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When you’re in the mood for:
Sunny stone fruit & citrus · Fresh but not sharp · A “just one more glass” white
Our second swing at Fiano, and we reckon this one’s firmly in the “dangerously more-ish” zone.
Heathcote’s warmth gives the grape plenty of flavour to play with, so we kept the winemaking simple and let Fiano do the talking. No oak, no tricks – just stainless steel, a long cool ferment and a lot of patience.
In the glass it tastes like ripe stone fruit and citrus – think white peach, nectarine and a squeeze of lemon – with enough texture to feel like a proper glass of wine, not flavoured water. The acidity is still fresh, but a touch softer and rounder than you might expect, which makes it very easy to go back for another sip.
It’s become our “goes-with-almost-anything” white: bright enough to cut through creamy pasta, but still friendly with seafood, BBQ’d veg or chook, and very happy next to fish and chips or whatever’s on the table when friends turn up.
Fiano’s been around a lot longer than we have – its ancestor was known to the Romans as “Vitis Apiana”, vine of the bees, because they were attracted to its gorgeous sugary sweetness. Two thousand years later it’s still doing its thing, just now on an Aussie working holiday in Heathcote.
2024 was our first go at Fiano. We loved it so much we went straight back for round two.
The brief for 2025 was simple: keep everything we liked – the flavour, the freshness, the texture – and see if we could make it just a little softer and more more-ish without losing the zip.
Fruit came in from Heathcote looking beautifully clean and sun-kissed, so we pressed straight off the skins and sent the juice to stainless steel. No oak anywhere near it – we wanted the grape, the whole grape and nothing but the grape.
We rolled out the DIY cooling set-up again: home-made tank jackets, repurposed solar water heater tubing and a chiller keeping the ferment long, slow and cool so the yeasties could settle in for a long lunch rather than a sprint. That kept the aromatics in the tank instead of out the vent and helped build that gentle texture you feel on the palate.
Fiano is a bit of a winemaker’s dream – incredibly versatile, capable of everything from crisp, citrusy whites to richer, oak-aged styles and even sparkling wines. For now we’re keeping it clean, dry and unoaked, but you can safely assume we’re already daydreaming about what else it can do. Watch this space.
By the time it finished and settled, we had what we were hoping for: a Fiano with plenty of citrus and stone fruit, but with the edges smoothed out – fresher than Chardonnay, less shouty than Sauvignon Blanc, and very, very easy to drink.
We’ll be tucking a few cases away to see how it evolves (Fiano has form for ageing well), but in the meantime it has an important job: being the versatile, “grab it from the fridge door” white that can keep up with whatever’s for dinner.
