d'Arenberg

When Chester Osborn, head honcho at d'Arenberg and incontestably one of the wine world's great characters, turned up on YouTube recently tasting his Dead Arm Shiraz for the benefit of the cyber audience, it was typical of this great McLaren Vale winery.

The last decade has seen Chester develop a range of white wines every bit as individual and thrilling as the red Rhone varieties with which the company made its name. He dislikes overblown oak, instead wanting subtlety, minerality and layered tannins. And in the last few years he has been "winding the vineyards back", abandoning fertilisers, abandoning cultivation between the rows, cutting yields and reducing irrigation. There is method to his madness (and his shirts!) and no one knows their soils and vines better than Chester.