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You might know shit about wine

You drink it every week. At dinner… on the couch… on a flight… at your mate’s birthday where someone brought two bottles of something and you drank both without once asking what it was.

You’ve held a glass at a work event and nodded while someone talked about tannins.

You’ve ordered “the Pinot” because it was the only word you recognised.

You’ve told a waiter “something dry” and hoped that meant something.

Here’s the thing: you probably knew exactly what you liked. You just didn’t have the words for it.

That dry, mouth-squeezy thing that put you off that red? That was tannins. That light, easy one you kept going back to? That was body. That wine you loved but couldn’t explain why? You were tasting something real. You just didn’t know what to call it.

You already know more than you think.

This post is me giving you the words. And then telling you what I drink, because I have opinions and I’m not keeping them to myself.

This is a personal post. If you’re here for the engineering content only, fuck off.

If you’re here for me rambling about grapes with too many swear words… pull up a chair and open something red (Pinot Noir, given we’re getting to that).

Let’s start with the words you already know

You’ve been tasting these things your whole drinking life. You just didn’t know they had names.

Tannins

You know that dry, grippy feeling in your cheeks when you drink red wine?

Like your mouth is being squeezed or sucked of all moisture? Those are tannins.

They come from the thiccccc grape skins, the seeds and sometimes the oak barrel.

Some wines have loads of them. Some have almost none.

Here’s the thing about tannins: they can completely change whether you enjoy a wine. A big, tannic red on its own on a Tuesday night can feel like a punishment. That same wine with a steak in front of you? A fucking revelation. The fat in the meat softens the tannins. They need each other. Understanding that one thing will change how you drink forever.

Meat needs tannins.

You already knew this, by the way. You just didn’t know why that red wine tasted better at dinner than it did on the couch. Now you do.

Body

This is just how heavy or light the wine feels in your mouth.

Water is light-bodied. Full cream milk is full-bodied.

Most wine sits somewhere in between. A Pinot Noir is usually lighter. A Shiraz is usually heavier. That’s it. That’s the whole concept.

You’ve already noticed this. Every time you’ve said “that’s a bit heavy for me” or “I want something lighter”… you were talking about body. You just didn’t call it that.

The nose

When someone says “on the nose” they just mean what it smells like. And here’s the part that nobody tells you: you can smell whatever you smell.

There’s no wrong answer.

If it smells like cherries to you, it smells like cherries. If it smells like your nan’s garden, fine. Your nose is your nose and it doesn’t owe anyone a bloody explanation.

That said, the wine does give off patterns based on how it was made. People who pay attention start to pick them up. You will too, once you start noticing.

The first sip

How long the flavour sticks around after you swallow. A short finish disappears instantly. A long finish keeps going… ten seconds, twenty seconds, sometimes longer. Generally, a longer finish means a better wine. But not always.

Some of my favourite wines are quick and clean and don’t hang about.

Nobody explains how to actually taste wine, by the way. And it’s up to you. Fine dining restaurant, probably don’t want to oxidise in your own mouth… but if you’re just checking a wine out… splash that bitch through your teeth and put it on YouTube.

Oak

When a wine has been aged in oak barrels, it picks up flavours like vanilla, spice, toast, sometimes coconut.

Too much oak and the wine tastes like furniture. Not enough and it can feel a bit thin. The best winemakers use oak like seasoning… enough to enhance, not enough to overwhelm.

That’s it. That’s your vocabulary.

Tannins, body, nose, finish, oak.

You now know more than 90% of people who drink wine every week. It’s fucking simple. And you already knew most of it. You just didn’t have the labels.

Let’s keep going.

I’ve always had a palate

I’m Australian. Wine wasn’t a hobby growing up, it was furniture. It was always there.

BBQs with a bottle of Shiraz already open before anyone arrived. Dad coming back from Margaret River with a boot full of Cab Sav he’d bought at the cellar door. Someone’s uncle cracking a Penfolds Grange at Christmas and everyone pretending they could tell it apart from the Bin 3891 they’d been smashing all arvo.

