The cellar notebook
Australian wine collecting guides.
The producers to understand, the questions to ask and the practical work of building a collection. Choose a subject below.
Start your collection
Clear briefs, useful budgets and a plan for the wine you want to own.
How to build an Australian wine cellar
Start with the wines you enjoy, the space you have and a clear plan for buying. You don’t need an encyclopaedic knowledge of wine to build a collection that feels like yours.
Sourcing Australian wine in larger quantities
A larger wine order needs more than a bottle price. Set out the exact wine, quantity, budget and delivery requirements so you can compare a proposal properly.
Finding hard-to-get wines and specific vintages
A producer you love. A year that matters. A gap in a collection. Give a specialist sourcing team the details that make your search specific.
Planning your monthly cellar budget
Build a considered collection over time. A monthly sourcing budget gives the search direction without making every month an instruction to spend.
Australian producers & regions
Understand individual labels and the vineyards or blending approaches behind them.
Top Australian wine producers for a considered cellar
An evidence-led starting list of Australian wineries and labels to research, from Grange and Hill of Grace to Chardonnay and Hunter Valley Semillon.
Collecting Penfolds Grange: a buyer’s guide
Understand Grange’s blending approach, compare exact vintages and prepare a sourcing brief that goes beyond the label.
Collecting Henschke Hill of Grace
A guide to the vineyard, vintage chart, unusual release sequences and the questions to ask before sourcing Hill of Grace.
Margaret River wines for collectors
Build a Margaret River shortlist around Cabernet, Chardonnay, individual producers and vintage-specific evidence.
Collecting Giaconda Chardonnay
Explore Giaconda’s Beechworth vineyard, Chardonnay winemaking, vintage gaps and the practical details to check when building a collection.
Collecting Mount Mary Quintet
Understand Mount Mary Quintet’s five-variety blend, Yarra Valley estate, vintage comparisons and the records worth keeping with each bottle.
Collecting Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon
Explore Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon, the Short Flat vineyard, release-specific cellaring guidance and how to plan a white-wine collection.
Collecting Cullen Diana Madeline
Read Cullen Diana Madeline by vintage, with a closer look at Wilyabrup, the 2021 and 2022 releases, vineyard certification and buying checks.
Vintages & collecting decisions
Read the evidence, compare years and know what to ask before you buy.
Best Australian wine vintages: a regional buying guide
Which Australian vintages deserve a closer look? Read by region, grape and producer rather than treating one year as a national quality guarantee.
What do experienced wine collectors look for?
A practical buying checklist: exact wine identity, provenance, condition, cellar suitability and a clear reason for adding the bottle.
Langtons Classification explained for wine collectors
Understand Classification VIII, the First Classified and Classified tiers, and where this reference belongs in a buying decision.
Storage & provenance
Look after the bottles and the information that travels with them.
How to store a wine collection in Australia
Plan temperature stability, bottle orientation, capacity and records before adding more wine to your cellar.
Wine provenance and bottle condition: what to ask
Separate a bottle’s documented history from its visible condition, and know which questions remain unanswered before you buy.
Tastings & cellar records
Compare bottles with a purpose and keep an inventory that helps you decide.
Plan a vertical or horizontal wine tasting
Choose a useful tasting question, source the right Australian bottles and keep a record that makes your next cellar purchase more informed.
A wine cellar inventory you can keep using
Download a simple CSV cellar inventory and learn how to record bottles, purchase lots, storage, documents, openings and future sourcing priorities.
Ready to find a wine?
Tell Aaron and the team the producer, vintage and quantity, or start with an idea for your collection. Monthly sourcing budgets above $1,000 to $100,000 AUD; one-off enquiries welcome.
Send a sourcing enquiry →