Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Episodes
218 episodes
Beechworth, Bottled: The Deep Dive on Our Smallest GI
Beechworth may be Australia’s smallest GI, but we taste why it’s become one of the most talked about premium wine regions in Australia. We dig into the price reality, the Beechworth Chardonnay obsession, and what makes the whites and reds feel ...
Wine News: Italy Reclaims Prosecco, a $1.5M Piece of Wine History, and the Great Wine Bus Debate
“Prosecco” is one word, but it carries a whole fight about history, labelling, and who gets to own a name. We unpack the newly completed EU trade deal that lets Australian producers keep using Prosecco in Australia, while forcing a phase-out fo...
IYKYK: A Buyers Guide to Sourcing the Best Alternatives to World Famous Wines!
We chase “quiet luxury” wines that give you the feel of Burgundy, Sancerre and cult Italian reds without the eye-watering price tags. We taste our way through smart substitutions, explain the label terms that trip people up, and call out where ...
Queensland Wine, Is This Australia's Next Great Wine Story?
Queensland wine sounds like it shouldn’t work, so we taste our way through the Granite Belt and talk through the climate science that makes it possible. Four bottles later, we’re genuinely shocked by how balanced, fresh, and buy-worthy these wi...
Wine News: Winemakers under pressure, Trump's... "interference" in Iran and its influence on the wine industry, and the passing of a wine icon
We move through the week’s biggest wine headlines, from career-building opportunities in Adelaide to the very real stress of smoke over vineyards during harvest. We also unpack rising fuel costs, what redundancies signal about the market, and w...
The Right Glass: A deep dive into Glassware with SPIEGELAU CEO Richard Voit
We taste and test how different glasses change the way wine shows up, from aroma to texture, with SPIEGELAU CEO Richard Voit. We land on a simple, practical setup for real life: buy fewer glasses, buy better, and match the glass to what you act...
$50 Small Town Supermarket Wine Survival Guide for a Weekend Away!
You know that moment on a weekend away when you’re standing in a local supermarket with bananas in one hand and a basket in the other, staring at a random wall of wine and thinking, “How am I meant to pick something good from this?” That’s the ...
Goon Review! "Traditional" Goon Vs the Modern Bagnum
We put goon on trial by tasting Bagnum versus a classic tap cask, blind, and learned just how easily packaging can mess with perception. Along the way we unpack why a Goon Bag can inflate (unintentionally, unlike Austin's high school pillows), ...
Wine News: How Hedge Funds, Record Exports, And Troye Sivan (?!) Are Shaping Australian Wine
We break down why hedge funds are shorting Treasury Wine Estates in plain language, explore how Victoria Wine posted a record year, and unpack Penfolds’ culture pivot with Troye Sivan and the switch from the Australian Open to F1. We close by m...
Pairing Thai Food, with Wines that Work!
We test Thai favourites (roti with satay, pad Thai and green curry) against a tight wine list to find pairings that truly work. A skinsy white surprises with satay, Riesling shines with pad Thai, Moscato calms green curry, and a light red secre...
Mel from Marketing's POD TAKEOVER!
What passes the Pub test?Beyond catchy slogans and sleek aesthetics, where does alcohol marketing cross the line? We examine Australia’s ABAC standards through the lens of recent, real-world complaints. By breaking down which campaigns w...
From Coonawarra To Cape Jaffa: Are South Australia’s Cool-Climate Whites a New Fave?!
Forget everything you thought you knew about the Limestone Coast being "just for Cabernet." We’re following Meg’s week-long trek along South Australia’s wind-whipped shoreline to discover a region that’s cooling down and sharpening up. From the...
Wine News: New Season, New Studio, Big Wine Questions; Saving Riverland; Gen Z's drinking and Bloege to Beckham!
A fresh studio, a new season, and the most pressing question in Australian wine: how do we move a region built on volume toward a future built on value? We open with Riverland’s reality—cheap grapes, heavy irrigation, and a glut of ageing red—a...
A Vintage Under Smoke: What the fires mean for Victorian wine
Bushfire season has arrived with brutal force, impacting Victorian wineries - this extra episode is to answer your questions around what this means.From Strathbogie Ranges and Yea through to watch zones near the Yarra Valley, we map the ...
Our Top Wines of 2026
A glass of champagne in hand and a year’s worth of tasting notes on the table, we set out to crown ten wines that genuinely moved us. Not the priciest. Not the rarest. The bottles that delivered texture, balance and joy—whether poured at a barb...
Australian Icons Part 2
We taste through Australian icons and ask what truly makes a wine “great”: site, story, structure, or time. From Great Western’s mineral Shiraz to Margaret River’s silky Cabernet, Grange’s legend and Noble One’s golden botrytis, we weigh value,...
Australian Icons Part 1
We taste a line-up of Australian icons. From Tasmanian bubbles to Hunter Semillon, Canberra Shiraz Viognier, and Yarra Cabernet blends, we map style, site, and ageability with unashamed love for homegrown greatness.• Arras Late Disgorge...
Wine News: Backlash from an unfortunate slogan; Aluminum bottles; French protests; A Review of Netflix's New Holiday Movie, "Champagne Problems"
A toast to legacy, a clash over creativity, and a bottle that could change how we drink. We open with a tribute to Peter Fraser—winemaker, mentor, and quiet force at Yangarra—then step straight into the friction points shaping wine right now: t...
We find out how ALDI do it - Interview with Wine Buying Director Jason Bowyer
Ever wondered how a $12 Italian white can stand toe-to-toe with a $40 benchmark? We bring Aldi Australia’s wine buyer, Jason, into the studio and pull back the curtain on how supermarket wines can be precise, expressive, and outrageously good v...
We Put Aldi’s $20 Wines Against $50+ Bottles. The Results Shocked Us.
We blind taste Aldi’s Blackstone Paddock against renowned Australian bottles and were absolutely shocked by what we found.• Aldi wines + our end of year partnership• Aldi Blackstone Paddock Tasmanian Pinot Gris ($19.99) tasted with ...
Can you trust a wine label or is it just marketing guff? We test it.
We blind-taste three Kunawarra Cabernets and then compare our notes to the wineries’ own descriptions to see what holds up. Along the way we share a science-backed look at regional character, practical decanting and cellaring advice, and a simp...
We finally do Spritz
We taste the spritz surge head‑on, from peachy Bellina to zesty Zoncello, a spiced curveball, and a local bitter orange can, while unpacking how climate news nudges fine‑wine prices and how producers adapt. We share how to serve spritz properly...
To POP or HISS? Does how you open bubbles matter or are we all being wankers?
We put the champagne opening myth to the test, comparing the quiet hiss to the party pop to see if bubble quality actually changes. Along the way we unpack Coravin’s medical-engineering roots, wine by the glass growth, and why glassware choice ...
Subregions: Can different sides of a hill REALLY make a difference in Pinot Noir?
What if two Pinots from the same producer, made the same way, could still taste nothing alike? We uncork that mystery by tracing flavour back to elevation, aspect, soil and the quiet work of a long ripening season. Starting on the Mornington Pe...
Can you taste where a Pinot comes from? We put Mornington, Yarra Valley and Tasmanian Pinot Noir to the test to see if regional differences really are perceptible.
Think all Pinot Noir is just “light red”? Three glasses say otherwise. We set up a controlled taste test with Handpicked’s single-vineyard Pinot from Tasmania, Mornington Peninsula, and the Yarra Valley to hear terroir speak without the noise o...