Appellation Australia

Some quick notes from an excellent evening hosted by David Lole in Canberra. All wines were tasted and scored blind except for the Curlewis, the St. Henri and the Petaluma Essence.

Rockford Sparkling Black (Sept. 2005 disgorgement) - (Barossa Valley, South Australia):

Bright, clean raspberry, cherry, pepper, vanilla and blackberry aromas as well as a smidge of oak. Flavours refreshingly dance across the tongue into a good length finish. Rather lovely to drink - sure it is youthful, but at least you don’t have to deal with the infamous leaking/snapping Rockford corks when you open them early.

90/100

Grosset Watervale Riesling 2002 (screwcap) - (Clare Valley, South Australia):

Lemon and lemon zest, floral aromas, gunflint (although I wasn’t as troubled by the sulphur as some others) and a touch of toast and honey. The palate is austere and shows an excellent minerally acid structure. Certainly youthful and not providing all that much pleasure to drink at the moment, but the promise lies in its future in around 5-8 years time.

91/100

Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay 1999 - (Margaret River, Western Australia):

Toast, strong pear, peach, grapefruit and nutty, creamy oak that is well blended into the rest of the nose. A very classy palate that is just slightly let down with just a touch too much oak at this stage and just a bit of alcoholic heat on the back palate that I fear may not subside with time.

91/100

Curlewis Reserve Pinot Noir 2002 - (Geelong, Victoria):

Lots going on with the lovely nose - black cherry, earth, forest floor (I learnt a new descriptive French wine term on the night - “valley of the hare”) stalks, some beetroot, spice and honey. Superb length, great depth of fruit and fine walnut flavoured tannins. A genuine top-shelf Australian Pinot Noir that I think is drinking very well at the moment.

93/100

Seppelt Great Western Shiraz 1996 - (Grampians, Victoria):

Deep youthful colour, but there was some complexity on the nose suggesting that it had a bit more age to it. Earth, mushroom, violets, rosewood, a hint of black pepper and cassis. Tannin structure is present on the palate but showing good integration with the other components. An excellent wine that should be drinking at its peak in around 3-5 years and should live on for some time after that.

93/100

Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 1998 - (Regional Blend, South Australia):

Chocolate, blueberry, vanilla oak and lots of clean, vibrant red berry fruit. Lovely balance on the clean palate, with good length and importantly it is very enjoyable to drink! Sure, it doesn’t give you a sense of place - but that obviously isn’t what it is aiming for. Drinking really nicely now, but has the structure and balance to develop complexity should you want to give it time over the next 6-8 years.

92/100

Penfolds St Henri Claret “Special Release” 1979 - (Regional Blend, South Australia):

Great colour, no browning even around the edges. Leathery, sweet earthy fruit. Everything is fully resolved and balanced on the palate. A nice old wine that was drinking without faults, and not falling over in the glass, but almost certainly would have had a lot more to offer in the early to mid 90’s.

87/100

Best’s Bin 0 Great Western Shiraz 1998 - (Grampians, Victoria):

A nice coincidence to have this wine on the same night as the Seppelt Great Western. Raspberry, bramble, blackberry and a lovely touch of floral lift (which had some thinking Shiraz/Viognier). A palate that has great weight and depth of fruit flavour. Very youthful and primary but has the class to go the distance and I think it’ll hit its peak in 8-10 years. Should have been poured after the Giaconda, but that is one problem with tasting wines blind.

92/100

Giaconda Cabernet 1992 - (Beechworth, Victoria):

60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc. Excellent colour with just a hint of thinning around the edges. Classic cabernet nose of graphite, capsicum, cedar and some some smoky ash. Excellently balanced palate flows through to a long finish. A much better bottle than the one I had late last year with some friends in Sydney at a dinner. Not showing any signs of tiring, but it is well and truly ready to drink.

92/100

Petaluma Botrytis Semillon “Essence” 1999 - (Coonawarra, South Australia):

Great depth of aromas to the nose with honey, botrytis, peaches and pears, crème Brule, burnt toffee and caramel. The palate is just a bit over the top, especially in comparison to the balanced 2000 vintage of this wine that I served late last year. The acid structure is there in the background, but it is just overawed by the level of sweetness. It did seem to come together slightly with some air. Very good but not great.

89/100

Wine Australia, the biennial exhibition of Australian wine and wine related products has come and gone and after four days of tasting over 400 wines, I’m taking a little break from drinking for a few weeks!

