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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.

👉 Subscribe to @thewinedup and tell us below:
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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📺 Watch full episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow us on Instagram @the.wined.up, @iheartwineaustralia and @wineworthwritingabout
🌐 Visit https://www.thewinedup.com.au

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#pinotnoir #australianwine #marcmalouf #bromleywines #TheWinedUpPodcast #wedrinkwetrywelearnweconnect

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

How good is Australian Pinot Noir?

Ten glasses, one blind tasting, and a question that’s been quietly …

Mark Best – To Infinity and beyond!

Mark Best doesn’t care what people say about him. He never really has. …

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/

🎙️ 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, @infinitysydneytower, @chalouwines and @markbest

🌐 Visit https://www.thewinedup.com.au
📩 info@thewinedup.com.au

#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 ApprovalShow More

Five Way Cellars – One of Sydney’s Wine Institutions

In this episode of The Wined Up Podcast, Trent sits down with Ches …

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

🎙️ 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
📩 info@thewinedup.com.au

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

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

The Winemaker Trying to Prove Wine Doesn't Need the Alcohol

What happens when you take a winemaker who never planned to work in …

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 Edenvale, 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
🎙️ 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
📩 info@thewinedup.com.au

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 NextShow More

Is Ashton Hills Making Australia's Best Pinot Noir?

A three hectare Brussels sprout farm on a hill in the Adelaide Hills …

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/

🎙️ 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

📩 info@thewinedup.com.au

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 ThoughtsShow More

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The Wined Up is an independent Australian wine, food, travel and hospitality media platform.

Through podcast interviews, editorial features and digital content, we share the stories behind the people, places and experiences that shape our industry.

We champion Australian wine regions, independent producers and hospitality businesses, helping brands connect with an engaged audience through authentic storytelling.

Hosted by Trent, The Wined Up celebrates the stories behind wine, food, travel and hospitality.

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