosco.” The approach in the winery matches that sensibility: hands-on, humble, and guided by the fruit rather than a fixed formula. “Listen to the fruit. It’s about being fluid – everything changes year to year, variety to variety.”

That her label exists at all is largely a function of the environment at Billy Button. Jo Marsh and Glenn James – her mentors and employers – encouraged her early, and the practical arrangement of making Nacre wines within her day-job winery removed enough of the financial pressure to make it possible. “The energy and passion at Billy Button is contagious. I caught the bug,” she says. “While studying I quickly realised I would love to have my own label – I just thought it would be a lot further down the track.” Being surrounded by upwards of 30 varieties through Billy Button’s broad portfolio has also sharpened her own preferences; where she once had an appreciation for Italian varieties, she now has a deep working knowledge of them. The range beyond the vermentino and refosco has also included a blanc – a blend of pinot gris, riesling and gewürztraminer – a grüner veltliner, and a shiraz. It changes each year, small-batch, one or two wines at a time.

The Alpine Valleys feels like home now, and Wallace isn’t looking anywhere else. “The Alpine Valleys is a treasure trove of obscure varieties and the quality of these sometimes tiny parcels is a joy to work with.” It’s a region still gathering the attention it deserves, and Nacre is one of the labels making the case quietly and well.

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Patrick Wood and Greta Darling-Filby run three things at once from Kyneton Ridge Estate in the Macedon Ranges: the estate wines for Pat’s family business, a contract winemaking operation serving labels across the region, and their own label Harbinger – a roving single-vineyard project that follows them across Victoria’s most compelling growing regions. The Harbinger range spans a Heathcote fiano, chardonnay, grenache nouveau, GSM, syrah, cabernet franc rosé and pinot gris, made with flexible, low-intervention winemaking and a curiosity about what Victoria’s less-championed varieties can do in the right places. The Kyneton Ridge estate wines, anchored by the Skipping Rabbit pinot noir from a 25-year-old organically farmed vineyard, sit alongside. Together the two labels cover a lot of Victorian ground – and that’s entirely the point.

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Macedon Ranges Victoria
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Patrick Wood and Greta Darling-Filby run three things at once from Kyneton Ridge Estate in the Macedon Ranges: the estate wines for Pat’s family business, a contract winemaking operation serving labels across the region, and their own label Harbinger – a roving single-vineyard project that follows them across Victoria’s most compelling growing regions. The Harbinger range spans a Heathcote fiano, chardonnay, grenache nouveau, GSM, syrah, cabernet franc rosé and pinot gris, made with flexible, low-intervention winemaking and a curiosity about what Victoria’s less-championed varieties can do in the right places. The Kyneton Ridge estate wines, anchored by the Skipping Rabbit pinot noir from a 25-year-old organically farmed vineyard, sit alongside. Together the two labels cover a lot of Victorian ground – and that’s entirely the point.

Pat came up through the cellar, starting with a vintage in Castillon, Bordeaux in 2014, then working across the Yarra Valley including Coldstream Hills, before a full-time stint as cellarhand at Punt Road from 2017 to 2019. He went on to assistant winemaker at McCarthy Wines, contributing to wines for Soumah, Helen’s Hill and Gioiello Estate, before returning to the family business at Kyneton Ridge in 2022 to establish the winemaking facilities and contract operation. He’s currently completing his viticulture studies at Charles Sturt University. Greta came through cellar doors in the Yarra Valley before becoming cellar door manager at Helen’s Hill Estate – where she and Pat met – and made her first foray into winemaking there in 2020. By 2022 she had taken on a full-time vigneron role at Kyneton Ridge. Harbinger, as they describe it, came about through “a lot to do with Pat’s family taking a leap of faith into the wine scene, and the opportunity to help them achieve something great with it. It was also about love, covid and misguided ambitions.”

“We had fantasised about grenache being a chilled red with attitude, and giving cabernet franc centre stage. We wanted to see what the unsung heroes of the vitis family could achieve if only they found their home in Victorian soils.”

Pat’s family adopted the estate in 2020, taking on a 25-year-old pinot noir vineyard that had seen better days. Since 2022, Wood and Darling-Filby have been steadily converting it: herbicides gone, organic-based principles in, soil compaction reduced, microbial activity encouraged through zero-till methods, and the Simonit & Sirch pruning methodology – developed in Italy and focused on maintaining vine health and sap flow over the long term – introduced to manage trunk disease. New plantings of riesling, nebbiolo and cabernet are going in alongside clonal additions to the existing pinot noir and chardonnay blocks, and a composting program is steadily building carbon into the estate’s poor sandy soils. “We’ve jumped deep into regenerative farming,” they say, “and become the first Macedon Ranges vineyard to be certified sustainable.” The results are showing in the wines: “We’ve since been getting progressively higher yields, consistency in crop and seeing wines with greater purity and intensity.”

