2025 By Fabiano Vermentino

Fabiano Minchella's on a mission to reshape McLaren Vale through a decidedly Southern Italian lens. After racking up more than twenty-two vintages across Australia, Europe, and Canada, his By Fabiano project is entirely focused on Mediterranean varieties grown on his family's estate, keeping the whole process tightly controlled from vine to glass.

For this Vermentino, the fruit comes off a small 2019 planting at the Stocks Hill vineyard along Tatachilla Road. The vines sit on a dark loam over a mix of clay and limestone, managed with the meticulous Simonit & Sirch pruning method to keep the canopy healthy and flavour profiles deeply focused.

After a hand-harvest in late February, the grapes were destemmed and given a 24-hour soak on skins to pull out some structural grip before pressing. The juice went through a cool thirteen-day ferment before spending ten and a half months resting on its fluffy lees - mostly in seasoned French oak hogsheads, with just seven per cent kept in stainless steel to preserve its snap. It was sent to glass unfined, producing a tiny run of exactly 850 bottles.

This release is a brilliantly taut, saline expression of the grape that trades simple fruitiness for genuine texture. Expect tart yuzu, crisp orchard fruit, and a briny, herbal edge, all wrapped around a chalky, pithy finish. It's the kind of coastal-leaning white that practically demands a plate of freshly shucked oysters.

95 points
"The ’24 bottling was a bit of a revelation, and this is a fine follow-up... a grapefruit pithiness moreishly sapid, with a positive, and classically Italian, bitter-almond finish. Excellent, again."
- Marcus Ellis (Halliday Wine Companion)