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Iain Riggs made 38 vintages as Brokenwood's chief winemaker. In 2024, Stuart Hordern became only the second person to take on the role. So how do you honour more than half a century of legacy while still making it your own?

Stuart grew up on a mixed farm in the Upper Hunter, hosing out grape bins over the school holidays while his dad built the Horseshoe Vineyard from nothing. From there it was ag college in Orange, winemaking in Adelaide under the generous eye of Dean Hewitson, vintages in south west France and Sonoma, and a stint at Tyrrell's before a game of rugby led him to Brokenwood in 2009. Seventeen years later, he's running the place.

And 2026 has been some year. A third Hunter Valley Winemaker of the Year, on the same night his father was named a living legend of the Hunter wine industry, and Brokenwood crowned Halliday Winery of the Year. Stuart is quick to share the credit with everyone from the vineyard crew to the finance team.

Along the way we taste four wines that tell the Brokenwood story. A zippy 2025 Hunter Valley Semillon that's pretty much a breakfast wine, the 2019 ILR Reserve Semillon named after Riggsy and showing exactly what patience does to Hunter Semillon, the 2023 Hunter Valley Shiraz, and the 2024 Graveyard Shiraz, one of only three Shiraz in the country to score 99 points from Halliday this year. You'll also hear how the Graveyard vineyard got its name (no bodies, just grapes), how three Sydney wine lovers started Brokenwood as a weekend hobby in 1970, and why the team went chasing cooler climate Chardonnay in Beechworth.

The biggest lesson running through it all comes from Riggsy: you can't make great wine if you only ever taste your own, and you never settle for OK. Stuart also makes the case for New South Wales as one of Australia's most underrated wine states, ahead of NSW Wine Month and Sydney Cellar Door this November.

It's a warm, honest chat about legacy, family and the Hunter Valley, and why the best way to honour what came before is to keep making it a little bit better every year.

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What's the Hunter Valley wine that won you over? Drop it in the comments 👇

Go check out Brokenwood: https://www.brokenwood.com.au/ and Sydney Cellar Door tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/sydney-cellar-door

See what's on at NSW Wine Month: https://thewinedup.com.au/events-nsw-wine-month

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We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷

YouTube Chapters

00:00 Taking the Reins of a Hunter Valley Legacy

00:30 The Wined Up Ice Breaker Questions

07:41 A Young Semillon Made for Breakfast

10:22 From an Upper Hunter Farm to Brokenwood

15:13 Riggsy, the ILR and the Art of Ageing

25:53 One Big Night for Father and Son

28:18 The 2023 Shiraz and How Graveyard Got Its Name

33:04 Three Sydney Wine Lovers and a Weekend Hobby

36:49 Why Brokenwood Went Looking for Cooler Chardonnay

40:39 Tasting the 99 Point Graveyard Shiraz

43:28 Is New South Wales Wine Underrated?

47:13 The Legacy He Wants to Leave

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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Ten glasses, one blind tasting, and a question that's been quietly dividing Australian wine for years: are we still trying to make Burgundy, or have we finally found our own voice with Pinot Noir?

On this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, Trent sits down with returning guest Marc Malouf of iHeartWine for a genuine celebration of Pinot Noir, not a ranking exercise. They kick off with a round of Pinot specific icebreakers, including the 2012 Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny that Marc calls the most gorgeous Pinot of his life, and a dinner with United Cellars that ran through nine vintages of Mascarello Monprivato Barolo.

From there the conversation gets into the real substance. Marc is honest that Australian Pinot doesn't quite reach the heights of Shiraz or Chardonnay yet, but argues that isn't really the point. Where Burgundy has had centuries to map its soils down to the individual row, Australia is still working it out, and Marc makes the case that chasing a Burgundian blueprint might be the wrong goal altogether. Sites like the Yarra Valley grow half a dozen varieties side by side, which makes the kind of granular classification Burgundy is famous for a genuinely different challenge here.

Then comes the main event: ten Pinot Noirs poured blind, head to head across two glasses at a time, with the loser pushed out and replaced until only a favourite remains. Whole bunch versus destemmed, carbonic maceration, oak tannin versus stem tannin, and the way colour gives away a wine's story all come up as Trent and Marc work through bracket after bracket, laughing at how genuinely hard it is to choose between wines that are all, in their words, unfairly good.

