Exploring Australia's Unique Wine Varieties with Kim Chalmers of Chalmers Wine

Ep 52

The Chalmers family’s wine business is nothing short of extraordinary.

They place an emphasis on sustainable practices and family-owned values as well as being advocates for broadening perspectives on Australian wine.

Australian wine is more than Shiraz or Sémillon. Chalmers is leading the way with their unique flavor profiles.

However, those unique flavor profiles come with their challenges when it comes to growing and introducing new grape varieties and how Australian weather shapes the taste of the grapes.

Today’s guest, Kim Chalmers, is a managing director of her family vine, grape and wine business in Victoria, Australia. Kim and her family work to import, promote, propagate, and sustainably grow grape varieties new to Australia. The Chalmers Family has imported more than 50 grape varieties over the past two decades, helping shape the modern face of Australian wine.

So, press play and tune in to discover the intricate world of Australian wines, the passion behind the Chalmers family's vineyards, and the hurdles they faced in their pursuit of wine innovation.

Connect with Kim:

Website: https://www.chalmers.com.au

Instagram: @chalmerswine

Mother Block: https://motherblock.com.au

Related Links:

Exploring Australian Wine with Jane Lopes - https://www.corkandfizz.com/wine-blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-34

Legend - Australian Wine Imports - https://legendaustralia.com/

Episode Highlights:

• Kim’s transition from pursuing music to getting involved in the family wine business
• The Chalmers family business and it’s dynamic operations
• Broadening the perspective on Australian wines
• Unique Styles of wines produced by Chalmers and their flavor profiles
• Emphasis on unique style and stories behind the wines produced by Chalmers]
• Strategic expansion of Chalmer wines into the marketplace with an emphasis on the story and purpose behind the wine
• Experimentation of grape varieties
• Importing Italian varietals and collaborations
• A breakdown of how vines are brought into Australia and are then propagated
• Top 3 wines Kim recommends trying from Chalmers

