The Home of Renowned Tasting

Rather than linking to everything, everywhere and everyone I have chosen to just list those sites that I regularly read or use. It does keep expanding though!

Wine Writing

The Wine Front - Australia’s best independent wine publication. Subscription required.

James Halliday’s Wine Companion - A great online resource featuring over seven years of the big man’s tasting notes.

Jeremy Oliver - Comprehensive and often highly opinionated. An invaluable resource for the Australian wine enthusiast. Subscription based.

The Wining Pro - Grant Dodd makes his living by putting his balls into little holes. It is an odd job being a pro golfer. When he is not hitting things with sticks he spends his time far more wisely tasting wines and running his excellent web site. It looks the business and he is an excellent taster to boot.

Wino Sapien - West Australian Dr Eduardo Catflapo has a nice site with regular updates and detailed tasting notes. Nice and quirky with some lovely photographs adding additional interest.

Tinto y Blanco - Dave Worthington’s (aka Shaggy) excellent site. Specialises in Spanish wine.

Full Pour - It says ‘Wine mates Chris and Julian share tasting notes.’ Ahhh give us a hug! A site that is updated regularly and contains thorough and thoughtful tasting notes on a wide variety of wines. An excellent read.

Wine of the Week - Sue Courtney’s NZ based wine site. Lots of excellent tastings (but alas no scores) and articles to be found here.

Winedome - Perth based Maurice Hovens runs an excellent site with a focus on imports from the old world.

ACEHIGWINE - Max Veenhuyzen deals up a mix of wine and poker on (yet another) West Australian based site.

Woine Time - Amateur Wine Tasting Club - Nice site, regularly updated, with an eclectic mix of reviews. You can’t post comment’s mind you..but if you did I’d let them know that Chapoutier’s La Bernadine is made from Grenache..not Gamay..opps.

Vinosense - Dave Brookes and Murray Almond’s entertaining commentry and news on all things wine. Infrequent updates. Currently dead.

Recommended Retailers

WineStar - Excellent service and very keen pricing with an excellent and very entertaining weekly email journal. The best in the business.

The Wine Emporium - Knowledgeable staff and a great selection of imports. Beautiful store.

North Sydney Cellars - Interesting small maker and international selection. Great staff. Regular in-store tastings. Prices can be a bit steep by the single bottle but competitive in dozen lots and during the fairly regular sale periods.

Boccaccio Cellars -Melbourne based retailer. Very good prices and a lovely soothing website.

Langtons -Australia’s biggest and most reliable wine auction house.

The Australian Wine Centre -Specialises in boutique and premium wines, wine gifts and rare wines. Always has an interesting selection of small makers on offer - especially from the South Australian regions.

East End Cellars - Knowledgeable staff with a focus on imported wines and boutique Australian producers. Part of “the Alliance” of independent fine wine producers.

Cloudwine - A leading retailer for small Australian wineries, stocking over 800 different wines - all from the smaller producers. There’s also a strong range of New Zealand wine together with one of Australia’s biggest range of local and imported beers.

Wine Forums

StarForum -Australia’s busiest and biggest wine forum with a very broad range of tasting experience

Boccaccio Cellars Online - A nice friendly forum with a good range of discussion and tasting notes.

Auswine Forum -Australia’s first wine forum. Focus is primarily on Australian (red) wine.

UK Wine Forum - Humourous and interesting. Less tasting note focussed but some good discussion with an international perspective.

eRobert Parker Forum - Very broad coverage. Large audience and huge collective experience. Sadly quite often wine discussion can turn into a bloodsport…

Other Links
Able Grape – The wine related search engine!

eWineCentral - Like a broadsheet newspaper but with clippings from various wine blogs and sites. Nicely done.

Popping Corks - Good idea. A site that brings together wine reviews from around the world.

Winemega - Tasting notes on Bordeaux wines: a summary of tasting scores and notes of the finest international wine critics.

Wine Diva - A very good source of information for Australian wineries and contact details.

WBM Australia’s Wine Business Magazine - An excellent publication covering the business end of the Australian wine industry. Also publishes WBM 100 - 100 wine reviews by Nick Stock & Tyson Stelzer.

VisitVineyards.com – for independent wine, food and wine country travel information. Visit Vineyards® brings you the best of Australian wineries, regional restaurants, accommodations and more, with expert reviews and recommendations.

Wine at Alltop - A clever site showing multiple wine websites aggregated on a single page.