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...
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...
Summer is just around the corner and it gets anyone that has a wine collection, or is thinking of starting a wine collection, or heck, even just wants to be able to save a few bob and buy their wine by the carton, starts thinking about how to store the collection. Not all of us have a wine cellar, in fact what I refer to as my cellar is actually a spot under the stairs that has a three wine fridge...
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. Th...
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 brow...
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, r...