White Wine
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...
Best Job in the World?
There are people that I meet that think being a wine judge is the best job in the world, the ones that automatically ask “how do I get that job?” Some out there think that tasting your way through a hundred or more wines in a day is some kind of booze induced hazy heaven, but those people need to be put straight, as my dentist, GP and long suffering family will attest, it isn’t all a bed of roses,...
Dandelion and Heirloom
I’ve got pretty average hand writing, very, it’s a cross between printing and running writing that just looks wrong on the paper at the best of times. So you could well imagine the difficulty I’ve had trying to decipher my tasting notes after I had spent the day chatting with 30 something winemakers, all with about ten different wines to try. It’s become more hieroglyphics than handwriting, I’m so...
50 years of Vasse Felix
50 years, it’s a long time to be in business. Most local companies don’t manage it, in fact a heck of a lot of national companies don’t manage it either. Those stats are worse when you look at wineries, especially ones that pop up in, what are thought of, as unusual spots. It’s hard for new wineries to get the label out there, and it only takes a couple of bad growing years for the profits to star...
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...
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...
“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, ...