Overall, I thought the event was excellent - although there is still some room for improvement. I’m going to quickly make a few comments about some of the positives and some of the problems.

Missing some big industry names - With the newly merged Fosters and Southcorp deciding not to exhibit, the show felt (and I’m pretty sure was) smaller in size than 2004. Some of the people at stands thought that visitor numbers were down a bit as well and I wonder if some people stayed away because their favourite brands weren’t being shown.

That the big brands were missing meant that this was a good chance for the smaller names of the industry to show what they can do to the (still large) crowds that showed up.

Wine drinkers rather than wine lovers - While I am all for the general public coming along to these events and finding out more about wine, it was painfully obvious on the public days (and even a few sad cases on the trade day) that if you give some people an opportunity to drink for 9 hours straight with no limit, then they will take the opportunity to do so. The incidence of people falling over, glasses shattering against the ground and other general poor behaviour increased steadily as the day wore on.

That said, unlike 2004 I did see some people being escorted by security from the event and some refused further samples. I don’t think wineries like being the bad guy who says “no more” and additionally there is a bit of a problem with Australian culture where it is seen as okay or funny to get as drunk as possible, but well done to the winery staff who were willing to stand up to people who had enough and ask them to leave their stand.

Pourers with passion - For the most part, the staff were excellent - friendly, knowledgeable and passionate - in many cases it was the winemaker themselves or a family member who put all their effort into the wine who was pouring it and happy to discuss it with you.

There were a few isolated cases where the person didn’t seem to want to be there or one instance where I asked how long the wine had spent in oak and had a booklet thrust at me rather than a verbal answer. Another infrequently occurring problem that bothered me was representatives who wanted to talk me through what I was meant to smell and taste on each wine - those are things I can decide for myself.

Food and Water - To save a massive rant on the quality level of the food, I’ll sum it up in one word, abominable. I know that catering contracts are probably in place for the convention centre but to serve that level of food to people who are into wine (and probably into decent food as well) is insulting. In 2004 there were many water fountains scattered around the stands so that you could rinse your glass and top up water bottles, this year they were still around, but seemed much more infrequent - please increase the number for 2008.

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I’m looking forward to the 2008 event now, let’s hope that this event was successful enough for it to be organised again. I’m working on transcribing my hastily scribbled notes and will start posting some brief impressions of each wine I tried (Sorry to the Australian law industry, but I didn’t taste any 50 point wines this time to generate more work for you!).

At least not to the best of my knowledge it isn’t, otherwise most of the wine lovers that I associate with would be in jail right about now.

Yet, last week I received the first threat of legal action against my site (after being around for 18 months now). I figure that it is probably a compliment as I am finally important enough for people to get angry over something I have written.

Ric from TorbWine has written an excellent article on the topic here along with the contents of first few emails sent between me and the winery, thanks to him for taking up the issue in the hope that those of us giving our genuine opinions will not face similar threats in the future. Welcome to anyone visiting my site after reading his article.

As part of my large write-up on the Victorian Winemaker Exhibition 2006, I reviewed a wine here that I believed to among the faultiest wines I had ever tasted. It smelt like burnt rubber, onions and the stable in a poorly maintained barnyard. I awarded the wine 50 points, which is the lowest possible score for the 100 point system. I also indicated in the review that I hoped that these were off bottles rather than representative, but that I can only rate what is in the glass on the day.

Despite what Graeme Miller from the winery of the same name may think, publishing a bad review on a wine is not against the law. All I am putting forward with each tasting note is my personal opinion, and as long as I do not make false allegations (ie this wine will poison you or similar) I am entitled to tell people what I think. In this particular case, I was not the only person who thought that the wine was faulty, a number of people I spoke to who work in the industry and have good palates were at the same event tried the wine, with one describing it as “Summer Nat burnout ring, mercaptan, DMS, DMDS it had the works”.

After I replied to the initial legal threat, indicating that I would not remove the review, I received another email telling me that critics enjoyed the wine, I guess with the implication that my judgement was incorrect. Wineries are going to have to get used to a big difference between old media (magazines, newspapers, books etc) and new media (websites, blogs, podcasts). Old world media is restricted in what they have the space and desire to publish, nobody wants to open the paper and read about three bad wines - so in general you will only see very positive reviews in these formats. With the internet, all wines can be reviewed - good, bad and indifferent; this gives some power to the consumer to look at various opinions, good and bad, and to make informed decisions.

