Wine

Every week a group of us get together, the number changes each week depending on availability but the group ranges from wine judges to teachers and welders, solicitors and bankers and stay at home mums. All of us have different views on what we look for in a wine, how much of a wine we would consume in a sitting, how long we would keep it open in the fridge for or how much we would pay for a wine.  It gives me a great real-world view of where these wines sit, combined with th

The Seabrook name is synonymous with wine in Australia. From expert wine judges to negociants, exporters and in the last few generations as winemakers with Hamish Seabrook being the 5th generation involved in the wine industry. His range of Seabrook wines have expanded from originally being a Victorian Shiraz to now cover wines from his own family vineyards in the Barossa and fruit from contract growers, with each label paying homage to a generation of the Seabrook Wine In

One of the bonuses of all this COVID madness is that its given me time to clean up around the place. Last week I moved a box to find a sample wine from Huntington Estate that had somehow escaped and become hidden away under a pile of stuffed toys. The timing was perfect for our regular Wednesday tastings, and cracked the top off the Huntington Estate 2015 Special Reserve Shiraz, more commonly referred to as their gold label range. Its highly fragrant, initial whack of vanilli

what makes a premium wine "premium"

Stuck at home and thinking about the possibility of starting a cellar when this COVID is over?

Wondering what to match with your take away food whilst all this madness is happeniig?

the beast that is Rosé juggernaut shows no sign of stopping its momentum in the Asutralian wine market. And nor should it really. We are seeing more and more of the style drafted in the dry savoury end of the spectrum, our lifestyle, climate and foods we enjoy just work so well with the style of wine. The days of it just being a summer quaffer is gone as this savoury style drinks well year 'round. Rosé isn’t grape variety specific, as long as you are a red grape you’re good

About 350kms west of Sydney, and 35kms south of Orange, nestled in the foothills of Mount Canobolas sits the vineyards for Angullong Wines. It's one of the largest vineyards in the area with a total of 220 hectares or 550 acres under vine. The property has been in the Crossing family since 1950 and has been run as a successful sheep and cattle station prior to diversifying into grape growing and winemaking in 1998. The wines that are produced from the fruit off these vines i

I'm a huge fan of the Coopers Vintage beers. and if money wasn't an issue then it would probably be my everyday beer. I've watched the beer evolve over the years from having its fancy gold foil cap wrapper and copper plate writing on its label, to becoming a slowly less fancy labelled beer, now with a plain circular and generic-ish label. I love watching how the beers evolve in the bottle over the years (with careful cellaring), from big brash hop driven mouth grenades to car

Its not often that I see samples of imports, but a few weeks ago we sat down to what is probably the best known name in Rioja wine. Campo Viejo, Spain's Winery of the Year, (now fully imported by Pernod Ricard) has won its the sixth Winery of the Year award, cementing their place as the "go to" Rioja wine, the region best known for its Tempranillo. But its been at the cutting edge of wine-making since its inception. José Ortigüela founded Campo Viejo as a premium Rioja brand

Chateau Tanunda is one of those names that have been synonymous with wine in Australia, especially the Barossa. Constructed in the late 1880’s by some of the first winemaker’s in the Barossa, its vineyards are home to some of the oldest plantings in the Barossa, dating back to the 1840’s, and its Chateau is Australia’s largest and oldest wine Chateau. Built 40 metres into a Tanunda hillside to provide a stable temperature for the maturing of barrels by more than 100 local far

I’ve often remarked in these columns how marketing departments dictate what wines the winery make. Sometimes I think they get it wrong, the marketers are aiming for a certain segment and just miss it. It’s either a touch too soon, too late or the final product they are aiming for just didn’t line up with what was available for the winemakers to work with. But every now and again they get it right, their timing with the winemakers, the fruit that was in the vineyards and the

Is there life after working for the big names of wine making, after all the trophies and media about your big name wines? You bet there is, and unsurprisingly it involves making more trophy winning wines. John Duval had a stellar career at Penfolds, including a 16 year long stint as the Chief Winemaker, responsible for the crafting of Penfolds world renowned Grange. Under his guidance, Penfolds were propelled to world-wide fame taking out Winemaker of the Year at the Intern

Drinking healthy? The phrase sounds like an oxymoron, however every time I look at the news there seems to be some new link with health and alcohol, a glass of wine here or a gin there and suddenly we all live to a ripe old age. It’s all rather hard to believe, but I slept through most of my high school biology classes. I personally think that the key here, as with anything in life, is moderation. But if you still want to be able to have a couple with friends, like most of u

“There’s no beer left”. It was a movie moment. You know one of those scenes when there's an explosion or  something happens and there is no sound just the actor’s hard breathing, and then slowly all the sound rushes back to them? It was like that, I heard the words but I didn’t believe them….“There’s no beer left!” Probably the most dreaded sentence a man can hear, closely followed by “I’m late” and “Where is this relationship going”. For a while all I could hear was my har

Growing up on his family’s farm in NSW’s Griffith, John Casella wanted more than just to run the little winery with a hand turned wine press. Over half a century later, Casella now oversees Casella Family Brands (CFB), a vinous empire that sells hundreds of bottles of wine around the world every minute of the day. In fact in the time it takes you to read this article, wine drinkers around the globe will have consumed several thousand glasses of his family’s range, heading t

In 2014, the family behind one of Australia’s most successful wine brands, , purchased the famous Barossa winery Peter Lehmann Wines from Swiss based The Hess Group. It followed the death of Peter Lehmann in 2013, who had founded the winery in 1979. It continues the rise and rise of Casella Family Brands, who produced their first bottle of wine in 1969 at their Farm 1471 near Griffith in NSW, with their first full vintage being crafted in 1971. The Casella family recognised

Most sports are broken up into summer and winter: Cricket for summer, rugby for winter for example. Whilst I firmly believe that beer is a 365 days of the year sport, there are definite times of the year when some beer work and some don’t. No-one has ever finished mowing their yard in Australia in the middle of January and said “what I need now is a pint thirst quenching stout”, they reach for the beers that are more refreshing, with more tropical and citrus flavours rather

I’m a bit of a cricket tragic. I’m one of “those” people that can sit there and watch a five day test very happily. I think what I love about the game so much is that it’s one of the few, if not the only game, where everyone will sledge the opposition player, but then applaud that same player loudly for a well-played shot, or when that person rockets a near unplayable ball down the pitch and you hear that rattle of stumps. Some of my happiest Christmas’s have all been about

I often remark on here about how when we taste wine around at our regular “Wet Wednesday” sessions that its quite different from how we judge a wine, or beers for that fact, at competitions.  At a Wine Show you are taking a sip of the wine, aerating it a bit, and spitting, you’re looking at colour, flavour profiles, tannin and acid structure, mouthfeel and finish to name just a few points. Jotting down your notes and moving on to the next wine, in some cases you may have up t