Transcript

0:00

Hello. How are you? Good. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. I always have to forget too on the opposite hemisphere. You guys are quite busy right now. We're in the middle of harvest. Yeah. And I'm also driving, to our other vineyard. We got 2 vineyards in Victoria, and they're 5 hours apart. So I have to get in the car after this and drive to the other vineyard. So Goodness. Alright. Well, thank you. I so appreciate the time in getting to chat with you. Well, we'll just kinda jump in and get started then. So do you wanna tell us a little bit little bit more about who you are and what you do? Yeah. So Kim Chalmers, I am from a family business in Victoria in Australia. So that's the southeastern part of Australia. And we are a kind of unique viticulture business, which is completely vertically integrated from the vines to the vineyard to the wine. So we have a nursery, we have vineyards, and we also make our own estate grown and made wine. So we have lots of fun. I love that. I can't wait to talk more about the the vines, especially. I feel like that's something that not a lot of wineries focus on, and I think that'll be super fun to learn more about. But first, let's talk a little bit about how you ended up in wine. So your parents founded Chalmers in the 19 eighties, so I'm guessing you were immersed in it early. Yes. That said, did you always know you'd end up in wine, or did you end up going somewhere else first? No. So I loved being around around the family business growing up, and we had a nursery not only doing vines, but doing, you know, flowers and trees and all sorts of other things and growing vegetables and all my parents are real green thumbs, so they were farmers through and through. And I love that life, like, making, growing things from the land, making things from scratch, you know, which was really cool. But I actually was really into music, and I went off and studied composition and became a composer and taught at the university in Adelaide in South Australia teaching music. So I had quite a different path and then ended up back in the family business a little later on. Was there anything that, like, drew you back in? Was there, like, a moment? Was there something about wine, or was it more just working with the family? So when I moved away and went off and did music, my family business was more focused on the the nursery side and the vineyards, and we weren't making wine. I went and studied and traveled overseas and whatnot and then eventually came back. And in that time, that was the time that my parents had introduced all these Italian varieties into Australia and started to make wine from them, which I could relate to as a composer because it was taking an artifact of a place and a time and a cultural kind of idea. And, you know, the way people talk about wine and the way people enjoy wine is a lot like art and music. So I loved the whole farming thing from the beginning, but I didn't really see myself as a farmer. But once the kind of wine side came along, I got really into it. And I'm still heavily involved in the nursery and importing new varieties and all that side of it too. Oh, couldn't agree more. Yeah. Right? You're like, absolutely. So kind of getting into that, I feel like you've maybe answered a little bit, but I have to ask, what is your favorite part of your job? Oh, it's so hard to say. The diversity is what I love. So, you know, one minute, I might be in a strategic meeting about biodiversity, which sounds all very boring and, you know, whatever. And then the next minute, I'm hosting a lunch for international visitors. And then the next minute, I'm getting to speak at a conference or mentor young people that wanna get into business or doing sales work, having wine dinners, being out in the dust and the flies in the paddock, and every day's different. And and working across all the different branches of the business, the seasons are all very different. So busy harvest time, and then it's busy bottling time, and then it's busy nursery time. So it's pretty constant. But, yeah, I love the, diversity. I would if I had to go and sit at a desk and do the same thing every day, I think I would shrivel and die. I just love, yeah, the excitement all the time. I find that as a common answer with many people who work in wine. It's like, what if the business is crazy and you do so much work, but I feel like you have to love doing that and getting that change and everything. And I find a lot of people would be very surprised because I mean, I think it's so cool. Traummers, I mean, I've had a bottle of Traummers here all the way in Seattle, Washington, and you guys are still a family run business and, like, the fact that you do all of those different things. I mean, obviously, you have a team as well, but, like, you are family run, and I think that's important to, you know, make sure people know that that you guys are still there working the winery and are just really good at distributing your wine. My parents in their mid seventies now, and they still work every day as well. My sister and I are in the business. My husband is the winemaker. And, yeah, it's very much still the family kind of passion and vision, but we've got an amazing core team, but it'll be a small team, 10 or 15 permanent people that help us across all those businesses. And then during busy times like picking grapes and and grafting vines, we have lots of extra big multicultural teams of casual staff that come through and brighten up our lives with all their amazing food and culture and language and and all those cool things that we have in Australia. So Yeah. Oh, so cool. Speaking of Australian wine, so I think especially, like, this is coming from, like, a US perspective of, like, what, you know, we know of Australian wine. I think a lot of people think of, like, these big, bold, and, like, jammy Shiraz from Barossa. They, you know and maybe maybe they know of, like, the Semillon, you know, the little bit more richer whites from the Hunter Valley, but that's pretty much it that, like, I think that, like, a lot of people think of when they immediately think of Australian wine. But I know that's, like, barely touching the surface for what you guys do. Can you give us a little better picture, kinda describe Australian wine? I know it's like a the hard question, but just a general overview to give us a better general picture. Absolutely. Look, the best place for anyone who wants to get an overview of Australian wine to go is the new book that's just been released called how to drink Australian. Jonathan Ross, Jane