The Canberra wine district was one of few regions in Australia to enjoy a bumper 2015 vintage with the fruits of winemakers’ labour beginning to pay dividends. According to a national industry report, favourable weather conditions led to a crush of 21 tonnes with vineyards in Murrumbateman searching for new ways to store and distribute surplus fruit. For Nick Spencer, the winemaker at Eden Road vineyard north of Canberra, the 2015 season was “just perfect” with the local Shiraz likely to be an award-winner.

Hunter Valley vignerons say they are looking forward to getting on with their lives now they have won the war against coal seam gas development in the region. A Goodbye AGL party was held in Broke on Saturday night, with about 100 community members turning out to celebrate the gas giant’s exit from wine country. Last month, AGL announced it was selling several exploration licences back to the New South Wales Government, including two covering a large part of the Hunter.

This sentence, handed out by a judge at London’s Old Bailey court this week, follows Constantinos’ conviction on 25 June on 10 counts that included running a fraudulent business, intent to defraud and acting as a company director while disqualified. His trial lasted three weeks and was brought by Tower Hamlets Trading Standards. An eight-year jail sentence is in the upper range of sentences given to wine investment fraudsters over the last decade. Constantinos compounded his fraudulent activities by running companies while banned as a director.

Wine judges set to taste over 1,300 wines at one of NZ’s largest wine shows. Year-on-year growth in entries has seen the New World Wine Awards become one of New Zealand’s leading wine shows, with a record 1,332 entries this year. At this scale, the independent judging panel of 13 wine experts will be required to blind-taste up to 120 wines each per day over three days from 3-5 August.

QUEENSLAND has been given the dubious title of being the nation’s biggest goon drinkers. Despite being considered the beverage of bogans and cash-strapped youths, it is pensioners who are buying the most cask wine. New research from Roy Morgan shows that of the 45 per cent of Australians who drink wine, almost 16 per cent love their goon. Queensland is above the national average with 18 per cent of wine drinkers opting for chateau d’cardboard.

Labour Weekend will mark the opening of the first annual ‘Down to Earth’ celebration of wine in New Zealand’s Central Otago region, set to run from Saturday 24 October to Wednesday 4 November 2015. This inaugural hands-on Celebration will give wine enthusiasts the chance to be immersed in uniquely interactive experiences only on offer during these special twelve days; many of which guarantee one-on-one time with renowned winemakers.

Wine industry law firm Finlaysons says many Australian wine grape growers and wine makers are considering their financial future, and are thinking about succession planning, expansion, finding an investor or putting up the for-sale sign. The company started a series of national workshops in Western Australia’s Swan Valley wine grape growing region today and will conclude the WA-leg of the trip in Margaret River tomorrow.

There’s a changing of the guard going on at Jim Barry Wines with two sons – Tom and Sam – taking the reins while current managing director Peter Barry is re-working his job description. “I’ll never retire,” Peter said. “I enjoy the winery my parents created, the wines and the vineyards – I can’t imagine living anywhere else other than the Clare Valley. “But there are also some rewards in taking a senior role – it’s a bit less hands on and you can take a bigger picture view,” Peter said.

A high proportion of grapegrowers are looking to sell long-held family vineyards, say industry insiders, amid continuing poor profitability for some South Australian operations. The Winemakers Federation 2015 vintage report shows that on average just one per cent of the crop from South Australia’s Riverland was sold at profit this year. The vast majority of the crush – 92 per cent – was sold below the average cost of production, four per cent broke even and three per cent turned a “low profit”.

The Wine & Viticulture Journal is pitting Clare Valley Rieslings against their Eden Valley counterparts for its next blind tasting. This will be only the second tasting the Journal has held comparing wines from different regions following its 2011 taste-off of Grenache from Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale. Producers from these regions have until close of business next Tuesday (11 August) to contact editor Sonya Logan expressing their interest in submitting a wine to the tasting (s.logan@winetitles.com.au).