Tag: Hunter Valley

Hunter Valley Chardonnay: Exploring Meerea Park’s Captivating Elixir 

Just as the pendulum swings, consumer’s palates oscillate from grape to grape and style to style. Sometimes, it’s seasonal, but other times it’s just that a change is as good as a holiday. The phenomenon is nothing new – we’ve seen the waxing and waning of the passion fruit flavoured sparkling wines of the 1970’s…
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Rod Kempe, Lake's Folly & Travis Schultz

Lake’s Folly; a small winery making big waves

When the management consultants decreed that “diversification is the key to risk management”, Lake’s Folly founder, Max Lake, clearly missed the memo. Since establishing the vineyard and winery in 1963, the Hunter Valley label has gone from strength to strength, making only two wines; a cabernet (yes, cabernet!) and a chardonnay. Minimalistic, perhaps, but the…
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Semillon Grapevine in Yarra Valley Australia

Semillon – versatile, vivacious and under-valued

Semillon hails from the French region of Bordeaux where it is grown alongside the more popular Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. Whilst today, in France, it isn’t really fashionable as a single varietal, it commonly plays a minor role blended in dry table wines or, more significantly, is coveted as a dominant contributor to sublime dessert wines.

Gwyn Olsen: Art or Oenology?

Head winemaker at Peppertree wines in the Hunter Valley produces a drop arguably more art than oenology….. There’s a place for tradition and respect for time-honoured winemaking practices, but in this day and age, consumers increasingly expect something fresh, different and cool before they will part with their hard-earned. And this drift towards wines that…
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Meerea Park Indie Rousanne 2018

Meerea Park Indie Rousanne 2018

Australia’s take on a French classic is best found in the South It may seem counter-intuitive to many of us, but the famous French red blend Châteauneuf-du-Pape from the Northern Rhone region is not made entirely from red fruits; it, in fact, has six white varietals which may be used by winemakers to craft their…
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2015 Gartelmann “Diedrich” Shiraz Review

Orange is the new pink

According to the well known Charles Caleb Colton aphorism, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or for the Oscar Wilde disciples, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”. So when winemakers leave their regional heartland to source fruit from a competitor district, it must surely be taken by…
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Tempus Two

Tempus Two

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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Meerea Park a five-star delight

As Australia’s oldest wine region and having some of the world’s oldest grape vine root-stock, the Hunter Valley success story is perhaps understandable. After all, the Valley is close to Sydney and Newcastle, produces outstanding Semillon and Shiraz and is home to any number of five-star wineries. One of my favourite vineyards, Meerea Park, may…
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Wine Tasting. Photo credit Paul Foley

World Class wines in the Hunter Valley

The Hunter Valley, less than a couple of hours northwest of Sydney and 45 minutes due west of Newcastle, has a relatively short history by global standards, but it is still the oldest wine region in Australia. Despite its relative youth, the region boasts some of the world’s oldest grape vines, largely because of the…
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Andrew Thomas, Braemore Semillon 2014 Review

Andrew Thomas, Braemore Semillon 2014

Once upon a time, the Hunter Valley produced enjoyable wines that only became top shelf once you got past the forest floor dirtiness that tended to dominate the nose and taint the front palate. But the new generation of Hunter Valley winemaker has purged the barrels of any yeasty residue and developed a clean, unadulterated…
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