Wine

There are people that I meet that think being a wine judge is the best job in the world, the ones that automatically ask “how do I get that job?” Some out there think that tasting your way through a hundred or more wines in a day is some kind of booze induced hazy heaven, but those people need to be put straight, as my dentist, GP and long suffering family will attest, it isn’t all a bed of roses, or rosés as the case may be. I recently judged at the Cairns Wine Show Awards,

I’ve got pretty average hand writing, very, it’s a cross between printing and running writing that just looks wrong on the paper at the best of times. So you could well imagine the difficulty I’ve had trying to decipher my tasting notes after I had spent the day chatting with 30 something winemakers, all with about ten different wines to try. It’s become more hieroglyphics than handwriting, I’m somewhat positive that there’s a line there that mentions “the latex not breathing

50 years, it’s a long time to be in business. Most local companies don’t manage it, in fact a heck of a lot of national companies don’t manage it either. Those stats are worse when you look at wineries, especially ones that pop up in, what are thought of, as unusual spots. It’s hard for new wineries to get the label out there, and it only takes a couple of bad growing years for the profits to start going south, and the inevitable call from the Receivers and Liquidators. Vas

Before I start this column I should probably announce that I’m an unashamed fan of Pinot Noir. And I’m not alone in my love for the variety; it’s one of the most highly prized wines in the world, certain labels are among some of the most highly priced wines in the world too. There is just something about it. The best styles of Pinot Noir can often be found from wines that are grown in cool climates. Pinot is a grape that ripens early, which allows it to be grown in some of t

There wouldn’t be too many wine drinkers in Oz that haven’t heard the name De Bortoli. And more than any other winery I can think of, De Bortoli are continually tweaking and extending their range of wines under label. Creating outstanding entry level, drink now $10 wines that taste like they should have mid $20 price tags right through to their most expensive, age worthy premiums, the range and quality is hard to fault. In fact their Vinoque Nebbiolo Rosé at around $12 is ju

Last week I had the chance to cross something off my “all things boozy” wish list, I’ve finally had samples turn up, and every single one of them was fantastic drinking. Now if you’re sitting there reading that thinking “geez life must hard for you mate” then think again, every week there are samples turning up here. Wines from all price points and all styles, some of these wines have been a true treasure, others are about as enjoyable as a prostate examination, but its not

About four years ago I was invited to a tasting for a new label that was just hitting the market called “Snake + Herring”. Truth be told after that tasting, I never thought I’d be buying wines from the label. The wines we tried on the day, a Cabernet and a Pinot, needed more depth and polish to them, they were too lean in the mouth, or they were too gritty and rugged. You could see where they were headed but it just wasn’t doing it for me, especially not at the $25 RRP. They

Over the last year I’ve noticed the word “Syrah” popping up on Australian wine bottles instead of the more common Australian usage of “Shiraz”. It’s been creeping in slowly as there has been a growing trend to use Syrah for wines that are made in the Old World style, being less fruit forward, quite floral aromatically with a tannin structure that is more often seen in a French or European wine, where strangley enough, its more common to see the word Syrah on a bottle than it

There is a type of wine that is in every wine drinker’s home, but there’s no real formal name for them, some call them “quaffers”, others call them their “go to wine”, I’ve even heard of them called “soldiers”, the dependable bottles that do all the ground work. These are those mid-week bottles that you have with pizza, or the ones that you take to a mates place on Saturday night for the BBQ. They are the ones that you roll out with the spaghetti on Tuesday, where you’ve adde

Iconic…..its a word that gets bandied about a heck of a lot, often it’s used simply because someone wants to say something nice about a block of flats or an ageing building, and calls them “iconic”. But it’s a word that probably sits quite well when you throw out names like “Wirra Wirra” or “Greg Trott”, the man responsible for resurrecting Wirra Wirra from being a lost and abandoned winery to the, dare I say it, iconic institution it is today. Wirra Wirra Vineyards was ori

Seppelt is one of Australia’s oldest wineries, with the original idea and foundations for the brand being laid in 1851 when Joseph Seppelt established Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley.  Seppeltsfield eventually expanded to purchase Best’s Great Western winery in Victoria, which was founded by Joseph Best in 1865. It was Best who paid the local gold miners to dig the 3 kilometres of underground tunnels, known as the Drives, which became the cellars for the winery. Eventuall

If I had to pick one style of wine to enjoy for the rest of my life it would be Riesling. No, seriously, it would be Riesling, I’m almost certain that the world would be a better place if more people drank Riesling, there’s even several unconfirmed reports of Riesling curing illnesses….again, seriously. It’s one of the greatest joys in wine, and yet it’s still one of the most misunderstood wines, mainly because acidity is easily misinterpreted by our tongue and brain as swe

Wondering how to actually go about starting that cellar? Here's a few tips.

Few wineries have been to the brink and back like Evans and Tate have. Their story starts just over forty years ago when, in 1974, two mates John Evans and John Tate, and their wives Jan and Toni, find the perfect site to build their dream vineyard on the banks of the Wilyabrup River in the Margaret River region of WA. In 1975 they planted out their first vineyard, naming it Redbrook, and set about creating some of the bestselling wines that WA has to offer, in fact thirty y

Back in 2007 Apple released the first iPhone , a product that took the world by storm. The Melbourne Storm won not only the minor premiership but also the grand Finals when they defeated, or should I say embarrassed, Manly 34-8. And over in WA’s Geographe Bay, the area that leads into the Margret River area, the Towner family were setting up a little winery called Flametree Wines were opening their doors, and immediately set about creating award winning wines. The winery fir

Many years ago the area of Mudgee fell off the wine radar for a lot of people, and for some reason it has struggled to come back. I’ve heard people say that’s because the wines coming from the region aren’t great, they are too hit and miss or they aren’t as expressive as some of the other wine regions of Australia. I think those people have had their head in the sand over the past few years as there are quite a few wineries out there, from the Mudgee area, in fact, around th

Most people tend to think of Sauvignon Blanc as an un-oaked wine, but some of the most interesting sauv blancs that are floating around on the shelves in the local bottleshop these days, are the ones that have seen time in oak barrels. The use of oak in sauv blanc has been creeping back in over the last decade or so, and its not surprising because, winemakers, like the rest of us, can get a little bored in their job and like to experiment with their creations, or they are th

Its not often that I like to review a wine that isn’t available at your local bottleshop. But every now and again I come across a wine label that is available direct from the winery, that is worth getting a few mates together to buy a carton or mixed dozen with. Huntington Estate in NSW Mudgee district is just that sort of winery. Huntington Estate was established in 1969 by Bob and Wendy Roberts, who had decided that Mudgee would be a better place to re-create the classic

For some years Australian growers and winemakers have been leading the world with trialling new varieties, taking varieties that were almost facing extinction or had been pushed out of favouritism in their own native country and trying their Aussie hand at them. A lot of these have been varieties that our winemakers have gone onto use extremely well and that have created outstanding, individual and expressive wines. Look at Yalumba for example, just over a few decades ago the

I’m often asked which wines we drink at home, and the short answer is a lot of everything, and it’s always changing, either because of seasons, changing tastes or the quality of a particular vintage of wine. Over the last few weeks we’ve been getting back into our summer wines; crisp and zippy whites, spicy pinots and reds that are best when chilled. However when I say chilled I don’t mean cold, when a wine is recommended to be served at room temperature, its referring to th