Erin Larkin - Standish 2020

The UK's No.1 Australian Wine Specialist

What a great pose from Erin Larkin… Erin and I both share our respect and appreciation for Standish wines with the 2020 collection launched (back in Australia) on the 5 May. Dan kindly provides The Vinorium with samples at the beginning of the year and well ahead of press tastings. This allows us to place our order and ship in Feb / March with an arrival set around the global launch however, and as we have voiced on many occasions, global shipping has not recovered with delays (as documented in last weeks email) continuing. Most shipments are now taking 12-16 weeks against pre pandemic lead-times of circa 8-weeks.

Erin released a fabulous 20-minute video aptly titled ‘Standish: Tiny Twenties’. Click on the above and watch Erin taste through each of the 2020 wines. I would highly recommend subscribing to her YouTube channel as she’s starting (after an 11-month break) to get back into the groove of adding more tasting videos. Subscribers wanted to know Erin’s preferences... ‘My preferred change every year. This year likely Relic and Schubert’s’. The Standish and Schubert Theorem remain my favourites. Erin has posted her tasting notes which you can compare against mine – sampled 4-months apart, however given the enormous concentration, I very much doubt this makes any difference. How two people taste and describe the same wine is fascinating…

Thank you kindly for supporting Villa Maria’s 100-point 2013 Ngakirikiri – we only had 54 bottles which unsurprisingly sold-out within 24 hours. We kept a bottle back for staff training which we plan to open on Monday – I will let you know my views next weekend.

Canny customers spotted the addition of many wines (we are close to 100) to our spring sale and ahead of our official launch – good on you! Discounts are highly attractive and now include some of our best wines / producers: Gemtree, Glaetzer-Dixon, Eastern Peake and Orin Swift… I have highlighted some of my personal favourites below. I plead for you to try the amazing Eastern Peake Pinot Taché 2019 which remains the best Aussie rosé money can buy. In fact, the best ‘global’ rosé in my humble opinion.

This is the only rosé we will stock. 1. For the above reason and 2. Vinorium customers seem to shy away from our previous offerings, which aligns with a viewpoint that an industry colleague shared regarding USA rosé wines. Fundamentally, we both share the viewpoint that the UK market for rosé wine is hotly contested with £10-15 French examples winning hands down. My retort – very good rosé wines should be sold at the same price as their white and red siblings rather than chilled and glugged down like pink water! Pinot Taché is always 100% Pinot Noir, picked from a parcel in the vineyard designated for rosé, “made for purpose” as Owen likes to say. This is a serious wine and left on lees for 16 months. I am yet to find a French example which comes close to quality versus value… Give it a try it and tell me that I am wrong!

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We are making a conservative effort to canvas your opinions – both on The Vinorium as a wine merchant and each wine which we sell. Seven days after placing an order, you will receive an automated email requesting your feedback which we would love to receive. This is automatically populated on our new website.

As an incentive – we are randomly picking a customer out of the hat who will receive a few cracking bottles. This will be monthly, and we will share the winner and their comments. We will certainly be forming a customer buying team who will spend time with me (at our new HQ). The job is to assess the many hundreds of samples that we receive and decide which ones suit our collection. In addition, the buying team will be invited to pre-launch tastings – Standish being a great example. The team will be sampling wines many months ahead of their respective launch.

This is a very important and fabulous role with all buying team members needing to prove their worth (not financially!). The team will be formed based on tasting notes provided on our website. We are looking for quality and descriptive notes – they do not need to match my encyclopedic length!

Wishing you all a great weekend – the weather is looking mighty fine.

Cheers,

Stu

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A few of our favourite reviews

Jerry
“Way better wine descriptions than other companies, speedier delivery, ability to order just a few bottles basically how a wine company should be run. Amazing that everyone hasn't tried to be as good”

Luke
“Have been buying from the Vinorium for many years now and simply the best Wine house in the UK. Fabulous variety and always something new and interesting to try and tempt you from the safe option. Superb new website with very fair prices and wonderful service with prompt delivery. Regular updates on what’s going in the world of wine from Stuart & his team and simply cannot fault what they deliver to their customers on daily basis. I will continue to be a loyal and happy wine loving customer!!”

Phil
“Re-introduced me to a long forsaken love of Australian wines and slowly but surely they now dominate my racks (no easy task). All done by quality wine and reliable scores and reviews, the website though vast is a breeze to use and the wine is there when you say it’s going to be there so the only anticipation is what it’s going to taste like ….Impressive.”

Andrew
“What a find. I was looking for a reasonably priced bottle of Two Hands 'My Hands' a few years back when a web search revealed the greatest range of quality, well priced (so non-Penfolds) Aussie wine I've seen outside of Australia. I'd never heard of most of the producers before and many are from regions I knew of but always took a back seat to the more famous areas and producers you find elsewhere. The litmus test is in gradually convincing my wife that Grange isn't worth the money next to the previously unheard of Dan Standish's collection, some of which I snapped up during one of The Vinorium's frequent sales.”

Rob
“A wine selection that is second to none at fantastic prices when compared to other retailers, backed up enthusiastically by an enviably efficient team. Weekly notes keep everyone up to speed with what is happening at the Vinorium and including latest offers is a treat. I have never had a bad wine, or vermouth, olive oil, etc. and never had bad service. Just the best!”

Wine Reviews

Artisans of Barossa Rare Batch Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

“Probably my favourite Cabernet. Smooth and delicious at a very fair price. Great value for money.”

Little Reddie Bannockburn Chardonnay 2018

“This was phenomenal! The perfect of crisp fruit and complexity, a wine that kept giving for minutes after each sip. An absolute must try, and given the age (2018) one to try again in a few years so see how it unfolds- if you have patience and restraint!”