Trevor Mast, longtime winemaker at Australia’s Mount Langi Ghiran winery and a legend in the Victorian wine industry, died of pneumonia on 8 March, following a five-year battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He was 63. Mast established Mount Langi Ghiran as a benchmark of cool-climate Australian Shiraz over 20 years, nurturing old vines in a dramatic, granitic site in the shadow of the mountain of the same name in Victoria’s Grampians region. The wine is widely recognised as one of Australia’s most distinctive single-vineyard wines, writes Tyson Stelzer in Wine Spectator.

The Riverina’s massive 280,000 tonne winegrape harvest is deteriorating by the day in flood water. Riverina Winegrape Growers chairman Bruno Brombal expects losses to total up to 30,000 tonnes in the region. Mr Brombal said many grape varieties were infected with Botrytis, rendering them useless for wine making. He said growers in the Yenda district, near Griffith, had lost entire crops in the midst of harvest, reports Weekly Times Now.

When it comes to wine, vintage is everything. Distant years are spoken of with great fondness, while some decades earn hushed reverence with wine lovers. That might be logical when it comes to the content of bottles, but what about the people working on those precious liquid? Without fresh faces the viticulture industry will be dead on the vine. It’s lucky then that there are people like Sam Bowman jumping into the wine world boots and all, reports ABC Central Victoria.

Coonawarra grapegrowers say close to ideal conditions over the past season should lead to a good Cabernet vintage. Growers will this week begin to harvest red varieties after the sparkling and white harvest began last month. The president of the Coonawarra Grape Growers Association, Daniel Newson, says good weather has allowed the grapes to ripen slowly, reports ABC News.

Winegrape varieties could soon be developed with a much higher tolerance to the harsh Australian conditions. Plant scientist Matthew Gilliham, from the University of Adelaide, was awarded $22,000 by the Grape Wine Research and Development Corporation to map the genetic make-up of a key grapevine rootstock. Viticulturists use rootstocks of grapevine plants to impart favourable characteristics in their winegrape varieties, reports ABC Rural.

Getting serious wine buffs to agree on which is the greater red wine style, Bordeaux or Burgundy, is akin to getting a roomful of economists to agree on anything. Bordeaux is the classic blend involving Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and, to a lesser extent, Petit Verdot and Malbec. It can be all of the above, sometimes with a dash of Carmenere, or it can be a combination of just a few such as St Emilion wines, which often rely on Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Burgundy, by contrast, is a single varietal: Pinot Noir, writes John Hawkesby in The New Zealand Herald.

The Ritzling. It may be a hard name to swallow for some, given it really is just a cutesy rebranding of Riesling, but it’s a beautiful drop. Launched in 2009 by award-winning winemaker Chris Archer, of Archer McRae Beverages, the Ritzling was bred out of Archer’s frustration with the wine industry, specifically its marketing constraints. The Ritzling, targeted at females aged 25-55 and young metro males, comes in a bottle resplendent with images of a semi-gothic lion’s head, a butterfly and a peacock, reports Auckland Now.

London wine merchant Bibendum has revealed a list of wines that will be served at the London Olympics this summer. Along with classics such as a 2008 Meursault Cuvee Charles Maxime Domaine Latour-Giraud and 2006 Brunello di Montalcino Castello Banfi, corporate guests will be served 2010 Best’s Dolcetto, a 2006 Quinta do Seival Castas Portuguesas from Brazil and a 2009 Quinta do Vallado Tinto from Portugal. In a nod to the host nation, the 2008 Hush Heath Balfour Brut Rosé will be on offer. The 2006 Balfour Brut won Silver at the Decanter World Wine Awards last year. This is the only English wine in the list of 18 wines so far announced, reports Decanter.

Maxxium Hong Kong, one of Hong Kong’s largest and most prolific wine and spirits distributors founded in 1999, is changing its name as of 1 April to become Edrington Hong Kong Limited. The company will work in conjunction with the Edrington Group, the major private group in the Scottish whisky industry, reports The Drinks Business.

American billionaire Bill Foley has thrown his clout behind New Zealand, pushing to increase his winemaking business here 16-fold. Mr Foley, the chairman of two Fortune 500 companies, told The New Zealand Herald he saw an opportunity to build up exports from wineries around the country. He would push New Zealand wines on his global distribution channels and expand production from 60,000 cases a year to a million, he said.