Wine connoisseurs will get a taste of the future at a special Barossa wine tasting this month. Appropriately the tasting will be held on Thursday, 15 December during one of the State’s hottest months of the year. The tasting will feature Barossa wines from grapes grown at temperatures expected to prevail in the year 2050. At the Barossa workshop interested people will have an opportunity to taste wines produced under current climate side-by-side with wines produced from fruit grown under elevated temperature, reports the Stock Journal.

Twelve months ago Brian Schmidt was living a routine life, working Monday to Friday in Canberra and trying his hand at winemaking after hours. Since the 44-year-old was named as a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics, things have changed. “There’s not a lot of free time, that’s for sure,” Prof Schmidt told AAP by phone from Stockholm where he will collect his Nobel prize on Saturday. Typically in early December Prof Schmidt spends his spare time in shorts and a T-shirt at his 35-hectare farm just outside Canberra, where he runs a vineyard and winery, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Iconic wine brand Penfolds has appointed Gary Burnand as its managing director. Brand owner Treasury Wine Estates said Burnand will be responsible for “driving Penfolds strategic direction” and will report to the group chief executive David Dearie. Burnand has more than 20 years of experience in senior marketing and strategic roles in the food, apparel and alcohol categories of Europe, Asia Pacific and the USA, reports Harpers Wine & Spirit.

Improved profits being made by wine companies will take about two years to filter through to growers, says Winegrowers New Zealand chairman Stuart Smith. The Deloitte and NZ Winegrowers’s sixth annual wine industry benchmarking survey released this week confirmed what he was hearing on the ground, Mr Smith, of Fairhall, Blenheim, said. Wine companies’ position was improving but no-one was dancing in the streets, reports The Marlborough Express.

Conrad Kirk, described as a “talent” on Hawke’s Bay’s wine scene, is the inaugural recipient of Skeltons Excellence Award for viticulture. Mr Kirk, a first year viticulture student at EIT, was presented with his award at Skeltons’ annual function for its horticultural growers in Hastings on Monday. Mr Kirk works at Morton Estate Vineyards’ Tantallon vineyard in the Ngatarara Triangle grapegrowing region. He is a first-year cadet but has successfully completed a number of year two papers, reports Hawke’s Bay Today.

2011 was a difficult season for winegrape growers in the Riverland. Many had hopes that 2011 would mean a financial turnaround. But after about eight of years of drought, compounded by low water allocation and low commodity prices, Riverland winegrape growers were confronted by a rising dollar and a global oversupply of winegrapes. This year there are signs that prices for grapes may be on the up but there are no guarantees that this harvest will deliver what wine grapegrowers need, reports ABC News.

The Margaret River Wine Industry Association has offered thanks on the industry’s behalf to all the emergency services personnel, volunteer fire fighters and associated community groups along with government agencies who worked hard in extreme circumstances during last week’s fire emergency, reports The Augusta-Margaret River Mail. Association vice president, Stuart Watson of Woodland Wines said, “It was the collective effort of these people working as a team who saved our region.

Irrigators in the southern Murray-Darling Basin may be able to pick up some water entitlement bargains in the next 13 months, according to water trading company Waterfind. Waterfind expects prices for permanent water will plummet by 15 to 25 per cent because of the temporary removal of Commonwealth Government water buying tenders. It has made the prediction in an analysis released this week of the draft Basin Plan, reports The Land.

Our summer drinking guide is big on the wine styles that suit a hot climate. Cold is good and hot means not your hearty roasts and heavy French sauces but barbecues and grilled foods. In this spirit, the recommended wines are lighter weighted white wines: dry rather than sweet and unwooded rather than oaky; refreshing and gulpable, not heavy. That means drier-style roses and a few light-bodied reds, such as gamay and lighter, less tannic Pinot Noir. And, of course, sparkling wines, writes Huon Hooke in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Bimbadgen Estate general manager, Rebecca Poynter is the new president of Hunter Valley Wine Country Tourism. Ms. Poynter was elected a meeting of the new board last Tuesday, winning a two way contest with John Drayton. The Special Resolution relating to the new constitution was passed at the annual meeting and four new board members appointed, including an additional Community representative, reports The Cessnock Advertiser.