A POTENTIALLY industry-destroying plan for a water pipeline and 100m easement through the Swan Valley has been quashed. The Water Corporation pipeline, planned to service Perth’s growing northern suburbs, was pulled out of the Environmental Protection Authority’s assessment process last month. The project stretches from Lancelin to Forrestfield. For more than a year, Swan Valley winemakers and grape growers have worried about the impact the pipeline would have on local tourism and agriculture.

Right now, New Zealand’s most expensive white wine happens to be a chardonnay. This doesn’t surprise me because crafting great chardonnay can’t be done on the cheap. First, you need to find the perfect piece of land, then you need to source the best clones you can plant, then wait for years and years before you get any fruit and when you do you need to cut off most of the bunches before they’re even ripe so that the flavours in the surviving ones are as intense as possible.

SIGNIFICANT anniversaries of celebrated painters and sculptors are often marked by retrospective exhibitions of their best works. On notching up his 50 years in the wine industry, 69-year-old Hunter Legend of Wine and former Mount Pleasant manager-chief winemaker Phil Ryan decided to do something similar. So last week, for a group of seven friends, he staged a retrospective exhibition of his high-wine artistry.

The trend of street-style or pop-up eateries is now so ubiquitous that you would think the cognoscenti of the world’s major cultural capitals would be getting tired of it. But it appears not. The pop-up food genre appears to be evolving faster than an Australian Ashes innings, and new collaborations are showing that the category can still deliver originality and cleverness. So it was last week in Sydney, I bought two, what we might deem as ‘food fads’, thanks to two clever collaborations, from which wine could find inspiration.

Independent Senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, said it was “deeply concerning” that the Government had missed its July deadline for the release of a discussion paper on reforming the Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) Rebate, given the distorting effect of the rebate and concerns it is being widely rorted. Senator Xenophon was part of negotiations in May with the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer to reform the rebate in order to assist wine grape growers and winemakers, the overwhelming majority of whom are struggling to survive.

Australia is becoming a more important trading partner for South Korea, even with the KAFTA between the two countries a little more than a year old. Business Korea was able to sit down with Patrick Stringer, Commissioner for Victoria to the Republic of Korea, and speak with him about the relationship between South Korea and Australia’s most populous state. Patrick has served for 10 years representing Australian trade in Asia in Hanoi, Shanghai, and now Seoul.

A south Auckland winery claims to be New Zealand’s most awarded Winery, and it delivered this year at the Spiegelau International Wine Competition, with a number of medals and trophies across several wine categories. “It’s a great night out when our North and South Island winemaking and viticulture teams can walk away with a trophy each,” said Villa Maria’s Group Chief Winemaker Nick Picone.

Official reports show that excessive preservatives and copper in imported wines are among the top reasons for Chinese customs to reject during the first half of 2015. Forty-nine batches of wine were rejected by Chinese customs during the first six months of 2015, among which 20% were due to excessive sorbic acid and 18% were due to excessive copper, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).

Ronny Lau will join Grossi restaurant group sommelier Mark Protheroe in judging the country’s premier wine competition, the 2015 Air New Zealand Wine Awards. Ronny Lau, from China, is an independent wine critic and has been the co-chairman of the Shanghai International Wine Challenge since 2011. He is a regular wine and spirits columnist for 10 different publications in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia, has written six wine books and is the editor and author of two wine books for the Greater China Wine Critics Association.

A Hunter Valley vigneron is excited about this year’s wine vintage, but warns that forecast dry conditions could pose issues for winemakers. It may have been a long, cold winter in the NSW Hunter Valley, but that hasn’t stopped the region’s vignerons from working tirelessly to ensure the next year’s wine vintage is a ‘corker’. Winemakers are currently pruning their dormant vines to ensure growth is ideal when the warm weather arrives.