Port Stephens Winery Murray's Tawny Aged 10 Years

Springtime brings the so-called ‘Caldaia di Maggio’ to Barolo, a noise similar to a kettle simmering that is caused by evaporating water in the soils. This year, however, it’s unlikely that this phenomenon will occur. Drought is affecting the entire north of Italy; predominantly the Langhe but also Valpolicella and Franciacorta. Not even Tuscany is spared. The vineyards are lacking the reserves of water that their soils usually contain at this time of year. Winter passed without snow in almost a ...

Franciacorta has lost one of its fathers; Franco Ziliani died aged 90 this Christmas. He was the winemaker who, along with the Count Guido Berlucchi, changed the destiny of an entire region and helped make Franciacorta one of the most consistent areas in the world for sparkling wines made in the traditional method. Their fateful encounter was in 1958 at Palazzo Lana, in Franciacorta. Count Berlucchi began to question the young winemaker about how to improve his unstable white wine produced in Co ...

Vanilla was ranked as the most pleasant smell in a study involving 235 people and conducted by an international network of researchers, including those from the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. This was closely followed by ethyl butyrate, ‘which smells like peaches’, said the researchers, who published their findings in the Current Biology journal. Vanilla notes can be found in several wine styles, such as some iterations of Chardonnay or Rioja, largely resulting from ...