Minim Yandoit Barbera 2018 High Hopes Wine Company

I didn’t plan on becoming a winemaker. I have no formal training as a winemaker or viticulturist, nor have i worked around the world at famous Domains. I studied Geology at University and my first love was always cooking. Then came wine…

…it was always there, always a passionate interest. But i never really got a sense of place and season and personality like i did with food. I grew my own food, i cooked for my family, it felt real. Wine didn’t back then. I wasn’t asking the right questions. Then i had dinner at Garagiste in 2010. That place changed things for me. I had a D’Meuer Pinot, Occhipinti SP68 and Phillippe Bornard Savaginin alongside some of the most creative and focused regional food i’d ever experienced and started seeing things a little clearer! These wines were vivid and textural and exciting. My focus changed after that dinner.

I wanted to learn more. I wanted to make wine like this.

My first release was in 2011 with Xavier Goodridge. It was all very loose. Shiraz and Grenache. All whole bunch in a milk vat under a tree, old basket press, old barrels, lots of mistakes, no time….but at the end we made a wine. A weird, faulty wine in one of the worst vintages in recent memory. Bottled early, made some labels, took it to some local venues. It was the start of something small and real and quickly consumed me. I loved that first wine.

Over the years i’ve worked with and leaned on generous vignerons like Jean-Yves Du Mont, Adam Marks, Gilles Lapalus, Jarad Curwood, Xavier Goodridge and Pat Underwood to help guide my hand, shape my understanding and fuel the fire. I’ve taken loads of risks, made countless mistakes and experimented recklessly in an attempt to better understand process and terroir. But, as time passes, i’m learning that my fundamental passion for simplicity, season and place in the context and food and wine informs my decisions in the cellar more often…

Local fruit, grown well, handled simply.

These days I want to make small wines from great sites around Central Victoria. I don’t grow and of my own grapes, but i plan to soon. I source handpicked grapes from small growers; some organic, some moving that way and some more conventionally grown. I work with native yeasts and tend to build complexity in my wines by fermenting smaller volumes with different approaches. Most wines age in old casks, some in stainless. I release lairy and fruitful blended wines in Spring and more focused varietal, single-site expressions throughout the following year.

My wines are made alongside Little Reddie wines under the roof of Boomtown Winemakers Co-operative in Castlemaine, Victoria.

– Winery Note