Varney + Friends Mixed 6 Pack

2025 Bondar Fiano

95 points, Halliday Wine Companion (2024 vintage)"a wine of startling clarity and purity, effortless in the way it unfurls pear and lemon notes scented with orchard blossom, soft herbs and sea spray. The palate, too, has this unforced quality, with subtle, thoughtful detail – it’s a Bondar thing. There’s acid tension, texture, ultrafine savoury pithiness and a soaringly long trail of fresh flavour.
For me, it’s their best yet." - Marcus Ellis

2025 Bondar Rayner Vineyard Grenache

96 points (2024 vintage) - Halliday Wine Companion."From a sandy 1970-planted block on the home Rayner vineyard; about 10% whole bunch; aged in ceramic amphorae and large-format old oak for 10 months. There’s always an ease to this wine, a red-fruited clarity of expression, a sense of immediate joy, but the Bondar wines never let the fun override the seriousness, nor vice versa. There’s certainly serious intent here though with elegance as the mantra, and perhaps more so in this vintage, with a more savoury lean. Wild raspberry, tart cranberry, rosehip, pomegranate, crushed rose, cinnamon, white pepper, young bay, cracked earth and tamarind. The mid-palate is supple, swirling with flavour, the tannins discretely resolute. Lovely." - Marcus Ellis

2024 Varney Wines Chardonnay

95 Points - Halliday Wine Companion. "From two sites, in Echunga and Macclesfield, and across five clones, this was harvested over a couple of picks. Wild fermented in seasoned Burgundy barrels (with a small carbonic component used as a final blending foil) with frequent bâttonage and seven months in oak. Cool white nectarine, apple blossom, lemon pith, lime and pomelo, with salted praline and sushi ginger. There’s charming delicacy, with a deftly light winemaking imprint, yielding a quiet precision of fruit expression, allied with depth of flavour. It’s poised, refined, very long and very good." - Marcus Ellis

2024 Varney Wines 'Limited Release Grenache

96 Points - Halliday Wine Companion. “It’s a wine that lures you in, seductive with its sultry florals and dark red and black fruits. It’s savoury, too, detailed with fine Medina spices and dried Mediterranean herbs. This is perhaps the finest Grenache I have tasted from this address, the three district parcels making up an effortlessly complex whole. Superb.” - Marcus Ellis

2025 Thistledown Thorny Devil Grenache

95 points – Halliday Wine Companion. "Built from a mix of sites, with the theme being old bush vines; seasoned oak for about eight months. This has gone up a few dollars, yet it remains one of the country’s best value wines, when you consider provenance, quality and pure joy-giving potential. This is expressly fruitful and open at this early stage. Ripe redcurrant, maraschino cherries, rosehip tea, kirsch, rosewater and dried rose petals in spice, a stroll through a Persian souk – perhaps an indulgent analogy, but it has that evocation of ancient luxury, when spice and perfume were marvels. The elegant headiness is delightful, but it’s the natural tensioning that elevates this, with detailed, quietly complex tannins yielding integrated savouriness." - Marcus Ellis

2023 Thistledown Vagabond Grenache

95 points - Halliday Wine Companion. "From four Blewitt Springs sites, all old, dry-grown bush vine. One parcel was fermented in a concrete pyramid with crushed fruit and whole bunches, the rest open fermented with 35% whole bunches; maturation mainly in old puncheons. 2023 has delivered grenache of beguiling perfume. In the best examples there's also depth, spice and the structural architecture to age. Such is the case here. Dusky dark rose, cherry, wild raspberry, ground cinnamon, rosehip and bergamot tea with a ferrous substratum. The tannins across the ’23 grenache bottlings at this address are excellent, assertive in a finely sandy and gently pithy way." - Marcus Ellis