The Macedon community has shaped how they think about their work. “Macedon Ranges winemaking culture is built on the spirit of tiny producers striving to express their own patch of dirt,” they say. “It’s the heritage of generational makers that built massive reputations as growers that gave it a go, managing to make waves on the international stage. The community has infectious motivation and enthusiasm, nurturing collaborations and an openness to morphing identity.” Beyond Macedon, each region Harbinger draws from carries its own pull: “Macedon for its brutality, marginality and varietal royalty – its ability to quietly make world-class wines. Heathcote for its unexpected finesse, confidence in character and flexibility. Geelong for its elegance, personality and ability to capture its character in the bottle. The Pyrenees for its unmistakable character, restrained power and subtlety.”

“The more you learn about vineyards and winemaking, the more your knowledge is humbled.”

Harbinger was born from curiosity about what Victoria’s less-championed varieties could achieve. “We had fantasised about grenache being a chilled red with attitude, and giving cabernet franc centre stage,” they say. “We wanted to see what the unsung heroes of the vitis family could achieve if only they found their home in Victorian soils.” The carbonic maceration grenache – a technique where whole uncrushed grapes ferment in a carbon dioxide-rich environment, producing wines that are light, fruity and low in tannin – was, by their own account, a complete swing in the dark. “We’d never made it, nor been taught anything about the process. I had some ideas and fundamentally wanted it to be the purest version possible – no shortcuts, no ‘partial’. We’re working with tiny batches so there’s no margin for error, and blending it away isn’t an option. Pretty stunned by the results, personally.” The whole-bunch pinot noir experiment at Kyneton Ridge had a similar energy. “It was just a niggling feeling, a missing piece of the puzzle. Gave it a go in 2024, and it turned out the first time we did it, the wine scored three trophies. Not bad.”

The winemaking philosophy across both labels is driven by quality rather than rules. “The more you learn about vineyards and winemaking, the more your knowledge is humbled,” they say. “We are entirely driven by quality, knowing that there are a thousand different decisions along the way to making a great wine, and the constant desire to figure out which are the right ones.” Oak, when used, is a tool rather than a feature. “It’s a long journey to understand cooperages, and no two are the same. And it doesn’t matter how well you look after old barrels – when they’re too old, they make wine look tired.” Beyond that, the house rule is flexibility. “It’s all about being flexible, rolling with the season, and letting each wine speak entirely for itself. That, and not letting the ego surpass the forces of nature and good chemistry.”

The ambition from here is specialisation rather than expansion – “the pursuit of purity of expression,” as they put it. “Creating lifestyle wines, and living the wine lifestyle.” With the vineyard improving each season, the contract business growing, and Harbinger ranging freely across Victorian terroir, the infrastructure for that pursuit is already well built.

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Lucas Blanck grew up at Domaine Paul Blanck in Alsace – one of that region’s most respected family estates – before a vintage in Australia in 2010 led to a life on the Mornington Peninsula instead. Kerri Greens, the label he runs with his wife Alyce, launched in 2015 and has grown from a single-vineyard chardonnay into a range spanning riesling, chardonnay, pinot noir, sauvignon blanc, rosé and a small clutch of aromatic and experimental wines. A grower-maker in the truest sense, Blanck leases and farms four vineyards across Red Hill South, Balnarring and Tuerong with organic practices across all sites (not certified) – and the project is deliberately counter-programmed to the region’s pinot noir and chardonnay dominance. Riesling is the true focus, made in an Alsatian idiom that has no real precedent on the Peninsula, and it is quietly reshaping what the region is capable of.

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Mornington Peninsula Victoria
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Lucas Blanck grew up at Domaine Paul Blanck in Alsace – one of that region’s most respected family estates – before a vintage in Australia in 2010 led to a life on the Mornington Peninsula instead. Kerri Greens, the label he runs with his wife Alyce, launched in 2015 and has grown from a single-vineyard chardonnay into a range spanning riesling, chardonnay, pinot noir, sauvignon blanc, rosé and a small clutch of aromatic and experimental wines. A grower-maker in the truest sense, Blanck leases and farms four vineyards across Red Hill South, Balnarring and Tuerong with organic practices across all sites (not certified) – and the project is deliberately counter-programmed to the region’s pinot noir and chardonnay dominance. Riesling is the true focus, made in an Alsatian idiom that has no real precedent on the Peninsula, and it is quietly reshaping what the region is capable of.

The path from Alsace to the Mornington Peninsula was never the plan. “Originally I always imagined making wine under my family estate in Alsace,” says Blanck. “But life had other plans – I moved to Australia, fell in love, and ended up building a life here.” The love in question is Alyce, who grew up on the Peninsula. After completing vintages at Domaine Zind-Humbrecht and Domaine Trimbach during his formal studies in Alsace, and a vintage in Bordeaux in the Côtes de Blaye, Blanck arrived in Australia in 2010 for a vintage with Quealy – one of the Peninsula’s most progressive producers. He stayed, became vineyard manager, and guided the Balnarring vineyard to certified organic status over the following years. By 2015, working the land he loved but yearning to put his own ideas into practice, he launched Kerri Greens alongside his role at Quealy. He stepped away from that position entirely in early 2023 to focus solely on the label.