The reveal at the end is the twist. The wine that very nearly won the whole tasting turns out to cost around $60, a reminder that some of the best Pinot in the country doesn't need to cost a bomb. Marc also hands over a genuine gateway recommendation for anyone new to the variety: an independent Geelong producer punching well above its price point.

It's an honest, occasionally chaotic and thoroughly enjoyable look at where Australian Pinot Noir actually stands right now, and why that might be something worth celebrating rather than comparing.

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Which Australian Pinot region do you think deserves more attention? Drop it in the comments 👇

Go check out Marc's site: https://iheartwine.com.au/ 

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YouTube Chapters

00:00  How Good Is Australian Pinot, Really?

01:04  The Wined Up Ice Breaker Questions

04:49  Fun Facts Even Wine Lovers Miss About Pinot

07:12  Marc's Favourite Australian Producers

08:39  Chasing Burgundy Without the Centuries of History

13:29  Ten Wines, One Blind Tasting Begins

20:37  A New Bracket and a Total Change of Personality

39:10  The Reveal and a Surprise Under $60

41:17  Final Reflections and Advice for New Pinot Drinkers

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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Mark Dietz grew up with over 30,000 bottles of wine around him. The question this conversation keeps circling back to is a simple one: how do you step out of a cellar like that and go build something entirely your own? 

Dietz is the co-owner of Small Island Wines, a boutique, cool-climate Tasmanian producer he runs with his business partner James Broinowski, focused on Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. But his path there wasn't a straight line. He started out chasing marine biology, half-convinced he'd become a reconstructive surgeon for shark attack victims, until the size of an actual great white changed his mind. What put him on the wine path instead was a blind tasting at Stellenbosch's Chocolate Block, where he called the varietal, the vintage and the hemisphere without really trying, and someone told him he had a knack for it. 

He talks candidly about growing up inside the wine world his father Rudi built at Stuyvesant's House, the family's Sydney institution with cases stacked at home, suitcases coming back from holidays loaded with Domaine Romanée-Conti, and a cellar that runs into the tens of thousands of bottles. It shaped his palate long before he ever touched a barrel, and he's honest about what he took from it and what he deliberately chose to do differently. 

The Small Island story itself starts almost by accident: one dinner at Golden Century, one taste of James's riesling and pinot, and a phone call that same night. What followed was a partnership built on cleaning things up — dropping the varieties that didn't fit, backing a handful of vineyard sites they trust completely, and letting Tasmania's cool climate do the talking. 

Along the way there's a blind chardonnay flight where Mark misreads his own wine as European (against a 2015 Bernard Huber Germanic chardonnay and a 99-point Tolpuddle), a shared birth-vintage 1981 Wolf Blass with a genuinely strange origin story, and two properly good anecdotes of a magnum of Rockford's Home Block that turned a room full of non-wine-drinkers into collectors, and a $14 guess on a wine worth considerably more than that. 

It's a conversation about legacy, about building your own name next to a very large one, and about why the story behind a bottle can matter as much as what's in the glass. 

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If you inherited a cellar like this, what would you open first? Drop it in the comments 👇 

Go check out Small Island Wines: https://smallislandwines.com/ 

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#markdietz #smallislandwines #tasmanianwine #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwetrywelearnweconnect 

We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷 

YouTube Chapters 

00:00 Growing Up Inside a Legendary Wine Cellar 

01:37 Rapid-Fire Confessions and a $20K Mistake 

07:39 Pouring a Hot-Off-the-Press Riesling 

10:19 From Marine Biology to a Life in Wine 

15:54 What Stuyvesant's House Taught Him About Moderation 

16:59 How a Golden Century Dinner Led to Small Island 

20:19 A Blind Chardonnay Tasting With a Twist 

26:36 Streamlining the Range and Backing the Right Vineyards 

36:10 Saltwater vs Cold River: Comparing the Pinots 

41:45 Why Winemaking Isn't All Sunshine and Roses 

55:39 A Birth-Vintage Time Capsule and Decades of History 

1:04:03 The Magnum Story, a $14 Gaja, and What's Next 

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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Mark Best doesn't care what people say about him. He never really has. And oddly, that's the throughline of one of the most layered conversations we've recorded for The Wined Up Podcast. 

Best built his reputation the hard way at Marque, seventeen years of three-hat, top-50 cooking that, by his own account, took more than it gave back. He talks candidly about closing those doors in 2016 by the skin of his teeth, about losing a hat and losing financial viability in the same breath, and about how long it actually took to work out who he was as a chef once the accolades stopped defining him. 

