Diageo Australia has revamped its DRINKiQ website as the company aims to help Australian consumers better understand how much alcohol they are drinking. A survey of almost 1000 Australians aged 18 and over found that half of those questioned were not aware of how much alcohol is in their drink. The survey found 50 per cent of respondents believed a schooner of full strength beer, a glass of red wine and a single serve of spirits with a mixer each contain one standard drink of alcohol.

Recent wet weather has caused problems for grape growers who are now racing the clock to complete their harvest. Bruno Brombal, chairman of the Riverina Wine Grape Marketing Board, said the rain and hail had a “big impact” on growers. “If we had another week of rain we could have been in big strife,” Mr Brombal said. “There could have been major losses in the region, not as bad as the Hunter Valley but close.”

Wine Odyssey, an innovative wine bar located in a Sydney’s popular waterfront location The Rocks, has been forced to close its doors after almost eight years in business after the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority announced they are seeking a “more relevant” tenant. The ‘cellar door in the city’ which offered tourists and Sydney-siders the opportunity to taste wines from the most popular regions of Australia, has been referred to as a “lifeline” for smaller producers to enter the mainstream market.

Wine purchases made online and via retail stores and supermarkets made up the majority of Australian wine consumption in China over the last three years, a study has found. A three-year study by the University of South Australia’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science funded by Wine Australia has found the number of people buying imported wine in China and frequency of consumption had sharply increased over the course of the project.

THE recommendations from a senate inquiry into the wine and grape industry will be made known next week. The Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee investigated the profitability of wine grape growers, the impact of the wine equalisation tax ¬rebate, the power and influence of retailers of Australian wine in domestic and export markets and the effectiveness of market intelligence in sending price signals to growers.

Boutique wineries are losing money following a tough 2015 vintage for the industry, a survey reveals. Results from the 10th annual financial benchmarking survey show most wineries recorded a healthy profit, while small wineries suffered. Wineries with more than $20 million in revenue averaged a profit of 30.5 per cent, while wineries which generated sales up to $1.5m lost an average of 9 per cent.

Wine Enthusiast managing editor Joe Czerwinski is in Marlborough for the International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration. The New York-based editor talks about his love of wine and what he sees in the Marlborough industry. “For me, wine was a bit of a hobby going back to when I was at university. I started grad school briefly and left for my first job, which was in a wine shop. Unfortunately I wasn’t getting much of a wine education and the pay was awful so I left.”

It’s a question from wine novices that comes up repeatedly. Just how do we know how long to age our wine critics? Furthermore, how can we tell which wine critics will age well, and which will fall apart? Are there any guidelines? I believe there are, and the best way to understand them is to look at wine critics of various ages we have now for clues as to how wine critics age. However, there is no exact measure, and certainly no guarantee.

SINCE they made a spectacular maiden entry into the Hunter Valley Wine Show in 2010, husband and wife winemaking duo Damien Stevens and Jodie Belleville have established a great reputation for their white wines. Their Hart and Hunter 2010 Single Vineyard Semillon took the Marshall-Flannery Trophy for the best current vintage semillon and the H.J. Lindeman Trophy for the best current vintage dry white of the 2010 show and since then their semillons, chardonnays and fianos have had great competition success.

For independently owned and operated wine producers, pitching labels to distributors in new markets can be exasperating. Distributors are offered hundreds of SKUs every week and getting a distributor to even consider your brand is often a tough task. When you finally land a meeting with a buyer after countless hours of emails and cold calls, you might find your brands rejected anyway, leaving you to start all over again.