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October 22, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
There’s something timeless about Yeringberg, and it’s not just the sign on the discreet gate at the start of the long winding driveway, nor the National Trust-classified timber 19th century gravity-feed winery.
October 15, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
It might just be the most useful book ever written on France’s prestige sparkling wine, Champagne.
October 8, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
I confess I was barracking for New Zealand in the recent America’s Cup challenge, although two key members of the victorious US crew were Aussies. Why back the Kiwis? Well, they’re our neighbours, and more importantly, anyone who takes on the Yanks is the underdog.
October 1, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
A new award for the Viticulturist of the Year was added to the 16th annual Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine 2013 Winemaker of the Year awards.
September 24, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
The bitter split between Dave Powell and the owner of the winery he founded, Torbreck Vintners, is the talking-point of the moment. Torbreck is an iconic Barossa Valley winery Powell founded in 1994.
September 17, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
The Tasmanian chardonnay that beat the world’s best in the recent Decanter World Wine Awards in London is a ‘love it or hate it’ wine. “My two off-siders at the winery both hate it,” says the winemaker, Jeremy Dineen.
September 10, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Western Australia is the big winner at the 2013 Boutique Wine Awards. Its wineries won seven of the 13 top-of-class trophies awarded, five of which went to Margaret River.
September 3, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Wine lists are no longer just wine lists. Matching degustation drinks increasingly include great beers, Japanese sakes, quality ciders and even fruit juices. At the same time, the choice of imported wine in Australia has expanded enormously.
August 27, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Only seven wineries worldwide have declared themselves carbon-neutral, according to the website Mother Nature Network (or mnn.com). It lists Backsberg (South Africa), Cono Sur (Chile), Cullen (Western Australia), Grove Mill (New Zealand), Parducci (California), Taylors (South Australia) and Tinhorn Creek (British Columbia), but it seems they’ve missed at least Temple Bruer (South Australia) and Yealands Estate (New Zealand). And now, our latest: Tahbilk.
August 20, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Had enough of chancing wine by-the-glass in restaurants? Tired of finding stale wine in your glass, poured from a bottle opened three days ago?
August 13, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
What’s this, a feature-length documentary film about wine? For general release in cinemas? People sniffing glasses and pontificating about wine for 79 minutes? Who’d pay to sit through that?
August 6, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
McLaren Vale is alive with a new surge of vitality. It may not be the newest or sexiest wine region in the country, but it has a new lease of life and is making superb wine.
July 30, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
It was one of those penny-drop moments. We were tasting two glasses of pinot noir, blind, and the questions were: is there any difference between them? If so, how are they different?
July 16, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Tasmania’s sparkling wine would be more competitive with discount Champagne if its grape yields were higher, according to the winner of the 2012 Vin de Champagne Award, Dan Buckle.
July 6, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Peter Lehmann - 18/8/1930 to 28/6/2013. Peter Leon Lehmann was born on August 18, 1930, the son of a Lutheran pastor who preached at five churches every Sunday in the Barossa Valley.
July 2, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Few winemakers go to the trouble to inform the wine trade and media as much as Chapel Hill’s Michael Fragos. No doubt he hopes that the retailers, sommeliers, writers and sales reps that he meets, will pass on what they learn.
June 25, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Naked Wines has been likened to Facebook for wine lovers, or a dating agency for wine makers and drinkers. It’s a new concept in marketing – and producing - wine, that is rapidly signing up new customers.
June 18, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
We in Australia like to think we have some of the oldest vines in the world, with our Barossa Shiraz and other Rhone varieties (grenache; mataro) dating back to the mid-1800s.
June 10, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Rule number one of wine marketing: believe in your product! And Peter Barry does. Addressing a crowd of sommeliers and retailers in three-hatted Sydney restaurant Quay, he was determined to make his point: good wine makes food taste better.
Apr-May 2013 — Gourmet Traveller Wine
The Barossa Valley is collectively wringing its hands: “We’ll never win another Jimmy Watson Trophy!” they cry. Not for a while perhaps, but the fickle finger of fashion may come around again some day.
June 4, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
I can’t imagine living in the tropics, where there’s no real summer or winter and seasonal weather changes are minimal. I enjoy the winter chill, which gives us the opportunity to rug up, to sit in front of an open fire, snow-ski, listen to the drumming of rain on the roof etc.
May 28, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Age was a recurring theme at St Hallett’s recent celebration of the 30th vintage of its flagship Old Block Shiraz. Age is of course an important factor in the provenance of the wine. It’s not called Old Block for nothing.
May 14, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
It’s a standing joke in Langhorne Creek that you have to have a doubt ‘t’ at the end of your name. Cleggett, Follett, Borrett and Potts are the names of the oldest families in this small, low-profile wine region. The other joke is that there’s no such thing as Langhorne Creek.
April 30, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
If you need multiple stars to get you along to a concert, A Day on the Green at Centennial Vineyards in Bowral a few years back might have done it. Diana Krall topped a bill that included Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot and Katie Noonan.
April 23, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
The recent news reports about the drastic effects of global warming on the world’s vineyards had a ring of Armageddon to them. But winegrowers in Australia’s warmer wine regions aren’t planning to sell up and move to Tasmania just yet.
April 16, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Considering the dreadfully wet conditions leading up to the 2011 vintage in most of eastern Australia, it’s a pleasant surprise whenever a really good wine comes along.
April 9, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
For a large-ish, small-ish winery, Howard Park sure has a lot of wines in its portfolio. When former Wynns Coonawarra Estate winemaker John Wade started Howard Park in Western Australia’s Great Southern region in 1986, he had just two wines: a riesling and a cabernet merlot. There were still only two wines when Jeff and Amy Burch bought their initial share in Howard Park in 1993.
April 2, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
When Cyril Henschke bottled the first Mount Edelstone shiraz, 1952 vintage, as a single vineyard wine he was way ahead of his time. It’s believed to be the first time anyone in Australia bottled an individual vineyard wine with the name on the label.
Feb-Mar 2013 - Gourmet Traveller Wine
When speaking of ‘terroir’, wine people often refer to pinot noir and riesling but not usually cabernet sauvignon. Discussion focuses on Burgundy, Alsace, even Germany, but seldom Bordeaux.
March 26, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Having enjoyed innumerable 2012 vintage Australian rieslings, and concluded it’s one of the better vintages of recent times, I got a shock reading the recent Sydney Royal Wine Show results catalogue.
