For February WBW#18 is hosted by Dr Vino’s wine blog. The challenge is to blog about a local wine store.
We are very spoilt for wine stores in Melbourne so this should be a difficult challenge. But for me one shop stands out and I should probably visit it more.
Cloudwine Cellars, which now has three retail outlets and a healthy online business sending wine to all corners of the globe, is the boutique of boutique stores.
No factory made wines are sold in this place. Its mission is to sell wines made in small wineries.
The owners acknowledge that small isn’t always best. But they quite correctly point out that if your palate if bored because every wine tastes the same (probably because it’s made in a factory or you smoke a pipe) then you should turn to the small winery.
And you can feel good about shopping here. First it’s not part any big multinational chain. Secondly by buying wine here you are supporting diversity in the wine business without which the world would be a boring place.
That’s not to say I don’t drink factory wine. Some of it is very good, cheap (naturally) and does the job.
Perhaps it will be a resolution of mine to buy more from here.
Cloudwine was founded in 1999 in the height of the dot.com boom in 1999 by Stuart Whent (29), and brother/sister team Jacinta (27) and Chris Plazzer (25). The first store was opened in October 2002 in South Melbourne.
I first stumbled across the store when I was launching my magazine Tomato. Jacinta would recommend us some wines to taste and give us some bottles. I’d round up a mob for a “people’s” wine tasting. The problem was that most people responded “very nice” most of the time and a core of us would mould the results.
I’m not paid to promote Cloudwine nor are they friends of mine.
I just think they are doing something pretty cool supporting diversity in what is becoming a homogeneous world.
I’m not sure who was serving when I popped in the other week. I asked what he thought of the rosés. He quickly steering to the AUD$18 Dominique Portent Fontaine Rosé 2005 from the Yarra Valley, a few hours out of Melbourne.
Rosé is currently in fashion down here. The Fontaine interested me because it is a cabernet shiraz merlot. Unlike its siblings it is not too floral. In fact, as the winemaker says, it is savoury. We drank it with zucchini fritters and a spicy Tomato sauce.
In Australia we are currently suffering from a massive wine glut. Some wine makers are really screwing the growers. The prices of the cheaper wines are falling and I can only hope this doesn’t hurt our small producers too badly. If you are reading this and fancy trying something from small Australian wineries rather than the internationally mass marketed stuff visit Cloudwine and they’ll deliver to anywhere in the world.
Take a risk and support diversity.
wine blogging wednesday, wbw#18, wbw, wine, Australian Wine, food and wine.
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