The winery alleges that my review is incorrect and that as I am high on the Google results for their winery, I am doing damage to their business. The other good thing about the internet and wine reviews is that reviews will balance themselves out - if this was truly a good wine, there would be others commenting around wine forums and blogs to say that it was so. If the wine is good Graeme Miller Wines could have offered to let me retry the wines, or offered other wine reviewers the chance to try them, but instead they decided to try to bully me into removing my opinion.

In conclusion, I was speaking to some wineries during Wine Australia and they were divided, some said that publishing the bad review was the right thing to do, and some said that it wasn’t and that reviewers have a responsibility to ensure that they do not damage small businesses with poor feedback (those with power protecting those without, so to speak). What do you think wine reviewers should do? Get stuck into wine that we think is poor (preferably after trying more than one sample, but indicating that it was only one sample if that is the case) or keep quiet about poor wines and just talk about our positive experiences with wine? I know that making wine is not easy, and that it requires passion and dedication - so I do not especially want to cause hurt to any one, but on the other hand I do want to make sure that the readers of this site and those consumers that are looking for information on wines have as much information available to them as possible.

Fast Facts: Variety: Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc Region: Geelong Country: Australia Winemaker: Nicholas Clark & Janet Cockbill Closure: Screwcap Alcohol: 13.0% Cost: $30AUD Source: Winery Sample Winery Website: Amietta Vineyard and Winery

Angels’ Share is a blend of 60% Shiraz, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Cabernet Franc that demonstrates the correct use of an apostrophe where another un-named winery has failed (although I should personally keep in mind the old saying about stones, glass houses and the wisdom imparted that those that live in such houses should refrain from flinging the mentioned object).

Tasted from Riedel ‘O’ Shiraz (414/30) glassware.

Tasting Note: A deep crimson colour. The nose is fairly tightly coiled upon opening with some spearmint, deep set blackberry, blackcurrant and raspberry, traces of echinacea and mocha. It has a medium bodied, smooth and balanced palate with plenty of upfront sweet berry fruit as well as having a medium length finish.

After three hours of being given time to breath it is really starting to show what it has to offer with the nose opening up and ramping up in intensity with blackcurrant and blackberry coming to the fore without any sense of under or over ripe characters.

When to Drink: It is drinking well now, but given time it will take on additional complexity and interest. 2008 - 2014

Verdict: A classy, balanced wine that surprised me a little bit with its level of quality. 91 points.

Fast Facts: Variety: Shiraz Region: Geelong Country: Australia Winemaker: Nicholas Clark & Janet Cockbill Closure: Screwcap Alcohol: 13.8% Cost: $35AUD Source: Winery Sample Winery Website: Amietta Vineyard and Winery

Of all the wines sent to me, I was probably looking forward to trying this one the most, it received a glowing review from Ralph Kyte-Powell as well as the 2002 version of the wine receiving a high score from James Halliday and some trophies. Tasted from Riedel ‘O’ Shiraz (414/30) glassware.

Tasting Note: I tried two bottles of this wine, and both showed similar characters. A slightly feral, rustic, smoky nose as well as earthy characters, spices and blackberry along with some mild French oak backing. On the palate there were green, bitter tannins and a metallic influence that disrupted the line and length of the wine.

For the second bottle, I took the remaining wine in a cleanskin half bottle to a friend who is seriously into wine and whose palate I respect, in order to get a second opinion. I told him nothing about the wine other than that I would like his to try it and to hear his opinion. His comment, without influence from me, when he called me later than night was that it seemed a very good wine that was lurking underneath an increasingly feral nose with some astringency on the palate. He also said that he could think of other tasters that would enjoy the animalistic qualities on the nose.

So by now you are probably thinking that it may have a problem with brett. I spoke to Nicholas and he mentioned that the wine was “filtered to 1 micron at bottling because Brett bugs are 2 micron X 4 microns” as well as lab tested and returned with no detection of the 4 Ethyl Phenol and 4 Ethyl Guiacol compounds that would cause a wine to show this fault. Nicholas thinks that it may be a free sulphur issue which if I had a high ability to detect would influence the palate in such a way.

Verdict: Well, you can probably tell from the review that I found it not to my liking, I could see some positives in the nose, but I found the palate to be entirely off-putting. It could be the case that there is some bottle variation happening (even though I tried two bottles) or it could be the case that this is one of those wines that splits tasters into two groups, those that love it and those that really dislike it. 82 points.

