Breakfast Wine

Nothing wrong with a glass in the morning given the right occasion I say. Legend has it that Churchill used to start with a cleansing Port, Madame Lily Bollinger preferred Champagne. I road tested German riesling recently at a get together in the Barossa and an importer threw a fully fledged German riesling breakfast yesterday that has me convinced.

Local or global?

Sometimes apparently unrelated events fuse themselves together for wine on opposite sides of the world. On the way to the Barossa last weekend I received an email from a colleague in the US lamenting the challenge of engaging US media in a more diverse Australian message. The event I attended on Saturday showed a) just why the Barossa garners so much interest and b) an inspired approach that others around Australia might hopefully follow.

More HOT stuff

The inaugural Adelaide Review HOT 100 wines went live last Wednesday with a couple of hours of shoulder rubbing at the Hilton Adelaide. An all South Australian list of cutting edge wine, the biggest and smallest winemakers are represented and the only criteria for selection are that wines must be from South Australia and they must be damn good, the very best in fact.

Celebrity Heads

The McLaren Vale Wine Show finished up with the all-important taste-off for the Bushing King/Queen trophy, awarded for best wine of the show, the last decision of many hundreds made over a two and a half day extravaganza. Then the fun started with a team of local celebrities called in to cast their own divine hands across a few gold medal contenders.

Wine Party - Southern Style

You needn’t spend too much time in the Vale (McLaren Vale) to notice that the locals are an easygoing, friendly bunch. Olivers Taranga hosted one hell of a shindig last Friday night to mark the opening of their new cellar door and headquarters and, clearly, they’ve got plenty to celebrate.

Riesling-a-thon

Having just finished the four-day epic tasting that is the 2007 Royal Adelaide Wine Show it’s a big ask to get on a plane and head to Perth on a Friday night. Lobbing into the Hyatt hotel at 12:30am it’s an even bigger ask to get up at 5:30am and take the 3.5 hour drive to Margaret River for the Howard Park International Riesling Tasting. A lesser variety would have copped the snooze button!

Build it and they will come – Seppeltsfield of dreams

Wine lovers welcomed the recent announcement that somebody had finally stepped up to purchase the Seppeltsfield site from Fosters. The joint announcement by Kilikanoon and Fosters puts to bed the months of speculation, gossip and outrage circling the sale of this historic Barossa Valley site. It’s closure in a sense but now the door to the future is wide open. What would you like to see at Seppeltsfield?

By Nick Stock

Wine from where?

“We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them here and we want them now.” Withnail and I (1987)

by Nick Stock