Pinot Noir

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

The warm weather signals two things ...Christmas is just around the corner, and the inevitable Battle of the Bubbles is about to hit its stride. It’s also the time when everyone starts to look at their budgets for the upcoming Christmas, and starts trying to work out how they can afford it after dropping all their cash at the nags during the spring racing season. Sparkling wine has always been seen as the celebration wine, but it’s much more than that. It’s a great aperitif

Crikey it’s been warm the last few weeks, as I sit here writing this its 9.30am in February, and already 38 degrees outside,  and I’ve already got that uncomfortable trail of sweat running down my back, the cicadas are chirping away, and the uniform for the day has been singlets and shorts. As the summer heat hits these highs, I find my tastes change. Not just from avoiding the big hearty stews, roasts and huge thick steaks coming off the BBQ, and leaning more toward fish, p

Lots of wineries knock out a second or third tier label. Often those tiers are good value, more often they are good quaffing wines, or your Friday night drinkers, but it’s rare that they are something that you would serve at a dinner party when you’re trying to impress the Father-in-Law to be for example. At the other end there’s the wineries that might stumble onto a good patch of fruit, from their own winery or from contract growers, knock out a good couple of vintages and

I don’t drink a lot of Sauvignon Blanc, I struggle a bit with its flavour profile most are just too sweet, some too acidic, and some just down right smell like a tom-cat has taken a wee on a passionfruit vine. However with the weather warming I thought it would be a good opportunity to go back and look at one of the few Savvies that I will happily reach for, the Shaw + Smith Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc, a wine that has consistently been Australia’s best home-grown savvy si

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,

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

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

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 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

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