Ten years on, he's running Infinity, high above Sydney in the Tower, and he's made a call most restaurateurs wouldn't touch: an entirely Australian wine list. No safety net of international labels, no champagne carve-out. Sommeliers pushed back. One told him the concept was weak. Mark Best leaned into the friction anyway, and the diners backed him. 

Along the way there's a tasting of the Chalou “Quixotic” Pinot Noir, made by Nadia Wallington and her husband Steve in a genuinely symbiotic vineyard-and-winery partnership, paired with Infinity's dry-aged, chargrilled coral trout. There's a proper conversation about mentoring the generation of chefs who came through Mark's tiny kitchen, Dan Hong and Victor Liong among them, and what he actually looks for in people. And there's an unfiltered take on where Sydney's dining scene is heading, on cultural cringe, on old vines and new heads, and on why he'd rather do good work quietly than chase anyone's approval. 

It's honest, occasionally profane, and full of the kind of hard-won perspective you only get from someone who's actually lived through the highs and the wreckage of hospitality. If you care about Australian wine, Australian food, or what it actually takes to build and rebuild a career in this industry. 

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What would it take for you to walk away from something you'd built? Drop it in the comments 👇 

Go check out Infinity: https://infinitysydneytower.com.au/ and Chalou: https://www.chalouwines.com.au/ 

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 Follow us on Instagram @the.wined.up, @infinitysydneytower, @chalouwines and @markbest 

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#markbest #infinitysydney #chalouwines #drinkaustralian #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwetrywelearnweconnect 

We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷 

YouTube Chapters 

00:00 Three Hats, One Restless Chef 

01:00 The Wined Up Ice Breaker Questions 

07:05 Portraits, Truth and a Craftsman, Not an Artist 

09:34 Wheat Country, No Chefs, No Celebrity 

11:37 The Night the Lightning Struck 

13:10 What Mark Best Cuisine Actually Means 

16:09 Chasing the Hats and the Weight of Getting There 

19:32 Closing the Doors on Marque 

20:57 Stepping Into Infinity and the All-Australian Bet 

28:55 The Chalou, the Coral Trout and Why Customers Bought In 

39:51 Passing It Down: Mentoring the Next Generation 

45:47 Why Mark Best Doesn't Chase Approval 

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, Trent sits down with Ches Cook from Five Way Cellars, the independent Paddington wine store his parents Ian and Prue opened in 1987 after Ian came home from a year in Europe wanting to bring that world of wine back to Sydney. Ches has now worked there for half his life, and he takes us through what's changed, and what hasn't, across nearly forty years of European-focused wine retail. 

The chat moves from a standout cellar visit in the Mosel and an unopened birthday bottle of Côte-Rôtie, through to the philosophy that actually keeps a small shop full of loyal customers: knowing people, being straight with them, and never pretending to love a bottle you don't. Ches breaks down why a higher price tag doesn't mean better wine, what a genuine beginner should actually look for on a label, and the seven types of wine drinker he sees walk through the door, tosser included. 

There's a proper detour into a mega-steep, volcanic Grand Cru in Alsace that almost nobody wants to farm, a case for Beechworth as Australia's best-kept Nebbiolo secret, and an honest read on where Burgundy's pricing might be heading. As Ian approaches 70 and the next generation starts taking the reins, Ches reflects on what he's learned from watching his dad build trust with an entire city, one recommendation at a time. 

It all circles back to that Grange. Wine, Ches argues, isn't something to hoard for bragging rights, it's something to open with the people who matter. Whether you're just starting out or you've already got a cellar full of Shiraz and only want Pinot, there's something here for you. 

👉 Subscribe to @thewinedup and tell us below: 

What's sitting in your cellar that you're waiting too long to open? Drop it in the comments 👇 

Go check out fivewaycellars.com.au 

YouTube Chapters 

00:00 Intro 

01:18 The Wined Up Ice Breaker Questions 

11:01 What Actually Is Five Way Cellars 

17:28 The Real Difference Is Connection 

20:37 The Grand Cru Almost No One Wants to Farm 

24:01 Building Trust One Bottle at a Time 

30:43 The Biggest Mistake Wine Buyers Make 

33:04 A Beginner's Guide to Buying Better Wine 

37:31 The Seven Types of Wine Drinker 

46:01 Beechworth: Australia's Nebbiolo Secret 

48:04 Rapid-Fire This or That 

50:58 What Excites (and Worries) Ches 

53:57 Why You Never Sell the Grange 

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#fivewaycellars #paddington #sydneywine #independentbottleshop #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwelearnweconnect 

We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We Connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷 

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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What happens when you take a winemaker who never planned to work in alcohol-free wine, and hand him the job of making it actually taste like wine?