Fast Facts: Variety: Riesling Region: Geelong Country: Australia Winemaker: Nicholas Clark & Janet Cockbill Closure: Screwcap Alcohol: 12.5% Cost: $20AUD Source: Winery Sample Winery Website: Amietta Vineyard and Winery

I tried this wine late last year at the National Riesling Challenge in Canberra and it was one of the favourite current release wines for me that I tasted, so it was good to get to try this under more relaxed conditions. I sampled this wine from Riedel ‘O’ Series Riesling/Zinfandel (414/15) glasses.

Tasting Note: A pale straw green in colour. The nose is comprised of rosemary, crisp green apples, lime, blueberry and passion fruit. It exhibits great focus across the palate. A racy, bracing, mouth-tingling core of acidity provides structure and drives the palate towards the extremely crisp and clean finish.

When to Drink: If you are going to drink it young, do so with food (perhaps with Japanese like Nicholas suggested in the interview) to temper the acid a bit, but I think that you would be well rewarded by letting this rest and develop over the next 6 to 7 years. 2008 - 2013

Verdict: I enjoyed this wine and thought that it showed quite a bit of potential. This is right up there as one of the better Australian Rieslings I have tried from the excellent 2005 vintage. 91 points.

Fast Facts: Variety: Shiraz, Malbec Region: Geelong Country: Australia Winemaker: Nicholas Clark & Janet Cockbill Closure: Screwcap Alcohol: 12.8% Cost: $20AUD Source: Winery Sample Winery Website: Amietta Vineyard and Winery

This is a blend of 80% Shiraz and 20% Malbec. I sampled this wine from Riedel ‘O’ Series Pinot/Nebbiolo (414/7) glasses.

Tasting Note: Cherry red in colour. The nose has aromas of pomegranate, strawberry, rose petals and a hint of yeast. The palate exhibits good depth of flavour and provides excellent crisp acidity leading into the finish. There is no hint of residual sugar that can spoil the vibrancy of some Rosé style wines.

When to Drink: I think that this will be best consumed while the fruit remains prominent and the palate retains its vibrancy. 2006 - 2007

Verdict: A Rosé that gives you something to think about, while remaining refreshing to drink. 88 points.

Here is part 2 of my interview with Nicholas Clark from Amietta in Geelong.

Questions about the region:

Cam: What influenced your decision to setup Amietta in Geelong? Did you select the region because of the varieties that you wanted to work with or was it a matter of selecting the vineyard site first and then deciding what grapes would work best? If you selected the site because you already knew what varieties you would like to work with, was there a reason behind wanting to work with them?

Nicholas: It was a mixture of practical considerations and suitability for grape growing. Amietta is actually between Melbourne and Geelong - about 1 hour 20 from the Melbourne CBD, 30 minutes from Geelong and 45 minutes from the surf at Torquay. So we saw it as a pretty ideal location for getting to Melbourne or Geelong for work or to buy equipment, spares etc for the farm and the winery. And I occasionally dust off the surfboard.

From an economic point of view, land here is a fraction of the cost of the other ‘Melbourne dress circle’ locations such as the Yarra Valley and the Mornington Peninsula.

From a grape growing point of view (our part of the Geelong region) has a near perfect climate - characterised as being about half-way between the climate of Bordeaux and of Burgundy and very similar to Margaret River. We have very dry growing seasons. That means low disease pressure, so we can manage with minimal use of ’soft’ fungicides (seaweed powder, vegetable oil, bicarb etc) and still have disease free fruit. In 2006 growing season we only sprayed the vineyard 4 times. So what’s an ideal climate? Well apart from low disease pressure, it is warm enough to consistently ripen our chosen varieties, but cool enough (maritime influence) so that the delicate, easily-volatilised aromas/flavours are preserved in the fruit. The warmer the climate, the more of these delicate characters are boiled off. The cooler the climate, the greater the risk of weedy, unripe fruit.

The other big issue was soil type. We wanted limestone (the soil of the best red and white sites in Burgundy) and here we found the Coonawarra-type soil mix of clay over limestone on a very good site.

Cam: How was the 2006 vintage for your vineyard and grapes?