Lopes, and a bunch of other amazing people have contributed to this book, which is a fantastic place to start if you wanna learn a bit more about what really happens in Australia. But let's just consider that Australia is roughly the same size as the US or Europe. So to think about the fact that we imagine only 1 or 2 styles in that whole entire landscape is interesting. It's like saying, well, American wine is just California Cabernet and Chardonnay. We know better than that. We know there's amazing riesling up north, and we know all all those other things. So if you kind of think about it like that or you know would would you grow the same grapes in Austria that you would in you know Portugal? No of course. So but being a relatively new wine country with only a couple of 100 years under our belt as opposed to obviously Europe having 1000 of years of evolution to kind of dial down and hone in on varieties that have kind of evolved over many, many, many centuries to, you know, perform in their particular environment. We're taking vines from the other side of the world, poking them in the ground in a brand new place, and then trying to work out within a quite a short space of time when you only get to make one wine a year what works and what doesn't work. So a lot of new world and growing countries are kind of tied with that same brush that, you know, a couple of things come in. They may be popular internationally, and it gets planted widely and sold all over the world. And and so that becomes, you know, the public face of the brand in a way. But, you know, we have amazing old vine resources in Australia. We've got some of the oldest pre phylloxera vines in the world. We've got some vineyards like Best's in Central Victoria, which have 20, 30, 40 varieties. We think that that's the oldest Dolcetto in the world down there and all sorts of amazing things. We've got some great history and fortified production in Rutherglen and in parts of South Australia. Victoria alone, which is a tiny state, the smallest state apart from Tassie in Australia, we have 21 official geographic indications. So officially demarcated wine growing regions, 21. And that's covering everything from coastal to alpine, some of the coldest mainland grape growing conditions in Australia, as well as the edge of the desert with red sand and big blue sky and warm sunny days. And so I think the main thing to kind of put in your mind with Australia is there's so many different places to grow wine. And over the last 20 or 30 years, we've turned our mind more and more as an industry to finding different flavors and things to work with by looking further afield in the toolkit for which varieties we might wanna work with. So that's where Chalmers has been instrumental, and and there's lots of other people that have either personally brought varieties in or other nurseries like Yalumba, which is one of the few other family stories where there is a nursery, vineyards, and a winery owned by one family. There's not many in the world, but Chalmers and Yalumba are 2. So we've focused our efforts on Italian varieties, but other people have worked with Portuguese, Spanish, French, and all sorts of things. And we do have quite an old resource of different varieties too. And I think in the last 20 years since the big international boom of Aussie wine in the nineties, we're maturing and working out that, you know, okay. Well, we can all grow sure as sure, but let's be a little bit more kind of in tune with our specific sites and find things that we can do in our backyard that the neighbor or the person in the next region can't, which, I mean, it's exactly what Europe does, but they've just had 1,000 of years to work it out, and we're trying to quickly reverse engineer it in a short space of time. But I think we're doing a great job. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But, yeah, I've actually, I had Jane on the podcast a little bit ago, so I had I got her book for Christmas. And so I've been making my way through that. I couldn't agree more. It is so cool learning about it. I mean, it's got everything. And so far, I've gone through some of the South Australia part. I did a tasting on some Grenache and Riesling from the area, so I wanted to dig deep. And and already, like like you said, like, it's like you're both experimenting with these new things and and trying all the new grapes and doing that, but then also how cool, like, super old vines that you're still making wine from, you know, exist there before phylloxera. I just the more I've gotten into Australia, the more I'm like, I think I just need, like, a full, like, couple months to just, like, surround myself with all things Australian wine because there's so so much to learn. But, yeah, I definitely recommend that book as well. The How to Drink Australia is a great place to start. But let's talk a little bit about where you grow your grapes. So you said you grow them in Victoria. You tell us a little bit more about the regions and the vineyards and what make them special. So our own region where we live, where the winery and where the nursery are is that edge of the desert type place I was explaining to you. So if you think about the kind of, you know, the inland parts of California sort of thing, so it's or a little bit like Western Sicily. So beautiful pale red colored sandy soils. You might be able to see somewhere here in one of these Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And big blue skies, long sunshine hours, very low rainfall, and but cold winters and cool nights, like a desert climate kind of thing. So we are able to grow varieties here and get beautiful ripe fruit flavors, but still retain some freshness from cool nights. Now when we first started working with all the varieties we're working with was right at that time, you know, the late nineties, early 2000 when the big Aussie and Shiraz were taking the world by storm. But in these sunshiny places, sometimes those wines can be quite bold, quite higher in our colon, more dense in fruit and richness. So our aim coming from a warm place was to show that it's not the place that dictates whether or not the wine would be good. It's how you grow and what you grow and all those sorts of things. So that's, for for instance, when we started getting into doing things like fermentino. So in the very same paddock where you might be growing a a sunshine in a glass Chardonnay, Next door, you you can be growing a saline mineral crisp aromatic fermentino. So our source blocks of imported varieties started up in this inland area because that's where our nursery was. And then a little later on once we'd been making wines for a few years and we wanted to delve further into having a wine specific vineyard rather than a nursery that vineyard we make wine from, We set up a vineyard in Heathcote in the Heathcote wine region in the northern part of Heathcote. So if you imagine Victoria, if if anyone can, it's the little triangular state at the bottom right hand corner of Australia. Melbourne is right down there on the bottom in a little bay. It's not that little, but it looks little on the big map of Australia. 