Eyebrows were raised heavenwards this autumn when the trophy for a Bordeaux blend over £10 was snatched by a Chinese red from beneath the noses of Argentina, Australia and California. Anthony Rose writes in The Independent sneering journalists questioned the integrity of the Decanter World Wine Awards. Then they queried the authenticity of the wine itself. How could China possibly make a wine capable of taking on and beating the world? D Loh commented in the China Daily: “If the wine is good, connoisseurs query if it has been secretly imported and then placed in a Chinese bottle.”

This festive season is shaping up to be the booziest in Australia’s history. New research has forecast Australian spending on alcohol this December will rise five per cent – an all-time high, reports The Daily Telegraph on the weekend.The prediction, by IBISWorld, would mean NSW bottleshop sales will almost certainly top the $385 million figure recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in December last

The week before Christmas can be stressful. Organise the drinks ahead of time, from festive rosato to sparkling reds, writes Jane Faulkner in the weekend’s The Age. And firston the list, is the exciting Australian first Chalmers Nero D’Avola Rosato, a juicy Sicilian red, with fruit grown at Heathcote.

The season’s deep discounting and the accelerated fall in wine volumes in the last weeks of the year will have a lingering hangover effect on the trade in 2012. That’s the opinion of sector leaders and analysts, who foresee volumes falling by up to 5% and up to one million wine drinkers leaving the category by the end of the year, reports Harpers Wine & Spirits Trade Review.

Scientists have identified more than 20 chemicals that make smoke-tainted wine taste like leather, disinfectant and other unpalatable flavours in a new research project that aims to limit the damage to the wine industry caused by smoke. The Canberra Times reports researchers hope the findings, part of a $4million smoke taint study, will lead to better timing of controlled burns and the creation of an online interactive tool that will help winegrowers assess the likelihood of their grapes having been damaged by smoke.

Up in the mountains north of Cape Town, the revolutionaries are massing. This is Swartland – ”the black land’’ – a place of big skies, where wheat fields blaze, grey-barked renosterbos (”rhinoceros bush’’) grows in abundance and the landscape is chequered with vineyards, writes Victoria Moore for The Telegraph. The revolutionaries are gathering in the small town of Riebeek Kasteel. They are wearing identical striped scarves emblazoned with a red star but, instead of Kalashnikovs, each one is armed with a wine glass.

Winemakers and food producers involved with the twenty-first annual Grampians Grape Escape next May are going all out with an impressive line-up of mini foodie events leading up to the stalwart food and wine spectacular. The Stawell Times reports first up will be ‘Christmas in the Vines’ at Grampians Estate this weekend, followed by a Delightful Dinner in Dunkeld on January 21 and Tastings @ Troopers, Beaufort on February 18.

It’s an emblematic wine-world row. Wine made on “natural” principles – both with organically or biodynamically grown grapes and with minimal intervention in the winery – makes up little more than a thimbleful of the total on sale, writes Andrew Neather in The Evening Standard. Yet its proponents are passionate – and they articulate a wider unease among winemakers and critics about the steady homogenisation of wine.

A minimum price for alcohol in the UK would help prevent thousands of deaths from related diseases, a group of leading doctors and academics has said. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, 19 experts said Scottish plans for minimum pricing were a “simple and effective” way to tackle alcohol-related deaths.

Yes, Malbec may be the grape—and wine—of the moment, but there are other offerings on the Argentine wine list. This was the gist of the wine exposition organised by the Embassy of Argentina last month at the Rockwell Club, writes Cecile G. Mauricio in The Business Mirror. Philippine importers and distributors of Argentine wines were invited to present their selections and set up tasting tables, but before the event, Minister Jaime Goldaracena, the embassy’s trade attaché, made the rounds of hotels and restaurants to personally invite chefs, restaurant owners, food and beverage directors and wine buyers.