Nicholas: It was very warm and very early. The main effect of this was that we picked the Shiraz 6 weeks early (hello, climate change!) at 13.5 degrees Baumé (= 13.5% potential alcohol more or less). A lot of producers in the region didn’t see it coming and suddenly they had jammy dead flavourless fruit at 15.5 degrees Baumé. The other effect was on the Riesling - which we pick on flavour and acid levels, rather than on sugar level. It had beautiful flavours at 11.4 degrees Baumé, so we’ve made a more delicate wine (11.3% alcohol) than in previous years (normally around 12.5%). It has some beautiful floral-honeysuckle characters this year on top of the normal minerally-lemon-spice, and looks very good.

Questions about food and export:

Cam: Food forms an important part of the wine experience for most people, are your wines geared towards any particular food style? Are there any particularly good matches for your various wines that you can recommend?

Nicholas: They are all made to be enjoyable by themselves when released. That doesn’t mean they are soft, it means they are balanced. Personally I can’t stand a red that needs half a cow in your mouth as a fining agent to moderate the tannins in an over-extracted, unbalanced wine.
By and large it’s the usual suspects - lamb or beef with Angels’ Share (Shiraz-Cabernet); duck, game or quail with Shiraz, oysters or Japanese with Riesling and anything pink with Rosé. Of the 2 reds, the Shiraz has the higher acidity, so can carry a richer dish. That said, both the Shiraz and the Angels’ Share are often on our table with a nice rare steak, a baked spud and a salad.

Cam: Do you export your wine outside of Australia? If not, is international exposure a goal for the future?

Nicholas: We’ve got a fair few mailing list customers overseas (mainly NZ and Japan) where we can post a case at a time and not get slaughtered by import taxes and duties. But our production is so small that if we supplied overseas importers we’d have to cut back what we can sell here. We haven’t ruled it out, just haven’t had anyone really push us for it.

Late last year, Nicholas Clark who is one half of the family owned Amietta Winery (the other half being his partner Janet Cokbill) in Geelong, Victoria contacted me to ask if I was interested in travelling to the Geelong Wine Show which he helps to organise. Unfortunately I was unable to go and despite my best efforts I have been unable to find time to make the trip down since.

Instead, Nicholas has sent me four of their current release wines to try and I took the opportunity to interrogate him with the following questions which I will divide into two posts due to their length. I hope that you find the detailed answers of interest as background leading into the wine reviews that I will post later during the week.

Questions about the people:

Cam: I have read that both you and Janet were archaeologists as well holding a varied number of other roles over the years, what led to you making a decision to start growing grapes and producing wine?

Nicholas: Apart from some type of insanity?

Reading biographical notes of newcomers to the Australian wine industry, it seems many of them have been people of reasonable/substantial financial means who have tasted their way through the fine wines of world before having an ‘I could do that’ moment. Phillip Jones (Bass Phillip) and Peter Althaus (Domaine A) spring to mind as particularly successful examples.

Janet and I really started the other way. We were both keen home gardeners with modest day-jobs who enjoyed outdoor activities and wanted to live in the country. Grape growing presented itself as a possible way of generating a farm income, but on a small farm it was never going to work without value-adding. So that’s how we became grape growers and winemakers. We did short courses in both grape growing and wine making and I enrolled at Charles Sturt University doing Viticulture as a distance education student.

Cam: Is there a particular bottle that you could say was the best bottle of wine you’ve experienced?

Nicholas: Janet and I were both unanimous on this one: though neither of us is prepared to choose between the Burgundy and the Sauternes as our ‘I’ve died and gone to heaven’ wine experience. Even more so when we had them both on the same night. At a small ‘bring a bottle night’ one very generous colleague put a bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti (a 1993 Echézeaux) on the table and another put a bottle of 1986 Chateau Suduiraut (Sauternes). There were other exceptional wines that night, but those two were unbelievable.

Questions about the wines and winery:

Cam: Is there a story behind the name “Amietta”? It sounds Italian but I couldn’t find a direct translation for it.

Nicholas: It is an Italian girl’s name (like Amy), but it was actually the name of Janet’s family’s ancestral home. It was a big house near St Kilda Road and the Shrine of Remembrance that was build in the 1880s during the height of the ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ building boom (when Melbourne was the richest city in the world courtesy of the 1850s gold rushes). We haven’t been able to discover how it came to be called Amietta, but assume that as most of the building work in Melbourne at that time was by Italian builders, stonemasons etc, that it was built and named by or for an Italian who named it for his daughter or sweetheart or something.

