As iconic and seductively curved as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Mo., the egg-shaped wooden fermentor displayed by Bordeaux-based master artisan Joseph François may be the image many visitors will retain of SIMEI 2011. Inundated with interest in his work, Foudrerie Francois directeur general Laurent Lacroix struggled to find time to respond to questions concerning the enological benefits of this unconventional design, reports Wines & Vines

The hardy Antarctic expeditioners from almost a century ago would pass the long, polar nights by smoking and playing cards for chocolate bars, and usually with a glass of port in hand. Now, decades after such provisions made life bearable for Sir Douglas Mawson’s band of pioneers, a new value is set to be established for a bottle they left behind. The 92-year-old bottle of port made for Mawson’s 1929 expedition is expected to fetch around $15,000 when auctioned at a dinner this week, reports Nine News.

Riverland growers have vowed to rebel against the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s “discriminatory” plan. Farmers, irrigators, politicians and local business owners have united to reject the plans to cut the area’s water allocations by up to 30 per cent. This is despite soaring production costs that already have forced many embattled operators off their land, reports Adelaide Now.

The evacuation of the Margaret River region has ended, as the devastating bush fires that swept through a series of National Parks last week are brought under control. After struggling to control the fires for several days, the Australian Department of Energy and Conservation told local newspaper WA Today on Sunday that ‘the fire is now within containment lines and weather conditions are favourable.’ Nick Power of the Margaret River Wine Association told Decanter the fires’ impact upon the 2012 Margaret River vintage would be ‘minimal’.

Winegrape growers in South Australia’s Riverland have spent the weekend spraying chemicals to prevent disease after significant rainfall. CCW Co-op viticulturist Andrew Weeks says the wet and humid weather has increased the risk of downy mildew spreading. He says growers need to monitor their vineyards closely over coming days, reports ABC News.

Veteran English wine writer Hugh Johnson is quite right when he observes that a wine tastes best in the village where it is made. I’m not suggesting that wine doesn’t travel well but there are factors that come into play when strolling among the vines, glass in hand, with a wine made from the soil on which you are walking, writes John Hawkesby in The New Zealand Herald.

European wine growing regions are battling European Commission plans to allow massive vineyard expansion. To boost the wine sector’s competitiveness by reducing production costs, the EU has included an amendment to liberalise planting rights, from January 2016, within proposals for the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – a policy which one lobbyist said would have ‘catastrophic’ consequences. If the reform goes through, by 2019 there will be no restrictions to planting vines across the European Union, even in countries that today have no vineyards, reports Decanter.

European wine bloggers are set to descend on Izmir in Turkey for the 2012 EWBC conference. The event, which this year took place in Brescia, Italy, will take place on November 9 to 11, 2012. The conference is organised by Ryan and Gabriella Opaz and Robert McIntosh of social media company Vrazon, and next year’s sponsor is Wines of Turkey, reports Harpers Wine & Spirit.

Bristol’s Accolade Park bottling plant has hit a new height this month with the dispatch of 1.2 million cases in a single week. The state-of-the-art facility, owned by Accolade Wines (formerly Constellation), is currently operating Monday to Sunday to meet orders ahead of Christmas and has already beaten last year’s busiest week by 30,000 cases. It has also broken a record in terms of production at the plant by transferring as much as 20.7m litres of wine into bottles and bag-in-box in one month, during October, reports The Drinks Business.

During the second day of SIMEI, the world’s largest winemaking trade show, experts discussed the growing use of sensor technologies in all phases of winegrowing. Jean Louis Marty of Université de Perpignan, France, began with a general talk summarizing sensor advances in precision viticulture as well as data collection in the winery cellar. Stanley Best from the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropeduarias of Chile detailed experiences in precision viticulture in Chile, and Marco Vieri of the Univerità di Fiorenze discussed control of vineyard processes, reports Wines & Vines