2 hours north directly up from Melbourne is where our heat community is. And if you draw a diagonal line northwest of Melbourne, 6 hours is where our our Murray Darling Vineyards is. So the Heathcote Vineyard in Central Victoria, we deliberately wanted to choose a region that was still warm because we were working with varieties that love sunshine and long ripening seasons, but a region that had a little more rainfall and some really interesting soil and geology. So we set that vineyard up in 2009, and we now make wines from both sites. So our Chalmers brand mainly comes from Heathcote, and then our mother block brand is from the mother blocks in Mervin. So yeah. And both of those as well as our Montevecchio brand are available in the US in many states. Thank you to to Legend Imports. Yes. I think that's so cool. I have to ask. So I tend to associate, like, style of wine with, yeah, the weather that is there. What are some things that you guys do in terms of either winemaking or that we might be surprised by about the, you know, terroir of the region that make it so you can produce. I mean, I've had your your Greco, and that was bright, acidic, fresh. I never would have believed that came from a hot, you know, warm climate. How do you do that? So it was really cool because we got to sort of learn by feel. As I said, my family is really a Viticulture family first and foremost. We got into wine later, but mom and dad, when they first introduced the big suite of varieties in the late nineties, they were selected in the in 2,021,001. We received the vines in. It's a very long process, and they were all planted out in a, source block vineyard, a row of each. So a row of this, a row of that, all these different varieties. And if you think about that, there would be a variety like Nero Nabla from Sicily here, and then next to it, Nossiola from Trentino, and then next to that Pinocchio, and next to that, you know, Matsumino, all sorts of all sorts of things, you know, in an experiment where they're side by side, which doesn't happen obviously in Italy because they all have their regions where they come from and where they're allowed to grow. And and, you know, denomination laws are wonderful in some ways, but constricting in others. So we had this amazing freedom, and all of these wines were planted. My mom and dad at the time really were not widely experienced wine drinkers in that, you know, they wouldn't have tried a Fermentino from Sardegna. They wouldn't have tried a sargentino from Montefalco. So the decision making around which varieties they decided to make into wine was really about how they were performing in their new environment. So they would go out being the green thumb, you know, very good grower people that they are and just literally look at the vines. How are they handling the heat? How are they handling the sand and limestone soils? You know? What's the acid profile? Is the sugar too high? You know? Are we gonna have more alcohol or whatever? So we began by choosing the fruit that and the vines that were performing best and making one from them, and that turned out to be a really good way to do it. We weren't influenced by, you know, sitting on a beach in a mouthy going, oh, I'd love to make Brecco in Australia. Like, it was that wasn't how it was at all. We had vineyards. We were making wines before we even went back and really started to backtrack the history of the varieties and the styles in their homeland. So things like high natural acidity, absolute number one characteristic for making elegant wines in hot climates. So freshness is really important and vibrancy, which comes a lot from the natural acid in the grapes. So it allows them to stay fresh when they reach ripeness. Very early or very late ripening varieties are good because if you think about the the kind of hottest time is the middle of summer where you have lots of hot days in a row. And if you've got grapes that are ripening right in the middle of that very hot period, the sugar can tend to go very high, and you end up with over alcoholic wines. So if something ripens quite early in the season or very late in the season, it's not reaching its kind of peak ripeness right in that really pressure point of super hot weather. So it could if it ripens late like, which ripens, you know, into autumn, The nights are cool and longer. The days are less warm, and so you end up with a lower sugar level. So that's an interesting thing. Varieties with thick skins, which are quite hardy and less disease prone, are good. Varieties, which have big berries. Shock horror. Most winemakers would tell you that big berry varieties don't make very good wine. But when you're in a hot place think about this. Think about this. You're about to go for a 10 k run. Do you have a drink of water first? Are you hydrated? Do you survive your run better if you're hydrated? Right. Bigger varied varieties are more hydrated. So on a really, really hot day in an extreme heat spike, and listen, they're just gonna become more common going forward, as we all know, Those berries have more resilience. So we find that the very small berry varieties are less resilient in terms of surviving heat spikes because they're less hydrated and they can get sunburned and and get kind of cooked and stewed flavors. So we've learned all of this just by trial and error over 20 years of working with these varieties. And I think that's allowed us to kind of shape our own vision around these varieties, which is that they are just the new regional Australian wines of of the future. You know, like, it's really hard to get away from comparing something to where it came from. And I try to talk to people all the time about, you know, they say, oh, so record for example, or Fiona. Oh, well, is it like Campania or, you know, what do you do? How do you make it to be like this or like that? We kind of then come back with an idea of, okay. Well, you know, if you're drinking Shiraz from McLaren Vale or the Barossa, do you say, well, how is that like a? Or is how is that like a Cote D'ronne? We