Sangiovese

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

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

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

I’ve often mentioned in this column that there’s a few of us that sit around a table and look at the wine samples that turn up on my doorstep, our Chateau Hangover as its sometimes called. It’s a mixed bag of people but it gives me a lot of feedback from people who all look for different things in their wine, we all have such different opinions when it comes to wine. We drop the bottle into a brown bag so there is no pre-conceived ideas about the labelling or brands or even t

Just over thirty years ago a little winery in South Australia’s McLaren Vale, decided to take the extraordinary step of planting out a large portion of their vineyards with traditional Italian varieties. The family owned Coriole vineyards were founded in 1967 by Hugh and Molly Lloyd, on a site with vines that were planted just after World War I, and home to several original farmhouses that were built in 1860. The winery is probably best known for their block buster Shiraz.