When the annual James Halliday Wine Companion announces a 5 Red Star winery and awards red wines scores as high as 95 and 96 points, I generally sit up and take notice. This year, the release of the 2025 Companion listed Victorian producer Sanguine Estate in this elite category. With such accolades, what else could…
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To the average wine consumer, selecting a red wine from a bottle shop shelf or a restaurant wine list can be a daunting experience. After all, it can be an expensive treat, but get it wrong and you’ll feel as though you’ve just put a lighter to a $50 or even $100 note! Some reds…
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A big part of the enchantment and allure of the Australian wine industry is the quirkiness and the nuances of our wines, regions and winemaking practices. As a nation, the quality of our wines punch well above our global weight, and there are plenty of stories about unexpected success of varietals, winemakers and sub-regions. One…
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Yalumba may be best known as Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, or for being the only one in the southern-hemisphere with its own operational cooperage, but for all its rich history and fine wine, I recently discovered that the iconic brand’s links to Australian cricket are as deep rooted as the vines that trace their origins…
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You don’t win the prestigious James Halliday Winery of the Year unless you’ve got some serious plonk! In 2024, the winner was Bleasdale Wines from Langhorne Creek, while in 2023, it was the famed Pooley Wines in Tasmania – where they make what are undoubtedly amongst the best pinot noir from Australasia. So when the…
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When friends come over for dinner, what do you serve first, the expensive hero wine or the cheaper support act? It’s an age-old dilemma when you’re serving two bottles of red with the main meal on Saturday night. Is it better to warm up the palate with the cheapie and impress with the expensive wine,…
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Whether we care to admit it or not, the Australian mainland doesn’t have too many wine-producing regions that are ideally suited to making the Burgundian classic Pinot Noir. After all, it’s a finicky grape that is highly susceptible to rot and disease and doesn’t do well in warm or wet climates. For this reason, many…
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I’m sure it’s not just me and that there are other “oenological bowerbirds” out there; wine lovers that are easily distracted by the shiny new object and constantly on the lookout for something different, intriguing, and experimental. After all, variety is the spice of life, right? Well, if you’re a Bowerbird of the vinous type,…
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With the shifting sands of consumer preferences, cool climate wines, once relegated to the obscurity of the back corner of the bottle shop, are finding themselves increasingly front and centre on the wine buyer’s radar. From the Macedon Ranges and Pyrenees in Victoria, to Great Southern in Western Australia, Orange and Hilltops in NSW and…
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