Glen Goodall is the senior winemaker at Xanadu (just south of the Margaret River township) and has been since the Rathbone family, who also own Victoria’s Yering Station and Mt Langi Ghiran, purchased it in 2005. WA dominates the semillon sauvignon blanc blend, chardonnay and cabernet classes on the seven capital city wine show circuit. WA won all seven of the cabernet trophies and five of the seven chardonnay trophies awarded in 2016 from the state’s 4 per cent of Australia’s wine and Xanadu is a significant part of the reason for these results.

OZONE Walk’s boutique bar Lucy will host Warrnambool’s inaugural wine weekend on Saturday. Fine natural wines from across Australia will be showcased, as well as craft beers. Bar owner Will Shepherd said the event was all about showing off “lo-fi” wine that was made in the traditional way. Chevre, Good Intention and Dirty Black Denim wines will be featured. “They are all natural, made by young Australian wine makers,” Mr Shepherd said. “It’s about minimal intervention, using proper wine making techniques.”

On Tuesday 31 January, Jacob’s Creek kicked off its 2017 vintage with Chardonnay destined for Jacob’s Creek sparkling wine. The first fruit to be picked was from the Murray Darling, with the Riverland commencing the following day. “The 2017 growing season saw an extremely wet winter which has resulted in a later harvest in January this year, more closely aligned with typical timings we’ve seen in the past. The below average temperatures and above average rainfall have delivered healthy and strong vine growth. More rain means less supplementary water used to irrigate, whilst also requiring growers to be more precise with their canopy management” says Ben Bryant, of his first vintage as Chief Winemaker at Jacob’s Creek.

Glen Goodall is the senior winemaker at Xanadu (just south of the Margaret River township) and has been since the Rathbone family, who also own Victoria’s Yering Station and Mt Langi Ghiran, purchased it in 2005. WA dominates the semillon sauvignon blanc blend, chardonnay and cabernet classes on the seven capital city wine show circuit. WA won all seven of the cabernet trophies and five of the seven chardonnay trophies awarded in 2016 from the state’s 4 per cent of Australia’s wine and Xanadu is a significant part of the reason for these results.

OZONE Walk’s boutique bar Lucy will host Warrnambool’s inaugural wine weekend on Saturday. Fine natural wines from across Australia will be showcased, as well as craft beers. Bar owner Will Shepherd said the event was all about showing off “lo-fi” wine that was made in the traditional way. Chevre, Good Intention and Dirty Black Denim wines will be featured. “They are all natural, made by young Australian wine makers,” Mr Shepherd said. “It’s about minimal intervention, using proper wine making techniques.”

Alex has settled on an old paint factory. Nick has taken over an abandoned ice works. And Cam’s venue is a former bakery on a busy main road, right on the tram line. Say hello to Australia’s new urban wineries where the traditionally rural activity of crushing grapes and fermenting wine has been transposed to various city settings across the country. As the 2017 harvest looms, these new places offer town dwellers a glimpse of vintage without the inconvenience of schlepping all the way out to a wine region. Winemaker Alex Retief opened the ambitious Urban Winery Sydney to the public in May in a rejuvenated industrial complex in the suburb of St Peters but he had already processed almost 40 tonnes of grapes on the site in the months beforehand.

The 23rd Annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium (AUWGS) took place last week. Something in it surely caught my interest. Christian Miller of Full Glass Research (FGR) presented at the conference the results of the latest sustainability research. Miller holds a BA in Economics from Franklin & Marshall College and an MBA from Cornell University. FGR is his baby. He also co-founded and advises Wine Opinions (WO), which bills itself as the qualitative and quantitative research arm of the overall wine industry in America. WO draws from a variety of consumer and trade organizations in its wine market research.

Hundreds of wine growers, buyers, and aficionados from around the world have descended on Wellington for a three-day celebration of New Zealand pinot noir. Wine exports in New Zealand are a billion-and-a-half dollar industry and since 2008, the amount of pinot noir New Zealand has exported has more than doubled from just under 6 million litres to just over 12 million. To consolidate that increase, Wine New Zealand hosts an annual pinot noir celebration, consisting of meetings and taste-tests. These allow local wineries to rub shoulders with international buyers and connoisseurs, make connections, and explain their offerings.

Whip-cracking acidity, tongue-tingling, citrusy-herby flavours, and pungent aromas give New Zealand sauvignon blancs a punchy, kick-boxing appeal. Immediately recognizable, reliable, predictable, and cheap, they’re tartly crisp wines you either love or hate, with grassy aromas some have likened to cat pee—not, I admit, the most appealing description. One critic suggested that if you dislike New Zealand sauvignon blanc, it might be because you had to mow the lawn when you were a kid.