What is old Bordeaux? When you’re talking about the pointy end of quality, I mean Cru class from Left and Right Bank. I think they start looking old at about 15 years. Maybe 10 for a less good year like 2007 or even 20 years for a great year like 2005. It is when they […]
Thursday was a cold Autumn day in Melbourne. Business as usual, but perfect for what was planned in the evening; a dinner showcasing the best Shiraz in Australia, Rockford Basket Press Shiraz. For my own enjoyment, I’ve been collecting Basket Press since at least 2000 vintage. But what do you do with seven or eight […]
The whole trip I’d been nudging forward the whites of the region because everyone knows how great the reds are. But subtly I had held back Chablis because I wanted to keep that flint dry (see what I did there?). Today that changes when we visit Chablis. The embargo lifted. We drove to the beautiful […]
The last Bordeaux 2010 dinner was so good we did it all again three weeks later. Different wines and a new venue to keep it interesting and away we went. Bordeaux 2010 recap. Bordeaux 2010 saw a summer drought without the heat of 2003. There were cool nights and a cooler August which meant thick skins, rich colour and tannin and […]
Over the years I have hosted numerous private tastings and dinners. When I got the call that the team at Telstra wanted to do a second one I knew I was in for a rowdy night. So I roped in some help in the form of Rob Hall from Kellybrook to entertain them. We decided to […]
On a warm summer night and only a week after my second Bordeaux 2010 dinner, I walked into my last wine dinner of 2013. And with high hopes, we sat down to six vintages of Antinori’s Tignanello. Tig, as it is affectionately known, is one of the original Super-Tuscan. The wine is exclusively from the […]
For the past two years I have been proud to raise funds for the Heart Foundation. To help achieve my goals I pulled a whole bunch of wine from my personal cellar and organised some customers and friends to attended a dinner at the wonderful restaurant Scopri. The end result was I raised $970 on the night. Plus […]
One of the perks of the job is shopping for these events. Trying to slide the best wines possible under the salary cap and working out the combinations often means I end up with more wine than I strictly need. But its all good wine, so the winner is me if no one else chooses […]
Regular readers of this blog will know I love Aglianico, Nebbiolo and well Italian wine in general. So with access to some lovely older Aglianico, known as the Barolo of the South, I thought why not taste them side by side. I don’t find that Aglianico tastes an awful lot like Nebbiolo. What it does […]
I will cheerfully admit I am a huge fan of Austrian wines. When a winemaking teacher tipped me off to the existence of Gruner Veltliner it opened up a whole world of textural, aromatic white wines that are almost more fun to smell than to drink (almost but not quite!). After years of enjoying Austria’s Riesling […]
One of the greatest parts of running your own business (apart from setting your own hours) is you can follow what you love and what interests you. So when wine importer Euan McKay suggested we do a dinner showcasing Burgundy 2009 I said yes before he had finished his sentence. For me the only thing […]
Greek wine has a very poor reputation, mostly because for a long time they have been churning out some pretty ordinary wine! We in Australia are just seeing the good quality producers being brought into Australia. So when importer Pete Johns suggested we show some open minded wine drinkers some great wines from Greece I […]
Bordeaux 2009 – WOW! Not since the 2005 vintage Bordeaux (of which I did three separate tasting in the space of a week) have I felt the need to write ‘wow’ in capital letters. I was a bit nervous to see if the wines lived up the the massive hype for a couple of reasons. First and foremost […]
Buy Henskens Rankin because you love quality Sparkling Wine. It has won two great awards. But the joy it offers in the glass is key.
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