Wine

With the weather heating back up again recently, it’s been time to start looking at those wines for the warmer months. Gone are the days of being able to pull out a bottle of big, bold Barossa red. I find that we start to drink more of the whites, rosés and pinots. Any regular reader of this column will know I’m a huge fan of Pinot Noir, it’s a wine that I drink all year round, from the light drink now, soft and supple style wines with summer lunches, through to big heavy wi

I’m often asked what the best value wine is, and it often has me stumped. It’s the idea of value that gets me, for example I hardly ever go past $15 for an everyday wine. These are wines that may have an RRP of $24-$29, wines that are 95 points but have a real world price point of $15 -$20. I go to around $30-$50 for something that I want to put away, I can find great value in different labels at that price point as you start to gain wines with more complexity in that price b

Back in 2009 the lads at Winefront nominated the 2007 Yalumba Scribbler Cabernet Shiraz as their #1 in the Top 100 under $20 in the 09/10 Big Red Wine Book. By the time that Gourmet Traveller Wine had decided to jump in and give the 07 Scribbler a pretty solid 94 points, I’d already bought a few bottles and put them away in the cool dark lonely spot. Last week I finally cracked the cap of a couple of the last few bottles that I had, and the wine had aged perfectly. Deep dark

So end of school holidays means back to work! This week the samples were the offerings from Longview and gartleman. I was super excited about the gartleman after seeing their semillon perform so well with only just a few years of age on them. This 2016 is super young, light low flavours of soft green fruits, probably not as good as previous vintages right now, but for $20 it's worth putting a few away. Happy to admit when I'm mistaken, and I was on the Longview wines by se r

I seem to be on a bit of Yarra roll at the moment, there must be something in the water down there as the wineries just keep knocking out great wine after great wine. Giant Steps is one of those wineries that’s always reliable, and always knocking out award winning wines. Whether it be in any of the three brands, Giant Steps, Innocent Bystander or Mea Culpa. And that’s in no small part to hard work and effort put in by the owner and founder of Giant Steps, Phil Sexton and hi

Some of the oldest wines that I have enjoyed the most, out of our collection at least, have been the Bin ranges from Penfolds. The wines have shown that they have an exceptional ability to carry bottle age and the wine develops exceptionally in the bottle, the problem now though is that the most of the reds in the Bin range start at a RRP of $40, a far cry from the sub $20 and $30’s of just over a decade ago. The demand for the wines and the need to recoup the massive outlay

I’m pretty lucky with the group that sit around the tasting table with me, the range of life experiences, skills and trades are so different, it gives us all different points of view on life let alone what we are tasting on the day. We have different things we look for in a wine/beer/spirit and have different price points that we won’t go past. I find myself running things past them when I want more feedback, especially when I think there is something that doesn’t quiet sit

Jimmy Durante once warbled about seeing people in them, the Sammy Hagar led Van Halen belted out about what they were made of. Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, The Moody Blues, Coldplay even Taylor Swift have sang about them. Dreams, we all have them, some of us sit back and think about them, fantasise about following them. Others get up, work bloody hard and make those dreams happen. Winemaker Nina Stocker falls very firmly into that latter category. About three years ago the

If you are a fan of those huge big and bold Barossa reds, then you should stop reading now. On the other hand if you have got to that stage where you are chasing wines that are more about elegance, finesse and restrained power then have I got a winery for you. Levantine Hill winery in Yarra Valley’s Coldstream has been knocking out wines for only a handful of years now, but already they have built a name with wines that have two keywords – elegance and finesse. The winery

1985, “We are the World” was playing everywhere you went, the wreck of the Titanic was found, Microsoft released th e first version of Windows, Canterbury rolled the Saints 7 to 6, and the mighty Bombers thrashed the Hawks 170 to 92 to win a consecutive premiership. Across the ditch, in an Auckland harbour, the French got a bit sneaky and sank the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, and over in Marlborough a little winery called Cloudy Bay were making their first vintage.

