Vininspo! podcast

This is intended as a video. Watch it on my Vininspo! Substack: https://edmerrison.substack.com/ Follow me on Instagram: @vininspo.wine After 550-plus Austrian wines over four days, my first impulse was to share some highlights with you. And there were many. It was fun, too. I mean, there were 300-odd of us from 30 countries, and we all liked wine. But then I had that feeling that I’d been somewhe...

I didn’t realise how off-the-beaten path the Osicka family vineyard was until I took the beaten path out of Heathcote and went off it for a considerable time before rolling into this vine-strewn refuge in the bush. The whole thing lulled me into profound contemplation: the sacred vault-like feel of the cellar, the lilting cadence of Simon’s voice, the subtle sustained notes of these wines. A bobbi...

David Bicknell’s unceremonious axing from Oakridge came as something of a bombshell. The Yarra Valley estate’s owner, Endeavour Group, had announced a couple of months previously that it was selling up. But it seemed improbable that the man who’d led it for a quarter of a century and put it on the map as a trophy magnet for site-specific, cool-climate wines would be tipped out. Given his reputatio...

Kelby James Russell had the air of the whizzkid about him when I first met him, and that’s clearly what he was. It was Melbourne, 2015. Riesling Downunder, a now-defunct triennial trade event, had rolled into town. With it came winemakers from Clare, Eden Valley, Great Southern and Canberra. A couple of Alsatians were there, and Germanophones aplenty from the Mosel, Rhine and Danube. And among the...

For a long time, I’ve been intrigued by Eugene Qiao’s brain—one I’ve picked on several occasions, not least for a reality check and a unique perspective on Italian and Australian wine culture. A Chinese student destined, seemingly inevitably, for medical career, somehow turned up in Barolo and entered the fold of a family where thinking differently is the norm. This conversation with Eugene makes...

Subscribe to this Substack and follow on Instagram so you never miss a story! Liam McElhinney’s astonishing show-circuit success at Lowestoft once seemed to me like lightning from a blue sky. The land of the long white cloud had seen it all before—twice over—but I was oblivious. The irreverent, self-effacing bloke I met during the Covid years, who spun a tragicomic tale of lording it up in a Tassi...

Sometimes it’s easy to confuse classicism with conservatism. On the face of it, 1798-founded Weingut A. Christmann seems to tick both boxes. Urbane 7th-generation patriarch Steffen Christmann read law at Heidelberg and presides over the VDP group of revered growers. The estate’s super-elegant wines grow exclusively on sites classified as premier and grand cru, and their crisp, sharp labels speak e...

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 an...

Like content like this? Get it straight to your inbox by subscribing to my Substack . Follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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...

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 to...

Support the show and don't miss an episode by subscribing to my Substack: edmerrison.substack.com and follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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 thi...

Follow and subscribe to this show and written content on Substack ; see what's happening on Instagram: @vininspo.wine . 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 gr...

Subscribe to edmerrison.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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 fur...

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 breathtaki...

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 inevitabl...

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 b...

Get every Vininspo! episode as soon as it drops on Substack: edmerrison.substack.com ; follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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 inter...

Get all these stories as soon as they drop bt subscribing to ed.merrison.substack.com Follow on Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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 an...

Don't miss an episode! Subscribe on Substack Instagram: @vininspo.wine 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...

“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 P...

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 o...

Giuseppe Vaira is one of those tireless torchbearers whose faith in his region is matched by an exemplary work ethic, the uniformly beautiful result s 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 assign...

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...

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...

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 t...