The Home of Renowned Tasting

Well, as near as I can tell, my last tasting note made it a neat 1000 notes for me, and with that, and it is not without considerable regret, that I have decided to pull up stumps and call a close to my innings at Winorama. It has been quite an experience over the past two and half years, and I really must thank Gary for his support and for providing this website and allowing me to post some of my views on selected wines on it. I would also like to thank those wineries and retailers that have provided me with samples, and also sincerely apologise for those wines that have been left unreviewed; hopefully Gary will be able to cover for me in this regard. Well, that’s about it for me, so goodbye and I hope you all continue to enjoy GW’s writings and David’s occasional contributions too.

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Well, someone had to mention it….

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If you have not had a look already you should check out Campbell Mattinson’s video reviews of the Penfolds Super Premium reds. They are available free of charge on the Winefront website. Thus far I’ve had an exploratory tasting of 2004 St Henri (awesom-o) and Reserve Bin 06A Chardonnay (excellent) myself and will be posting over the next few days.

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What’s black and white and red all over? Why it’s The Big Red Wine Book of course. And is it going to be a yearly thing? I’m not sure because it does not have a year on the cover but if it is then it’s going to be right up there with the top few Australian wine review books (and I’m thinking Halliday’s Wine Companion and the Penguin Guide here) and a must buy. The layout is excellent and similar to the Penguin guide with a neat little intro above and other necessary info (except alcohol and closure) on the side. It has over 500 reviews that are comprehensive, entertaining, eclectic and carefully considered - here tiny boutique operations jostle alongside mass produced corporate quaffers for place in Mattinson’s big red heart. It’s up to date and packed with previously unpublished reviews. In short, it’s a slick and beautifully executed snapshot of what’s good and red to drink right now. May release.

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And on the seventh day…..there was Bruce Almighty (possibly standing outside the winery having a quiet fag)! I get a bit of media and stuff in my inbox and don’t do much of it, but this is especially (good) newsworthy.

— press release from Farm 13 starts now —-
(more…)

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I know I used this cartoon last year and the year before last..but we still have a lot of new readers and well..really I just like the cartoon a lot. So much so that it has become a Winorama tradition. Anyway, a big thanks to all for reading and supporting the site and here’s wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year from The Renowned Winorama team.

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Here is an interesting little tidbit from the Sunday paper and maybe not such good news for people who travel regularly…and perhaps worse still for the local wine industry.

Perry may be off menu at Qantas

There’s a whole lot of turbulence in the Qantas food & beverage department. Recently Qantas wine buyer Peter Nixon decided to leave the airline, much to the dismay of the wine media. He’s lauded as the man who revamped the Qantas in-flight wine list and completely changed the way the airline bought wine. He decided wine must be bought in much smaller quantities to ensure the list was constantly updated. Qantas made an internal to replace him and the flow on is yet to be seen.

But the even bigger gossip is that Neil Perry is about to lose the catering contract for the flying Kangaroo. Perry has been associated with the airline since 1997 and his arrival prompted an overhaul of in-flight catering (in those days it was considered quite fancy when passengers were served olive oil and sourdough bread). Nowadays some of the well-heeled crowd who frequent first and business class expect more - and are making their voices heard. Qantas executive general manager John Borghetti said the rumours about Perry’s departure were false. “Neil has done an outstanding job for Qantas and we are extremely happy with the contribution he’s made and will continue to make in the future,” Borghetti said.

It makes sense that those who travel in the pointy end of the plane are used to fine wine and fine dining. But with the limited competition for business-and first-class flyers, perhaps Qantas will simply serve them cheese and whine.

Shelly Horton (the diary, The Sun Herald Dec 9th, 2007).

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Provocative title no doubt, but it’s not really about whether or not anyone likes ‘us’, but rather more about the state and status of the Australian (fine) wine industry. It is full of personality, honesty and insight. Often funny, very informative, sometimes rude, and as with most things Mattinson, intensely passionate and personal. Entertaining too. I don’t agree with some of it, and it perhaps it could be more cohesive (if you were looking for an argument), but I loved reading it. So much so that I’ve just picked it up and started again; now that’s a recommendation.

