The Winery ACG of Clare Valley of Australie du Sud

Old vines from Western Australia’s Swan Valley will be protected in the soon-to-be launched Swan Valley Old Vine Charter (OVC). More than 20 wineries from this historic region, a 30-minute drive from the state capital of Perth, are participating. The programme will see grapevines from 35 to 125 years of age registered and preserved. Participating wineries include Talijancich Wines, Nikola Estate, John Kosovich Wines, Mandoon Estate and Sandalford Wines. While the vines are predominantly Shiraz, ...

I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...

Flood concerns have continued to hit parts of Australia, with the country’s Bureau of Meteorology warning today (17 November) that ‘major flooding’ was ongoing in communities in New South Wales, as well as along a number of rivers in Victoria. In the wine world, there were were concerns that flooding of vineyards in Victoria last month is now being repeated at some New South Wales wineries after continued spring rain in the south-east of Australia. There was even flash flooding ...