Spoiler: they could not.

I grew up on Xanadu. Penfolds. Barossa Shiraz that could strip paint off a fence and you’d love it for that. Cab Savs with tannins like a firm handshake from a bloke who’s been working outside his whole life.

That was wine to me. Bold, sun-drenched and completely sure of itself.

But I’ve always paid attention. I’ve always cared about what was in the glass. That didn’t come from a course or a book or a sommelier telling me what to think. It came from drinking wine with people who loved it, growing up in a country where it was everywhere and being curious enough to notice when something tasted different.

The thing is, I had to develop that palate largely on my own terms.

I’m a gay white man. My social circle doesn’t exactly default to “let’s open a bottle of Pinot and talk about tannins.”

A vodka lime soda is the extent of most people’s palate and honestly, most of them couldn’t tell you the difference between a Shiraz and a Merlot if their life depended on it. (And we know how fucking obvious that is…)

So the curiosity was mine. The travel was mine. The paying attention was mine.

And here’s where I’ve landed after all of it: I want the simplicity of the spoon.

One grape. One expression. One conversation between the vine and the glass.

I want to know what I’m tasting. I want to recognise the tannins… that dry feeling in the cheeks that honestly, I’d rather not notice at all. I don’t want heavy. I don’t want your cherry-tobacco-grapefruit death bin. I want light raspberries. Grapes. Apple. Muesli. I want something loving and light. Something that doesn’t fight me.

But I also want to know when the tannins are there for a reason. When there’s a steak on the plate and the wine needs to grip the fat and hold its ground. That’s the only time I want them. The rest of the time? Keep it gentle.

The grape has become deeply important to me.

And with that comes opinions. Strong ones.

Pinot Grigio tastes like piss fermented in a tank. A “red blend” is a flavour bowl designed to taste like you strained your garbage bins through a sieve.

If you put a grape in a tin tank and call it wine, you’re a fucking liar and I hate you.

Here’s a confession: my heart belongs to Pinot Noir.

Always has. It’s the introvert of the wine world… doesn’t scream at you from across the room, doesn’t need to be the loudest grape at the party. It just shows up, does something quietly beautiful and leaves you thinking about it three days later.

I fucking love Pinot Noir.

And look… I adore New Zealand wine. Central Otago Pinot Noir? Some of the best wine on the planet. Full stop.

I grew up drinking it alongside the Aussie stuff and it absolutely shaped my palate. My world.

Aussie wine is home. But New Zealand is love.

The proximity problem

I’ve been lucky enough to drink the piss of vines across four continents. France, Argentina, Chile, Peru, California, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, Japan and China. Every one of those was a conversation. Every one taught me something about the place, the people and my own palate.

But the bottles I remember most aren’t the ones with the best tannins or the prettiest nose. They’re the ones that came with a story, a laugh or an unlabelled bottle in rural Peru that nearly ended me in a public road.

My stomach has never forgiven that particular chat.

The grape is the excuse. The people are the reason.

So when I moved to London in 2024, it wasn’t that I suddenly discovered wine from other countries. I’d been drinking it for years.

What changed was the access.

In Australia, your bottle shop is a greatest hits album of what grows within shipping distance… with maybe a few exceptions.

And that album is genuinely brilliant. You don’t need to look further because what’s local is world-class.

But proximity is a funny thing.

You can travel to France and drink beautiful wine for a week, then go home to Brisbane and your local doesn’t stock it. You can fall in love with a Chilean Carménère on holiday and never see it again. Travel gives you a taste. Living somewhere gives you a relationship.

And the UK… fuckkkk… the UK gives you a relationship with basically everything.

France is right there. Spain is right there. Italy, Germany, Portugal… right there.

