The Wined Up

Send us Fan Mail 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 M...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ...

Send us Fan Mail 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 sa...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 a...