Wine
Best of 2017
The jolly fat bloke with the white beard and the red suit has gone, the smoke from the New Year’s fireworks has passed, so it means that I’m due for a Best of 2017. I get to see so many different labels and brands over a year, it makes it very difficult to pick a best of anything, however I’ve gone back over my jumbled mess of notes and come up with I thought were the best that I tried this year. ...
Forgotten Labels
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 t...
De Bortoli Cask appeal
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, cha...
Voyager Estate
Since its creation in 1991, Voyager Estate has gone on to become one of Australia’s leading wineries. Set just a few kilometres from the Margaret River coastline, in Western Australia, the winery has gone onto win an incredible amount of awards over the years, both here and abroad, and has cemented its place in most cellars by gaining a Langton’s “Excellent” classification, the yardstick by which ...
Huntington Estate 2013 Red release
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 ...
Shaw + Smith – Australia’s best SB.
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 Sauvign...
Seabrook Wines
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 ...
Coriole Vineyards
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 bu...