The ban on glass at Blues Brews and BBQs has prompted all Marlborough’s breweries to pull out of the festival. Renaissance, Moa and 8 Wired will not have stalls at A and P Park on February 4 after a Marlborough District Council liquor licensing committee, under pressure from the police, banned glass. Marlborough Express beer columnist Geoff Griggs says in his weekly column today that three Marlborough breweries, and also north Canterbury brewery Brew Moon, have told him they will not be at the festival next year. Glass is still allowed at the Marlborough Wine Festival the following week, leading brewers to claim double standards.

The Wairau Bar has been home to the MacDonald family for more than 800 years. The land at “the Bar” has been put to good use over many centuries, but more recently for growing crops, dairy or beef. Today a drive to the Bar provides ample evidence of the latest use of some of the land – orderly vineyards abound, but there are still cattle grazing in some paddocks and milking sheds are easily seen from the road.

Federal Water Minister Tony Burke will front irrigation communities in southern NSW on Thursday to hear their views on a draft plan for the Murray-Darling Basin. So too will Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. The meeting, in the heart of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in Griffith, is one of a series planned by the basin authority during a 20-week consultation period.

The rise in popularity of Sauvignon Blanc in recent years has seen a drop in demand for Delacolline Estate Wine’s Chardonnay. But the owners of the winery, located on the outskirts of the South Australian township of Port Lincoln, were keen to make use of a good crop of Chardonnay grapes in 2009 so they decided to add bubbles to produce the region’s first sparkling white wine.

A remote region of northern China that began growing grapes for fine wine just a decade ago has beaten the centuries-old French wine-producing region of Bordeaux in a blind tasting held in Beijing. A group of wine experts – five French and five Chinese – ranked the bottles from the remote and sparsely populated Ningxia region above those from Bordeaux at the tasting, held on Wednesday in Beijing.

With a swag of awards in the bag, Palmer Wines is set to host the main event of the Margaret River Wine Region Festival in April. With just two years in the business, the winery was recently awarded the coveted WIAWA wine industry award for the Most Outstanding Cellar Door/Wine Tourism Facility.

Wine Australia, Austrade Brazil, Winetitles and Instate are teaming up to provide the opportunity for Australian exporters and wine companies to explore the burgeoning market of Brazil. The exciting study mission to Brazil, from 21-28 April 2012, has two main objectives: to assess the market potential for Australian wine, and to examine possibilities for collaboration between the Brazilian and Australian wine industries.

The price of wine is set to rise as the balance between supply and demand tightens, according to a strategic review of the billion-dollar export industry. The New Zealand Herald reports the national grape harvest soared to 285,000 tonnes in 2008, creating an oversupply which helped erode grape and land prices, before decreasing to 266,000 tonnes in 2010 and rising again to 328,000 tonnes this year.

A planned $100 million coalmine in Western Australia’s Margaret River premium wine region would have more impact on its social surrounds than Woodside’s proposed $30 billion gas hub near the tourist town of Broome, according to the state’s environment watchdog. Environmental Protection Authority chairman Paul Vogel told The Australian Financial Review that the absence of a direct environmental link between Woodside’s Browse Basin gas hub and Broome meant it could not include social aspects in its assessment of the gas project, unlike the case for the coalmine.

The Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula are known for Pinot Noir, yet each has just a handful of wonderful producers. The Clare Valley is known for Riesling, but it has only a few great producers. Coonawarra is the eastern states home of Cabernet Sauvignon, but how many very good Cabernet producing wineries can you name from there, questions John Jens for inmycommunity.com.au