A tasting of 50 years of Wynns Coonawarra Estate cabernet sauvignons last week highlighted what a long, twisting, sometimes profitless and often frustrating struggle lies behind the emergence of significant wines. The ‘estate that made Coonawarra famous’ remained largely unknown, under various guises, for sixty years before the inspired marketing of the Wynn family gave … Continue reading Fifty years of Wynns Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon
What has a bowl of tiny, exquisitely flavoured strawberries got to do with wine? The intense but delicate flavours of a cool climate, that’s what. The strawberries, fresh picked from Tamar Retreat B&B’s garden, became a metaphor for the equally intense but delicate Tasmanian wines tasted on a quick tour in late January. As if … Continue reading Cool climates, tasty berries and Tassie wine
This article, written two years before the Clare Valley Riesling Makers’ screw cap initiative, predicts the decline of cork in favour of alternatives, and reports how the battle began with synthetic plugs.
Shiraz of varying styles and origin show real class at the 1996 National Wine Show of Australia
A report on Wine Australia 1996, held at Darling Harbour, Sydney
As the Springboks defeated England at Twickenham, South Africa and Australia fielded 100 wine apiece in the South African Airways Wine Shield in Capetown. On the numbers, Australia won. But, as in all wine judgings, opinions varies and often it’s more important to note styles than to award points
Creation of the Maurice O’Shea Award marked a turning point for McWilliams as its focused turned from the declining fortified wine market to table wines. Awarding of the 1995 O’Shea presented an opportunity to taste from McWilliams impressively broad domain
Padthaway began as broadacre plantings in the 1960s to feed the coming wine boom. For the first 20 years the region had no winery and no name. In those days ‘Keppoch’ did just as well as ‘Padthaway’. But now it’s one of the major players on the vast Limestone plains stretching south from Lake Alexandrina to Coonawarra and beyond.
A long piece arguing that Australia’s successful mass production of many wine varieties won’t be replicated with pinot noir. This variety presents far more challenges and its successes are likely to be limited to the cooler southern extremities of the mainland and Tasmania
Padthaway has emerged as one of Australia’s most important broadacre grape sources