It might be the home of the prestigious Coonawarra wine region, but Australia’s Limestone Coast is largely overlooked, according to one producer in the region. Limestone Coast Wines (LCW) is hoping to catch the attention of UK consumers with the launch of an “edgy, forward thinking and artfully modern” range of wines produced in the Limestone Coast Zone in south eastern Australia.
National wine production data reveals more than half of West Australian wineries are unprofitable.
The Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) vintage report, released last month, shows the number of loss-making wineries around Australia has risen marginally from 84 to 85 per cent. The profitability data is based on grapegrowing costs per tonne and WA was a particularly poor performer, according to the vintage report.
South Australian reality experts are forecasting increasing foreign investor interest in the state’s farm land. Industry insiders blame austerity measures in China for dampening interest in farms to date. Colliers International’s Tim Altschwager, said he expected most interest would be in vineyards in the state’s iconic growing areas, like the Barossa Valley. “I’ve certainly seen an upswing in interest in the last few months, particularly from Asia,” he said.
The Mildura-based growers’ owned Vintage Traders Australia (VTA) has appointed an administrator to manage the process of winding up operations. VTA was established nine years ago as an unlisted public company to sell wine grapes on behalf of growers who were shareholders. For a time, VTA also had small batches of wine made from shareholders’ fruit and traded in bulk wine.
Capped at 100 SKU’s between wines, spirits and beer, it is a perfect area for small producers to get their brands out to the trade. Interstate producers looking to get in front of Melbourne and Sydney buyers can also find ‘The Pavilion’ section a good way to find a distributor or expand current retail distribution.
A long period of hot weather threatens to hit the wine harvest in France’s famous Burgundy and Beaujolais regions, experts told AFP on Tuesday. Production could be down, although quality will remain high, they said. Output could fall by as much as a third in Beaujolais, said Florence Hertaut, wine expert at the agricultural chamber of commerce in the Rhone region. “The dryness has meant that the grapes, the fruit, are especially small,” she told AFP.
Pinot Noir is the most widely planted red grape in New Zealand, making up 70% of our red grape vines and just over 15% of our total vineyard area. Nearly 85% of that Pinot Noir is planted in the South Island, though it is worth remembering that a significant portion of that is given over to the production of sparkling wines. Marlborough leads the way with the greatest area devoted to Pinot Noir, followed by Central Otago, Wairarapa, Waipara, Hawke’s Bay and Nelson.
Right now, New Zealand’s most expensive white wine happens to be a chardonnay. This doesn’t surprise me because crafting great chardonnay can’t be done on the cheap. First, you need to find the perfect piece of land, then you need to source the best clones you can plant, then wait for years and years before you get any fruit and when you do you need to cut off most of the bunches before they’re even ripe so that the flavours in the surviving ones are as intense as possible.
A POTENTIALLY industry-destroying plan for a water pipeline and 100m easement through the Swan Valley has been quashed. The Water Corporation pipeline, planned to service Perth’s growing northern suburbs, was pulled out of the Environmental Protection Authority’s assessment process last month. The project stretches from Lancelin to Forrestfield. For more than a year, Swan Valley winemakers and grape growers have worried about the impact the pipeline would have on local tourism and agriculture.
SIGNIFICANT anniversaries of celebrated painters and sculptors are often marked by retrospective exhibitions of their best works. On notching up his 50 years in the wine industry, 69-year-old Hunter Legend of Wine and former Mount Pleasant manager-chief winemaker Phil Ryan decided to do something similar. So last week, for a group of seven friends, he staged a retrospective exhibition of his high-wine artistry.