March 17, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
What happens to a winemaker when he or she suddenly takes ill, and loses their sense of taste? This is what happened to Bass Phillip owner and winemaker Phillip Jones in 2006, when the stresses of running his business resulted in an attack of shingles.
March 12, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
There are some winery names that just keep cropping up with good-value wines. The evergreens Jacob’s Creek, Westend, Kingston Estate, McWilliam’s Hanwood. And De Bortoli. Ah, De Bortoli.
March 5, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Pinot noir winemakers are either the most sophisticated and intellectual winemakers on Earth, or the most confused. After attending the two recent celebrations of pinot noir, a four-day event in Wellington and a two-day event on the Mornington Peninsula, and several associated events such as a couple of days in Martinborough and the Wairarapa, and a side-tasting of Ted Lemon’s Littorai wines from California, your correspondent is still in shock.
February 26, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
It was like Woodstock without the Grateful Dead. Peace, love, food and drink, not necessarily comfort but long queues, accompanied by the steady hum of the crowd and the clink of glassware.
February 19, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
After a week attending the triennial Pinot Noir New Zealand 2013, many Australian attendees were asking why Australia has no event of similar calibre.
February 11, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
In a wine sector that is not exactly enjoying boom times, the NSW wine industry is looking rather positive. After several years of increasing sales, NSW wine has plateau-ed, and is showing only modest growth, “But at least it hasn’t gone backwards” says Stuart McGrath-Kerr, executive officer of the NSW Wine Industry Association.
February 5, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
China is proving to be the great saviour of Australian wine. They Chinese are buying our wine lustily, and they’re buying up some of our wineries and vineyards. They’re taking the heat off the Australian wine sector in more ways than one.
January 28, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Sparkling wine was the biggest winner at this year's Tasmanian Wine Show, which I helped judge a fortnight ago in Hobart. Of the 32 gold medals in regular classes, seven went to bubbles, not including an extra one in the museum class.
January 21, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Vouvray is one of the world’s most exceptional wine regions. Its ancient vineyards on the north bank of the Loire River near the city of Tours grow in a kind of limestone known locally as tuffeaux.
January 15, 2013 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
“We don’t need any more vines in Marlborough,” says Ivan Sutherland, co-owner of Dog Point Vineyards. “We are doing wonderfully well in a difficult world economy, but we need to keep reinforcing the quality aspect.”
December 18, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
It’s fashionable to diss pinot gris. But I’m going out on a limb and declaring that pinot gris, and to a lesser extent pinot grigio, has been one of the highlights of the year 2012.
December 11, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
If you canvassed the most knowledgeable wine experts all over the world as to the world’s greatest winemaker, I doubt anyone would nominate Australia’s McGuigan Wines. Yet McGuigan has bragging rights to the title International Winemaker of the Year.
December 4, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
When I was a youngster (cue violins), Christmas involved a menu inherited from the ‘old country’ where Christmas happens in winter: multiple courses of hot, hearty food of head-spinning richness.
November 27, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
The 30th annual Cape Mentelle Cabernet Tasting highlighted just how good Australian cabernet is today, how far it has come in that period, and what good value for money it affords.
November 20, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Two new ventures in Coonawarra are staking their chips on the wine industry’s future in vastly different ways. Coonawarra Jack is a monster new start-up which oozes entrepreneurial confidence; Raidis Estate is a boutique-sized operation with no winery, making fine wines from its own small vineyards.
November 13, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food
Tom Carson is a cool-climate winemaker whose great love is pinot noir. Chardonnay runs a close second. He’s taken Mornington Peninsula vineyard Yabby Lake to a new level with both these Burgundy grape varieties. Earlier, he put Yarra Valley winery Yering Station on the map, with outstanding wines from several grape varieties.
November 6, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The other day I was invited to the Yarra Valley to look at a new wine venture – to be flown in, wined and dined, treated well - and this producer doesn’t even have a wine in the bottle yet.
Oct-Nov 2012 - Gourmet Traveller Wine
Occasionally one hears the irritating comment, usually from overseas, that Australia makes little but ‘industrial’ wine. Yes, we do have some very large wineries, and yes, we do have some huge, mass-market brands such as Yellow Tail and Jacob’s Creek. But more than 80% of our wineries are boutique-sized.
October 30, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Australian red wine is noted for often having minty aroma and flavour. This can express itself in many ways, from blatant crushed gumleaf smell to peppermint to garden mint and spearmint.
October 23, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
A Hunter Valley shiraz made by Hungerford Hill has won the title of NSW Wine of the Year for 2012. It’s the 2007 Hungerford Hill Epic Shiraz ($55), which topped a field of 780 entries in the NSW Wine Awards, a field that was dominated quality-wise by the Hunter Valley region and by the shiraz and semillon grape varieties.
October 23, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It was a dinner involving many great old European wines, held at Len Evans’s Bulletin Place restaurant in honour of the famous head of Christie’s Auctions wine department, Michael Broadbent, and including then prime minister Malcolm Fraser.
October 9, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When was the last time you bought a bottle of American wine? Never? Well, you wouldn’t be alone. But it might be about to change. The Americans are mounting a push here, buoyed by the strong Australian dollar which has made imported wines more affordable than for many years.
Aug-Sep 2012 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
I’m a bit tired of the breathless rhetoric of terroir boasters. It seems that everywhere I go, and not only in Australia, winemakers earnestly claim to be seeking the true expression of their soils. Funny, for the first 20 years of my 30-year wine writing career, I don’t recall winemakers carrying on like that, except perhaps in France.
September 25, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Tim Kirk, chief winemaker at his family’s Clonakilla winery at Murrumbateman, is well-known as a religious man, but now it seems he is working his own miracles. The various 2011 Clonakilla shiraz wines, born in the wettest and arguably worst season in living memory, are...
September 18, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It’s 10 years since the great 2002 Clare Valley rieslings were released, the first outstanding vintage widely bottled under screwcaps. So it’s no surprise there have been several tastings this year to see how the wines look on their 10th birthday.
September 11, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The 2011 vintage was a shocker: the year of the deluge. Unrelenting rain, not only at vintage but throughout summer, blasted the eastern half of the continent. Only Western Australia and the Hunter Valley were spared the downpour. But, as the wines appear in the market, 2011 is reminding us we shouldn’t rush to judgement.
