Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Joyous Festivus (take your pick of chosen intro). This has been a very weird Christmas for us. Here, situated in the only part of Australia in lockdown, Christmas …
Fun fact: Shiraz makes up over 25% of all winegrapes crushed in Australia, and South Australia has the largest vineyard area with 76,292ha (Wine Australia figures 19/20). But what I want …
Following closely on the Top 20 Chardonnay comes the Top 20 Shiraz of February 2020. For this lineup I dug deeper into the sample pile, searching - perhaps blindly - for …
Here are 24 tasty white and pink wines for your immediate drinking pleasure. Wines that, to my tastes at least, are in the prime of their lives and should be consumed …
Always a pleasure to check in one of the benchmarks of Australian wine and the Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2018 is a beauty. This was only a very quick taste as …
Not all wines can be great. Plenty are just ok drinks. And some are just bad. Here’s a selection of wines that almost made it in October 2019. I like plenty …
Sholto Syrah 2017 Wine's most amazing trick is to take you back to a time and place. One sniff of this Shiraz and I'm back in my garage in 2010, crouching …
Shaw Vineyard Estate Merlot 2014 Canberra Merlot. Now there's not a pair of words you see together often. This is surprisingly serious too. Dominant coffee oak, backed by a meaty, mushroomy …
Let's check in with some recent Shiraz and Semillon releases from the Hunter Valley (and beyond). A pleasure to see more experimentation with traditional Hunter styles too. Making the same wine …
I missed December's Almost Club edition (holidays), so this is a huge crop of almostness... As the name suggests, here are the wines that almost hit the mark for me in …
The premise with this collection is very very simple - I've been hitting the sample pile hard over the past week or two, and these 30 wines were not only …
The title says it all, these are 10 of the best Shiraz to pass the desk this month. This isn't a comprehensive last, as I probably taste somewhere between 6000-7000 wines …
Following on from last month's focus on other reds and Shiraz, this May I'm all about red blends. It's always frustrating that we seem so singularly focused on mono-varietal wines in Australia, as …
Gundog Estate Indomitus Rosa 2017 Super premium rosé from Team Gundog. I like the intention here too, though I much prefer the red and the Semillon. It's a blend of Murrumbateman Cabernet …
Here are a few of the wines that have passed the desk this month and almost made the grade. Some weren't far off the mark, others are absolute disasters. A few …
I know that plenty of people dislike these larger roundup style posts, but following on from my list of the Chardonnay hits of the summer, it seems only natural that …
Here's a selection of wines that were almost great. Some are just good, solid wines that are occasionally unready, through to slightly underwhelming/unexciting, and rounded out with a few wines that …
After last week's feedback I'm going to be sticking to just one roundup a month on site going forward (thanks everyone for the feedback). This roundup features a kaleidoscope of Australian …
This is the third part of a look at rosé - one of the fastest growing categories in the Australian wine industry. Best to start here. While this is a roundup …
Andevine Reserve Canberra District Syrah 2015 Great labels on these Andevine wines. Andevine is the brand of Andrew Leembruggen, ex-McWilliam's Mount Pleasant and Drayton's. Hunter all the way. This red, however, …
At 18, I started working in a small suburban bottleshop, largely to buy cheap beer. It was my first year of university, slogging through physics and chemistry, so a liquor shop seemed like fun. Needless to say, I discovered wine, and my life evolved with a unique dual focus - wine and environment.
Twenty years later and I spend my days wearing many (wine) hats, mostly as a writer, presenter and marketer.
I now judge at wine shows around the world, sit on the Australian Wine List of the Year awards panel and was once a Wine Journalism Young Gun (but baby that was years ago).
Currently, I write features for a variety of publications including National Liquor News, Gourmet Traveller WINE and the RAS, plus I'm a former Lifestyle FOOD channel wine expert.
In 2019 and 2020 I was voted in the Top 30 Best Wine Critics in The World, and in my spare time, I'm a sucker for punishment and run trail ultra marathons, much to the delight of my long-suffering family. Read more about me here or get in touch to book your next wine event with me here