Lunch with a couple of winemakers can be gruelling. This couple seems keen and an 11.45am start, with French bubbles at the bar, makes me wary. We sit down at one of Melbourne’s fashionable eateries. As we know, the way to get a drink at a modern restaurant is to negotiate with a sommelier. Just how we managed 20 years ago, I don’t know, but the sommelier on this day certainly looks the goods. The line between an experienced sommelier and a professional wine snob is one that can make or break your meal, writes Ralph Kyte-Powell in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Cool climate grapes may be the only grapes that grow in Tasmania but the state is about to reap the benefits. For the first time, and only the second time in Australia, the International Cool Climate Wine Symposium will be held in Hobart next week. The Symposium, held every two to three years, was last held in Seattle, US, where Tasmania made its formal bid to host the 2012 event, reports The Mercury.

London’s hotels, restaurants, pubs and bars stand to make an extra £300m from the Olympics – but there are major challenges to overcome as well, new research suggests. Wine distributor Bibendum reckons that food and drink spend in the capital’s on-trade will soar to £1.24bn during 2012, up from an estimated figure of £917m in 2011. However, the research, undertaken with the Local Data Company, also illustrates the potential disruption that this summer’s Olympic Games will cause, reports Decanter.

They might look like ordinary grapes, but this Swan Valley Chardonnay bunch are worth about $25a kilogram. That’s according to a new study looking at how much the region’s grape industry is worth to WA. In the past year, the valley’s wine businesses have turned over more than $90 million, according to estimates by the region’s winemakers’ association, reports Perth Now.

While the heavy rains and flooding in Nelson that destroyed homes and land just before Christmas was headline news, the impact on the winegrape growing sector has yet to be fully determined. Rainfall statistics reveal some of the heaviest downpours in parts of the region since records began. And while it probably made many winegrowers’ hearts sink just a little, the effects on the 2012 vintage are still only at best estimates at this stage, reports the Nelson Mail.

Transitioning from your main business to another which can be enjoyed into retirement is something many small business owners dream of. Ross Millar, owner of the Ross Millar Swim School, is planning to do just that with his new family business, Millars Vineyard at Mangawhai. That may seem like a bit of stretch, but Millar grew up in West Auckland with vineyards all around, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Louisa Rose is convinced that if Tem­pranillo had been brought to Australia in the 1820s instead of Shiraz, the coun­try would now be a sea of Tempranillo. The chief winemaker for Yalumba and Hill Smith Family Vineyards likes to paint a picture of a “parallel universe” in which the father of the Australian wine industry, James Busby, brought out cuttings of Tem­pranillo from Spain instead of Shiraz from France. And she ponders what the industry might have been like today if winemaking pioneers John Macarthur and George Wyn­dham had planted Tempranillo instead of Shiraz, reports Hospitality Magazine.

A drop in beer and wine sales across Australia has cost 70 Melbourne workers their jobs at a glass bottle manufacturer. O-I Australia will shed the positions as it closes one of three furnaces at its Spotswood factory in March, with the job losses to occur by June. Australian Workers Union Victorian secretary Cesar Melhem said the Spotswood factory employed 320 people and the jobs to go included 50 glass manufacturing workers, with the rest coming from trade and engineering positions, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Australia’s wine lovers are embracing European bottles as never before, exacerbating a decline in the local industry already suffering from plummeting exports. With the Australian dollar at record levels against the euro, imported wine has rarely been more affordable. Prices for some labels have dropped by 30 percent. The shift is harder on local wine producers, reports Bloomberg.

The prospect of a good harvest was enough to entice Bill Crowe out the door and into the gale blowing through the Four Winds Vineyard yesterday. The 20ha vineyard at Murrumbateman took a battering last year when wet weather destroyed 30 per cent of the vintage for the region’s wine growers. Despite recent conditions, ranging from 35-degree heat to a mid-summer frost, Mr Crowe said his second year on the job was shaping up to be a success, reports The Canberra Times.