The Winery Blaxlands Estate of Nouvelle-Galles du Sud

Following the creation of the DOC Sicilia in November 2011, the region has taken a step further in guaranteeing the origin of traceability of DOC Sicilia wines by introducing mandatory government-minted labels on all its bottles. The State label, which is mandatory only for DOCG wines (in Sicily this applies to Cerasuolo di Vittoria only) is an important marker and identifier of the most important Italian DOCs: each label shows a unique alphanumeric code that traces the entire production process ...

A methuselah of Romanée-Conti 1976 from Burgundy’s vaunted Domaine de la Romanée-Conti was among the highlights in a two-day series of Sotheby’s wine and spirits auctions in Hong Kong last weekend. The six-litre bottle sold for HK$1.25m (US$159,350), against a pre-sale estimate range of HK$1m to HK$1.4m. In a separate spirits auction, a single bottle of Yamazaki 35 Year Old Japanese whisky fetched HK$1m (US$127,440). Rare white Burgundy was also in-demand during the weekend event. Top lot in a f ...

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 ...