September 4, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide is the bible of restaurant-goers in New South Wales. Each year, as well as chef’s hat ratings and special awards to restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs, several wine-related awards are given. These go to the best restaurant wine list, the best small wine list and best regional restaurant wine list, as well as the sommelier of the year.
August 28, 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Penfolds has entered a period of fertile creativity that rivals that of the 1950s and ‘60s when Max Schubert was chief winemaker. A welter of great red wines were launched in that era, and the same thing is happening now - only they’re white as well as red.
14 August 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
You can hardly blame the winemakers of Coonawarra or Margaret River for talking up cabernet. It’s what both regions do best. If cabernet falls out of fashion for a while, as it’s done lately, producers in those regions aren’t about to rip it out and replace it with tempranillo or pinot gris...
7 August 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Having chaired the judging panel since the Boutique Wine Awards began, I never cease to be impressed by what the small end of the wine business can deliver. The 2012 competition produced trophy winners in all 14 categories, which doesn’t often happen...
Jun-Jul 2012 - Gourmet Traveller Wine
It’s hard not to get cynical about luxury-wine pricing. Remember the old joke about the Lacoste shirt? (when Lacoste was fashionable): you paid $10 for the shirt and $20 for the alligator.
31 July 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
One glance at a list of Japanese sake names would be enough to induce panic in most restaurant-goers. Then there’s the labels: often beautiful to look at – works of art even – but incomprehensible without an English-language sticker on the back.
17 July 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When a heatwave in early February wrecked her 2009 McLaren Vale vintage, Rose Kentish decided to take her family to France and make wine there. Not that unusual, you might think in this day and age, when winemakers flutter here and there making wine in various countries, seemingly on a whim.
10 July 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
“Zeus is being a grumpy old man today,” said Evangelos Gerovassiliou, as we lunched on his winery verandah in Epanomi, northern Greece. Black clouds were gathering over Mt Olympus, which dominates the horizon, and is said to be the home of Zeus - he of the thunderbolts and lightning.
3 July 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Something was missing at the recent Saltram museum tasting. Here was a rare opportunity to taste Saltram Mamre Brook reds from the current vintage to the first one from 1963, and Stonyfell Metala from now to the first from 1959. Yet only one member of the younger generation of wine writers was present. Everyone else was grey-haired - or no-haired.
26 June 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
What possesses a winemaker with 20 years' experience making vast volumes of wine for the biggest wine companies to go bananas about a 600-litre clay amphora? It's tempting to label Glenn James as born-again. Seen the light.
19 June 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Dads copped a right hiding at Australia's First Families of Wine (AFFW) ''Unlocked'' event in Sydney. The next generation hosted a tasting of supposedly modern wine styles immediately after a tasting hosted by the older generation with its more traditional wines.
12 June 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Years ago, the late Len Evans used to get on his soapbox at every opportunity and exhort Australia’s winemakers to produce more great wines. We have plenty of workman-like, mid-market, value-for-money wines, he would say, but we badly need more great wines.
May 2012 — Decanter Magazine
Australia has historically made a better fist of pure cabernet sauvignon than it has Bordeaux-styled cabernet blends. The reason for this is the same reason that Bordeaux traditionally makes its best wines by blending – but in reverse.
Apr-May 2012 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
It happened during the Frankland Estate International Riesling Tasting in Sydney in February. A roomful of riesling lovers had just tasted a flight which included Frankland Estate’s own 2002 Isolation Ridge Riesling. Hunter Smith, a member of the family that owns the winery, mentioned in passing that the wine had been banned from export approval.
22 May 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Sweet wines such as French Sauternes and Australian botrytis semillons are often mistakenly thought of as strictly for dessert. ‘Sweet wines with sweet foods’ is ingrained. But it shouldn’t be so. To ignore the savoury combinations is to unreasonably restrict the usage of these great wines.
15 May 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
At first glance they seem unlikely bed fellows: Larry Cherubino, the young star from Western Australia, former chief winemaker at Houghton and latterly one of the most sought-after winemaking consultants in the country, links up with the Oatley family, founders of Rosemount and former owners of Southcorp.
8 May 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
What is it about Dalwhinnie? Is it that this Pyrenees vineyard manages to produce great shiraz more often than anyone else in the region – elder statesman Taltarni included?
1 May 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Katharina Prum is the current vintage - if I can put it that way - of a revered Mosel Valley estate which makes some of the finest riesling in the world.
24 April 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Randall Grahm is a restless soul. He’s always looking for new ways to grow grapes and make wine, and when he’s not doing it he’s thinking, writing or talking about it.
10 April 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
For my last meal on earth I would happily settle for a banquet at Spice Temple. But for the wine to drink with that food I probably wouldn’t choose Henschke’s Hill of Grace, simply because other wines would go better with the food. But there we were, Stephen and Prue Henschke and daughter Justine, blissing out on Sydney town’s most mysteriously fascinating food, Prue nodding off from time to time...
3 April 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Bunnamagoo is a microcosm of what is wrong with Mudgee. The 2009 Bunnamagoo chardonnay is delicious, and costs just $22, but who’s ever heard of it? It has a forgettable label and a silly-sounding name - why does it make me think of a cartoon of John Howard? The crazy thing is that this vineyard is owned by the Paspaley family, who sell pearls as everyone knows. If they called it Paspaley chardonnay, buyers would be breaking the door down.
27 March 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
There are some spectacular Champagne deals going around, especially from the big supermarket retailers, but are they really such good news? The latest Vintage Cellars ad, in the national weekend press on March 17, advertised Bollinger Special Cuvee non-vintage at $56.99 (“Save $27”), plus delivery charges. “That’s $10 less than I can buy it on my staff account,” lamented Robert Hirst, chairman of the official importer of Bollinger, Fine Wine Partners.
6 March 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
What is viognier supposed to taste like? For any grape variety, the answer depends on which wine we’re discussing. Take chardonnay. The answer could vary between pale, delicate, low-alcohol, high-acid, unwooded, cool-grown styles and buttercup-yellow, full-bodied, rich, complex, oaky styles. Or one of many between those extremes.
28 February 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Who produces the best value in Yarra Valley chardonnay? It’s an area that’s heating up, as tough times encourage more producers to come out with a budget-priced bottling of this keenly sought wine.
14 February 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Chester Osborn had his foot in a moon-boot, thanks to a damaged Achilles tendon, and rather than use crutches he was getting about on a four-wheeled motorbike. The usual array of colourful shirts were worn...
