TWO vineyards, 34km apart and straddling two states, boast plentiful water, a contracted grape buyer and long-established plantings of some of Australia’s most popular wine varieties. Yelta Vineyard, at Wargan, 14km from Merbein, and Bel Vineyard at Gol Gol in NSW, 12km northeast of Mildura, are offered either as a pair or separately. Vendors Michel Tilley and Stephen Costley jointly own Bel and hold a 75 per cent interest in Yelta.
A NEWPORT-based wine distribution business is up for a People’s Choice Award as Australia’s favourite online retailer. Naked Wines Australia are in the running for the awards run by the courier company Star Track. Established in 2012, Naked Wines customers fund talented independent winemakers in return for wine at wholesale prices.
This year, the Hot 100 Wines SA celebrates a significant milestone: a decade of discovering this state’s most drinkable wines. The Adelaide Review-run wine show will mark this milestone with some exciting new events including a two-day publicly-invited celebration in the heart of the city called Hot 100 Harvest on Friday, December 2 and Saturday, December 3, an awards gala on Thursday, December 1, as well as a masterclass event in Singapore on Monday, July 25.
Australian rock bands You Am I, Something For Kate and Spiderbait will team up for the first time for an onslaught through A Day on the Green wineries in November. As triple headliners, the bands have a revered place in Australian rock culture as chart toppers and ARIA award winners. Jebediah and The Meanies round out the “all killer, no filler” line-up, adding to the theme of Australian rock favourites.
Fierce hailstorms have damaged vineyards in parts of Chablis in Burgundy, plus Beaujolais and Cognac, leading the country’s farming federation to declare a ‘state of catastrophe’ in the worst-hit areas. Hail in Chablis is expected to have severely damaged vineyards in the southern part of the famous Chardonnay region in Burgundy. There have also been reports of serious hail damage.
The New Zealand Organic Wine Awards have just revealed their 2016 results and Greystone Wines from North Canterbury has come away with the overall trophy for Vineyard of the Year. This follows gold medal awards this year for their Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Gewürztraminer wines. After a successful debut in 2014, the New Zealand Organic Wine Awards are now in their third year with 123 entrants in 2016 from across the length of New Zealand.
Land for vineyards in Marlborough is now becoming so scarce that an “end game” is in play to acquire the best remaining sites, believes the estate director of Cloudy Bay. “We have reached the zenith and there’s an end game going on in terms of acquiring the best sites,” said Ian Morden speaking the drinks business at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show last week, where Cloudy Bay has a garden.
TREASURY Wine Estates is changing the way it does business to manage the risks stemming from climate change. At the Agribusiness Outlook Australia conference in Sydney last week Treasury Wine’s general manager of sustainability, Gioia Small, said climate change was “changing the way we are responding as a business”.
Adopt higher alcohol taxes, ban alcohol sponsorship in sport, and introduce nation-wide lockout laws to reduce the harm caused by excessive drinking, Australia’s major political parties are being urged. Australia’s largest not-for-profit provider of health and aged care services, St Vincent’s Health Australia, proposed the measures as part of a plan to reduce alcohol-related harm by 20 per cent by 2025.
Producers of Australian-made blends of Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre are being invited to register their interest in an upcoming tasting of these wines by the Wine & Viticulture Journal.
It has been 12 years since the Journal last tasted GSMs, when wine industry consultant Nick Bulleid said in his introduction to the results, “To date, [GSMs have] established themselves well at high price-points, a good place to be.”