Classifying Australia’s top wines, with Huon Hooke

Renowned wine writer Huon Hooke previously appeared on the Drinks Adventures podcast way back in Season One, in an episode exploring Australians’ love affair with champagne. He’s finally back for this full-length chat about The Real Review Wine Classification, which launched in 2022 aiming to highlight the greatest wines of Australia and New Zealand that have an outstanding track record of a decade or longer. Huon and I discuss the fresh approach he’s taken to classifying wine versus other established frameworks; and how this helps bring emerging producers to the fore, as well as wine styles and regions that might be less fashionable, but are nevertheless extremely high quality. Case in point, the wineries of Langhorne Creek in South Australia; Bleasdale, Lake Breeze and Bremerton. The latter of those three wineries slipped Huon’s mind during our conversation, and he contacted me afterwards to see if this omission could be addressed. The Real Review was launched in 2016 to provide unbiased, independent reviews on wine. I started by asking Huon whether the classification has always been on the founders’ agenda. Click here to open episode in your podcast player.