Argentina’s Malbec is on every shelf. South African Pinotage that you’d never have seen in an Australian bottle shop is just… available.

English sparkling wine is quietly embarrassing Champagne producers and nobody’s talking about it enough2.

Your local bottle shop isn’t a curated selection of what grows nearby. It’s a cacophony of the entire planet’s varietals crammed onto shelves and fighting for your attention.

French Burgundy next to Chilean Carménère next to a £6.99 Côtes du Rhône that has absolutely no business being as good as it is. Tempranillo from Rioja. Riesling from the Mosel. A random Grüner Veltliner that someone on Reddit told you was “life-changing.”

And which do you fucking choose?

Seriously. It’s paralysing. You stand there in Majestic or your local independent and you’ve got thirty minutes before dinner and the options are essentially infinite.

In Australia I’d grab an Otago Pinot and leave. Here I leave with something different every single time and I’m not always sure why.

This is why I drink so much more Malbec now.

One thing before my drops

The label on your bottle is telling you completely different things depending on where it’s from.

In Australia, New Zealand and the US, the label tells you the grape. Shiraz. Pinot Noir. Chardonnay. Simple.

In France, Spain and most of Europe, the label tells you the place. Burgundy. Rioja. Côtes du Rhône. You’re expected to already know that Burgundy means Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. You’re expected to know that Côtes du Rhône is a blend of Grenache, Syrah (Shiraz) and Mourvèdre.

If you didn’t know that… now you do.

And don’t trust Vivino. A rating is someone else’s palate applied to your mouth. Use your face-hole, not an app full of morons.

My drops

Alright. Enough teaching. Here’s what I’m actually drinking and why.

These are the bottles I keep coming back to. The ones I’d bring to your house if you invited me for dinner. The ones that have survived the cacophony.

I’m a Pinot Noir and rosé person most nights… I like to stay skinny and heavy reds don’t help with that. But when Mum’s around, we’re opening a fucking gorgeous Chardonnay. And when there’s a steak on the plate, the big Aussie reds come out to play.

Chard Farm River Run Pinot Noir

The quiet one that stays with you.

This is Central Otago Pinot Noir3 and it’s everything I love about the grape.

It’s light but it has definition. I know it the second I smell it and taste it. There’s this distinct, groundy quality… earthy, savoury, like the vineyard itself climbed into the glass.

Smell it and you’ll get something like cherries and dried herbs. Not perfumey cherries. Real ones. The kind you’d pick off a tree and they’d still have dirt on them. There’s thyme in there, a bit of spice and underneath it all this earthiness that smells like the ground after rain.

Take a sip and it’s soft. Light. The tannins are barely there… just a whisper of grip that reminds you it’s a red wine and not a juice. Cherry and raspberry up front, then something savoury creeps in at the end. It doesn’t hang around forever. It just leaves quietly, like it’s already planning the next sip for you.

This is exactly the kind of Pinot I fell in love with. Gentle. Expressive. A bit moody. Excellent company.

The wine I reach for most evenings when it’s just me and a quiet kitchen.

AIX Rosé

Eight summers and counting.

I’ve been drinking this rosé for about ten years now4. It’s the summer wine. It’s always been the summer wine.

What I love about it is that it’s light but not too light. It has a fruity, gorgeous flavour to it, but it feels in charge. It’s not one of those rosés that tastes like someone waved a red grape near some water and hoped for the best. There’s actual substance here. Jesus may have been involved.

Open it and you’ll smell strawberries and something floral… not like a candle, more like an actual garden. Maybe a bit of watermelon if it’s cold enough.

The first sip is crisp. Dry. Your mouth feels clean, not sweet. There’s fruit there… strawberry, a touch of citrus… but it finishes with this mineral, almost salty quality that makes you immediately want another sip. That’s the Provençal thing. The wine is basically engineered to make you drink the entire bottle.

Provençal rosé from the Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence. Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault blended together into this pale, luminous pink.