13 February 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It’s just a year since winemaker Jonathan Holgate was crushed and seriously injured when a hopper of grapes fell on him during the 2011 vintage, but this accident was a long way from his mind when he monopolised the trophies at his local wine show.
12 February 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Andrew Hedley makes wine in Marlborough, the New Zealand region famous for sauvignon blanc. But it’s not sauvignon that he’s making his fame in, but riesling - in many styles and levels of sweetness...
7 February 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It’s been difficult to avoid drinking riesling this summer – not that you’d want to avoid it! This week (6-7 February) sees the Frankland Estate International Riesling Tasting returning to Sydney, and there are several other riesling events: Summer of Riesling, Wrapped In Riesling and the Great Southern Riesling Tasting.
Feb-Mar 2012 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Comparing Old World with New World is one of the favourite pastimes of wine lovers. You know the scenario: a couple of glasses of chardonnay with dinner… which is Burgundy and which is New World?
24 January 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The untimely death of David Clarke last April was a great loss to the Hunter Valley wine industry, where his Poole’s Rock winery has emerged as one of the leaders. The winery was sold to ...
24 January 2012 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Moscato’s popularity in Australia is booming. But don’t make the mistake of thinking they are all much the same – there’s a vast gulf between the best and worst, the cheapest and the dearest. And the gap is widening.
13 December 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
I regularly run into drinkers who lament the passing of rich, full-bodied chardonnays. They rightly observe that there’s been a sea-change in Australian chardonnay, from the big, buttery, often...
November 2011 — Decanter Magazine
Nothing irritates cool-climate Australian winemakers more than the statement that all Australian wines are big, alcoholic and unsubtle. This over-generalisation applies most to shiraz.
6 December 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It might have been a wet and dodgy year for wine, but it's been a good year for wine books. The most compelling new book is undoubtedly "Authentic Wine...Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking", by Jamie Goode and Sam...
22 November 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Former Stonehaven chief winemaker Sue Bell has bought a stately old shearing shed in Coonawarra, and is converting it into a winery. The Glenroy Woolshed is built of local stone and has a unique atmosphere...
15 November 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
An American wine writer, W. Blake Grey, recently included in his rather interesting list of 10 things he'd learnt as a wine retailer: 1) the wine press loves unusual varieties but consumers do not, and 2) ...
8 November 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Wine preserving gadgets don't usually work, but a new one – based on a different concept - does live up to its claims...
1 November 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
For one of Australia’s newest official wine regions, a small and embryonic region with less than 200 hectares of vines and seven wineries, New England is impressive. Considering its size, it delivers beyond expectations...
25 October 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards, said the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He might have been talking about wine vintages. It's easy to know which are the great vintages in hindsight, but harder to accurately identify them as they happen.
18 October 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When the news arrived that Hunter Valley winery Mistletoe had won the NSW Wine of the Year, with its 2009 Reserve Chardonnay, alarm bells rang. What’s this? A boutique, family-owned winery still selling a 2009 chardonnay? Do they still have stock?
18 October 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Australia's newest Nobel laureate, Professor Brian Schmidt, is a grapegrower and astrophysicist, but he's not converting his vineyard to biodynamics just yet. Professor Schmidt, who works at Mount Stromlo Observatory and is a fellow at the Australian National University, likes the challenge of trying to grow a great pinot noir near Canberra...
11 October 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Brian Croser draws from their barrels three samples of 2011 pinot noir, all pale coloured but charming for their floral and cherry-like perfumes. Blend them and you'd have a very attractive but pale-coloured, light-bodied pinot noir. It would be the fifth vintage of what was hailed almost immediately as an outstanding pinot, the second and third-crop 2008 and 2009 wines winning widespread critical praise. But Croser has made his decision...
4 October 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Barossa-based Glaetzer family seem to have wine in their genes. Nick Glaetzer, winemaker at Tasmania's Frogmore Creek and also a producer of his own wines under the Glaetzer-Dixon label, is the second member of his family to win the Wine Australia Medal...
27 September 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Imagine you're a winemaker, proudly based in the Barossa Valley, and you want to expand by producing popular grape varieties that don't grow well in the Barossa. Sauvignon blanc and pinot noir are the big growth varieties in question, so Grant Burge's answer is...
20 September 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Seated around a large rectangle of tables in a private room of the North Yoker Hotel in the north-eastern China city of Shenyang, are a few of the 271 billionaires in China, sipping six vintages of one of the greatest and most collectable Bordeaux red wines, Vie...
13 September 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The dark horse South Africa came from nowhere – as they say at the racetrack – to be the stand-out performer at this year's inaugural Five Nations Wine Challenge, judged in Sydney in August. Always the underdog for the eight years of the Five Nations' previous ...
6 September 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Yarra Valley is arguably Australia's most creative wine region at present, a cauldron of inventiveness and much progress is being made despite the setbacks of heat-waves, bushfire smoke, droughts and frosts and this year's deluge. Driven by such charismatic ...
30 August 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It can be difficult to stir up interest in old established brands. Everyone focuses on what's new – and there's always a lot that's new. It's a global syndrome, worse in Europe because there's so much there that's very old. Take the noble Tuscan ...
23 August 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
A wonderful French phrase that should be more widely used in the wine trade is "Vive la difference": long live the difference. Uttered with a typical Gallic shrug, it also implies "let's not try to say one wine is better than another; let's underst...
16 August 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The news that the Institute of Masters of Wine is to hold an Australian shiraz seminar in London is good tidings. The seminar will showcase wines from cooler climates such as Canberra, Beechworth, Heathcote and Eden Valley alongside better-known regi...
9 August 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Watching the artistry of a butcher at Victor Churchill Meats in Woollahra recently, wine trade guests were fascinated by some gems of information regarding authenticity. Butcher David Ellis casually informed us while he trussed a standing rib roast of...
2 August 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Wines from the Orange region had experienced a stellar week. Philip Shaw No.11 Chardonnay 2010 ($32) was crowned best chardonnay and wine of show at the 2011 Boutique Wine Awards. A few days later, the area's winemakers held a successful exhibition at Wine Odyssey ...
Aug-Sep 2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Luca Currado remembers the day in the mid-1990s when a group of Barolo producers ceremoniously burned a botte, a traditional Piedmontese large oak barrel. It was their way of saying the barrique is king, and the botte is yesterday's barrel. We don't nee...
