Cor Ribbe

About Cor Ribbe

We at CellarHand are lucky enough to work with some incredibly talented people – who not only work on the business side, but also the creative side. It’s a tough feat finding the time to do both, but when passion triumphs convenience, all falls into place to create some pretty magical things. This is what the wine industry is all about: talented people putting their ideas into action. It gets us really excited to have people like this on our team. And with that we’re proud to introduce our Domestic Purchasing Manager Cornelis Ribbe’s impressive range of wines from the Mornington Peninsula. Corn has been making wine with George Mihaly from Paradigm Hill since 2015, and this is his second release of wines.

Since 2019, Corn has leased a small vineyard in the sub-region of Balnarring and the 25-year-old close planted Pinot Noir (MV6) forms the backbone of the Pinot Noir release. Some of the other fruit is borrowed, some grown and some bought from other likeminded growers around the Peninsula. George Mihaly has been a great mentor, and he’s taken his teachings not only in the winery, but also in navigating the wonderful world of the Mornington community. The Peninsula is such a diverse region, and Cornelis has been fortunate enough to continue finding small parcels of fruit from all over to play with and keep tinkering away while he smashes his day job with us. We are so excited to have these wines on board with us and love seeing where these wines are going.

About Cornelis 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.