According to the chairman of judges, John Ellis of Victoria, the 2341 entries in this year’s Royal Hobart Wine show were down slightly from last year due to the very difficult 2011 vintage conditions experienced right across south eastern Australia. The Mercury reports for Tasmania however, the number of exhibitors rose to 76, wines to 304 and the number of medals totalled 170, including 19 golds, 48 silvers and 103 bronzes, plus five open-class trophies.
According to the chairman of judges, John Ellis of Victoria, the 2341 entries in this year’s Royal Hobart Wine show were down slightly from last year due to the very difficult 2011 vintage conditions experienced right across south eastern Australia. The Mercury reports for Tasmania however, the number of exhibitors rose to 76, wines to 304 and the number of medals totalled 170, including 19 golds, 48 silvers and 103 bronzes, plus five open-class trophies.
Offering a veritable smorgasbord of festive feasting, the Kiwi Christmas calls for a similarly diverse range of wines to match its many flavours. Now’s the time to splash out on some special bottles, as well as getting in a good stock of more affordable staples to see you through the season, writes Jo Burzynska in The New Zealand Herald.
Albert Bichot’s winemaker Alain Serveau has described 2010 as having a better expression of terroir than 2009. Speaking to The Drinks Business, Serveau said that while 2009 was “very easy to drink and charming it did mask the terroir”. By contrast he described 2010 as “precise, fresh, a little less tannic than 2005 and with much better potential to show the vineyard in individual wines”.
A little-known winery has lost its battle to sell port and fruit wines in a Porirua shopping mall. Porirua City Council refused to grant Ruahine Wines a special licence to sell unopened bottles of wine and gift packs from a stall in the North City Shopping Centre in the lead up to Christmas. It made the decision behind closed doors after winery director Damon Pratt pleaded for the initial refusal by the Porirua District Licensing Agency to be overturned in order for his business to stay afloat, reports The Dominion Post.
Accolade Wines has announced a £1m marketing campaign for its Banrock Station Light brand in a bid to champion the lighter drinking category. The campaign will include a link-up with Weight Watchers, as it focuses on its “60 calories per 125ml glass, 100% taste”, tagline which has been highlighted as a key category and consumer driver. The six month campaign launches in January and is set to reach 5m UK female ‘Routiners’, reports Harpers Wine & Spirit.
Twelve months ago Brian Schmidt was living a routine life, working Monday to Friday in Canberra and trying his hand at winemaking after hours. Since the 44-year-old was named as a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics, things have changed. “There’s not a lot of free time, that’s for sure,” Prof Schmidt told AAP by phone from Stockholm where he will collect his Nobel prize on Saturday. Typically in early December Prof Schmidt spends his spare time in shorts and a T-shirt at his 35-hectare farm just outside Canberra, where he runs a vineyard and winery, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Iconic wine brand Penfolds has appointed Gary Burnand as its managing director. Brand owner Treasury Wine Estates said Burnand will be responsible for “driving Penfolds strategic direction” and will report to the group chief executive David Dearie. Burnand has more than 20 years of experience in senior marketing and strategic roles in the food, apparel and alcohol categories of Europe, Asia Pacific and the USA, reports Harpers Wine & Spirit.
Improved profits being made by wine companies will take about two years to filter through to growers, says Winegrowers New Zealand chairman Stuart Smith. The Deloitte and NZ Winegrowers’s sixth annual wine industry benchmarking survey released this week confirmed what he was hearing on the ground, Mr Smith, of Fairhall, Blenheim, said. Wine companies’ position was improving but no-one was dancing in the streets, reports The Marlborough Express.
A small-production Australian Shiraz has earned global renown by being named the world’s best label in 2011 by the World Label Awards Association. The label of Alpha Crucis Shiraz 2008, produced by Chalk Hill Winery in McLaren Vale, was named best in Australia before taking on and beating the best from Europe, the US, India, Japan and New Zealand in the global final. The awards are recognised as the peak competition for printing and label associations around the world, reports Decanter.