The Wanderer is the small Yarra Valley label of Andrew Marks, made alongside his family's Gembrook Hill. This is a single-vineyard wine from Yellingbo, at the cool, southern Upper Yarra end of the region. The site is planted to the MV6 clone, cane-pruned, on volcanic red soil with a north-eastern aspect at around 200 metres elevation, a combination that gives fragrant, finely structured Pinot Noir. Yields are naturally very low. The 2024 was again a low-cropping season here, with only about 130 dozen made, concentrating the fruit and giving a wine of intensity, tension and detail from a cool, elevated Yarra site.

The wine was made with a light, low-intervention hand. Around 20 per cent whole bunches were included, with the rest destemmed, then given a cold soak before a wild fermentation in small open fermenters. Caps were hand-plunged for gentle extraction, in keeping with Marks's philosophy of tasting frequently but touching rarely. After fermentation the wine was pressed to large-format and barrel-format French oak, about 30 per cent of it new Damy Allier, where it matured on lees for around eleven months. This restrained élevage preserves the vineyard's perfume and graphite-edged tension while adding fine tannin and length.