The hops season ended recently and already we’re seeing beers that capture, in various forms, the wonderful aromas and flavours of freshly harvested hops. From Foster’s there’s Cascade First Harvest Ale, brewed with fresh Tasmanian hops flowers. And from Lion Nathan, there’s James Squire Hop Thief, brewed at the Malt Shover Brewery and making a … Continue reading Brewers go hop mad
Peter Gago presented the soon-to-be-released Grange 2004 and other top-end Penfolds wines in Canberra recently. What a contrast I noted between these confident, beautiful, unique, world-class wines and the dour attitude of Foster’s (Penfolds’ parent company) towards its suffering wine division. The survival of the Penfolds culture across decades of rationalisation, culminating in Foster’s disastrous … Continue reading Gago keeps the Penfolds flame burning
Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA 500ml $7.99 The Brits loaded India Pale Ale (IPA) with alcohol and hops to survive the long trip in cask to India. But by the time refrigeration arrived it was too late to stop — and now even the Scots brew it, perhaps better than the English. This is a beautifully … Continue reading Beer review — Belhaven and Emerson’s
Predictions are generally wrong, sometimes dramatically so, as 2008 proved for the wine industry. An expected end to the wine glut was stymied by two unrelated forces – a bumper grape crop and a dramatic decline in exports. The bumper crop caught the industry by surprise, prompting a press release from the Winemakers Federation of … Continue reading 2008 a memorable wine year for Australia
The Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans loved the muscat grape and spread it around southern Europe. From there it colonised the continent, and later the new world. Two millennia on, drinkers everywhere enjoy muscat in still, semi-sparkling, sparkling and fortified wines. Its full name is muscat-a-petits-grains and its colour ranges from white to pink to brown. … Continue reading Muscat — popular for 2,000 years
As we move towards vintage 2008 Australia’s wine industry is in dramatically different shape than it was last year. In spring 2006 as vines budded for the 2007 vintage, I was in the Barossa and Langhorne Creek hearing daily of cancelled grape contracts as large winemakers, with storage tanks full, anticipated a third consecutive bumper … Continue reading Snapshot of the Aussie wine industry
Look at today’s feature picture for an idea of how cool Macedon is – in both senses. What you see is Hanging Rock’s south-facing Jim Jim vineyard, one of the coolest wine-growing sites in Australia, covered in winter snow. And that’s winemaker John Ellis’s son, Robert, making the most of it. John and Anne Ellis … Continue reading Macedon Ranges — really cool
Curly Flat Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2005 $46 Williams Crossing Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2005 $20 Portree Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2005 $33 The very cool climate of the Macedon Ranges wine region, an hour’s drive north west of Melbourne, produces top-notch pinot noirs – wines of great perfume, clear varietal flavour and silky, fine … Continue reading Wine review — Curly Flat, Williams Crossing, Portree, Cope-Williams, Hanging Rock, Mount William, Shadowfax & Lanes End
In a good year Australia crushes about two million tonnes of grapes, equivalent to about 150 million dozen bottles of wine. About one quarter of that comes from New South Wales, second in volume to our undisputed winemaking monarch, South Australia on fifty per cent. Scratch below the surface of these big figures and we … Continue reading Lots to like in New South Wales
About half of the wine consumed in Australia reaches our dinner tables via a plastic container – the flexible bladder crammed inside chateau cardboard. But will we embrace the polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, plastic bottle so readily? Not since the cask appeared more than thirty years ago have we embraced any non-glass packaging so enthusiastically. … Continue reading Plastic set to take a slice of the glass wine bottle market