This episode is the second half of our interview with Elena Brooks, the winemaker for Dandelion, Sister’s Run, and Heirloom Vineyards. Part 1 tells the story of Elena’s upbringing in communist Bulgaria and how she moved to Australia and started her own wine label in her early twenties. This episode, Part 2, covers Elena’s ambition with Dandelion, the challenges and opportunities that exist today within the Australian wine scene, and the region Elena believes should have ‘Grand Cru’ status.

At the time she started Dandelion, the trend in Australia was big, bold red wines. Elena launched Dandelion to tell a new story, one of acid and tannin and aroma over fruit and alcohol alone. She was also trying to tell the story of place and regional diversity, which she believes is paramount if Australia wants to compete globally.

While Australian wine today faces plenty of challenges, Elena’s perspective is one of gratitude to be making history, writing the playbook for Australian wines alongside an incredibly talented cohort of peers in the industry. Changing the narrative has always been Elena’s drive. When she started Dandelion 17 years ago, she had one lofty mission: to change peoples’ palates.

01:19 Boutique Wines and Changing Palates

01:50 Wine as a Storytelling Medium

03:05 Food and Wine Culture

05:14 The Aspirational Journey of Wine

09:18 Exploring Unique Vineyards

14:37 Eden Valley's Signature Riesling

17:49 Challenges in the Australian Wine Industry

20:16 Opportunities in the Australian Wine Industry

21:03 Trust Your Palate

Hosted by Charlotte Alsaadi.

Special thanks to SNACKTIME for the music!

Vine Street Imports Instagram | Website

In today’s episode, which is part one of two, Elena Brooks from Dandelion Vineyards shares how she went from making pantyhose-filtered wines as a teenager in Bulgaria to a true winemaking visionary in South Australia. Elena has multiple wine brands, including three that we import: Dandelion, Sister’s Run, and Heirloom Vineyards. All of these brands are based in McLaren Vale but feature varietal wines from all over South Australia. Elena makes some of our highest volume wines, but don’t confuse that for low quality. These wines often come from single, old-vine sites, and they are drinkable and acid-driven while staying true to the benchmark styles of their respective regions.

Elena has made quite a name for herself in Australia and the US, and her path to success success was entirely self-made. It involved immigrating from Bulgaria to Australia around the age of twenty and learning the customs and language of a new country. In this episode, you’ll hear how Elena’s first experience with wine was at a 45,000-ton Bulgarian winery that employed 500 people, including her mom. When communism fell in 1990, an influx of foreigners, namely Australians, came to work at this winery for big supermarket brands. At the age of 12, Elena was interpreting at the winery after school, and a few years later she’d move to Adelaide to study winemaking. Elena was drawn not only to the winemaking side but the marketing of wine, as marketing wasn’t exactly a thing in communist Bulgaria. She’s a true entrepreneuer in every sense of the word, diving not only into the product, wine, but the sales, marketing, and philosophy of the product.

Part one sets us up for part two, which delves into Elena’s wines, the challenges and opportunities in Australia today, and which region Elena would classify as Grand Cru if Australia used the cru system.

To begin, we have to go all the way back to Elena’s childhood in Communist-era Bulgaria, when she remembers tasting her very first wine, a sparkling herb infused white wine…

00:29 Wine Culture in Bulgaria

01:32 Childhood Entrepreneurial Ventures

03:43 The Analytical Mind Behind Winemaking

06:27 Accidental Entry into the Wine World

15:36 Transition to Australia

18:44 Starting Dandelion Vineyards

Hosted by Charlotte Alsaadi.

Special thanks to SNACKTIME for the music!

Vine Street Imports Instagram | Website

This is the fifth and final episode in our mini-series on South African wines. The goal with this series is to highlight the key regions, grapes, winemakers, and stories of the South African wine industry to distill this huge category into bite sized, educational pieces. Joining me for this episode about the Stellenbosch is our in-house South African wine expert, Aaron Meeker.

While the last four episodes covered wine regions specifically, this episode is about the industry at large. We talk about stereotypes and push back in the market and how the story of South African wine is being rewritten thanks to a number of movers and shakers in the US. We also talk about Vine Street’s strategy for premiumizing South African wines. Through storytelling, persistence, and direct engagement with buyers, our goal has always been to cultivate a greater appreciation for South African wines.

Our conversation starts by going back to 2015 with an introductory email from Mick Craven, and how we got into South African wine knowing virtually nothing about this category...

00:46 Discovering South African Wine: A New Opportunity

01:33 Challenges and Learning Curves

02:03 Initial Knowledge and Perceptions

02:57 The Hard Sell and Changing Perceptions

03:48 Growth and Optimism

05:38 Key Players and Market Dynamics

07:15 Strategies for Success

10:02 The Long Game: Building a Market

12:46 The Future of South African Wine

18:55 Conclusion: The Road Ahead

Hosted by Charlotte Alsaadi.

Special thanks to SNACKTIME for the music!

Vine Street Imports Instagram | Website