When blind tasting wines from Australia’s Margaret River region at the IWSC’s Global Judging, one Chardonnay stood out in particular for being ‘so perfectly of its place’ that the judges felt compelled to award the first perfect 100-point score in the competition’s modern history. In Episode 284 of The Drinking Hour podcast, host David Kermode is joined by the winemakers behind this very triumph. The co-founders of House of Cards, husband-and-wife duo Travis and Elizabeth Wray, share their elation and how they are ‘still pinching themselves’, two weeks on from the announcement. We also hear from judging co-chair Freddy Bulmer, buyer for The Wine Society, about how the tasting team felt that Ace High Chardonnay 2025 ‘could sit shoulder to shoulder with the great white wines of Burgundy’, and of how he personally couldn’t stop thinking about it after tasting the wine blind himself.
Later in the episode, winemaker Travis shares his journey from a career in the Navy into winemaking, and how Margaret River took hold of him and his wife Elizabeth, who looks after the commercial side of this family business. They share how the House of Cards brand was inspired by the gamble farmers and vineyards take each year with a hand dealt by Mother Nature, which is fitting given the estate’s conversion to organic farming in 2020 and its current steps towards biodynamic winemaking. The pair detail the difference in flavour since organic conversion, the power of the Gingin Chardonnay clone used to make their top-scoring Chardonnay, and how it feels to be at the centre of Margaret River’s rapid ascendence as a world-class wine region.
Discover more episodes of The Drinking Hour with David Kermode here.
