Wines made from Semidano grapes of Australia
Discover the best wines made with Semidano as a single variety or as a blend of Australia.
Cultivated for a very long time in Sardinia (Italy) where it occupied an important place before the phylloxera crisis... it is almost unknown in France.
Australia is an extremely important wine producing country, both in terms of quality and the scale of its wine economy. Wine Australia's 2018 annual report describes it as the sixth largest wine producer in the world. That year's production was 1. 29 million litres (341 million US gallons), split 52:48 between red and white.
A couple of weeks ago, I was looking up at some terraced vineyards in St-Joseph with an Australian friend. He remarked that he’d never seen a steep vineyard like this in his home country. Who could afford to rip out the trees, build the access roads, construct the terraces, and plant the vines, without being certain beforehand that the resulting wine could be sold at prices high enough to recoup the investment? It might not be the most romantic way of looking at it. But that’s the modern reality ...
In preparation for this column I tasted 46 reds in total, and – taking both quality and value into account – I can recommend 33 of them. Overall, the reds were less consistent than the whites, and although the lows were lower, the highs were higher. This tasting confirmed that it’s still possible to buy genuinely excellent northern Rhône reds for under £30 in the UK. That being said, it’s virtually impossible to find any Cornas, Côte-Rôtie or Hermitage for under £30 a bottle these days, but ther ...
Sealwood Cottage Farm in Derbyshire, central England, has been put up for sale with a guide price of £1.4m ($1.66m). A five-bedroom, Grade II-listed cottage is the focal point for the 8.68-hectare (21.44 acres) estate, but it also features a vineyard of around 1.6ha established by the current owners, John and Elisabeth Goodall. Listing agent Fisher German said the Swadlincote-based estate’s guide price doesn’t include ‘any apportionment of the [wine] business’, but the owners would be ‘open to s ...