Over the last few months I have heard bits and pieces about a new/old form of winemaking. A hippy style of natural wine, unfiltered (winemakers sometimes use eggs or other chemicals to filter and fine the wine), with no added chemicals like sulphur or other preservatives. This eliminated unnecessary winemaking techniques giving the drinker wine in its rawest possible form.

The thing is that I do like the idea of winemaking, the alchemy, the process and the end result. But the idea of just drinking grape juice seemed shallow; hollow of its full potential. Call me elitist, but I didn’t think I would be excited by the natural movement. This was until I meet Tom Shobrooke.

Last week, this young South Australian strolled into Cavallero, with a lot of passion for this movement and a 23 litre demijohn of his drop, The Voice of the People. This large glass demijohn now sits atop our bar.

As a self-confessed Italophile Tom stipulated that the wine was only to be served from tumblers, so you won’t be seeing any fancy wine glasses around this drop.

At $7.50 a tumbler we think it’s a steal.  Particularly for such an interesting wine.

He is quite a character and so is his wine, so we’ll let you know when Tom is next back in town and hopefully you can meet this Barosss Valley hillbilly.

In the meantime, swing past and give it a try - as you can see we’ve got a bit to get through.

Wine maker Andrew Marks has been a friend of mine and Robs for a long time. He is part of a group of young winemakers whose wine label, The Wanderer, has grown and evolved in a similar manner to our business. Andrew is a truly exciting winemaker as well as a really nice guy, so we are happy to introduce to you El Wanderer. 

We could only get a few bottles of this rather expensive wine (by our standards). Bottles sit on our list at $92, a little pricey we know. But with Andrew’s minimalist handling principles used when making this wine, we think it’s well worth every penny. The grapes were had picked early in the morning. They were de-stemmed, not crushed and left to soak cold for a week. Maceration of the fermentation was as soft as possible to preserve the fruit and build texture without extraction of excessive tannin. At the completion of fermentation the wine was run into 1 year old French barriques and left on lees for one year until bottling. This may seem like a lot of wine terminology, but it translates into a terrific wine.

El Wanderer is a wine that speaks of the wine region in Spain, Emporda. It is boldly aromatic yet medium bodied. It has great texture and real character, dark fruits and hints of the sea with wafting rustic notes.

Cavallero also holds stock of The Wanderer 2008 ‘Upper Yarra’ Pinot Noir and the 2008 Shiraz. Both are great locally produced wines.