The Cellar Door Podcast

Send us Fan Mail In 1901 a train steamed into Coonawarra and Bill Redman stepped off onto the station platform. Bill took a job at John Riddoch’s winery and thus the Redman family established itself in the Coonawarra region. I recently had the honour and privilege of sitting down with 4th generation Redman, Dan, who is the wine maker for Redman wines. The Redman family champion the Coonawarra regi...

Send us Fan Mail Nick Brown tells me that he is nurturing wines in barrel that he will never see bottled – this is to ensure the success of their long-term vision of quality. This to me is wine at its best. There is an element of the supernatural, a counterintuitive sacrifice seen through a genuine willingness to contribute to something larger than oneself with a complete understanding that someon...

Send us Fan Mail The term young gun is usually used to describe a young person who exhibits enormous potential early and looks set on actualising it. It also describes the philosophy underpinning the Australian Young Gun program, a program designed to harness and channel the potential of the youngest, brightest and best of the Aussie wine scene. Justin Folloso, originally from Tassie and full of p...

Send us Fan Mail Spoiled again, Lindsay and I start with a stunning Hunter Chardonnay from the 5 star Elbourne winery in Pokolbin, we then move onto a fascinating Clare Valley mouvedre from Kilikanoon, the first Clare mouvedre for me. To finish, Lindsay pulls out a Barolo from a small and particular producer evidently doing very big things..... Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Small scale wine making is vital for its contributions to diversity, sustainability, craftsmanship, and community support in the wine industry. It can be argued that It offers a more intimate and personalised experience for wine enthusiasts while helping to maintain the cultural richness and heritage associated with winemaking. Small wineries are the hidden gems of the wine world,...

Send us Fan Mail Ray Costanzo and Golden Grove are a wine enthusiast’s dream. Ray, born and raised in the emerging Granite Belt region, made it his mission, after working vintages all over the world, to show case the Granite Belt's very best, capitalising on one of Australia’s most exciting emerging regions. After all, when you have a winemaker as passionate, focused and innovative as Ray Cos...

Send us Fan Mail Lindsay and I are blown away by a Rutherglen Prosecco, courtesy of Rutherglen pioneers Cofield, Lindsay serves up a classic Alsatian blend and we finish with the magic of the cool climate queen, Tillie J's Langhorne Creek Grenache  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail I was lucky enough to sit down with Jill Upton, host of the Wine Australia Show and Brand Manager for Accolade. Jill’s relationship with wine was galvanised in her 20’s when she got her hands on a bottle of Hill of Grace. Jill knew soon after that this wine thing was going to be a significant force in her life. Jill now hosts the flagship podcast in Australia and is a chief ambass...

Send us Fan Mail It seems like just yesterday I met the incredible Tillie Johnston. the Yarra Valley girl, who traversed the cool climate wine trail before setting up shop, for at least the present, back home in the Yarra Valley. Tillie has been tirelessly working to consolidate her success and the fruits of the harvest are looking good, with Tillie recently winning the People’s Choice Award at th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Tasting the Wright Way, where I sit down with my good mate and ultimate wine man Lindsay Wright to compare our value for money finds – here we taste, compare, learn and laugh – our mission being to locate the best value for money propositions in our local wine market. These shorter snippets are beyond fun to produce, and we hope you enjoy listening to them! Welcome to T...

Send us Fan Mail Wes Hagen is an icon of the modern US Wine scene. The flame was lit young for Wes, being known as the wine guy around university campus due to his access to his father’s wine cellar, from which all his friends benefited. It looks like Wes was always destined for greatness, and after one thing led to another he was voted as one of the most influential wine makers in the US, in addi...

Send us Fan Mail The Clare Valley has always been one of my favourite Australian wine regions. The incredible diversity of the place, from producing some of the world’s best Riesling, to also producing some of the world’s best reds – after all, if you haven’t yet been mesmerised by Clare Valley Shiraz you really need to sort that out – but there is a magic to the place, and I have always wondered...

Send us Fan Mail I hate to sounds cliché but I think I have met the Anthony Bourdain of the wine world – Vince Anter is a premier wine educator – when he decided to put an emphasis on place, he decided that the best way to do that was to take you right there – to the place where the wine comes from – be it, Province, Bordeaux, Piedmont, Rias Bijas – Vince thought – why not give people the michelin...

