On the mainland, $3 million can buy you a fair bit – a six-bedroom home in Manly, or even Port Melbourne penthouse. However if neither of those ideas takes your fancy, you could also spend that money on a wine cellar in Tasmania. The clifftop property is a 20-minute drive from Hobart, and includes 8 hectares of land, a 300-square-metre shed, and the most unusual wine cellar in Australia. The wine cellar is housed in a tunnel that is a staggering nine stories deep. Like something out of a Bond film, it took mining experts six-and-a-half months to build.

These are exciting times for South African wines as a new generation of winemakers come of age, according to Siobhan Thompson, chief executive of trade organisation Wines of South Africa. Master of wine Jancis Robinson agrees, describing what’s happening to the industry there as “feeling like a teen coming-of age movie. In the classroom of wine regions, it’s the kid who sits alone at lunch, wears weird clothes, but is still strangely confident, and manages to answer the teacher’s questions with aplomb.”

A Texas Tech University doctoral student won a $10,000 grant to study how millennials respond to the way in which wines are packaged. Nicholas Johnston, who is starting his final year in the hospitality administration graduate program in the Department of Hospitality and Retail Management, has studied consumer behaviour for years, most recently in a research setting but for several years before that as a bartender.

Sean Beer has a unique name for a winemaker and operates in a unique location, Rotorua in New Zealand. The Volcanic Hills Winery run by Beer is the only winery in the Rotorua district, a Mecca for tourism in the country. “We’re still a pretty small winery but we source grapes from the oldest vines in New Zealand and crush around 60 tonnes,” said Beer. “I’ve worked in wineries where the crush was 300 thousand tonnes, so we do things differently,” Beer said.

Marlborough entrepreneur Peter Yealands has again denied reports his wine company is being readied for sale. The Marlborough region is said to be awash with rumours that Yealands is about to sign – or has already done so – a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The ‘market talk’ comes just months after he hit back at a report in the Sydney-based newspaper The Australian claiming German investment bank Deutsche Bank had been drafted in to sell “Yealands Estate”.

IT may just be one of the best kept secrets in the Australian wine industry; an innovation in the barrel fermentation of handcrafted Shiraz taking place right here in the North East. But word is getting out quickly about Star Lane Winery’s 2012 Elements Shiraz, uniquely aged in recycled Australian red gum barrels, and there’s already plenty of interest from growing wine markets in Japan and China for the boutique offering.

One man’s extra Shiraz is another man’s treasure. The Canberra district of Australia’s wine regions are experience an amazing harvest this year, and with some wineries harvesting more grapes than they can handle, one team of winemakers has decided to sell the wine made from extra grapes and donate the proceeds to Companion House, an Australian non-profit which provides assistance to refugees.

Many of Australia’s wine regions have been exposed to bushfires over the last decade, and scientists have made great strides studying the effect of the smoke on wine grapes, according to a University of Adelaide researcher. Early questions about the chemistry of smoke taint have been answered.
The focus of research then shifted to treating wine affected by smoke taint, which cause a smoky, ashy taste.

Australian taxpayers would be forced to subsidise the importation of Kiwi beer, under a new New Zealand government proposal. Prime Minister John Key’s Government has hit out at the move to stop Kiwi wineries claiming tax rebates of up to $500,000 a year from Australia. They also want independent NZ breweries that export beer across the Tasman to be able to claim up to $30,000 each a year Australia’s brewery refund scheme.

Leading Loire winemakers François Chidaine and Jacky Blot have been banned from vinifying their Vouvray wines in the neighbouring commune of Montlouis. Vouvray’s appellation rules were changed in October 2009 to ensure that all wines bearing the name, whether still or sparkling, were made within Vouvray. The only exception is Nazelles-Négron, a neighbouring commune just outside the eastern limit of the appellation.