One glass becomes the bottle. Every… fucking… time.

If the sun is out and this isn’t in my hand, something has gone terribly wrong with my day.

Shaw + Smith M3 Chardonnay

The Chardonnay for people who think they don’t like Chardonnay.

Sorry to the Chardy haters. I fucking love it.

And I know people don’t like this one. It doesn’t tick the “buttery Chardonnay” box. That’s exactly what I like about it.

The M3 is Adelaide Hills Chardonnay5, which means it’s grown high, cool and wet. It’s a completely different animal to the Californian and French counterparts. It’s oaky and it has this acidity to it… likely because of where it’s grown… but it’s not as heavy, not as hot-graped. It’s a younger Chardy. It has energy.

Smell it and there’s lemon, white flowers, something like nectarine. And then this flinty, struck-match thing that sounds wanky but once you smell it you’ll know exactly what I mean. It smells sharp and bright, like the wine is awake.

Taste it and it’s strong. There’s oak there… you’ll get a hint of something nutty, like cashew… but it never takes over. The acidity hits you at the end and lifts everything. Your mouth feels clean. Alive. Not too “Listeriney”. That finish is what separates this from every buttery, oaky Chardonnay that gives the grape a bad name. Strong. Bright. Absolutely delicious.

And it’s under a screw cap, naturally. Because it’s Australian and we’re not idiots.

The one I open when Mum visits. Every single time.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon

The one that demands a steak.

This is a long-time love affair6.

I’m going to be honest: I fucking hate the tannins. They’re firm, they’re everywhere and they will bully you if you let them. But with a steak? With a proper eye fillet, some asparagus and sweet potato? They’re a godsend.

Remember what I said about tannins earlier? This is the wine that taught me. The fat in the meat tames them. The tannins grip the richness of the beef and something clicks. Without the food, this wine will fight you. With it, it’s one of the best things you’ll ever put in your mouth.

Pour it and it’s dark. Deep crimson, almost purple. Smell it and you’ll get blackcurrant… not the cordial kind, the real, slightly sharp kind. Dark cherry. And underneath there’s something woody and warm… like an old cedar chest, or a cigar box that’s been sitting in the sun. There’s a whisper of mint that’s so distinctly Coonawarra you could blindfold me and I’d know where I was.

Take a sip and your cheeks will grip. That’s the tannins. They’re everywhere. Your whole mouth goes dry and the wine just sits there, heavy and serious, blackberry and plum and something savoury you can’t quite name. It doesn’t let go. It doesn’t want to.

This is the meal juice. This is the family dinner wine. This was the wine on the table at every proper meal growing up… eye fillet, Coonawarra Cab Sav and the understanding that the two were made for each other.

This wine has been made since 1954. Seventy years of the same terra rossa soil producing the same bloody brilliant Cab Sav.

Don’t even think about opening it without something substantial to eat. It will bully you otherwise.

Unapologetically Australian, built to last and absolutely zero interest in being polite about it. Just like the family dinners it belongs to.

Joseph Drouhin Gevrey-Chambertin

The perk of proximity.

This is the newbie on my list7. I only learned of it here in the UK. I never would have found it in Australia.

I love to cook a medium rare eye fillet mid-week. It’s my thing. And this Burgundy has become my go-to for that occasion.

Quick reminder: Burgundy on the label means the place, not the grape. This is Pinot Noir. The same grape as my Chard Farm, but grown in completely different soil, a completely different climate, on the other side of the world. And it tastes nothing alike. That’s the magic of wine… same grape, different story.

In the glass it’s a beautiful, bright ruby… lighter than you’d expect from something this good. Smell it and there’s black cherry and wild blackberry, almost like jam but not sweet. Give it a minute and something deeper comes through… leather, nutmeg, a bit of spice. Leave it longer still and you’ll get mushroom and damp earth. Seriously. The wine literally smells like a forest floor after rain. And it’s incredible.