Aaron Milne fell into it almost by accident. A winery job during his studies happened to be run by the same people leading Australia's zero-alcohol scene, and a "one year, just to learn it" detour turned into a career. In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, Trent sits down with Aaron, winemaker for Eden Vale, to pull apart what actually happens when you strip the alcohol out of wine, and why it's so much harder than it sounds.

Aaron walks through the process, from the early days of simply boiling off the alcohol, to vacuum distillation, spinning cone columns, and now single-pass equipment that separates the essence, removes the alcohol and returns the flavour. But the technical side is only half the story. Alcohol carries weight, sweetness and length on the palate, and once it's gone, a wine can turn "fossil dry" almost overnight. Reds are the real test: strip the alcohol from a Cabernet and the tannins and colour compounds that depended on it start to fall apart, which is why Eden Vale's Coonawarra Cabernet is described as the Everest of the whole project.

The conversation also gets into the culture around no and low alcohol wine: why traditional wine drinkers have been resistant, the idea of "vinosity" as the actual goal, and the rise of the "zebra drinker" -- people who move between full-strength and zero wine in the same session rather than choosing one camp for good. Aaron also touches on where the category is heading, including the mid-strength range he thinks holds the most promise over the next five to ten years.

It's an honest, occasionally very funny look at one of the more overlooked corners of the Australian wine industry, and what it actually takes to make something that isn't wine taste like it belongs at the table with food anyway.

Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, SBS and Cabernet all make an appearance, alongside a story about a 98 Grange, a fire drum, and Snoop Dogg.

👉 Subscribe to @thewinedup and tell us below:

What's your take -- is alcohol-free wine a genuine alternative, or does wine need the alcohol to be wine? Drop it in the comments 👇

Go check out edenvalle.com.au

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We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷

## YouTube Chapters

00:00 Can Wine Still Be Wine Without the Alcohol?

0:56 Grange, Snoop Dogg and the Icebreaker Questions

5:59 How Aaron Fell Into Winemaking by Accident

8:03 Ending Up at the Frontier of Alcohol-Free Wine

10:33 Why Eden Vale Exists in the First Place

12:58 From Boiling It Out to Vacuum Distillation

16:12 The Real Fight Is Replacing What Alcohol Does

24:09 The Expensive Mistakes Along the Way

25:48 Why Whites Are Easy and Reds Are Brutal

32:53 Chasing Something Called "Vinosity"

36:14 The Rise of the Zebra Drinker

44:03 Taking On the Everest of Zero-Alcohol Wine

50:35 Where Low and No Alcohol Wine Is Headed Next

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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A three hectare Brussels sprout farm on a hill in the Adelaide Hills doesn't sound like the start of one of Australia's most respected Pinot Noir stories. But that's exactly where Ashton Hills began.

In this episode of **The Wined Up Podcast**, Trent sits down with Liam Van Pelt, the winemaker now carrying on the legacy Stephen George built over more than 40 years in the Piccadilly Valley. Liam's own path to Ashton Hills was anything but planned. A Glenelg kid with no wine background, he worked his way through hospitality, wine school, a vintage in Italy, Jeff Grosset's cellar in the Clare Valley, Chapel Hill in McLaren Vale, and a wild stint with Andrew Thomas in the Hunter Valley, before a casual vintage role and a bit of serendipity landed him alongside Stephen. What followed was a letter from Stephen to the CEO of Wirra Wirra that Liam still describes as one of the most emotional moments of his career, handing him a role, and a legacy, that didn't exist yet.

The conversation moves through the story of how Ashton Hills got its name, why Stephen trialled 27 different clones of Pinot Noir on one tiny patch of dirt over four decades, and what it's like to inherit that kind of obsession. Liam and Trent taste through the range together, from the 2025 Piccadilly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir through to the two single vineyard wines, Woods Hill and Bow House, sourced two kilometres apart and showing almost nothing in common, right up to the flagship 2025 Estate Pinot Noir grown on Stephen's original site.