kind of accept now that Shiraz is an Australian grape, and we just need to accept now that Australia is a multi viticulturalist country, and Cohen Vermentino and all the other things are just tools in the kit for us to produce Australian wines that speak of their place. So we're learning all the time about how to do that in our places which are warm. Wow. Is that I mean, they say, like, the wine is made in the vineyard. Right? Like, that's a big part of it. But it's even cooler that you got to, like you said, experiment and have each of those side by side and find out what it is exactly. Because I feel like there's this very much this belief of like, okay. This is a cool climate grape. This is a warm climate grape. This is where you grow. Right? And there's just, like, at least for, like, somebody who's just knows that stuff on the surface, it feels like it's almost limiting. But y'all were just like, no. We're gonna try all of them here. We're gonna see what actually does better. And I'm curious. You mentioned that, your parents really hadn't even had a lot of Italian wine. What is it that, like, encouraged them since you started as a nursery? You did some grapes, it sounds like, but a lot of other things. What made them make the turn to bring in these Italian varietals? So by the time they started the nursery in 1989 and then by the time they kind of got into this idea of importing some new vine material into Australia was the late 1990s. So it was about 10 years in. So the first decade of the nursery, they were very, very busy in the nineties creating vines of the Shiraz and Chardonnay and Cabernet and Mello and things because that's when Australian wine just exploded globally, and a lot of new plantings were put in in Australia. I think the biggest year in the nursery back then was something like 4,000,000 vines in 1 year, which is crazy. And it was the same sort of, you know, handful of internationally recognized varieties that were going out to all the different regions, be they cool, be they warm, be they whatever. And this is where mom and dad kind of had an eye to the future in a way, and it was their kind of agricultural innovation more than anything rather than a thirst for wine that led them, you know, to partnerships with some important people in the industry who were suggesting that a broadened availability of vine planting material would be a good thing for the future of Australian wine. So they made some partnerships through a colleague who worked with us, doctor Rod Bonfiglioli. He had, an association with the University of Udine, who worked with which is the largest vine nursery in the world in Friuli. And we made a partnership with them, and we're their Australian agent in Australia as well as having some private selections that were made by Alberto Antonini through Matura Group, and we've more recently brought in some of Giuseppe Russo's clones of Norello and Caraconti from Etna. Oh, that's exciting. Gosh. I love Etna wine. Very exciting. We won't be able to make it in a wine in Australia, of course, because it's so much about the place, but the varieties themselves, you know, they tick the boxes, like ripening, high acidity, you know, and we've learned over the years what we're kind of looking for in terms of that hit list of characteristics. But you can't always expect the logical things to work and the illogical things not to work. So we've got, you know, turologo and povana and nosyola planted in our Heathgate vineyard. We've made beautiful wines from, you know, ribolacella, which comes from a humid, low elevation sort of, you know, almost seaside place and makes, you know, a particular type of wine. We're growing it in an inland sort of rich iron rich soil with low pH and, yeah, completely different environment. So we have the poetic license because we don't have a denomination system to do whatever we like. It also means sometimes you fail, but sometimes you find really exciting new things that you wouldn't have if you were just following the playbook. Yeah. Absolutely. Now I'm curious. I'm guessing because so already I know that Australia has has to have some sort of strict rules with agriculture for having the old vines that they do that have survived phylloxera, right, and all this. Can you kinda give us, like, the short version of how do you get a Vine from Italy to Australia? So, yeah, we have really strict biosecurity protocols in Australia. Anyone who's been here on a holiday would know. If you've traveled into the country, we're very serious about that. And I think that's absolutely fantastic. Being an island continent, we've got a wonderful natural border of the sea that allows us to protect ourselves from incursions, which so while it is it does make things a little more problematic and drawn out in terms of bringing in new plant material. I think it's a wonderful thing to have, and it really does protect the agriculture industry in Australia. And, you know, the Australian government does a great job on that. So if we wanna bring a new plant material in, we would do the homework and work out, you know, our selections, and we might do that with a consultant or with the nursery that we partner with in Italy or however we decide on which varieties we're gonna have, then there's a lot of paperwork to get a permit. And then the people on the other end have to get, like, all kinds of certification and things done and send the cuttings. The cuttings arrive by air into Melbourne. They are confiscated immediately at customs and taken off to a quarantine nursery that's run by the federal government. That nursery then will strike the cuttings and grow a pot plant for you of your new variety. So one pot plant, you know, yay big. It then lives in that little jail quarantine nursery for a year or 2 until they run a whole heap of tests on the vine to make sure that you're not bringing in any new nasties that aren't in Australia yet. And once they're satisfied that you're not bringing any any new nasties after all of that time, after a couple of years and all the expense spent, get that one pot plant. So from that one pot plant, you need to create an entire nation of vineyards. So for a variety like Narodavala, for instance, which did not exist in Australia before we introduced it, there's now 50 plus people making Narodavala wines and probably a million or more wines out there. That one little pot plant is the great great great great great grandmother of all of those wines and all of those wines. It's super cool. We feel like proud grandparents. I mean, we have our own Usually, every now and then of all. Like, that