The 384-page book should be available nationally in book stores or it can be ordered now, for immediate delivery, by clicking here.

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If you are reading this then we have moved hosts and things should be much quicker. The disaster area that is Melbourne IT no longer the host. We are now with www.comcen.com.au and so far so good. Apologies if any comments were lost in the cut-over to the new domain.

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What is this? A center for ants? How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read… if they can’t even fit inside the building?

I switched hosting over last weekend to the so-called ‘Business Plan’ offered by Melbourne IT and like Derek Zoolander I am astounded by just how small and pathetic it is. Anyway, in the meantime please be patient with the lack of performance and all the ‘503 - Service Temporarily Unavailable’. I know all about them. The site will be moved this week to a host that offers a real solution for a moderately busy website.

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How long do you leave a wine in the cellar for? In Australia most wine sold at retail is consumed within 24 hours of sale. Ask any person at cellar door what the most frequent question they get asked is and invariably they will say “How long will the wine age for.” I started placing wine in my cellar and buying Bordeaux indents about 25 years ago because I had consumed some old Bordeaux and thought they were very good and also because I didn’t particularly care for the young Bordeaux. (more…)

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A copy of this landed on my desk yesterday so I gave it a good working over last night. Authors Tyson-eye Stelzer (earnest, intellectual, fine taster, work ethic of a Clydesdale) and Matthew Jukes (stentorian, a little outré, fine taster, good taste in shoes) have sifted through a river of wine and pulled out 365 little nuggets of Australian and NZ gold. It’s an excellent list of wines too, offering a wide range of styles and price points, and while perhaps a little heavily weighted towards certain producers, I’d say this is more a function of quality rather than bias. I was most impressed by the fact that unlike many other guides, this is packed with wines that are yet to be released, so it will stay current for a long time. It has an extensive food and wine matching section, a new classification system for NZ Pinot Noir, results for The Great Australian Red competition, a directory of wine retailers, wine tasting terms, useful information on serving wine and a nice little guide to wine regions. It is cleverly laid out, packed with features and fun, and is bigger and better than last years edition. Top work chaps.

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This site has proved to be a little more popular than expected. Late last year I took up a $35 per month plan that gave me 10gb bandwidth per month which I thought would be adequate at least for a while. Turns out the site has been chomping through about 30 to 40gb per month, shows no sign of going on a diet, and as a result I have been pinged with additional hosting fees of around $130 per month which will only increase. I would like to keep the site hosted locally because 85% of the traffic is from ANZ and would consider going overseas but reliability and uptime is of very high importance. Shaggy of the excellent Tinto y Blanco has already given me a hot tip for a new host but if anyone out there has a positive experience or suggestion then feel free to comment below or send me an email via the contacts page.

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This very nice map of all the Victorian wineries and wine regions just landed on my desk. I do like it a lot. There is one Yarra Valley winery that they have put in the wrong place..but you will have to find it yourself..or not as the case may be. You can purchase in several different formats from the website below. Now I am off to find a blob of Blu-Tack.

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In 1968 The Beatles released “The White Album” and 1984 saw the release of Spinal Tap’s “The Black Album” (only due to the fact that the original “Smell The Glove” concept was cruelly grounded by management) and now in 2007 Campbell Mattinson (with a little help from his friend Damien Leith) release “The Red Album”. A groundbreaking epic including over 4000 classic Mattinson tracks. My copy just arrived by express mail in an appropriately padded bag. Orders can be placed here.

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1 to go …. what will it be?

