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
232 episodes
Listener Questions! We Answer All Of Your Burning Questions
Your DMs run the show this time, and the questions swing wildly between deeply practical wine advice and the kind of chaos you only get when you put three opinionated people in front of microphones. We start with the story so many of you asked ...
Wine Education: We Blind Taste Spätlese Riesling
We build a fast, practical way to remember German Riesling by region, then test it with a blind Spätlese flight that forces us to use Mel's... interesting study technique. Along the way we unpack Prädikat ripeness levels, GG and VDP labelling, ...
Wine News: National Vintage Report 2026, European Heatwaves & Shifting Consumer Behaviours, Look at Gen Z Go
The Australian vintage just shrank, but the story is not as simple as “less wine equals higher prices”. We unpack Wine Australia’s national vintage report, why production is down across regions, and what it suggests about oversupply, water cons...
Wine News Goes Rogue: A Heated Debate About Whether Winemakers Matter To Brands Anymore
A winemaker gets cut, a flagship winery gets prepped for sale, and suddenly we are not talking about tasting notes anymore. We dig into the Oakridge bombshell: David Bicknell, the winemaker many credit with changing the direction of Australian ...
Gamay Gets Technical: Unleash The Geek!
Get your clipboard, lab coat and pen at the ready as Meg and Mel NERD OUT on this episode about Gamay. We go deep on Gamay and Beaujolais, from Nouveau history to why carbonic maceration can taste like lollies even when the wine is ...
The $25 Australian Shiraz That Beat The World
A $25 McLaren Vale Shiraz wins Best Shiraz in the world, so we put Beresford to the test with side-by-side pours and zero patience for hype. We chase what makes the wines feel so seamless, from sub-region minerality in Blewitt Springs to oak ch...
Wine news: who won the world wine awards, disease resistant vines, mental health in wine, bulk wines update, and is there a silver lining in all this?
We stack up the week’s wine news with a mix of hard numbers and genuine bright spots, from rock-bottom bulk prices to a more diverse global awards landscape. We also get real about mental health in the Australian wine industry and why connectio...
Does Price Matter? The Ultimate Langhe Nebbiolo Blind Taste Test
We test a bold theory about Langhe Nebbiolo by blind tasting four bottles across wildly different price points. The surprise isn’t just which wine wins, but how often this Piedmont red delivers that savoury, cherry-driven “drink well, don’t thi...
Pinot Gris v Pinot Grigio: The Blind Taste Test
We taste Pinot Gris versus Pinot Grigio blind and find the difference is real when we focus on structure instead of label hype. We also share the tricks we use to call style, origin and quality, including why bitterness and balance matter more ...
Sweet Red Wines... WHY?!
Sweet red wine keeps flying off shelves, so we taste what people actually buy and try to work out what’s driving the demand. We get blunt about confected flavours, then land on a more useful answer: sweetness, spritz, and lower alcohol can make...
Wine News: Endeavour Sells Wineries As The Aussie Wine Industry Hits A New Normal
We jump from rare Grenache by the glass to the bleak reality of industry restructuring, and ask what keeps wine alive when the money and the politics turn cold. Along the way, we dig into Endeavour’s winery sell-off, a federal budget that leave...
The Riverland, a Region Worth Saving Ft. Bottle Shock's Brendan Carter
We sit down with Brendan Carter from Unico Zelo and Bottle Shock to unpack why the Riverland became synonymous with bulk wine and why that mindset blocks real solutions for growers. We chase the economics, the history, and the human cost, then ...
How To Pair Fried Chicken With Wine Without Ruining Either
We test how much fried chicken changes what we taste in wine. We taste Fried Chicken (known for its 11 Secret Herbs & Spices) with four different wines and land on a big big winner!And the Winner is.... CHENIN BLANC...
Our Most Unpopular Wine Opinions. Fight Us.
We put our reputations on the line with a rapid-fire round of unpopular wine opinions, then dare you to come for us in the comments. From cheese pairing myths to rosé shade, Sauvignon Blanc redemption, “fault” versus flavour, and biodynamic roo...
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...