Along the way, Liam talks candidly about the pressure of protecting someone else's life's work, the balance between honouring Stephen's philosophy and finding his own voice, the backing that's let Ashton Hills invest in better fruit and new vineyards for the future, and where he sees the winery heading over the next decade.

It's a conversation about legacy, trust, patience, and what it really takes to keep a 40 year old vision alive without losing it.

If you love Pinot Noir, cool climate wine, or stories about people stepping into someone else's shoes, this one's worth your time.

👉 Subscribe to @thewinedup and tell us below:

What's your favourite Ashton Hills wine? Drop it in the comments 👇

Go check out https://www.ashtonhills.com.au/

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📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷

## YouTube Chapters

00:00 Intro

0:55 The Wined Up Ice Breaker Questions

5:15 Wine of the Day: The 2025 Chardonnay

6:26 From a Glenelg Kid to Chasing Vintage

8:32 The Letter That Changed Everything

14:35 Carrying Steven's Piccadilly Pinot Forward

20:11 A Brussels Sprout Farm Called Ashton Hills

27:33 Woods Hill vs Bow House

31:50 What Makes the Piccadilly Valley Different

44:00 The Flagship: 2025 Estate Pinot Noir

47:18 Gamay, Lighter Styles and a New Generation

51:13 Rapid Fire: This or That

52:08 What's Next for Ashton Hills

54:16 Closing Thoughts

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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What happens when Australian investors, a respected Portuguese winemaker, and a forgotten vineyard come together just 45 minutes from Lisbon?

In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, we head to Portugal’s emerging Tejo wine region to discover ODE Wines. A winery that’s quickly gaining attention after being named one of Portugal’s best new wine projects.

But this story goes beyond what’s in the bottle.

We explore how ODE transformed semi-abandoned vineyards into a destination built around wine, food, farming, nature and hospitality. Along the way, Trent tastes through three very different wines that reveal a fascinating side of Portugal many wine lovers may have overlooked.

From a rich and textured Arinto that completely changes expectations of Portuguese white wine, to a beautifully expressive Touriga Nacional that captures the spirit of Portugal, and finally a happy-accident blend called Quarteto that might just be the perfect steak wine, this episode is all about curiosity, discovery and finding exciting wines from unexpected places.

We also dive into:

·       Why the Tejo region is becoming one of Portugal’s most talked-about wine areas

·       The Australian connection behind ODE Wines

·       Minimal intervention winemaking and what it actually means

·       Portuguese grape varieties worth seeking out

·       Food pairings for Arinto, Touriga Nacional and Quarteto

·       Why Portugal continues to be one of the most exciting wine countries in the world

If you love Portuguese wine, wine travel, hidden wine regions, or simply discovering great stories through a glass of wine, this episode is for you.

Because sometimes the most exciting wine journeys start with a little curiosity.

Chapters

00:00 – Is ODE Portugal’s Most Exciting Winery Right Now?
 00:20 – How a Portuguese Chicken Pairing Sparked This Journey
 01:00 – The Story Behind ODE Wines
 01:45 – More Than a Winery: Farming, Food & Wine Tourism
 02:30 – The Australian Connection to ODE
 03:10 – Minimal Intervention, Maximum Attention
 03:50 – Why Portugal’s Tejo Region Is Rising Fast
 04:40 – First Taste: The Arinto That Changed Expectations
 06:20 – Discovering Portugal’s Signature Red: Touriga Nacional
 08:45 – A Happy Accident Called Quarteto
 10:30 – The Portuguese Steak Wine?
 11:05 – Final Verdict: Is ODE One to Watch?

👉 Subscribe to @thewinedup and tell us below:

Have you discovered Ode wines, Tejo region or Portuguese wines yet? Drop it in the comments 👇

Get out and visit Portugal and Ode Winery at https://odewinery.com/ and also grab your Ode wines at https://www.globalgrapevine.com.au/product-category/vineyard/ode/ 

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#Arinto #touriganacional #quarteto #PortugueseWine #odewinery #tejoregion #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwelearnweconnect

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Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

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What makes a modern Chinese restaurant truly great? And what wine should you be drinking with it? 

In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, Trent sits down with Victor Liong, the chef behind Lee Ho Fook, for a conversation that spans food, wine, family, culture and the realities of building one of Australia's most respected restaurants. 