26 July 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Winemakers are wringing their hands over the 2011 harvest, branding it absurdly large for a nation still grappling with too much wine. After early estimates suggested a moderate-sized harvest was on the cards (say 1.3 to 1.4 million tonnes), it's weighed...
Jun-Jul 2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
If you ask wine professionals what is the most important factor in wine quality, they will probably answer balance. Some professional tasters use the word symmetry, others use harmony, and they are probably all referring to the same thing. Balance – at the...
19 July 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Yabby Lake did it this year at Sydney Royal Wine Show; Giant Steps did it a couple of weeks ago at the Royal Queensland Wine Show. Both won trophies for pinot noir at capital city wine shows. Both are small, independent, pinot noir-oriented wineries – a br...
12 July 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If the taste of Marlborough sauvignon blanc is so popular, how come traditional Australian semillon is so unpopular? This is the question that has plagued producers and lovers of semillon - especially Hunter Valley semillon - for the last decade or so, as Kiw...
5 July 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Mann family are winemaking royalty in Western Australia, so we might expect them to have a conservative, steady-as-she-goes philosophy. Rob Mann, chief winemaker at Cape Mentelle, is a grandson of Jack Mann, a legendary winemaker who did 51 vintages...
28 June 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
In the Barossa Valley two weeks ago, it was surprising how many vineyards had fruit still hanging on now-dormant vines. The autumnal rusty-coloured leaves had mostly fallen, leaving great dark masses of shrivelled fruit exposed in the centre of each vine...
21 June 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
After a recent tasting of new-release samples of non-mainstream red varietals, I was shocked to find two wines I didn't particularly like ended up giving the most pleasure with dinner. The wines were both produced by Italian consultant winemaker Alberto An...
14 June 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Being served tepid Champagne in an expensive restaurant during a Sydney summer is one of my bugbears. This happened recently in a restaurant in one of our top international hotels, and a gentle complaint elicited no action at all. At the same restaurant, ...
7 June 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The managing director of Angove, John Angove, is weary of hearing people say (and write) that Angove wines are "good value for money" and he'd prefer to hear that they were simply "good wines". Sorry, John, but that is their station in life, at least up till ...
31 May 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Organic and biodynamic viticulture are growing movements throughout the world. It might be tempting to dismiss them as trendy, and ask "Why has it suddenly become so important to grow vines this way?" For the first 25 years that I was interested in wine, it...
17 May 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Organic and biodynamic viticulture are growing movements throughout the world. It might be tempting to dismiss them as trendy, and ask "Why has it suddenly become so important to grow vines this way?" For the first 25 years that I was interested in wine, it...
10 May 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
My parents always offered guests a thimble of sherry before dinner. And one of port after. But ever since the 1970s, fortified wines (port, sherry, muscat, etc) have been in decline. They are slowly disappearing, although the best examples are still among t...
3 May 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Vintage charts are never perfect – the world of wine is complex, and summaries and short-cuts are a necessary evil, but those who trust in them will miss out on some great wine. There are few better examples than the 2008 Penfolds reds. You may recall 2008...
26 April 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When is a shiraz not a shiraz? When it's a cabernet. It's taken for granted in wine competitions that if you want to assess the quality of wine, you need to judge like with like – apples with apples, oranges with oranges. Don't judge a cabernet as a shiraz...
19 April 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Peter Barry has always been a straight-shooter. He tells it like it is and doesn't mess around. So when he releases a new riesling in the now-fashionable semi-sweet style, he labels it Jim Barry Sweet Riesling. (Its full title is actually Jim Barry Lavende...
12 April 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living.
The abnormally soggy eastern Australian summer is likely to result in lower-alcohol wines than usual from the 2011 vintage. Winemakers from Clare to Canberra, McLaren Vale to the Yarra Valley, say this year's wines will have moderate alcohol strengths, mor...
5 April 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
A whiff of scandal whipped up by the American magazine Wine Spectator around a small Barossa Valley winery has re-opened the question of how to deal with the practice of batch bottling. It's an extraordinary story. Firstly, the winery Schild Estate was ecs...
Apr-May 2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
A side of beef, neatly dismembered and hanging from butcher's hooks for several days until it goes putrid, is displayed on one wall, opposite a Sidney Nolan work from the 1960s. In between are piles of smelly black coal. The contrast between all three is ...
Apr-May 2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
It happened near the end of the Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir Celebration in February. One of the visiting overseas winemakers was Etienne de Montille, of Domaine de Montille, in Volnay, Burgundy. In the previous session, we had tasted a shockingly bad ...
29 March 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Damn: it looks like I'll have to get rid of my entire wine cellar and start again. Nicolas Joly, the father of biodynamic viticulture, says if your wine is stored in an environment with electric current of 50 Hertz or more, it will be dead. "The vibration ...
22 March 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It is possible Jean-Claude Mas has the greatest range of value-for-money wines in the world. I certainly scratch my head trying to think of someone who might beat him. They're French wines, but inspired by the New World. Arrogant Frog is his best-known bran...
8 March 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Perhaps the most welcome piece of news in the rather depressed wine community in 2010 was Brown Brothers' purchase of Tasmania's biggest wine group, Tamar Ridge. The Tasmanian response has been almost embarrassing, according to the outgoing Brown Brothers C...
3 March 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Six of the 11 wines Chris Tyrrell lined up on the bench were made from vines more than 100 years old. "That's unique in the Hunter Valley and probably in Australia," said the fresh-faced son of Bruce and grandson of Murray, who would be struggling to summon ...
1 March 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
What should we make of an invitation to attend a Hot Pants wine tasting in Rozelle? The invitation depicted girls wearing skimpy shorts, 1970s style, and attendees were invited to do the same.
Feb-Mar 2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Some wine-show medals are more credible than others. If wine shows are to be gauged by their results (and they are), a European judging named Berliner Wein Trophy is looking a bit shaky. Angove's Butterfly Ridge Chardonnay 2009 is a perfectly serviceable, w...
22 February 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The All For One Wine pledge initiated by Adelaide Hills winemaker Stephen Pannell and joined by 470 co-pledgers, to drink only Australian wine from January 1 to 26, created quite a stir. The pledgers comprised 304 winemakers, 61 grapegrowers, 22 restaurateur...
