Drink wine and do good. In partnership with Social Traders and Australia Post, we talk to one of the social enterprises on their Good Spender website: Goodwill Wine. David Laity was one of the thousands of people displaced by the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria. At the time of the blaze, Laity was living in Chum Creek and working at a nursery in the Yarra Valley.
Vintage House Wine and Spirits, the distribution house of Angove Family Winemakers has been appointed as the exclusive Australian distributor for Barossa winery Schild Estate. Vintage House will commence distribution on 1 September 2016 and “completes” the distribution house’s Barossa offering with cult winery Cimicky being in its portfolio since 2003. Schild Estate has been under the watchful eye of patriarch Ed Schild, who this year celebrated his 60th vintage.
Vintage House Wine and Spirits, the distribution house of Angove Family Winemakers has been appointed as the exclusive Australian distributor for Barossa winery Schild Estate. Vintage House will commence distribution on 1 September 2016 and “completes” the distribution house’s Barossa offering with cult winery Cimicky being in its portfolio since 2003. Schild Estate has been under the watchful eye of patriarch Ed Schild, who this year celebrated his 60th vintage.
WINE industry workers looking to broaden their knowledge of the craft are flocking to enrol in a free online university course from South Australia. A new version of the University of Adelaide’s World of Wine: From Grape to Glass course was launched this month on itsAdelaideX platform and already has 10,000 enrolments following the success of last year’s inaugural course, which attracted almost 40,000 students from 160 countries via the edX platform.
A new report shows the higher priced end of the wine market is continuing to grow, especially in China. The Wine Australia Export Report shows that for the 12 months to June 2016, the value of wine exports grew by 11 per cent to $2.11 billion, and volumes were up by half a per cent to 728 million litres. Expensive bottles of wine, especially those above $10 a litre, have driven the rise in total export values.
Help is on its way for WA winemakers. The federal government Department of Science and Industry will fund the delivery of new Direct to Customer and Wine Tourism workshops to be delivered by Wine Business Solutions. These will be free to attend for WA wine producers. The two-day programs will cover strategy formulation, creating an unforgettable customer experience, building a fan base of loyal customers and customer engagement leveraging all of the latest tools, technology and social media.
From a quiet region of Bordeaux where the high side of wine costs a few dozen dollars per bottle—one winemaker who shucked tradition now sells a portion of his precious liquid for close to two thousand dollars per bottle. To learn more I visited the eight-acre château (and home) of Dominique Léandre-Chevalier in the tiny village of Anglade, an hour northeast of Bordeaux city.
At the behest of the local wine industry, a new proposal would toughen federal labelling standards on a bottle of wine, controlling more tightly wineries’ claims of vintage dates, varietals and geographic region where the grapes are grown. Local vintners have complained that exemptions currently allowed by the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau are misleading consumers and hurting the reputation of their local wine regions.
New Zealand entrepreneurs Roy Zane and Steven Male are launching a world first: a calculator which helps users work out how much wine to buy for their wedding or upcoming event. The free Wedding Wines calculator works on a simple four step process in which users are asked a few details about their event including the main type of food being served and the drinking habits (from tea-totaller to heavy) of the average attendee.
As demand for New Zealand wine continues to grow in the key markets of the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia, the industry is rising to the challenge. That’s according to Alistair King, Crowe Horwath’s viticulture specialist, who says the outlook is positive, particularly with a plentiful grape harvest for the 2016 vintage.