The Orange Wine Festival now stretches the entire month of October. We normally provide lawn games for picnickers which gives us a good deal of satisfaction watching visitors enjoying themselves. However, Covid has changed all that as we cannot sterilise the games between each group. So,...
Patina Wines, Winter 2020 Dear Friends, It’s June already and what a year! Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse… it did. There’s heaps of bad stuff to write about but I think I’ll let you source news feeds for that. I’ll focus on some positives… I...
Introducing Patina White Label If you have been to Cellar Door in the last year you have probably purchased a carton of the 2011 Patina Cabernet Merlot at a very attractive price. Until now this has been a Cellar Door only Special price. Now with Cellar Door...
Tannins are a natural substance found in many fruits and bark of trees and are felt via our tactile senses rather than tasted. Most people are familiar with the tannins of over steeped tea or young red wines designed for long ageing. Tannins in wine are...
I thought it very topical to write about the drought in my Long Dry Finish as it is pretty much impacting everyone. It has an impact on wine as well but I will be focusing on historical droughts in this article. ...
Wine fining is little understood outside the winemaking community. When someone reads the back label, they often get a confused look with “Do you really put milk in wine?” We do in fact put a few things in wine that sound quiet strange but once...
A fortified wine is one that has been fortified with alcohol. It actually describes the process and the name sounds kind of technical but we can no longer call them Port as the Portuguese get a bit narky about that. In Australia we can only...
It’s much more expensive to establish and grow grapes in cool climates than in warmer climates. So apart from beautiful views there must be some substantial reasons to grow grapes here… There are and I’ll discuss a few of them. There are a number of phenological...
Cork taint is primarily produced by fungi and can ruin wine in very low doses. I rate Cork Taint in four stages as it increases in concentration: • at very low levels it simply masks the fruit of the wine, turning a wine that should be quite...