15 February 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
There's only one thing that could tear Greg Melick away from January's one-day cricket match between England and Australia at Hobart's Bellerive Oval. Picking up a truck-load of trophies at the Tasmanian Wine Show awards night...
8 February 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Plaudits for Australian pinot noir flowed almost as freely as the wine at the recent biennial Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir Celebration. Visiting American Burgundy specialist Allen Meadows, author of the Burghound newsletter, said he'd been impressed by the...
1 February 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Moorilla Estate's founder, the late Claudio Alcorso, would have been thrilled. The house that he built on his vineyard, on the Berriedale peninsula which juts into Hobart's Derwent River, has been transformed into an extraordinary art gallery, the Museum of O...
25 January 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Hunter Valley is probably the most difficult place to grow grapes in Australia, with a risk of summer rainfall that most regions seldom have to fear. This year, though, much of the eastern half of the continent is having a Hunter summer. Rain, rain and ...
18 January 2011 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Australians could be accused of being obsessed with mono-varietal wines, with some justification. Just look through your local bottle-shop and you'll see the labels mostly carry the name of just one grape, such as chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, riesling, shir...
Dec-Jan 2010-2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Philip Laffer turned 70 just days before he was presented with the McWilliam's Wines Maurice O'Shea Award for 2010 - the wine industry's most distinguished accolade. And while he's given away day-to-day involvement in running Pernod Ricard's Australian arm, ...
Dec-Jan 2010-2011 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
I'm a born sceptic. The Australian Sceptics magazine is a very entertaining read and I'm the last person to take anything at face value, especially the supposed benefits of biodynamic viticulture, magnetic wine pourers, vortexes, pyramids and stags' bladders...
30 November 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Cultural Cringe is back, at least in relation to Australian wine. So says Adelaide-based winemaker Stephen Pannell, of S.C. Pannell Wines. So concerned is Pannell that he's started a movement to get people to pledge to drink only Australian wine during Janu...
16 November 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
There is so much interest in ‘new' or alternative grape varieties these days, not to mention obscure imported wines, that it often seems the retailers, sommeliers and press think traditional Australian varieties are too boring to bother with. The ‘chocolate an...
9 November 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Limestone Coast and Geelong wine shows could not be more different, but both shone the searchlight on outstanding wines. A fortnight ago I judged at Limestone Coast; a fortnight before at Geelong. Limestone Coast featured some of the biggest wine companie...
2 November 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Sir George Fistonich is a survivor. But the founder and owner of New Zealand's self-proclaimed most successful winery, Villa Maria, is also living proof of the wisdom of sticking to a quality ethic. In 2001, Fistonich claims, the Villa Maria group became the...
26 October 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It seems almost perverse to be writing about the most exciting new trophy in Australian wine shows in the week that the Jimmy Watson Trophy is announced, but here goes. It's the Gramp, Hardy, Hill Smith Prize awarded at the Royal Adelaide Wine Show for, and I...
19 October 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Liz Jackson is the star of the NSW Wine Awards this year. Not only does the 32-year-old Hunter Valley winemaker have five wines in the NSW Top 40, one of them is the NSW Wine of the Year – the 2003 Tempus Two Copper Zenith Semillon. This wine is already much d...
12 October 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
I'm not the only person who has long believed that the red soil in many of the best vineyards of the Hunter Valley was volcanic in origin. It's enshrined in all of the reference books and taught in schools. Now, I know better. It is in fact terra rossa, derive...
5 October 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Treasury Wine Estates is the big winner in the latest revision of Langtons Classification of Australian Wine. Classification Mark V is the fifth edition of this, the most significant such attempt to give a hierarchy to collectable Australian wine, which was st...
Oct-Nov 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
More and more wineries are claiming to produce 'natural' wine. Is this just more spin, or is for real - and does it have merit? We know the wine game is full of spin, and when wine is over-supplied, producers are under great pressure to differentiate their pr...
Oct-Nov 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Tom Shobbrook is a young man who thinks outside the square. He's into biodynamic viticulture and 'natural', or low-intervention, winemaking, but he's also quality orientated. He's no hippy winemaker, but he has a strong sense of nature and respect for the eart...
28 September 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Those pesky Kiwis have done it again. Trounced us in the Tri Nations again, I mean. No, that's not rugby; that's wine. It's becoming a regular thing in the Tri Nations Wine Challenge. They were the most successful nation last year and this, and what really hu...
21 September 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The impish, hyper-talkative Luca Currado is holding forth at his Vietti winery in Piedmont's Barolo region. He's hosting a gaggle of wine writers and trade people in the Vietti tasting room - something he must have done hundreds of times before, although you w...
14 September 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Hunter Valley is one of our most idiosyncratic wine regions, for many reasons, not least its climate - which doggedly follows its own pattern, different from any other Australian region. Its wine styles are also highly distinctive – in the case of dry whit...
7 September 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Burgundy is expensive wine. A grand cru will set you back at least $250 and a good premier cru around $150-plus; even drinking a village-appellation wine from a good maker costs around $100. So a faulty bottle is about as much fun as a punch in the nose. At le...
31 August 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When Robin Brockett joined the Browne family at the emerging Scotchmans Hill winery in 1988, he thought he might stay a couple of years. There were three employees then; now there are 80, and Brockett is still there. "It's a stimulating job; there's always so...
24 August 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
As a critic, I get to taste enormous quantities of shiraz, cabernet, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc and its various blends, and sometimes it seems that choice - one of wine's greatest fascinations - is contracting. It often seems the hegemony of the main varie...
17 August 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If you've been out and about in wine bars recently you might have noticed a large clear container of red wine perched on the counter. It has a steel tube coming out of the top with a tap and a lump of cherry-wood for a handle. Scrawled on the demijohn is its n...
10 August 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The Coonawarra region has been ho-hum for yearsan under-performing region. It has great natural advantages which it doesn't fully capitalise on. It's a sleepy place where there's little experimentation or innovation compared to other regions. If you contrast i...
3 August 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Pinot gris and pinot grigio - different styles of white wine made from the same grape - have emerged as a significant part of the wine market in recent years. Trouble is, many drinkers - perhaps the majority - are confused about their identity. No, I don't mea...
Aug-Sep 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Unique is an over-used word in the world of wine. But there's a worldwide trend among winemakers to seek to make wine that's as individual as possible. Ideally, it should be irreproducible wine that can be made nowhere else. It's the opposite of varietal, bra...
