For those who don’t know Andrew Marks, or the wines of The Wanderer, they are one and the same. These are wines with a pulse – they tingle with energy and intent.
The Chardonnay is intense and angular, driven by razor-sharp acidity and cool, high-toned citrus. It’s beautifully linear, yet now carries something more: a layer of mid-palate flesh and texture that brings real allure. Where earlier vintages felt tightly wound and almost austere, the latest releases strike a more compelling balance – precision still at the core, but with a newfound generosity.
The same evolution is evident in the Pinots. Always defined by floral lift, red fruit tang and fine, grippy tannins, they now show greater depth and breadth. The warmer 2025 vintage has brought more of everything – more aromatic complexity, deeper colour, greater intensity of flavour, and a supple, flowing structure. There’s flesh here now, not excess, but a welcome sense of completeness.
If 2024 hinted at a shift, 2025 confirms it. The Wanderer has moved toward a more expansive, quietly luxurious expression – wines that retain their signature tension and detail, but with softer palates, sweeter fruit, and a seamless sense of balance.
Winemaking remains intuitive and restrained. The Pinots see cold soaks, mostly destemmed fruit, and natural whole-berry ferments, worked gently with pump-overs and hand plunging. They’re then aged in oak (the top cuvée seeing around 30% new), resting on lees for 11 months without fining or filtration. The result is Pinot with perfume, structure, and serious texture.
The Chardonnay is whole-bunch pressed, left to settle overnight, then run to barrel with full solids for wild fermentation – a crucial step for both texture and integration. Aged on lees without stirring and finished with a light filtration, it walks the fine line between clarity and richness with precision.
The Wanderer represents something increasingly rare: genuine fine wine at an accessible price. Like producers such as Dappled and Rob Hall, these are wines that deliver site expression, craftsmanship, and ageing potential without the usual barriers to entry.
There’s also something deeper at play – a quiet commitment to an older Australian ideal. A belief that great wine should be within reach. That quality and integrity don’t have to come at the expense of accessibility. It’s a kind of egalitarianism that feels increasingly uncommon – and all the more worth seeking out.
The Wanderer Yellingbo Chardonnay 2025
A very limited offering of only 70 dozen this year. As always, the simplest of winemaking; whole bunched press to old format oak with full solids, wild fermented, occasional stirring and bottled with minimal sulphur. Bright and aromatic, with grapefruit, stone fruits, tangy citrus, lemon peel, cashew and gentle spice. A very even wine, from the initial attack of flavour, through to the close. It’s sinewed, lithe and supremely energetic, the short elevage heightening it’s pulsing resolve, ending with a lightly textured flourish. Balanced, so neat and persistent, auguring well for a very long life.
The Wanderer Yellingbo Pinot Noir 2025
The heavier soils provide that little bit of extra warmth (retaining higher temperatures for a greater length of the year and into the night) for a darker, deeper and fleshier expression of Upper Yarra pinot noir. The warm vintage has helped too and pretty that it is, it’s certainly a very serious, savoury and structured beauty. 100% destemmed and after an initial cold soak and wild fermentation in open top vessels, pressed off to old French oak for 11 months. The use of open top fermenters is a masterstroke.
Brightness hasn’t been compromised and there is blessedly no reduction, but the structural and savoury underpinnings have been created with such a simple, hands off approach. The fruit profile is very complex, a compote of red and black fruits, sweet and tangy. Dark and savoury with soy, mace, cinnamon, baking spices and fresh compost. A turning point wine for white label Wanderers? It is for me, the structure so serious and assured, grabbing hold and not letting go for minutes. And yet the fruit still sings.
The Wanderer Upper Yarra Pinot Noir 2025
20% whole bunches, judicious considering the clone here is MV6. What isn’t destemmed is left as whole berries and the mess is then cold soaked and wild fermented in open top fermenters. Aged in large format French oak, 30% new or 11 months, unfined, unfiltered. Everything that can be packed into a pinot is packed into this.
Beginning with a fine floral lift, combining with a compote of English summer fruits, so sweet and juicy, with darker, wilder, tangier hedge fruits. Baking spices, compost, sweet wood spices and soy offset the wealth of fruit and slathered on flesh, for the shape is curvier here. For all the bountiful wealth, luxury and exuberance on display, the Wanderer’s strictness of form and cut is in evidence. It’s energetic and thrusting, the tannins cutting, gripping, shaping, sculpting and before you can tire of form comes the textural, sensual, velvet embrace.
