Innovating Wine: The Groundbreakers
Wine Selectors, Jeremy Oliver
Will Berliner, Cloudburst
As far as wine is concerned at least, Will Berliner only does things by extremes. He doesn’t like machines and is deeply interested in sustainability, so his close-planted Margaret River vineyard is fully biodynamic and entirely operated by hand. Every single vine is subject to extraordinary attention. Start asking about the soils and he’ll dig you a hole. In my experience, Cloudburst pushes the limits of what is possible with total viticultural commitment in Australia. Its wines are typically multi-layered, profoundly intense and vivacious, revealing an elegance and gentle charm that belies their depth of flavour. Berliner’s are ground-breaking wines, if only for that they handsomely enlarge upon what is considered possible in Margaret River and because they have shattered the region’s previous imagined ceiling of price.