Wet weather over recent weeks looks to have delayed the start of the Hunter Valley’s grape harvest.
Some vignerons were hoping to begin their vintage next week but rain has slowed the final ripening of fruit. The harvest usually lasts about six weeks beginning with white varieties including Semillon and chardonnay, before ending in February with the reds. Hunter winemaker Andrew Margan said recent rain has had an impact.
More than a million litres of wine was drained from tanks at a Riverland winery earlier this week, sparking a plea for help from the public. Police believe the property damage occurred at the Monash winery in South Australia sometime between 3:00pm on December 28 and 9:00am the following morning. About 1.2 million litres of wine was drained from four separate tanks.
Bordeaux lost more ground to Burgundy and Italy in 2015, but the overall fine wine market has shown greater stability, says a review of the past 12 months from the Liv-ex trading exchange. Bordeaux‘s market share on Liv-ex has dropped to levels not seen since 2004, Liv-ex said this week in its review of the fine wine market 2015.
Back in the 1990s, Russ Raney and John Paul were scandalized to discover that several of their wine-producing peers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley had begun installing drip-irrigation systems in their vine-yards. After all, the valley receives an average of 42 inches of rain a year. It seemed like the last place you’d need to add water.
Sauvignon Blanc is generally regarded as a “drink now” wine. Australians love it, downing more New Zealand Sauv Blanc than any other white. The Kiwi winery that started the craze, Cloudy Bay, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the wine that changed a nation’s drinking habits this year. The first Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc was released in 1985.
On a recent trip to the UK, my long-retired mother in-law admitted to succumbing to an extra bit of decadence in her life. She usually restricts her drinking to one small glass of sweet sherry a week, but confided that she and her 92-year-old best friend have taken to having a glass of prosecco at their weekly lunch at Marks and Spencer. Once I got over the shock of her drinking her way through my wife’s inheritance, I began to marvel at just how popular prosecco has become!
ENJOY great Australian wines, artisan foods, culinary talent and the finest Queensland produce at the new-look Noosa Food and Wine Festival from May 19-22. There will be a range of events staged in the Festival Village on Main Beach as well as others across the region in restaurants and the hinterland.
THE first Margaret River vineyards had been planted only a decade before when young McLaren Vale-bred Roseworthy graduate and avid surfer Keith Mugford was lured there by the region’s immense winegrowing potential and great waves. Sited in the northern sub-region of Wilyabrup, Moss Wood vineyard was founded in 1969 by medico Dr Bill Pannell and his wife Sandra and was one of Margaret River’s earliest wine ventures.
WINEMAKER Philip Murphy, son of discount wine store king Dan, is selling his stunning Mornington Peninsula estate. Vineyards and views are key attractions at the five-bedroom, Stephen Akehurst-designed mansion at 484 Purves Rd, Main Ridge, which hit the market last week.
A new partnership between Swinburne University and DAL Group Australia (DGA) seeks to develop technology to transform winery waste into natural compounds that can be re-used in the winemaking process. In the European Union the skins, pulp, stalks and seeds left over after grape pressing are now classified as industrial waste.