So Let Me Tell You A Story

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon a few years ago now, when Sean and I found ourselves on the back of a catamaran at Rottnest Island. We had not known each other long and I found myself being immersed in a wonderful journey of discovery as Sean poured out his passion for interesting and different wine and beer (together with the actual wine and beer itself). Up to this point, I thought I had tasted a lot of good wine, but this afternoon just blew me away. It's a while ago now, but I particularly remember the German beer and a bottle of very nice Tasmanian Riesling. 

This turned out to be the start of my real journey through the world of wine and beer, as we repeated this Saturday afternoon experience many times over.

Eventually I got around to asking the inevitable question as to why hadn’t I seen these wines and beers anywhere else? Over another glass of Argentinian Malbec, Sean explained the situation in Australia where the market is dominated by the two big supermarket chains and that the average punter is only offered what these two chains believe can provide them with the greatest amount of profit. Some Restaurants have interesting wine lists (Sean’s wholesale business supplies restaurants), but it was usually really difficult to buy these same wines for home consumption.

 We were back on Australian wine territory with a very lovely bottle of Barossa Shiraz, when we got onto the next inevitable question - why couldn’t we bang my IT head together with his wine brain and set up an online presence.

I think it was the Spanish Tempranillo that progressed us onto talking about our business philosophies – our combined need to connect closely with our customers, to constantly get their feedback and to never lose focus on customer service. Sure, things go wrong, but its how you address them that matters.

We workshopped our way through some great Austrian, German and French beers as we determined how best to combine our passion and expertise to build a community of wine and beer drinkers who would similarly be blown away by these different wines and beers.

The discussions progressed over time and I was an enthusiastic researcher, all the time discovering new and interesting wine on my own personal journey that Sean was guiding me on. My light bulb moment occurred when I discovered just how often there was a really interesting back story that underpinned why a particular wine was so interesting and different. 

Stories abounded about the Italian Tavern owner whose customers literally forced him to bottle and sell his own wine; the German entrepreneur, GV von Mumm who bought up a whole vintage after four failed vintages and struck it lucky; and the University wine lecturer, Mark Warren from Margaret River who just loves to make alternative varieties – Malbec, Fiano and Gamay to name a few.  These stories taught me the importance of terroir - a particular region’s climate, soils and aspect. I learnt about Croatian winemaker Ivica Matosevic, considered a visionary in the wine industry, with a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Italy, whose focus on the potential of terroir saw him drawn to the Istrian wine growing region in the northernmost part of the Mediterranean, on white and red earth, ideally exposed to sunlight, perfectly suited to a wine maker's needs. Reading further, I was intrigued to find out that Matošević is on the 45th parallel, a latitude it shares with some of the most renowned wine growing regions in the world.

These stories drip with passion and effort – passion and effort you can ultimately taste in every bottle. Wine tastes so much better when you know there is an interesting story behind it.

So that's what we decided to do. Simply go out and collect the stories behind a really fascinating and surprising collection of wines, beers and ciders from some of the most interesting and iconic wineries and breweries in the world. To do this, we would tap into Sean’s expertise and encyclopediac knowledge of wine, beer and cider to ensure that this collection would provide great value for money, with something for everyone’s tastes and budgets, thus providing valuable information to our community of wine, beer and cider lovers.   But most of all - we would keep discovering and writing about new wine, beer and cider - whilst continuing to have a little fun along the journey.

And this is the journey of discovery that we would like you to join us on.

If you really want to find out a bit more about us or just want to chat about wine or beer then please feel free to contact us.

We'd love a chat. 

Sean and Steve