Fine wine market Liv-ex said its Fine Wine 100 Index rose 0.9% in June to close on 244.08, up 3.4% on a year ago. That follows a slow recovery from the nadir of July last year, when the index dropped to 234.01, its lowest level since September 2009. It rose 1.9% to the end of 2014 and has gained 2.3% in 2015 so far. Bordeaux Index MD Gary Boom said the market was experiencing ‘welcome, gentle recovery’, with the company’s own LiveTrade index up 3.02% in 2015 and rising steadily every month since last August.

What a whimsical and inventive brand story Aaron Pollock Design has created for the New Zealand wine Left Field. Left Field is an existing brand, a part of the Te Awa Collection, that didn’t have a clear voice or any defining personality to stand out in the market. It was time for a brand refresh. A perfect project for Aaron Pollock Design, known for their amazing brand identity work for lifestyle products. “The objective was to create a brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”

New Zealand’s favourite poet Sam Hunt has partnered with fine wine distributor and retailer La Cantina Wines to launch the Sam Hunt range of wines. These New Zealand wines feature poetry by Sam, with a verse from a different poem on each bottle. “A poem printed in a book often dies, I’ve noticed, from suffocation and neglect,” says Sam. “Alternatively, a poem told or sung – or printed on a wine label, say – stands a much greater chance of life, of getting it across.

A colour says a lot about a brand. Any woman who has ever considered marriage knows what the little blue box means, while shoppers with discerning taste like presents that come packaged in a particular shade of orange. Like Tiffany & Co. and Hermes, champagne house Veuve Clicquot is known for the vivid streak of yellow that wraps around its bottles, and at events and venues around the world, from Bondi Icebergs to the annual polo in New York, whether in umbrellas or ice buckets or festive flutes, that shade of yellow signals a good time waiting to be had.

A SELECTION of vineyards will this weekend offer a sneak preview of the magic happening in wine barrels across Bendigo. Eight wineries will throw open their doors for two days of exclusive barrel tasting sessions. Bendigo Winegrowers Association president Bill Blamires said the weekend was a chance for wine lovers to taste wine right from the source and enjoy some barrel alchemy. “Meet the winemakers who’ll be keen to chat about the latest vintage and taste future releases straight from the barrel,” said Mr Blamires, whose family operates the Mount Alexander Winery.

You’d be hard pressed to find a famous wine region around the world without at least a handful of flying Australian winemakers. With the vintage done and dusted in Australia, every year thousands pack their bags for a working holiday in wineries dotted around the northern hemisphere. Vintages in great regions and chateaux guarantee hefty bragging rights plus the chance to sharpen skills working with some of the world’s top fruit. But sometimes the opportunity to make spectacular wines is just too great and our best are lost to faraway lands for good.

Sitting with Anthony Grundel and Craig Viney from Murray Street Vineyards, you get the feeling the pair run a very smooth operation. Grundel, the general manager, is just as comfortable talking about the importance of the winery’s mailing list as he is discussing their plans in China. Viney, who drives a VW Kombi and rides a skateboard, has a sample from the final press of the 2015 vintage on the coffee table. The pair spoke to Nathan Gogoll about making wine, selling wine and capability – rather than potential.

TAX on wine and spirits sold at pubs should be cut because they provide a safer drinking environment, the hotels lobby says. The Federal Government is also being lobbied to introduce an American-style “soda tax’’ to discourage Australians from drinking too much soft drink. The Australian Hotels Association wants an excise discount on wine and spirits consumed on premises because of the “safer environments’’ licensed establishments are required to maintain.

The high-speed Japanese bullet trains have been a much better bet for Cassegrain Wines managing director John Cassegrain than Australia’s liquor giants Woolworths and Coles. The NSW-based wine producer supplies about 700,000 small bottles of red and white wine each year to the operator of the Shinkansen bullet trains, JR Tokai, which hurtle around Japan at speeds of up to 320km/h.

THE first time I saw a draft horse in a Bordeaux vineyard I thought it was a PR stunt. Call me a cynic, but I was convinced that when the journalists left, the horses would be sent straight back to whichever farm they came from. I hate to admit it, but in the case of Château Pontet-Canet I was wrong. Every April I visit this small corner of Pauillac, just south of Château Mouton-Rothschild, to taste the latest vintage.