We don’t get out for dinner often; with kids, work and general “stuff” to be done around the house, but we recently made that happen. We were supposed to travel over the Valentines, but the roads were cut, so out we went, and of course being Valentines, there were more people around than a Drug Intervention at the Titans Rugby League Club, and not having booked because we weren’t supposed to be here, we just managed to sneak into a spot at the third place we stopped at. By th

A few weeks ago, just as I was packing our camper trailer to head off for the long weekend, I received a call from Gavin Berry, Winemaker/Owner of West Cape Howe Wines in Western Australia’s Great Southern region. He was in town and wanted to swing past to show his new vintages of his fantastic wines. It was stinking hot in the shed, I was covered in sweat, had just realised I had mistakenly rewired the trailer with five core instead of seven core, leading to me having to rew

I generally try not to write up drinks that I don’t enjoy, or can’t rate that highly. Simply because people want to read about good drinks, and what new drinks out there that are worth laying down your hard earned cash on. Often when I find a drink I don’t like I make sure I have as many people try it with me because I know I can be a bit of a tosser when it comes to this stuff. I realise that I look for different things in beers and wines than what even my mates do. But ev

There have been so many good drops out there this year it’s hard to put my thumb on what was the best. But if you’re looking for out of the ordinary Christmas presents for staff, clients or loved ones then have a quick crack at some of these: A Subscription to the Beer Cartel. This is a great idea for a gift that will keep giving. The idea is that you choose how long you want your subscription to run, from 1 month to 12 months, and then either select a half dozen or dozen b

You may not know this, but I write this column from home, surrounded by our children and mountains of cardboard boxes of wine and beer that the Minister for War and Finance says that “I must simply stop buying”. And it’s been kind of hard to write over the last few weeks with the kids running around , wanting you to play with them, stop fights, clean up paint off the walls, bury dead fish and do the general run to the doctor to have stitches put in their little noggins. So y

BYRON BAY...famous for its beaches, the laid back lifestyle and their HUUUGEE Blues Fest...which has become more of a rock fest, but that’s beside the point. But if the stuff from Stone & Wood is anything to go by, it should be equally well known for its beers. Back in 2008, 3 guys set up Stone & Wood Brewing, leaving their corporate worlds behind and settling into a life of making beer, headed up by former Matilda Bay head brewer Brad Rogers. Sounds great doesn’t it, makin

It’s remarkable how the stars can align sometimes. With a remarkable, almost what could be referred to as biblical timing, it turns out that two of my favourite brewers are celebrating their 150th anniversaries this year. Both Coopers Brewery in Adelaide and Chimay – brewed by Trappist Monks in Belgium - both started way back in 1862. Both were also started by men of religion too. Thomas Cooper was a lay Methodist preacher, and the monks of Chimay were ....uhhmm .....Monks. C

I went camping for St.Patricks Day to catch up with a few mates a few weeks ago. It was a little wet so most of the time was spent chatting, and while we were having a few beers a thought hit me like a lightning bolt out of the blue: “As a Nation of Beer drinkers, we have it within our power to stop the collapse of foreign nations from national debt, by the simple action of...drinking beer” Think about it. With the background of the group of people that were camping with u

Ahh ‘tis the New Year and I’m busy marking off all the long weekends with camping and fishing. And with that in mind I thought I’d share my top Four FOR Camping. These are just something a little different from taking the usual Bundy or Bourbon or UDL. Things that just help to make more room; are lighter or just make things go easier while the kids are fighting, the boat won’t start and the sand flies are doing the gypsy tap on your leg. Brass Beer : Brass Beer has

I was looking at the Port Douglas Carnivale website the other day and noticed that it mentioned they will feature the first ever North Queensland release of the Penfolds Bin 389 and Bin 407 wines. This will be Queensland’s first public release of the “baby Grange” outside of Brisbane. This would be an awesome way of trying these wines along with several others all matched to fine food…..I’d book a ticket now, along with a detox course to follow…. Penfolds are doing some inte