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The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) Advanced Wine Assessment Course (AWAC) is an intensive four-day course designed for participants with considerable formal winetasting experience. It aims to prepare potential new wine show judges and develop the sensory analysis capabilities, and the vocabulary, of Australian wine industry personnel at an elite level. (more…)

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I employ a variety of methods and software to track visits to Winorama, and true to all things involving statistics, they all tell me different things. Nevertheless they very accurately reflect trends. The month of June alone saw 112,189 (27,534 unique) visits to the site which is the first time we have pushed through the 100k barrier. Other interesting snippets for June include

* 62.17% are visitors returning more than once, and when narrowed down to Australia and NZ, this number jumps to 72%.
* ANZ traffic accounts for 78% of total visits to the site.
* 73% use Internet Explorer with Firefox on 19.6% being next closest
* Windows operating system is 91.6% (89% XP, 2.6% Vista) with nearly 8% being weirdos who use Macs (eh David).
* Only 4% use a screen resolution of 800×600 (or lower) and only 6% still use dial-up modem (as a percentage of the 45% where the connection speed is known)
* 35,641,119 (35gb) of bandwidth used
* 1,487,265 hits
* Lincoln has a Rousseau screensaver

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Back from Holidays now and I popped into the office yesterday to find my samples transformed into what looks like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Looks like I may have been replaced…anyway we visited Paris where I concentrated fairly hard on classic bistro food like entrecote of beef, coq au vin and a couple of paving slabs worth of foie gras. Not much note taking but on the wine front we had good basic stuff like 2000 Phelan St Estephe, 2004 Clos L’Oratoire CNDP and 2003 Faiveley Mercurey.

On to the Greek Islands of Sifnos, Naxos and Santorini where the food was good if not fairly repetitive and the standard of the house wines really quite abysmal..and kick me again if I did not keep trying them at each new taverna! Ice cold Mythos (or Alfa) beer was a much better option. One gastro highlight was a meal overlooking the bright blue Aegean with a half bottle of Krug (served en Coupe) and a couple of fresh local lobsters. Lovely. I think I will write up three of the better local wines we had later on but a holiday from work is also a holiday from tasting. Good interesting stuff though and I think it’s probably worth throwing something up.

London was the last stop where we had excellent Yum Cha at Yauatcha in Soho. This is the sister restaurant to Hakkasan. I picked a glass of fino sherry (after being cautioned by the waiter that it would not go with my meal) for pre-dinner and a bottle of some 2006 Albarino (from a producer I completely forget) to go with the food. The food was outstanding and in particular the Wagyu Beef steamed thingo. Wine served in tinted tumblers. Tumblers are the way forward..

Back and refreshed now and ready to tackle a huge amount of new release wines. Thanks to Lincoln and David for keeping things ticking over very nicely.

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At the risk of being labelled a Pinot Noir groupie in the same way that many label GW a Hunter Valley Groupie…. Wendy and I have just flown back from Adelaide where we spent $160 each to attend a dinner devoted to Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir. There is a website, www.pinotenvy.com.au if you want to learn more. Upon arrival we had the choice of a glass of Croser or a glass of Diva by Chain of Ponds. In what seemed like no time at all we were seated with 8 Pinots lined up in XL5 glasses as in the photo. The first course to accompany this was a tomato tart as we all explored the red wines in front of us. The wine of the bracket turned out to be a Gevrey Chambertin from the stunning 2005 vintage. We then had 3 guest speakers to entertain us as we explored the second bracket of eight, along with a rather tasty slow cooked duck leg. The Feral Fox 2005 put up quite a struggle but for us the wine of the bracket was the 2004 Barratt Reserve. By coincidence we had tried the just released 2005 Barratt earlier in the day and for me this was the finest Pinot that I have seen from the Adelaide Hills. The evening concluded with a dance band for those who like such things. The region is well worth a visit and extends from Macclesfield to near near Gumeracha although we thought the more elegant styles were nearer Ashton and Hahndorf. The vineyards, wineries and associated cellar doors are NOT popular with many of the locals so restrictions to opening hours often apply so I suggest you research carefully, starting with www.adelaidehillswine.com.au

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