Cor Ribbe

Cornelis was born in Rotterdam and grew up above his parents’ restaurant, running around the floor and kitchen from an early age. There wasn’t a lot of wine around in his early days; Beaujolais Nouveau and Heineken were the norm. He lived across the road from the Feijenoord stadium, the best supported but most average football team in the Netherlands, which taught him humility from an early age. It wasn’t until 2010ish that Cornelis really got into wine. This was at Melbourne’s iconic Stokehouse restaurant, where Matt Skinner and Lincoln Riley were running an inspiring program. After the Stokehouse fire of 2014, he moved next door to Donovans where he bumped into George Mihaly of Paradigm Hill, who invited him to work harvest on the Mornington Peninsula in 2016. That sowed the seed for a Graduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology at Adelaide University beginning in 2018. He’d already produced his first wine under his own Cor Ribbe label in 2017, and has since worked in Beaujolais, the Mâconnais and Adelaide Hills, as well as a string of harvests at Paradigm Hill. As well as his restaurant and winemaking experience, this consummate all-rounder also worked in retail at South Aussie institution East End Cellars prior to joining CellarHand in early 2020 as domestic purchasing manager.