Take a sip and the tannins are there but they’re polite about it. Velvety. The fruit you smelled comes back on the palate… cherry, berry, a touch of liquorice… and the finish is long and fresh. It doesn’t leave in a hurry. It lingers like the end of a really good conversation.

It’s the sophisticated older sibling of my New Zealand Pinots. Same grape, completely different upbringing. And that’s the joy of Pinot Noir… it tells you exactly where it grew up.

This is the wine that proximity gave me. The perk of living a short hop from Burgundy. I’m not giving it back.

Trivento Reserve Malbec

The reason I wrote this entire post.

In Australia, Malbec barely exists8. The shelves are so packed with local Shiraz and Cab Sav that a bottle from Mendoza never gets a look in. I’d had Malbec in Argentina, loved it and then basically couldn’t find it at home.

Move to London and suddenly it’s everywhere.

And it’s just… good. It tastes great. The tannins aren’t fucking horrid. I don’t know if that’s mass market wizardry or just knowing how to do it, but it works. With food, without food, on a Tuesday, on a Saturday, it doesn’t matter.

Pour it and it’s dark. Like, properly dark. Deep violet, almost inky. Smell it and you’ll get plums and dark cherries… the ripe, sweet kind, not the sharp kind. There’s raspberry in there too and a warmth underneath that’s the vanilla from the oak. It smells like something you want to drink immediately.

Take a sip and it’s smooth. That’s the first thing you’ll notice. The tannins are soft… they’re there, you can feel a gentle grip, but they’re not trying to fight you. There’s fruit, there’s warmth, there’s a spice on the finish that just keeps going. It’s the kind of wine you open on a Tuesday and suddenly it’s midnight and you’re two glasses deep having the best conversation of your week.

For under a tenner, it’s genuinely absurd value. Buy a case. I’m not joking. Buy a case.

The wine that made me write three thousand words about grapes on a weeknight.

Tom Gilbey changed how I think about wine

If anything I’ve said so far has made you think “I want to learn more but I don’t know where to start”… here’s where you start.

Tom Gilbey9.

Tom is what happens when a proper wine expert decides to stop being a wanker about it.

He has the credentials. The palate. The decades of experience working with the biggest importers and merchants in the UK. He could absolutely be the guy swirling a glass and muttering about “tertiary aromas” and “minerality” while you nod politely and feel stupid.

But he’s chosen to be the opposite of that guy. And that choice is everything.

His whole philosophy is that wine should be fun.

That’s it. That’s the whole fucking thing.

Everything I explained at the start of this post… tannins, body, nose, finish, oak… Tom does that for a living, but better, funnier and with videos you’ll actually want to watch.

What Tom does brilliantly… and I mean brilliantly… is explain the why.

Why does this wine taste like it’s been baked in the sun? Because it has… too much time on the vine, thick skins, heavy tannins, the grape never had a chance to develop subtlety.

Why does this one feel light and playful? Thinner skins, cooler climate, less time in oak, smaller berries with more concentrated flavour.

He tells you the difference between a wine that resembles bin juice and something genuinely beautiful. And he does it without making you feel like a dickhead for not already knowing.

His book, Thirsty10, is essentially that philosophy in paper form. His Instagram and TikTok videos with his son Fred are chaotic, educational and genuinely hilarious. He once tasted a wine at every mile of the London Marathon and the video went viral with over 4 million views.

That’s the energy. Wine as joy, not as gatekeeping.

He’s an expert disguised as a mate you’d want to have a pint with. And boy, is he easy to love.

Follow him. Subscribe. Watch the videos. Read the book. You’ll drink better wine within a week. I promise you that.

The point of all of this

I started by saying you might know shit about wine.

You do. You always did.

You knew what you liked. You knew what felt heavy and what felt light. You knew when something tasted off and when something tasted right. You just didn’t have the words.

