Wine Communicators of Australia (WCA) announced the eight winners of its Wine Communicator Awards at an exciting Awards Night at the Four Seasons Hotel, last night (Tuesday, November 8th), including the coveted Wine Communicator of the Year. This year, the Wine Communicator of the Year was awarded to Gourmet Traveller WINE Magazine, the first time the award has gone to a business not an individual. The Wine Communicator of the Year is selected by the Board of Wine Communicators of Australia from the category winners, who this year are:

Australian wineries are forecasting growth from white varietals in China, threatening the traditional dominance of red wine in the marketplace. Local wine companies exhibiting at ProWine China in Shanghai this week were pleasantly surprised by the growing trend from buyers towards white wines as well as improved education and awareness of specific varietals. Wine Australia figures show that while 93 per cent of wine sales to China are still red wine, there has been a 33 per cent increase in white wine exports over the last 12 months.

Founded in Boston by Yau and his MIT roommate Joe Laurendi, Bright Cellars, a monthly wine subscription startup, fell in love with Milwaukee during the accelerator program and turned the 3-month stay into a permanent headquarters. Bright Cellars is a personalized monthly wine subscription company that delivers four bottles of wine per month, based on a user’s preferences. People take a quiz, and based on their responses Bright Cellars sends them bottles it thinks they’ll like. People rate how they liked each bottle, and Bright Cellars’ algorithm learns and gets better over time.

A Marlborough couple is saying ‘neigh’ to tractors and banking on horse power to deliver spraying services to vineyards around the region. Since the industrial revolution, the equine beasts have fallen out of favour with farmers and other agricultural types, but they could be making a comeback. Stephen and Melisa Rae started their contracting company Horse Power Contracting after buying two clydesdales from Marlborough wine company Seresin Estate.

Michael Glover is a local lad who has come home to the place he loves, Upper Moutere, as the winemaker for Mahana Estate. I first met Glover when he was a teenager hanging around his parent’s winery, Glovers Vineyard in Gardeners Valley, and it is fair to say his father’s singlemindedness and stubbornness has rubbed off on Glover junior. Back in those days he was a lean, mean racing machine of road cycling. He was a member of the original Upper Moutere Wheelers that was established as a breakaway from the Nelson Club, now called the Tasman Wheelers it is one of the strongest road cycling clubs in the country.

Well-known McLaren Vale winemaker and industry icon Steve Pannell, of SC Pannell Wines, has been crowned as the 2016 Bushing King – his second consecutive win of the region’s top award in the McLaren Vale Wine Show. The prestigious title was awarded at the 52nd annual McLaren Vale Winemakers Bushing Lunch, held at Serafino Wines, October 28. The 2015 SC Pannell Touriga Cabernet Mataro was the highest scoring wine of the 2016 Wine Show as judged by an impressive panel of international and Australian judges.

The inaugural Taste Orange @ Barangaroo cool climate wine, food, cultural and tourism showcase event will be held at Nawi Cove, Barangaroo Reserve on Sunday 20 November from 11am-5pm. Proudly sponsored by Orange City Council as part of its ‘Visit Orange’ campaign, Taste Orange @ Barangaroo will be a day of cool climate wine tasting, sampling the region’s local produce and exploring the cultural and tourism opportunities the Central NSW region offers. Two of Australia’s leading wineries, Philip Shaw Wines and Ross Hill Wines, along with award-winning local cider makers Small Acres Cyder will be present along with an additional eight local wineries.

For about 15 years from the mid-1990s, the Chalmers were the go-to family for grapes and vines. There was a time their property at Euston, near Mildura, was the largest privately­-owned vineyard in Australia, with 600ha under vine. And the associated Chalmers Nursery also, for a time, was the largest wholesale grapevine nursery in Australia, renowned for its imported new varieties from around the world. “Over the years Chalmers Nurseries propagated at least 30 million vines, averaging 2 million a year,” Kim Chalmers said.

The Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland and Norway offer growth opportunities for Australian wine exports and, unlike some of the traditional European markets, they are generally quite open to wines from around the world. Growing winegrapes is difficult due to cold weather and the low number of winter sunlight hours. As a result, Nordic countries do not have significant domestic wine production and wine is primarily imported. Additionally, there is no strong preference for a specific style of wine, which offers opportunities to producers of both traditional and alternative wines.

One of Australia’s best known winemaking families, the Oatley Wine Group, will open a cellar door in the Margaret River region, part of what’s believed to be the largest value sale ever for a winery in Western Australia. The winery – Laurance Wines – has been sold to a US-based investor, reportedly New York-based real estate developer, philanthropist and wine enthusiast Howard Milstein, in a deal worth $20 million. Part of the Laurance property will be leased to the Oatley family, with another part of the estate to go to local winemaker Larry Cherubino Wines.