is that is because of you guys. That is so cool. Obviously, we have our own one and our own things we do. But as you said, you know, while our story is big, our business is not that big. You know? Like, we only make 10 to 20000 cases of wine a year. We're not making heaps and heaps of wine where we've probably a lot of people know our story because of the impact that it's had, but we're still small. Man, I mean, it's already hard to like, it takes a while to make a wine. Right? Like, if you wanna get into the wine business, right, it's like, it's gonna take a while to make money off your wine because, right, you gotta plant the grape. You gotta wait 3 years for the grapevine to actually produce good enough grapes, and then you can make the wine, but then you gotta wait a year because you gotta and then it's, like, add on to that that you guys now wanna bring in new grapes. You have to bring in the vine, wait a few years in quarantine, and then you can start from there. So the absolute best case scenario if everything goes very smoothly is about 5 years from importing the variety to move in the first line. But for something like Nerielo Mustelazy, for instance, which we've been working on since 2012, and we still are only at the one mother vine stage. So, you know, and that's just in terms of tracking down healthy material. There's been a number of hurdles, but, yeah, it's it's a labor of love, but it's worth it. You know? Look at I mean, you only have to look at, you know, the book from John and Jane or their portfolio or, I mean, looking at wine lists, for instance, around Australia and some of our cities, the diversity that's out there now, it's exciting. And you know there's all the obviously the classics. Yeah. Hunter Sam's and yeah yes, he brought us a shiraz. But you know, riesling's from henty and and great Southern in Western Australia, and and you know all sorts of amazing things. And now there's this whole other spectrum of things that are, you know, really making their home here. Yeah. Okay. Well, I wanna dive into your wines now, and I this is, like, this is the hard question that I ask people in wine with a wine business. But I'm curious if you, you know, folks had an option of any of your wines to try. I mean, obviously, around here, if I just see Chalmers, I'm grabbing the bottle at this point because I wanna try. I wanna get to the point of trying all of them. But for you, are there 3 that stand out that you feel like if people had a choice, those would be the 3 you'd recommend they try first to kinda get an idea of Chalmers, or maybe they're just your favorite that you make? So my current little favorite is our Falunghina. Unfortunately, that's not being imported into the US right now. So I'm gonna talk about ones you can find. So one of which which is really fun is our colfondo. So we love algenico. We love algenico as a variety. As I mentioned before, it's very light ripening. It suits our environment really, really well, and we make rose. We also make our top brew red, and we make some sparkle rose from Alianico. So that is available in the states as is our table 1 rose from Alianico as well, the charmers risotto. But the colfondo is really interesting because it's essentially like a method traditional sparkling, but it remains undisorged. So as opposed to, say, a pet nap where you are packaging the wine prior to the finalization of the primary ferment. It's re fermented in bottle, but it's just never disgorged. So it stays on its re fermentation leaves. So it's a lovely fine texture to it and a beautiful fine bubble on it. It's, you know, it's one of my favorite varieties, but it's also a really fun wine. So charmerspofondo 2022 is around the place in a few different states. Another wine that I think is absolute go to and because of the story I just told is our Nero d'Avola. So we make Nero d'Avola not in the typical style that you probably would have found in, you know, in supermarkets or wine lists, from Sicily. Some of the ones from Victoria and the cherry swallows with their brightness are probably more reminiscent. But for us, it's really all about our site, which is the top of the hill in the Heathcote. It's a really mineral rich rocky soil, and the wine is designed to be crunchy and fresh lovely acidity bright cherry and raspberry fruit so it's right in that kind of summer slash chillable red zone. However, it's not overly simplified. You know, sometimes those bright reds can be all about fruit. This has lovely chalky tannin underneath and graphite kind of, and that smokiness that you associate with Nero d'Avola smells sometimes a bit like barbecue depending on the day, that lovely charring note. So I think it's a really great example of modern Australian red wine. And the last one that I would suggest trying is the mother block white. So that is the mother block range is a bunch of wines that are made from our mother blocks of all the varieties that we import over time. So as you can imagine, being that there are 50 plus varieties in our mother block, they are blends. They're field blends, which is super fun because in the mother block blends, of course, you know, referring to the story we just told, you can have a variety from one end of Italy to the other and, and the blends can change from year to year. So you might find things like radicchio. You might find things like croquito or moscato even. You might find vermentino and fiano, all sorts of varieties in there. And what I think is very cool about the mother block wines is that they're not really about variety. They've got all the varieties in there, but they're about style and they're about place. And so for us, it was really, really important to tell the story of the big sky and the red sand and that beautiful sunshine that gives the wines the delicious flavor that people love, you know, beautiful fresh fruit flavors. But by using these varieties that we've discovered work well, it delivers crispness and freshness and elegance at a really accessible price. You know it's sitting around the 20 to 23 kind of point in the states, and it's family owned sustainably grown estate made, and, you know, delivering of a whole bunch of deliciousness. But, yeah, kind of proving that that affordable Aussie wine can also have great provenance and be super fun. That is I don't know how you do that. That's the other thing. I'm like, you're a small family owned winery. You get your wine all around the world, and it's also at a very affordable price price. I mean, I think the Graco that I got was, like, 27, maybe $30 here in Seattle. And so no, I'm very excited. The blends blends always, like especially field blends. I think I've been definitely leaning more towards lately. I think it's like you said, it's like it's a blend you're not gonna get anywhere else. It's very unique, and then it does. It showcases instead of being, like, the the single bridal grape or single bridal resing or whatnot, it has to sing of that. Instead, it's like, no. It's all these grapes that were in our vineyard, and it's gonna sing of our vineyard. That's the, like, 100% important thing. 