Now you do. Tannins. Body. Nose. Finish. Oak. The difference between a label that tells you the grape and a label that tells you the place. The fact that your mouth is the only rating system that matters.

That’s not nothing. That’s everything.

I’ve drunk wine in over a dozen countries across four continents over decades longer than the Australian Police Force care to know about. The bottles I remember least are the ones I drank alone or the ones someone told me to be impressed by.

The bottles I remember most are the ones that came with a story, a laugh, a debate about whether the second glass was better than the first, or an argument about whether that’s really blackcurrant or just “dark fruit.”

I think we should drink what we love.

Not what a sommelier tells us to love. Not what a rating system says is important. And definitely not what’s expensive just for the sake of being expensive.

Share the drops you’re excited about. Open a bottle with someone who’s never tried it. Talk about what you taste, even if what you taste is just “wine.”

The exploration, the sharing, the conversation over a glass that turns into three… that’s the point. That’s the whole bloody point.

Not the score. Not the vintage chart. Not whether you can pronounce Gewürztraminer without sounding like you’re having a stroke.

Yes… I will STILL spit out a shit wine. I’m sorry. Life’s too short for bad tannins and fruitjuice to convince me otherwise.

But I will happily, gleefully enjoy an average wine with you. Because I love you.

And an average wine shared with someone you love is better than a grand cru drunk alone.

That’s not snobbery and it’s not pretension. It’s just the truth about fermented grapes and human connection.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Malbec that needs opening. It’s a Thursday, it’s ten degrees outside and the glass isn’t going to pour itself.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. Penfolds — Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz. Often called “Baby Grange,” Bin 389 is matured in the same American and French oak barrels previously used for Grange, giving it a similar richness at a fraction of the price. penfolds.com ↩

  2. Decanter — English Sparkling Wine. English producers, particularly in Sussex and Kent, have been winning blind tastings against Champagne houses, driven by chalk soils remarkably similar to those in the Champagne region. decanter.com ↩

  3. Chard Farm — River Run Pinot Noir, Central Otago. A regional blend drawing from Chard Farm’s vineyards across Lowburn (bright, fresh fruit), Gibbston (savoury, herbal tones) and Parkburn (texture and mineral length). chardfarm.co.nz ↩

  4. AIX Rosé — Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence AOP. A blend of Grenache (60%), Syrah (20%) and Cinsault (20%) from Maison Saint Aix. The vineyard sits at 420m on a high plateau, where the Mistral wind and limestone soils produce a dry, mineral rosé. aixrose.com ↩

  5. Shaw + Smith — M3 Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills. Hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed, fermented in French oak barriques for nine months. Founded in 1989 by Michael Hill Smith MW and Martin Shaw. Scored 95 points from James Suckling (2024 vintage). shawandsmith.com ↩

  6. Wynns Coonawarra Estate — Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon. First produced in 1954, this is one of Australia’s most collectable wines and the benchmark for Coonawarra Cab Sav. Made from the top 20-25% of Cabernet fruit grown on terra rossa soil over limestone. Aged 18 months in French oak. wynns.com.au ↩

  7. Joseph Drouhin — Gevrey-Chambertin. A village-level Burgundy from the Côte de Nuits, where vines have been cultivated since 630 AD. Aged 14-18 months in French oak (20% new). Drouhin was founded in Beaune in 1880. drouhin.com ↩

  8. Trivento — Reserve Malbec. 100% Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. Named for the three winds (Polar, Zonda and Sudestada) that shape the vineyard’s microclimate at the foot of the Andes. 20% aged in French and American oak for six months. trivento.com ↩

  9. Tom Gilbey — Wine merchant, educator and content creator with over 710,000 Instagram followers. His mission: “to get you drinking better wine without needing to remortgage your house.” tomgilbey.com ↩

  10. Tom Gilbey — Thirsty. His debut book on drinking better wine without pretension. tomgilbey.com ↩