Send us Fan Mail Stella Bella Wines in Margaret River. I remember the first thing I noticed when I came across the winery was the name – a beautiful name, but quite unique especially when grouped with the associated and equally as quirky labels of Suckfizzle, Luminosa and Skuttlebutt – all magnificent labels crafted by head winemaker Luke Jolliffe. Now, Luke was born in South Australia’s Clare Val...

Send us Fan Mail There was a time when wine maker super star Sarah Crowe wasn’t sure that she was going to be a wine maker. Growing up as a beach loving girl in Wollongong, she studied horticulture with the thoughts of opening her own gardening business. However, life had other plans and planted the possibility in Sarah’s mind that a vineyard could hold more than just an arena to satisfy her passi...

Send us Fan Mail It’s interesting to think that once upon a time, multi-award-winning Australian author Max Allen nervously submitted his first article hoping it would be published. It was published. The magazine actually liked it – so they asked Max to write another one. And another one. And another one. Anyone who has ever read the books, articles and other works of Max Allen more or less knows...

Send us Fan Mail The Hunter Valley, some three hours’ drive north of Sydney, is the spiritual home of wine in Australia. It is where the first Australian vineyards were planted. With a relatively warm climate, mitigated somewhat by humidity and some maritime influence, it boasts world class and unique expressions of many varietals particularly Chardonnay, Shiraz and Semillon. Andrew Thomas is a gu...

Send us Fan Mail Nestled in a very inconspicuous section of Brisbane’s Albion is a treasure adding to the growing prowess of the Brisbane, cultural, culinary and wine scene. Here lies Wineism, owned and curated by sommelier extraordinaire Ian Trinkle whose reputation for creativity and selection precedes him. Ian, who heralds originally from Philadelphia in the USA, spent his early days watching h...

Send us Fan Mail Lindsay Wright walked into a wine store looking for a job when he was 20. He doesn’t boast enormous wine pedigree, though he has researched that his family has heritage stretching back to the Geelong and far off Champagne of many years ago – so it may very well be in his DNA. However, when Lindsay walked into that wine store on that fateful day, something happened, and it changed...

Send us Fan Mail The wine world is full of hidden treasures - hidden wineries that you stumble across and have a great experience with, both tasting the wines and meeting the people. But many of these hidden gems lack the financial backing to purchase recognition – and yes, for the most part, unless you are extremely lucky, you must purchase recognition. Unfortunately, marketing costs are quite st...

Send us Fan Mail I think the first ever social media platform I recall hearing about was Myspace. Can’t ever say I got amongst that one when I was at school, but in the blink of an eye, its out with the old and in with Facebook. And it was all Facebook. For a long time. Until it wasn’t – and then it was Twitter, Pintrest Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok – you get the picture – this world ditches an...

Send us Fan Mail The Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria’s Geelong region is one of Australia’s magical maritime subregions. Together with the Mornington Peninsula to the southeast it separates Port Phillip Bay from the Bass Strait. Here wine makers craft exceptional pinot noir, shiraz and Chardonnay and capitalise and the regions ancient soils. Now it would be a might task to find someone who knows B...

Send us Fan Mail The wine market is a buzzing production line of activity, from the vignerons and wine makers on one end, through to the consumers on the other end, all teaming together like a complex echo system to keep the world of wine pulsing and spinning around. Now an integral and complex part of this process is guiding consumer choice. This goes very much to upholding the integrity of the w...

Send us Fan Mail Queensland’s Granite Belt. It’s one of Australia’s exciting emerging wines scenes, possessing a unique beauty and identity which expresses itself through the region’s wines. As the region’s name suggests, the large granite slabs and boulders that dot the scenic landscape and the granite-based soils, paired with the Granite Belt’s surprising altitude, form a distinctive terroir tha...

Send us Fan Mail I was fortunate enough to cut my teeth on some of Australia’s Big Reds. The first wines I remember tasting were from my dad’s collection of Barossa Shiraz or it could have also been Coonawarra or Margaret River Cabernet. We were kind of spoilt from a young age in my family when it came to wine, and we didn’t really have an appreciation for the magic we were allowed to play with. T...