100%. Oh, those all sound so good, and that sparkling sounds delicious. I'm gonna be asking around. When I was in the states last year, it was a big hit when we were showing that around. That's for sure. Yeah. Oh, those sound really good. So you did mention so you you don't export all of your wine. Some of them are only available in Australia now. Do you have a plan to export most of them, or is it kind of some will stick around? Listen. Everything is up for discussion, but some of the lines 100 cases or something. So, you know, we get we're very enthusiastic at Chalmers as you can probably tell. So we make a lot of different wines. It probably doesn't make sense to pull 25 of them to be exported around the world because it's just cumbersome. But we'd love to have more products in market, but I think it's really important to build the story up in a really strong way because if all of a sudden people are seeing 25 different ones from charmers and they're like, what? The story is really important that the story gets built well, and that's why we have our main drive lines, you know, the things that we've been known for championing and doing, like, Vermentino and Naradavela and things like that out in the market and Greco for John and Jane to really build our story up on. And then once people are kind of aware of what we do, and and thanks to people like you and this podcast, there'll probably be a time for all those other kind of fun, interesting things to be around. But there are 3 brands from us available across the states. There's the field blends, the mother block field blends from the nursery source blocks. There's another range of field blends called Montevecchio, which means old mountain, which is from our Heathgate vineyard because the geology of that site dates back up to 500,000,000 years. Hence, old mountain, but same concept, field blends of lots of different Italian varieties that really speak of the place. And then there's the Chalmers range, which is more the kind of individual variety of wine. So there's still lots to play with out there. Yeah. I highly recommend anybody that's listening here in the US. Do you also export to Canada? Not at the moment. Oh, we gotta get them there too. Right? Yeah. But so for those in the US listening, I mean, my thing that I do is I just ask at the, you know, wine shops that I visit and let them know that that's something I'm interested in, let them know that Legend is the importer for the US and to reach out to them and get those wines in. So looking down the road a bit, 10, 20, maybe even 30 years from now, what do you see for Chalmers in winemaking in Australia? Look. I think all around the world right now, people are drinking less wine. So I think what's gonna happen over time is that producers and growers and regions, and and we're all going to probably dial in really partly on what we do best. And I think that meaning and purpose will become a bit more fine tuned in everybody's approach to what they do, And that's happening across all industries across the world in general. People wanna know where their T shirt was made. They wanna know where the beef came from that's on the menu. They wanna understand, you know, what is the footprint of this product? What's the health ramifications of this or that product? What are the social ramifications of of what I'm consuming or things like that. So I think that over time, like, wineries and and growers and certainly for us at Chalmers, it's really just putting a finer and finer point on what it is we do, why we do it, and making sure that we deliver the absolute best quality with the best kind of story and ethos behind it that we can. I couldn't agree more. I think people are, yeah, wanting to know the story behind the wine. You're not just buying the wine to drink it. You're buying the wine because you care about who made it and that story and knowing all of that. At least I'm very excited about that. That's the reason I love wine anyway. So it's like, that's perfect. But okay. Before my little speed round, it's just I call it a speed round because they're questions that you could have millions of answers to. So it's just meant to be like, think of what you come up with. Before we get to that, anything new and exciting that you are working on that you'd like to share? Well, as I said before, so we've got some Etna varieties coming in through a partnership with Giuseppe Rousseau from Julimar Rousseau. So we there's a lot of interest in those wines from Etna in Australia, and so lots of people are excited to see, you know, how those varieties might perform in Australia. We've literally just made our first tiny little demijon of 30 liters of karikantay. So the 1st Australian karikantay is in the winery just over there. Norello and Moskalase still at the one vine stage, so we'll be propagating out some babies. We just propagated out some baby vines. Actually, I'll show you a photo because it's super cool. Propagated out some little tiny baby vines of those. So can you see here? Yes. Oh, okay. Tiny, tiny baby vines in a little tiny greenhouse. That is Australia's first Norelloa Muscolesi. There you go. That's how it starts. Wow. And I can't even keep a house plant alive. So we're super excited to learn a little bit about what the potential of those varieties will be. And as we learn more and more about the varieties we work within the sites, you know, something like Falahina and Pecorino, which are more recently imported. We brought them in in 15. We're still on a real trajectory of discovery with those. And and each year, we kind of dial further down into our vineyards like this year. The block that we make our narrow from, we actually divided it down into 3 sections, north, middle, and south to really hone in on, you know, the finer points. This is what I'm saying. All of us who produce things, not just charmers, are doing that. We're getting to know ourselves better and understand what we're doing, and then that's the exciting part. I don't think you ever stand still. I don't think if you stand still, then you need to get out of the business. Oh, that's