British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has taken to Instagram to praise Wilyabrup winery Cullen Wines to her almost half a million strong following. The professional chef, food writer and journalist who is beloved the world over for her abilities in the kitchen has made an appearance on Australian TV as a guest judge on the reality cooking program Masterchef.
“Just spin the Hills Hoist and if the goon bag lands above you, you’ve gotta skull it,” a bare-chested man wearing an Australian flag as a cape tells me. Yesterday was January 26th, my inaugural Australia Day, and I played my very first game of Goon of Fortune, an unofficial initiation into Australian society. Its name may be a spinoff of the iconic Wheel of Fortune, but Goon of Fortune takes full advantage of two very Aussie inventions: the goon bag (also known as bag-in-box, cask or boxed wine) and the Hills Hoist (rotating clothes line).
Ever since I went to Tasmania for the first time in the early 2000s and got excited about the generally superb vintages of that era, I have waited, patiently, for this cool and relatively dry region of Australia to consistently deliver what it has always promised. Vine age, considerable mainland investment from producers such as Treasury, Accolade and Shaw+Smith, together with the ever-growing number of locals making their own wine on site, add up to exciting times for a region that’s finally challenging the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula for pinot supremacy.
We may not have a long winemaking history in this country, not compared with the Europeans, but we have something they can never have, that true-blue, dinky-di never-say-die – or syrah – spirit that is distinctly, utterly ours alone. It’s downing a glass of hot red on a 40-degree day, inflating an empty wine cask bladder for a game of pool volleyball, sipping a rizza in the Eden Valley or ordering a “pig” when you simply can’t be bothered sounding out a few extra syllables for a p-i-n-o-t g-r-i-g-i-o. Time is short in this country when there’s wine to consume.
Modern winemakers have a vast array of new tools to help improve wine quality at nearly every level, from optimizing grapevine hydration to mechanical harvesters and DNA fingerprinting. More than ever, winemakers must be a blend of artist, farmer, scientist and computer geek to keep up with the latest technologies. “Producing the highest quality wine starts with healthy grapes,” said Garrett Buckland, a winemaker and partner at Premiere Viticultural Services in Napa.
The “huge success” of Saturday’s second Bridge Pa Wine Festival which saw more than 1500 people enjoy the hospitality of seven wineries in that region meant it would become an annual summer event “on the Hawke’s Bay map for years to come,” event co-ordinator Paul Ham said. “It was overwhelmingly successful and we have been getting a lot of very good feedback about it.”
Continued strong growth in export demand for New Zealand wine is rapidly depleting inventories after a light 2015 harvest. Rabobank’s latest wine quarterly showed export volumes increased 8.5% in volume and 13.1% in value over the 10 months to October 2015. Average export prices have edged up in all major markets since the harvest, despite growth in bulk wine export volumes (up 13% year on year) outpacing that of bottled wine exports (up 6.6%) over the period.
If you love bargain plonk, you’ll be disappointed if you wander into Drops Total Spirits, wine and spirit wallahs of New Bel Road, Bengaluru; in fact you’re unlikely to find much joy anywhere in India, no matter how well you haggle. A bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz, which sells at Dan Murphy’s for $7, was yesterday on the shelves at Drops for 1425 rupees, a whopping $29.99, while a 750ml bottle of Yalumba Unwooded Chardonnay sells for $38.50 a bottle — it’s available in Australia for $12.99 in a two-litre cask.
Move over Moscato — a vigneron in Orange is counting on the trend towards drinking prosecco continuing. See Saw wines owner Justin Jarrett is weeks away from harvesting the first grapes grown in Orange, in the central west of New South Wales, to produce prosecco. Mr Jarrett grafted prosecco grapes on to chardonnay vines to speed up the process of transitioning to the sparkling wine variety.
Adelaide Hills couple Brendan and Laura Carter have just released a couple of bitter orange liqueurs in the style of Aperol and the more bitter imported Campari, developed and distilled right here in Gumeracha under the name Applewood Distillery, the drinks called Okar and Red Okar for the stronger version. “We wanted to showcase Australian food and cultural tastes, and we realised we are well positioned here to create a unique beverage,” Brendan says.