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In any craft, the more experienced you become and the more effort you put in, the better your results will be. Well, that’s the hope. Andre Bondar is experiencing this progression firsthand. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Andre, let’s just say he’s a thinking person’s wine guy. He’s not one for bravado, soundbites, or hyperbole. Instead, you’ll find a driven and deeply knowledgeable winegrower intensely focused on improving the health of his vineyard’s soils and, henceforth, the expression of its wines.

For those new to this producer, the wines come from an Anjou-based micro-négoce started by Philippe Germain with his brother, Thierry Germain (of Roches Neuves fame), acting as a consultant. Thierry is no longer involved with the project, though the wines have not missed a beat. With Phillippe Germain’s Château de la Roulerie vineyards now contributing the lion’s share of the fruit, each vintage sees a further layer of quality added to wines that showcase the vibrant, earth-to-glass Germain style.

We don’t think it’s news that the 2022 vintage was a dream year for Garagiste. Growing conditions were nigh-on perfect—a long, slow and moderate season that allowed for ideal flavour development and precise harvesting. And, even if volumes have been shot to pieces by the La Niña pattern, the quality has been, to quote the man himself, “bloody spectacular”.

Despite mourning the loss of our luggage, there were worse places to be stranded than in Saumur. Unable to progress on our journey, we called on the help of Google Maps and Guiberteau’s right-hand man and self-proclaimed tractoriste, Brendan Stater-West, to help us locate a good portion of this grower’s vineyards. A dropped pin or three later and we were on the way to see the vineyards central to this grower’s rise to stardom.

New releases from Murdoch Hill, Quealy, Toolangi, Laughing Jack and Blind Corner.

The small but perfectly formed 2021 vintage provided the impetus to act on a years-long desire to add a ‘Villages’ Marlborough Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to their range. From a year when yields were so miserly, Corofin could not feasibly make the usual range of single-vineyard wines, and so 2021 marks the first release of its Marlborough blends. These wines bring another layer to an already impressive range of wines and importantly, a little more volume to Corofin—and its customers, who have been yearning for more!

From grapes harvested at least two weeks later than in 2020, you’ll find ample, silky density buoyed by moderate alcohols and a surge of energy that comes from a lighter place than the three preceding vintages. And in contrast with those years, 2021’s flavours shimmy from a more exotic spectrum in the direction of citrus, crystalline white fruit and herbal nuances. The notes from the wine press and our tastings, all point to a don’t-miss year from a Rheingau great.

Drum roll, please. Following a two-vintage hiatus, the crown jewels in the Spinifex portfolio—La Maline and Indigene—are back, and in this release, they join the new Moppa Shiraz and the Inaugural Sol Solice Grenache. The 2021s are a welcome return, each showcasing Schell’s consummate ability to harness and channel raw Barossa power into wines of sleek charm, perfume and length.

The legacy of a warm and dry vintage, the 2020 Chenins are stony, ripe and supple, with intense, well-balanced palates alongside graceful, textured length. Following our tasting here last year, we have shipped the domaine’s deliciously vibrant Saumur Brut and its first red wine, a 2021 Saumur Rouge, which is bouncing with red-fruited energy and refreshment.

While you will hear of some producers in France struggling to find balance in 2021, quite the opposite was the case at Domaine Weinbach. Eddy Faller puts 2021 up there as one of his family’s finest in the last 20 years and notes the domaine has not seen the same confluence of ripeness and acidity since 2010. It’s a match made in heaven—or Kayserberg, in this instance... 

2022 was quite a year for Luke Lambert and Rosalind Hall. Both quit their day jobs—Luke as a consultant winemaker in the Yarra Valley and Rosalind as a music teacher in Melbourne—to focus exclusively on their Glenburn farm (Sparkletown) and Lambert Wines. They also said goodbye to Tibooburra, instead switching their base camp to one of the Yarra Valley’s most distinctive and meticulously managed vineyards. 

Today we offer a relatively substantial allocation of this grower’s sought-after wines. We mentioned last year that due to three low-yielding vintages, to manage his inventory, Goisot has been holding back a portion of his annual allocations to re-offer the following year. While we are not quite in Benjamin Leroux territory, we can now offer over twenty wines spread across three exciting years.