27 July 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
La Verriere, a restored monastery on a hilltop near Crestet in the southern Rhone Valley, is undeniably grenache country. Dry and sparsely forested with stony, infertile soils, it's anything but your postcard image of lush French countryside. Precipitous mount...
27 July 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
To filter or not to filter, that is a question that winemakers must grapple with continuously. It is often said that when wine is filtered it is never as good as it was before filtration. US critic Robert Parker went on a crusade against filtration some years...
13 July 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Andrew and Jane Mitchell recently attended a promotional tasting at Sydney's Wine Ark, where their $27 Mitchell Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon was rubbing shoulders with $100 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon and $100 Yarra Yering Dry Red No.1 (a cabernet blend)....
6 July 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Jonathan Nossiter is a film-maker who first came to the attention of wine lovers when he released his epic hand-made documentary Mondovino about five years ago. Mondovino irritated many winemakers and merchants because of its blatant bias against big companies...
29 June 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Frenchman Loic Le Calvez is a young man in a hurry. At the age of 32, he's already been chief winemaker of an important Australian winery for two and a half years. He arrived at Taltarni eight and a half years ago for a vintage job; went away again; worked in...
22 June 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Robert O'Callaghan is one of those people who are always doing something interesting - and usually totally original. The founder and owner of the Barossa Valley's most unique winery, Rockford, is an irrepressible individualist, a creative spark, a mentor to ma...
15 June 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
When I last visited Burgenland about eight years ago, I didn't taste any red wines that I could get excited about. The botrytis-affected sweet whites were far and away the best thing in Burgenland – a flat, rather featureless wine region of far eastern Austria...
8 June 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If the Aborigines have 16 words for water, and the Inuit a similar number for snow, the Piedmontese ought to have the same number for tannin. Tannin is such a critical part of their greatest wines, made from the enigmatic nebbiolo grape. And there are myriad k...
1 June 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Unless you've been hiding under a rock out west of Oodnadatta, you would have picked up on the fact that natural and ethical winemaking are the buzz wine trends of the moment. Grow your grapes organically, biodynamically or at least with minimal inputs, and in...
Jun-Jul 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Is the world getting sillier or am I just getting more intolerant? In the past 12 months I've been regaled with some of the weirdest decanters and aerating gadgets I've ever seen. The Ovarius takes the cake. This is the ugliest decanter I can recall, shaped l...
Jun-Jul 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Tim Adams's mentor was the legendary Mick Knappstein, who ran Leasingham in Clare for many years. "He employed me; he was my second father-figure," says Adams. That was in 1975 and Adams was 17. The son of a bank manager who was posted to Clare in, Adams hasn...
18 May 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Australia prides itself as a world leader in shiraz. Shiraz's spiritual home may be France's Rhone Valley, but Australia is more closely identified with shiraz/syrah than any other nation. But perhaps we should be looking over our shoulder across the Tasman. I...
18 May 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Australia prides itself as a world leader in shiraz. Shiraz's spiritual home may be France's Rhone Valley, but Australia is more closely identified with shiraz/syrah than any other nation. But perhaps we should be looking over our shoulder across the Tasman. I...
16 May 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Amid the gloom and glut of the Australian wine scene there are occasional good-news stories. Such as that of Jason and Alecia Brown and their Moppity Vineyards at Young. Moppity was first planted in 1973, a year after Peter Robinson planted the now-famous Barw...
11 May 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Noosa Heads is a slightly unreal place. A place where the beautiful people go to frolic with other beautiful people and forget their worries. It's the logical place for a wine and food festival, and Noosa's attracts an amazing cast of celebs and wannabe celebs...
4 May 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
There's something about old vines. A certain mystique. Old vines don't automatically produce better wine than young, of course. There are a few other boxes that must be ticked, but if everything else is right, old vines can produce wines of greater finesse, de...
27 April 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Chablis. One could almost argue that the chardonnay-based wines of Chablis must be related to the riesling wines of the Mosel Valley way over in Germany. At their best they are similarly transparent, translucent and pure. They reflect the soil they spring from...
20 April 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
It was Remington Norman's book "The Great Domaines of Burgundy" (Kyle Cathie, 1992 and 1996) that first showed me how great wine can be made by people using diametrically opposed methods in the same village. Norman's detailed explanation of winemaking techniqu...
13 April 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Tough times in the Barossa Valley are having positive effects on the way the grapes are grown. Grapegrowers and winemakers are taking the opportunity to re-focus on quality. "It's only in the down-turns that you can get grapegrowers to change their ways," says...
6 April 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If I had to nominate my 'desert island' wine it would probably be Mosel Valley riesling of the Kabinett style. That's assuming I had a fridge on the island in which to chill it No wine refreshes, enlivens and delights like this. It possesses a wonderful balanc...
1 April 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Tough times in the Barossa Valley are having positive effects on the way the grapes are grown. Grapegrowers and winemakers are taking the opportunity to re-focus on quality. "It's only in the down-turns that you can get grapegrowers to change their ways," says...
Apr-May 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Winemakers call it The Pox. It is the dreaded social disease of wine. It is shared around unwittingly - passed by those who usually don't know they've got it, to those who are unaware they're running a risk of contracting it. If a winemaker buys or borrows som...
30 March 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
In the pantheon of iconic Australian wines Grant Burge's Meshach is a bit of a puzzle. It was first made in 1988 and released in the early '90s at a similar time as a wave of new, reserve-style reds from the Barossa region. That wave included St Hallett Old Bl...
23 March 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If you think the Barossa Valley is behind the times, is dominated by big factory wineries and makes nothing but overripe, over-oaked, over-alcoholic monster reds, you'd be mistaken. But this is the stereotype some overseas critics seem to harbour. You'd also b...
9 March 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Happy birthday, 'Chateau' Tahbilk - 150 years old this year. It's quite something in this young country 150 years is a long time in a land that's only seen white men making wine for around 220 years. It's been known as Chateau Tahbilk most of that time, but Ta...
2 March 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The tragedy of Australia's wine sector is that it has always been in reality two wine sectors: big and small, the big having the interests of the large winemaking companies at heart, the small having their own, very different interests. The big are the minorit...
1 March 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If you think the Barossa Valley is behind the times, is dominated by big factory wineries and makes nothing but overripe, over-oaked, over-alcoholic monster reds, you'd be mistaken. But this is the stereotype some overseas critics seem to harbour. You'd also b...
