Wine Market Council, a non-profit association of grape growers, wine producers, importers, wholesalers, retailers, and other affiliated wine businesses, today announced a partnership with the Wine Business Institute, a research and education institute of the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University, to bring an academic perspective to Wine Market Council’s research and industry insights.

My feelings about screw caps on wine have been complicated. I know that good wine can be under a screw cap, but I also have had fear of the screw cap.

Two highly respected international wine personalities will be joining this year’s judging panel for the country’s premier wine competition, the Air New Zealand Wine Awards.

The national representative winegrape growers organisation has a new constitution and a new trading name. Yesterday, members of Wine Grape Growers Australia (WGGA) voted in favour of a new constitution and a new trading name, Australian Vignerons. “This is not the end of a period of hard work – it is the start of it,” said Andrew Weeks, WGGA executive director.

GRAPE and wine producers are being asked to participate in an online survey about production practices. The survey, launched last week by The Australian Wine Research Institute, is aiming to determine how common a range of different production practices are.

Regarded as one of the world’s finest wines, Penfolds Bin 95 Grange also serves as the iconic wine of Australia. Collectors pay impressive sums (upwards of $850 for a recent vintage) for this exquisite Australian Shiraz. However, unlike most of the world’s ultra-premium wine labels that only change hands in the rarefied air of the one percent, Penfolds also makes pop and pour entry-level wines to be enjoyed every day.

Until Australia’s inventive winemakers decided to call their Syrah-based wines ‘Shiraz’, the original historically correct and generally blended wines – grown in the Rhône Valley in south eastern France – were quietly sinking into comparative obscurity.

The WSTA has embarked on preliminary talks with the national industry body for Australia’s winemakers to explore post-Brexit trade as the country’s trade minister admits that cheap Australian wine would be “a fringe benefit” of a new trade deal.

Today it is the most widely planted wine grape on earth, prominent in everything from the world’s premier wines to the serviceable, reliable bottles that crowd grocery store shelves and sell for less than $15. You can surely find decent bottles of Cabernet for less than $10 too. Cabernet grows well pretty much everywhere you find sunlight and warmth, from Chile to China.

New Zealand is forced to rely on foreign workers to fill jobs because locals are too lazy and have problems with drugs, its own prime minister said. “You don’t get a second chance when harvesting fruit – it needs to be picked in its prime. So if workers don’t show up, that hugely affects the business,” said Leon Stallard from Hawke’s Bay.