Victor shares stories from growing up between Brunei, Malaysia and Sydney, visiting his grandfather's kopitiam, walking away from a business degree to pursue cooking, and the journey that led to Lee Ho Fook becoming a fixture of Australian dining. 

They also dive into opening Lee Ho Fook Sydney, balancing fatherhood with business ownership, handling criticism, overcoming imposter syndrome and why great restaurants focus on refining ideas rather than constantly chasing trends. 

For wine lovers, Victor discusses the wines that shaped his palate, why Lee Ho Fook champions Australian producers, and his favourite Chinese food pairings. 

It's a conversation about hospitality, identity, creativity and the philosophy of serving guests above all else. 

If you love wine, food, restaurants, hospitality, entrepreneurship or Australian gastronomy, you'll enjoy this one. 

Chapters 

00:00:00 Intro 

00:00:55 Icebreakers 

00:09:50 Victor's Background Story 

00:18:47 Culinary Influences 

00:21:10 Li Ho Fook Story & Philosophy 

00:24:43 Defining Modern Chinese Cuisine 

00:33:00 Wine Journey 

00:46:57 Wine of the Day - Gronju Chardonnay 

00:52:06 Wine at Li Ho Fook 

00:57:13 Wine Pairings with Chinese Food 

01:01:28 Rapid Fire Questions 

01:08:33 Proudest Moments & Future 

01:12:58 Closing 

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What if you could travel from England to France, Tasmania and Bordeaux without ever leaving your chair?

In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, we're not exploring a single wine region. Instead, we're following the story of one family that has spent more than 50 years searching the world for great wine and has delivered over a billion bottles along the way. 

The journey starts with a young Tony Laithwaite working a harvest in Saint-Émilion. Surrounded by talented growers making incredible wines that rarely left France, he had a simple idea: load a van, take the wines directly to customers, and share discoveries that most people would never find on their own. Decades later, that idea became one of the world's largest family-owned wine merchants.  

To understand the philosophy behind Laithwaites, we taste our way through four very different wines.

·       A sparkling wine from Windsor Great Park that showcases why English sparkling is becoming one of the most exciting categories in the wine world.

·       A classic Provence rosé that delivers everything you want from southern France, freshness, minerality and effortless drinkability.

·       A beautifully elegant Tasmanian Pinot Noir from Joseph Chromy that highlights why Tasmania continues to punch well above its weight.

·       A mysterious Pauillac Bordeaux sourced from a secret First Growth parcel that offers a glimpse into one of wine's most prestigious regions without the eye-watering price tag. 

This episode is ultimately about discovery. The people who spend their lives searching for hidden gems. The stories behind great bottles. And why wine remains one of the few things that can transport you across continents through a single glass.

Chapters 

00:00 How Do You Travel the World Through 4 Wines?

00:47 The Family Behind a Billion Bottles

01:13 The Bordeaux Harvest That Started Everything

02:00 The Untold Story of Barbara Laithwaite

02:30 What Actually Makes a Wine Merchant?

03:06 Four Wines. Four Regions. One Journey.

03:24 England's Royal Sparkling Wine Surprise

05:01 Why Provence Rosé Never Goes Out of Style

06:13 Tasmania's Pinot Noir Sweet Spot

07:55 The Secret First Growth Bordeaux

09:35 A Pauillac That Drinks Well Above Its Price

10:04 Why Wine Is the Ultimate Way to Travel

10:34 The Wines We'd Buy Again Tomorrow

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Do you think great wine always has to come with a big price tag? Drop it in the comments 👇

Go check out https://www.laithwaites.com.au/ to find your favourite wine OR check out the wines at the https://goodfoodshow.com.au/sydney-show/ 

🎙️ Clip from The Wined Up Podcast
 📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
 Follow us on Instagram @the.wined.up
 🌐 Visit https://www.thewinedup.com.au

📩 [email protected]

#laithwaites #greatwindsorpark #josefchromy #moulindepontfract #pinot #rose #paulliac #goodfoodandwine #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwelearnweconnect

We Drink. We Try. We Learn. We Connect. Drink Responsibly. 🍷

Follow Us on YouTube (@TheWinedUp), Instagram (The.Wined.Up), Tik Tok (@TheWinedUp), Spotify (The Wined Up), Amazon Music ( TheWinedUp), and Apple Podcasts (The Wined Up).  Visit our website https://www.thewinedup.com.au or email us at [email protected].   

Drink More, Try More, Learn More.