23 February 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The giant-killer at the recent Sydney Royal Wine Show was Alex McKay, whose 2008 Collector Reserve Shiraz netted four trophies, climaxing with the Gilbert Phillips Trophy for best red wine of show. McKay, who is one of the quietest and least demonstrative win...
16 February 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
One of the most memorable quotes in Andrew Jefford's fine book, "The New France", is this, attributed to the godfather of biodynamic viticulture, Nicolas Joly: "Before being good, a wine should be true." I'm sorry Mr Joly, but that's where you part company wi...
9 February 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
If you're a serious Champagne lover, and like your Champagne dry and with plenty of acidity, but your budget doesn't run to the likes of Bollinger (at $240 for the '99 Grand Annee vintage) there is one house that offers unbeatable value. Lanson. Part of the r...
2 February 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
"Savnami" and "Savalanche" are epithets Australian winemakers have invented for the tidal wave of New Zealand sauvignon blanc that has swamped the Australian wine market. It is one of the most talked-about topics in Australian wineries and Australian producers...
2 February 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
At the Tasmanian Wine Show awards night, they were calling it "Yattarna at a quarter of the price". Derwent Estate Chardonnay 2007 ($32 at cellar door) scooped the trophies for the best chardonnay and best white wine of show. The Yattarna reference is because...
Feb-Mar 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
The pros and cons of wine competitions are widely debated; so are the shortcomings of the judging process. It's a truism that there is no perfect way to evaluate wine, and none of the methods - including wine shows - should be taken as gospel. One area where...
Feb-Mar 2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
"What makes me want to make wine is its ability to talk about where it comes from," says Belinda Gould, winemaker at Muddy Water. Part and parcel of 'making the soil talk' is to intervene as little as possible in the winemaking - minimal intervention is a catc...
26 January 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Brian Croser is a conundrum. He is a progressive, even pioneering, vigneron yet he doggedly sticks to sealing his bottles with natural cork. He made his first Petaluma Coonawarra red from cabernet sauvignon and shiraz and although many considered it the best o...
19 January 2010 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
The job of a wine writer is misnamed: it should be 'wine taster' because we spend a lot more time tasting the stuff than we do actually writing about it. I spent the last four weeks between mid-December and early-January catching up on tastings: I had never be...
Dec-Jan 2009-2010 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Pinot noir must be the most dissected and psycho-analysed of all wines. It fascinates and frustrates all of us, whether winemakers or drinkers. At the many pinot symposia, such as the annual SIPNOT (Stonier's International Pinot Noir Tasting) pinots from Austr...
Oct-Nov 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Red wines, especially Stonewell Shiraz, are what most of us think of when the name Peter Lehmann comes up, but the development of the Lehmann white wines, especially riesling and semillon, is perhaps even more impressive. Great shiraz is no rarity in the Baros...
Oct-Nov 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
The 1959 red Bordeaux vintage was an outstanding one, and the best of the wines, the first growths and other highly rated wines, are still drinking well if they've been well cellared. They have become very scarce and extremely expensive, and opportunities to t...
Oct-Nov 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Last August, the public relations firm whose job it is to talk up cork, on behalf of the leading Portuguese cork producer Amorim, issued an astonishing press release. "TCA NO LONGER A MAJOR PROBLEM IN USA, SAYS INDUSTRY LEADER". Essentially, the report said t...
Oct-Nov 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Sarah Fagan, 28, was brought up on a farming property at Cowra, and it was odds-on that she would end up doing something in agriculture. By the time she went to Sydney University her parents Peter and Jenni Fagan had already become late entrants in the winegro...
Aug-Sep 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
The biggest problem with Australian red wines is not ‘brett' or oak chips or residual sugar, but something more fundamental: the ripeness of the grapes. Judging in shows across Australia and tasting in many different contexts, I find ripeness is the key issue...
Jun-Jul 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Julian Alcorso is probably the first Winemaker of the Year finalist ever who doesn't have a wine of his own. As head of the contract winemaking company Winemaking Tasmania, the 61-year-old son of the founder of Moorilla Estate, Claudio Alcorso, and his team ma...
Jun-Jul 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
I'd like a dollar for every time I've heard a send-up of the language used by wine tasters. The unenlightened delight in lampooning any suggestion that wine could smell or taste of fruit, vegetable, flower, herb or spice. Even a hero of mine, Michael Leunig, h...
Jun-Jul 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Peter Lehmann's Stonewell Shiraz is one of the benchmarks among the full-throttle, rich, flagship red wines of South Australia's warmer regions. There are many of these 'pedestal wines', but relatively few that I actually enjoy drinking. Distressingly common a...
Apr-May 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
At a time when winemakers are vigorously diversifying into ‘alternative' grape varieties, it can be disconcerting to find that a given winery's shiraz, cabernet, tempranillo and sangiovese all have much the same flavour. Minced gumleaves! Eucalyptol is one of...
Feb-Mar 2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
‘A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down'. "in the most delightful way." So sang Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. And winemakers know it to be true, as low-level residual sugar is widely used these days to make ‘dry' wines both white and red more palata...
Dec-Jan 2008-2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
Dr John Gladstones is a bright-eyed, smiley imp of a man, small of stature but large of intellect. If anybody could claim to be the father of Margaret River as a wine region, he could. He probably wouldn't, though, because he is a modest man. He was the one wh...
Dec-Jan 2008-2009 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
‘Minerality' is the latest buzz-word in wine-speak. It's reached plague proportions, but only relatively recently in Australia, despite having been widely used in Europe for a long time. Writers and winemakers who never before uttered this word, now routinely...
Oct-Nov 2008 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
A lot has happened in Louisa Rose's career since she was a second-time finalist in this award in 2005. She was promoted to chief winemaker of Yalumba in 2006, taking over responsibility for all winemaking. This year Yalumba released an innovative new riesling,...
Aug-Sep 2008 — Gourmet Traveller WINE
"Great cool-climate shiraz has a warm heart." Maybe it's the preacher in Tim Kirk: he has a way with words. What he means is that cool-climate shiraz may be spicy to the point of peppery, and even a touch vegetal, but somehow it has an inherent warmth in it....
17 June 2008 — Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living
Don’t know about you, but when I’m heading off to a BYO Chinese restaurant (which I do often) I usually take a carry-bag containing a chilled bottle of either riesling or Hunter semillon, and a pinot noir. Between them, they cope with most of the flavours...