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When you’re in the mood for:
Lime & green apple · Light, fresh white · Feels like a day by the water
If Fiano is the textural, sit-down-to-dinner white, Tino is the one you open while you’re still deciding what to cook.
Our 2025 Tino (Vermentino) from the Chalmers vineyard leans into bright citrus and green apple, with a little wink of tropical fruit and a gentle mineral line that makes it feel a bit coastal, even though it’s grown well inland. Think lime, lemon zest and crisp green apple, with just enough weight that it still feels like a proper glass of wine.
We kept it in stainless steel with no oak, then let it sit on fine lees long enough to take the hard edges off – more like water lapping at your feet than waves taking your feet out from under you. The acidity is lively but not harsh, and it finishes clean and refreshing.
Tino is the “sunny afternoon” bottle in the fridge door: great with seafood, grilled prawns, BBQ fish, crispy squid, salads, or just a bowl of chips and good company.
Vermentino – or Tino, because life’s too short for long names on tank labels – has very quickly become one of our happy-place whites. Mediterranean by origin, quite content in Heathcote heat.
Fruit from Chalmers arrived as whole, hand-picked bunches in the cool early morning, so we pressed straight off skins and ran the juice into stainless. We dropped the temperature, wrapped the tank in our classic DIY cooling jackets and let the ferment tick along slowly to hang onto the citrus and green-apple perfume.
Once the ferment was done, we left Tino on fine lees for a while. The idea was simple: keep the fresh acidity Vermentino is known for, but swap “sharp” for “more-ish”. The lees time added gentle texture without covering up the citrus or the subtle mineral edge.
No oak. No MLF. Just clean, cool stainless and a bit of patience (although I couldn’t help “checking in” from the tank fairly often… all in the name of quality control, of course).
In the glass it’s very Tino: lime and lemon, fresh green apple, a hint of something lightly tropical, and that quiet mineral note that makes you think of being somewhere near the water. Lighter and a little racier than our Fiano, it’s the one we reach for when someone says, “Got anything cold and crisp?” – and yes, we reckon it beats a Sav Blanc.