perfect. Okay. So like I said, we're gonna finish with a little speed round. And like I said, they're just 5 quick questions. Not like you have to, like, get ready and, like, buzz in, but more like there's there's gonna be a lot of things that you think of, so just whatever is the first thing that comes to mind. Well, in the end. Yeah. Exactly. So what is your favorite wine at the moment? I love German Riesling. Do you go sweet or dry, off dry? What's your go to style? Depends on the situation. If it's quality 1 and, you know, it doesn't actually bother me the the the sweetness level, I think it's all about the the structure and and the acidity. If the sweetness is there, it's there for a reason because it's balancing out that acid. So Yes. Oh, it's such a great way to think about it. I so much of it, at least here in the US, it's very much tied to, like, is it a sweet Riesling or a dry Riesling? But just to think about it as, like, if it's a well structured Riesling, it's the way it's supposed to be, so it's gonna be good. It's all about balance. That's the reason why sugar's there. You know? Exactly. Okay. How about favorite wine region that you've ever visited? Have to be Trentino. Trentino. Really? That's a new one. I haven't heard a lot mentioned that, but I'm not sure how many people seek out going to to Trentino. So sure it's very cool. Okay. How about this one maybe is harder because I have a feeling you've been to a lot of places. A wine region that you'd like to visit that you haven't yet? The Dura. Portugal. Yes. Everyone that's been one of the favorites of people when I mentioned what's your favorite, Portugal. Somebody even said, like, when I retire, like, that's where I'm going I'm going. So I've been to the Algarve and around the south in Portugal, obviously, with my bent towards learning about warm climate. Obviously, that drew me in, but, Douro Valley is right up there, you know, just for a holiday. Yes. Okay. How about your favorite, like, wine and food pairing? Oh, well, I'd say it was one of our wines because I think about that more often when I'm writing tasting notes and and that sort of thing. I think vermentino, our vermentino, which is really crisp and aromatic, vermentino and sushi. Oh, that's always nice to find a good sushi wine. Yeah. So I think the savory element, the umami element of the nori, the seaweed, works really well with the mineral and aromatic kind of elements of our vermantino. So if you're thinking if you're out there and you're thinking about, you know, galore vermantino, it's not like that. It's not bold and full bodied. It's very crisp. And we actually we packaged it in a Riesling bottle because it's gotten more in common with the structure of something like a Riesling in terms of freshness then. Perhaps some of those superior or a amazing vermantinos from Serenia. So it's Australian vermantino. It's its own thing. And, yeah, it works really, really well. That that sort of sea spray character of vermentino, it works really well with the umami of sushi. Cool. Do you guys do this this isn't one of my speed round questions, but I'm curious. Do you guys do a lot of comparative tastings? Like, when you make the Australian version of something just out of curiosity to see, like, how it not, like, compares in terms of what's similar, but, like, learning what's different. How they express. We probably don't, like, set them up deliberately and do them very often. But back in the early days, 20 years ago, when we first started making some of these varieties in Australia, It was funny because the a lot of the importers that worked in Australia bringing Italian wine in would seek us out to do events and dinners and things because they said, you're going around educating the restaurants about what is vermantina, what is Aglianico, and it's opening doors for us. So it was really quite interesting that earlier on, we probably did more of those side by side type things. And I know it was wonderful when I was last year in the States and, we had a wine dinner at Crown Shy, how lucky am I, New York. And Jane paired Italian versions of the varieties we make with charmers. And the discussion was fantastic. It's really interesting to see. You can kind of see the familial relationship because of the varieties, but stylistically in most instances, they were very, very different, which I think is great. I'm proud of that. We're not emulating anything. We're making our own statements. So Yeah. Oh, to have a seat at that table, man. Alright. Well, I dream of that. My last speed round question, what would you recommend as, like, for those that are kinda just starting, they don't have a lot of money to spend on wine, but they wanna try new things. What is, like, a good style or bottle of wine under $15? Under $15. Okay. So I just bought a a box last week in Australia. I don't know. I have to look. You might be able to tell me if this brand is sold in the US, but there's a a very old family winery from the sort of 18 sixties in Victoria called Tobilk. It's from a a region not that far from our Heathcote Vineyards just over the hill in the Gambie in Central Victoria. Now Tobil make, messan, and they have been making it for a very long time. They've got vines right back to 1927. Their Missan is, yeah, on release about 18 Australian dollars, so it would be under 15 for you. And it's an epic wine. When it's young, it's kind of crisp and aromatic, and then it ages beautifully. So it's a really great beginner one because it's delicious when it's fresh, you know, off the press. But at that affordable price, you can also put a few bottles away. And, you know, after 5 to 10 years, it's incredible. So that's my bargain wine for those of you that are starting out, tahbilk. Tahbik, tahbik. K. If it's not in the US, I'm gonna have to message Jane and be like, this needs to be in the US, like, now. I love Marsana. I think it's such a cool variety. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Kim, again, especially during your busy harvest time. Really enjoyed learning from you and and talking to you about all of the new things going on in Australian wine. Amazing. And if anyone wants to try and seek out any of our wines, be it Chalmers, Montevecchio, or Motherblock, Legend Imports have a website which will point you in the direction of distribution across the many states. I think we're in about 27 now. So somewhere nearby, you you should be able to pick up a bulb. Perfect. Yeah. And I'll I'll put that in the show notes so people can look out for it and give it a try. But awesome. Thanks again for joining. Thank you. Cheers.