It’s a well understood phenomenon of consumer behaviour that the vast majority of wines purchased in Australia are consumed within 24 hours of it exiting the bottle shop, but for those who are prepared to be the exception to the rule, the rewards of patience can be considerable. These days, most winemakers craft their wares…
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“Monastrell, Mourvedre or Mataro?” I asked my friend’s Rebecca, John and Michael when they recently called over to pick up their 10-year-old sons after a post-rugby playdate late on Saturday afternoon. Darkness was imposing itself on what had otherwise been a glorious day of autumn Queensland weather and it was most certainly wine o’clock. So…
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Are Queensland wines good enough to serve to international visitors during the April 2018 Commonwealth Games? If you ask the Queensland Wine Makers from the Granite Belt around Stanthorpe, they’ll probably tell you that their wines are not just the equal of their southern counterparts, but even better! So the umbrage of local producers was…
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One of Australia’s most underrated white wine grapes must surely be the Portuguese import, Verdelho. It’s a style which for some reason is mainly used for blending in dry white blends, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. But with the intensity of flavour and the delicious overtones of lime and honeysuckle, I reckon it’s an…
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Yellowtail It may not be a label that frequently graces dining room tables in Australia, but overseas, Yellowtail Wines are enormously popular and enjoy high levels of brand recognition across the United States, Asia, Europe and the UK. In fact, in 2017, the Yellowtail brand was recognised by The Drinks Business as one of the…
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When we think about Portuguese wine, it is fair to say that most of us can identify Port as their premier style of fortified, but beyond that, draw a blank. The Country has developed a reputation across the globe for the quality of the cork it produces as a seal for wine vessels, but I…
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Zinfandel may not be a varietal that is widely grown in Australia, but in the United States it’s one of the most commonly grown grapes, accounting for over 10% of all Californian vineyard plantings. And as I discovered recently, it’s a style with a story! Zinfandel grapes are black skinned and heat tolerant as consequently,…
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My slightly offbeat and spiritual sister would say it is fate or destiny, but some of the best viticultural discoveries I’ve encountered were completely unintended and happened upon purely by chance. Big Sis would take a fatalistic view and claim it was karma at play but I personally prefer to see these happenings as chance,…
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You’ve gotta love living in Queensland in summer. Swimming in the pool, barbeques on the deck, long days and even longer walks on the beach. It’s awesome. But as the mercury climbs and the humidity starts to suffocate you like the carpet python that caught my sister’s kitten that time, it can become a challenge…
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It’s what’s inside that really counts In our globalised, digitalised and highly commercialised world, there seems to be a view among many marketers that “perception will become reality” and that you can almost turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse if you dress it up nicely enough! And the wine industry is not immune…
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