Wine

Snake + Herring

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...

Syrah vs Shiraz

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, wh...

What does a lazy $20 buy?

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...

Iconic Wirra Wirra

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...

Seppelt Wines.

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 ...

“Dear Australian Riesling, Don’t ever, ever change.”

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, ...

How to Start a Cellar….

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

Evans and Tate

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 abou...

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