Vintner Select Portfolio: Australia and New Zealand

We source our portfolio from a bevy of extraordinary producers who craft artisan quality wines. The majority of our wineries come to us through the agency of Robert Whale. Robert has spent nearly two decades traveling and tasting in Australia and New Zealand in the elusive pursuit of quality and value. His search has led to a portfolio of wineries that showcase their regions and that consistently deliver the utmost pleasure for the price. Robert Whale Selections encompasses the wines of Plantagenet and Peter Howland in Western Australia, world renowned Coriole in MacLaren Vale, Parker Estate in Coonawarra, exciting newcomer Tamar Ridge of Tasmania, and Seifried, Nelson, New Zealand pioneer. In addition, Robert has created a line of Australian values whimsically called Rafferty's Rules (Australian slang for "no rules at all") sourced with geographical promiscuity but a keen nose for value.

Torbreck - named after a forest in Scotland - began life in 1995 when Dave Powell crushed three tons of grapes from ancient Shiraz vines and fermented them into wine in a shed on his 12-hectare Marananga property in the Barossa Valley. Dave's expertise, his collection of vineyard contracts and wines - all based on the grapes familiar from France's Rhône valley - and above all his reputation, have grown at a rate unprecedented even among the cult cast of California. Here are two excerpts from the reams of laudatory prose that Robert Parker, in his Wine Advocate, has written about Dave.

"[His are] some of the most exciting wines produced not only in Australia, but in the world "

"[Dave Powell's] are wines of enormous strength, but also riveting individuality and
extraordinary purity and symmetry. These wines not only make for compelling drinking,
but they are also a huge amount of fun, and isn¹t that what it¹s all about? If I had to give an award toAustralia¹s finest winemaker in 2001, it would be hard not to consider Dave Powell."

"The spectacular current and upcoming releases are among the most exciting wines
being made on planet Earth, that's how good this guy is."

[Wine Advocate 2/0; 6/01;10/02]

In his "day job" as winemaker for Cellarmasters, Australia's largest direct mail-order wine company, Barossan Wayne Dutschke has been responsible for vinifying and/or overseeing and judging nearly two million cases annually. In a job like that, you taste a lot, learn a lot, hone your craft, and in Wayne's case earn a lot of awards. In 1990, Wayne and his uncle, Ken Semmler, began producing a small amount of wine from their own old vines. Grant Burge, Mitcheton and Yalumba followed Wayne's fruit to the source, each employing him for a time as winemaker. But Wayne was not satisfied, and he and his family have in a short time won international acclaim for their Barossa estate - and above all its Shiraz and fortified wines. In the words of Robert Parker,

"From one of the Barossa's oldest winemaking families (5 generations),
[theirs] are all fine efforts. [Their] fortified treasures from South Australia continue to merit
my highest accolades for their extraordinary richness as well as amazing flavors."

[The Wine Advocate [8/03]