Shiraz

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"

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

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

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

With the year nearly over its time to look take a good hard look through the bottom of the empty glass at the year that was. There’s been a few noticeable trends this year, some of which have actually lined up with my predictions from the end of last year – that rosé will continue its steady rise and broaden its flavour profile to make wines that men will happily drink during summer, and that beer brewers would start to return to forgotten or uncool styles, Gose beer has sky

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

The way I look and review a wine is probably a bit different to how you would normally consume a bottle. I get a group of people around to our house every week, and look at a wine as a group, getting feedback on the wines, across a broad and diverse range. Anything that is particularly good, I will hold onto and try again the next evening, and see how its evolved after being opened for a while. This changes the tastes, some become more expressive and others fade off to become

Its funny how wines can taste when purchased from different bottleshops. It all comes down to how it’s been treated in transport. Factors like whether the pallet sat in the sun whilst it was being unloaded, even whether the pallet was in the middle of the shipping container or against the edge with the sun beaming on it whilst it was being transported up here, all have a bearing on how the wine will taste. We recently sat down to look at the new 2015 vintage from St.Hugo Shi

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

It may come as a surprise to many that the first commercial planting of Shiraz in Australia wasn’t in the Barossa. It was near a place called Branxton in the Hunter region of NSW. It was planted out in 1830 by George Wyndham on a property he named “Dalwood”. He was an unconventional and headstrong man and somewhat of a radical. He was born into landed gentry in England, deciding to emigrate to Australia for life as a farmer after refusing an English Government posting, whose

Over the last few months, especially over the Christmas and New Years break I’ve noticed something amongst our friends, it’s the idea of “forgotten labels”. And by that I simply mean the idea that there are some wine labels out there that some of us swerve past, as we’ve had a bad experience or that we somehow associate with being sub-par. Those labels that we say “geeze I used to drink that all the time”. Once I noticed that we do it, I became aware that I do it myself, ev

Australia has lead the way in many inventions over the years. From Spray-On Skin, the winged keel, the black box flight recorder, the ute even the humble Hills hoist and petrol lawn mower, the list is as long as my kids Santa wish list. But there is one thing that is having a massive resurgence in Northern Hemisphere, that Australia can lay claim to: the bag-in-a-box. Whether you call it goon, chateau cardboard, bladder or schoolies handbag or cask, it was a go to for many d

Sometimes it’s very hard for me to work out how wineries make money, especially the ones that decided to make excellent wines, but hold them back for aging. Not just for special or cellar aged releases, like a lot of wineries do, but they age their wines as their standard practice. Tucked away in Mudgee, north-west of Sydney and over the Great Dividing Range, lies Huntington Estate, a winery that bamboozles me as to how they can keep operating when they choose to release the

The name Seabrook Wines will ring a bell for a lot of wine drinkers, or those with long memories at the least, having been part of the Australian wine landscape since 1878 when the family started WJ Seabrook and Son. Since then they have been involved in many forms - wine brokers, wine judges, exporters or negociants (the French term for a wine merchant who uses the fruit of smaller growers and winemakers and sells the result under their own name). In 2005 the fifth generati

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.