B.C. wines were put to the ultimate test at the Judgment of BC on Tuesday, Aug.25.
Twelve B.C. wines were pitted against 12 acknowledged global benchmarks, and BC’s C.C. Jentsch Syrah 2013 from the Okanagan Valley ranked first among the flight of Syrah, and Soumah Chardonnay Single Vineyard 2013 from Yarra Valley, Victoria Australia came out on top for the flight of Chardonnays.
Damon Huard’s hands are stained a deep purple. His white polo shirt has two circular splotches of the same hue. For the past hour he has been drinking wine siphoned out of new $1,500 French-oak barrels—just another day at the office.
“This is our little Napa,” says Huard. It’s late July, another football season approaches, and the former NFL quarterback is surveying his new 5,300-square-foot winery outside Seattle with the look of a proud parent.
The annual Queensland Wine Awards is the night of nights for the local wine industry with accolades for wine quality, service quality and contribution to the wine industry. This year Ballandean Estate matriarch, Mary Puglisi, was recognised for her outstanding contribution.
A new, free wine education tool has launched, offering online video content to help students tackle the Master of Wine syllabus and hone their essay skills. WineTutor.tv, which launched this week, has been set up by Tim Wildman MW in partnership with Johnny Mindlin, a specialist in producing educational audio and video content.
Vintage Wine Estates has continued a recent winery-buying spree, announcing its purchase of Napa Valley’s Swanson Vineyards, a pioneer in California Merlot. The deal, which closed Aug. 31, comes just a month after the Sonoma-based company purchased B.R. Cohn Winery.
Oregon’s wine industry is set to celebrate another banner year. While it will be difficult to top 2014, when the grape harvest increased nearly 40 percent over 2013 to a record 78,000 tons and sales increased 14 percent to $430 million, many growers are predicting an exceptional crop again this year.
The optimistic outlook comes despite the hot, dry summer that pushed up the 2015 harvest by as much as three weeks.
If you still can’t get past that wines in a screw-top bottle can be high quality, then wine in a can is going to make you flip your lid.
Several innovative wineries around the world have started “bottling” their juice in cans and marketing it toward a hipper crowd, some — like Oregon’s Underwood — more successfully than others. Underwood’s pinot noir, pinot gris and rosé aren’t dumbed-down novelty wines. They’re what they’d put in glass, and do, just more portable.
Renowned New Zealand winemakers Hawkshead, Valli, Domaine Thompson, Wild Irishman and Soho have formed an exclusive wine partnership with Gibbston’s Kinross Cottages and General Store.
Perfectly positioned half way between Queenstown and Bannockburn, Kinross now operates as the exclusive Gibbston cellar door for this stellar group of winemakers. Brought together under one roof for the first time, their stories are entwined in the history of New Zealand wine making, and Kinross is the perfect hub to be drawn into their world.
In what was once a considered a low-end hippy market, organic wine is fast becoming the preferred drop of choice for discerning wine palates worldwide. That growth is seeing the sector gaining momentum throughout NZ vineyards. Today seven per cent of New Zealand wine growers are certified organic or biodynamic.
Do you want to join the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show (AAVWS) in Mildura this November? Launched in 2014, the AAVWS Fellowship invites applications from wine professionals and knowledgeable enthusiasts who are excited by the opportunity to explore and celebrate Australia’s alternative varieties and share that new found fervour with their networks and industry groups.