The four vineyards Blanck farms are each at different stages of development, and each tells a different part of the Mornington Peninsula story. The Hickson Vineyard in Red Hill – where he began in 2013 – is a heritage two-acre block of P58 clone chardonnay planted in 1982, regenerated from lyre to VSP trellising and farmed without herbicides, systemic fungicides or insecticides, with sheep as natural mowers, annual cover crops and dry-grown vines. The Silverwood Vineyard in Balnarring, under management since 2016, sits in a localised rain shadow on poorer soils that push the vines harder, producing bolder, more powerful fruit. The Kayes Paddock in Red Hill South – taken on in 2024 – holds the old-vine riesling that is the source of the flagship Citrea, on an elevated, north-east facing site overlooking Western Port Bay, with a slower ripening season that builds flavour while holding freshness. And the Turners Vineyard in Tuerong, also added in 2024, is an entirely pinot noir site that contributes to the multi-vineyard Par Foi blend. “The wine is really made out in the field,” he says, “so the parcel or block we’re working with will shape the style more than anything I do in the winery.”

Across all sites, the organic (not certified) approach follows the same principles: no herbicides, no synthetic fertilisers, cover crops sown in every second row during spring to improve soil health, then mulched down in October to return organic matter to the soil. Most vineyards are dry-grown; where irrigation infrastructure exists, Blanck has chosen not to use it – a decision he stands by philosophically, even if practically it has taught him a hard lesson. “Don’t plant vineyards without irrigation, even in regions that get reasonable rainfall,” he says. The Silverwood site has been progressively converted to arch cane pruning – a technique from Blanck’s Alsatian background where the cane is bent into an arch along the trellis wire, distributing growth more evenly along its length. “Arch pruning opens the canopy, giving better airflow and more balanced fruit distribution along the cane,” he says. “It tends to produce slightly smaller bunches and a more even ripening pattern, which helps with both quality and disease pressure. In the wines, that translates to cleaner fruit expression and better balance, particularly with aromatic varieties.” At Kayes, the focus has been on restoring vine balance after years of conventional high-yield farming – shorter canes, fewer large cuts, gentler practices that allow the old dry-grown vines to express themselves properly rather than pushing volume. “These old dry-grown vines are now being nurtured with greater care,” he says. “We have adjusted pruning to restore vine balance and unlock the vineyard’s full potential for high-quality Riesling.”

In the winery, Alsatian instincts are equally present. Old oak – barrels that have been used enough times to no longer contribute flavour – is preferred for riesling, adding gentle texture and integration without masking the variety’s natural aromatic profile. Sulphur additions are kept low, averaging 35 to 40mg/L total, rarely exceeding 50. No acid additions in most cases. No fining. Generally no filtration. “Our philosophy is minimal intervention both in the vineyard and the winery,” says Blanck. “The aim is to let the fruit express itself while still making wines that are clean, stable and enjoyable to drink.” The Peninsula’s maritime climate – surrounded by Port Phillip Bay, Western Port and Bass Strait – means picking windows can close faster than expected, and the fresher style Blanck is after can be lost if harvest is delayed. “You often have to make the call earlier than you might ideally want to, otherwise the style can shift away from the fresher profile we aim for,” he says. “It requires a lot of constant observation in the vineyard and being ready to act when the timing is right.” In warmer years, canopy management adapts accordingly – more cover retained to protect against sunburn; in cooler years, the canopy opened earlier to encourage airflow. The golden rule above all of it: “Don’t be lazy. If something needs to be done, do it. If a wine needs attention, act quickly rather than waiting and hoping it fixes itself. Anticipation is always better than reaction.”

The ambition from here is to stay Peninsula-focused and push further into Alsatian varieties – more riesling, and ideally gewürztraminer and pinot blanc if the right sites present themselves. “There will likely be a stronger focus on Alsatian varieties, particularly Riesling,” he says, “and hopefully Gewürztraminer and Pinot Blanc if we can find the right sites. The goal is gradual growth while refining both the viticulture and the expression of these varieties in the region.” For a winemaker who could have inherited one of Alsace’s great estates and chose instead to build something from scratch on the other side of the world, the direction is clear. “Honestly, it’s instinct – it’s in the blood,” he says. “I grew up around vineyards and winemaking, watching my father work with his own vision. That naturally shapes the way you approach things.” He is, by his own admission, most happy on his tractor in the vineyard. Everything else follows from that.

2021 Dal Zotto ‘L’Immigrante’ Barbera King Valley

Cherries, raspberries and plums up front, with savoury notes of cured meat, cinnamon and autumn leaves running through. The palate is bright and a little tart, all strawberry and fine, silky tannin, finishing long and savoury. Light on its feet, but with real presence.

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