Apart from the family connection to the name, as you noticed, it sounds a little bit European and maybe a little bit Australian - which is how we see our wine. Marrying European and Australian winemaking approaches: preserve the terroir, go a little wild in the ferments, but don’t be bound down by stuffy or senseless tradition. Gary Farr (ex-Bannockburn, now of By Farr) was recently quoted as saying he would only ever bottle wine under cork. Maybe he also uses 18th Century pain relief at the dentist, travels by horse and uses a musket to shoot rabbits.

Cam: All four wines you produce are sealed under screwcap (7 this bottling: Shiraz-Lagrein, Chardonnay and a non-estate Sauvignon Blanc added - Nicholas), which is great. Do you need to do anything differently when you are bottling under screwcap, to when you bottle under cork? Did you, or are you still looking at any of the recent other closure alternatives (Diam, glass stoppers etc), or do you believe that screwcap is still currently the superior closure method?

Nicholas: We give the wines a fair bit of air in the month prior to bottling (a couple of pretty aerative rackings etc) to push the Reduction-Oxidation potential of the wine (remember Redox potential from school chemistry?) out of the heavy reduction zone. With Riesling, we make sure the wine goes smoothly and cleanly through the ferment so it doesn’t have a stink problem to start with. We don’t do a lot of copper fining - which some screw cap winemakers see as necessary - mainly because our wines are pretty stable by the time we bottle. I think if you rush your wines to bottle (particularly reds) they still have a lot of growing up to do and that’s where problems can arise.

Other closures - none of them really get the points for being simple, functional, robust in transport, well accepted in the market and reasonably priced. My next choice would be a Diam cork - but they are nearly as impermeable to air (= good) as a screw cap, so why not just use a screw cap. My last choice (= over my dead body) would be the ridiculous Zork, which is as ugly as it sounds.

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With that, we’ll take a break - please look for the second part of this interview covering some questions about the Geelong region, the 2006 vintage and food matching here. Please also let me know if you would like to see more of this kind of content in addition to the wine reviews on this site.

Wine Australia is this coming weekend in Sydney and with hundreds of exhibitors, even those of us who are going on all four days will probably not get to see all the producers on show.

With that in mind, here are ten producers that caught my eye and that I think are worth taking a look at. Of course there are many more that are very worthy, so please feel free to post any of your own recommendations in the comments.

Bass Phillip Wines (Gippsland, Victoria) - STAND: 560A

Phillip Jones of Bass Phillip is considered by some to be the best, and perhaps the most Burgundy influenced producer of Pinot Noir in Australia.

Castagna (Beechworth, Victoria) - STAND 561A

At the last Wine Australia two years ago, I tried to engage Julian Castagna in conversation without success. Perhaps I just caught him on a bad day, but the quality of the wines speak for themselves.

Charles Melton Wines (Barossa Valley, South Australia) - STAND 472A

Home to one of my favourite Australian Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre blends (Nine Popes) and one of my favourite Rose wines (Rose of Virginia) the wines are well worth trying.

Curly Flat Vineyard (Macedon Ranges, Victoria) - STAND 528A

Right among the very top Pinot Noir and Chardonnay producers in Australia recently.

Hoddles Creek Estate (Yarra Valley, Victoria) - STAND 562E

The producers of what have to be some of the best value wines on the market today. Yarra Valley Chardonnay and Pinot with style and interest, both providing change from $20.

Petaluma (Coonawarra, South Australia) - STANDS 414, 431 & 455

It will be interesting to see what happens to Petaluma with the recent departure of Brian Croser, who had been at the helm for 30 years - but the quality across the range at the moment is superb.

Pierro (Pemberton, Western Australia) - STAND: Not Listed

The Chardonnay can be polarising with its monumental stature and the LTC blend is almost the opposite with its delicate structure.

Pirie Tasmania (Tasmania) - STAND 525A

The new venture from Andrew Pirie, who was one of the founders of the Tasmanian wine industry through establishing Pipers Brook in the mid 1970s. I haven’t tried these new wines, but am looking forward to doing so.

Tyrrell’s (Hunter Valley, New South Wales) - STAND 438A

A Hunter Valley institution and home to some of the most underrated wines in Australia. Their Vat 1 Semillon is a national treasure.

Woodlands (Margaret River, Western Australia) - STAND 516

A winery that has a large buzz surrounding it in the past couple of years through some excellent reviews from wine critics and positive feedback from various wine forums. They are sure to be a popular stand based on some exceptional reviews for four of their wines from Jeremy Oliver in the past few weeks.