Wine trade

Adrian Read is one of the unsung protagonists of the Australian wine industry. With a background in journalism he was instrumental in professionalising and creating new standards in wine-related public relations. He is best remembered for his PR agency Read McCarthy and work with Penfolds during the mid-1980s to the…

Fongyee Walker works as a wine consultant and a WSET Certified Wine Educator in both the English and Mandarin language,  based in Beijing. She started her study of fine wine whilst reading a PhD in Classical Chinese at Cambridge. Fongyee and her husband Edward Ragg run Dragon Phoenix Fine Wine Consulting,…

Philip White : Wine writer. Stephen Pannell,  our last interviewee,  reckons “If you ask most winemakers who is the best wine writer in Australia, the answer is Philip White ” Philip was diagnosed with cancer late last year. He’s had major surgery,  is currently having more radiotherapy and about to…

I first met Bhatia at our friends Kaaren and Kevin Palmer’s home in late 2016. Kaaren had recently published her award winning book ‘Champagne a Tasting Journey‘. Bhatia was then the head Sommelier at the Penfolds Magill Estate restaurant and was doing some research into Growers Champagne. He went on to…

Langton has recently launched it’s seventh Classification of Australian Wine. The classification has been around for 30 years, and Langton’s Head of Auctions, Tamara Grischy, has been involved with it for the last 20. Tamara lives in the Macedon Ranges, a cool to cold wine region about an hours drive north from Melbourne.…

I first met Andrew Caillard as a young cellar hand at Petaluma over thirty years ago. A few years later we caught up again at the 1997 Penfolds ‘Rewards of Patience’ tasting in Adelaide. Andrew was one of six independent international panellists. He has gone on to author the last…

One of my favourite shots in the Grange Book is of Kim West trying to give a thank you speech at the 50th anniversary dinner of the Mirrabooka Beefsteak and Burgundy club. It was at Jacques Reymond’s restaurant in Melbourne. Westy was doing his best to thank everyone. Right in…

Sommeliers or ‘Somms’ get plenty of comments in the wine press. Wine writer Jeni Port emailed me one day saying “I love your series, particularly the interview with Irina”, at the time she suggested that if I were ever in Newcastle, I should call in on Patrick Haddock at the…

If you have ever had a tour of Penfolds Magill Estate Cellars, you would have noticed Grange and St Henri are matured in different sized barrels. In Champagne earlier this year I noticed at Lanson the amount of wood they used to mature the Champagne. I was not so aware of Champagne…

The year that I photographed ‘A Year in the Life of Grange’ was 2012. The 2012 vintage has just been released and the reviews are fantastic. One hundred points from Andrew Caillard MW  (Langtons) and many more around this mark. Grange is undoubtably Australia’s most famous wine. Penfolds work very hard…

I have always thought photography and winemaking had a lot in common. You need a lot of technical knowledge, but also a passion to create something unique. At a certain level both are a bit like an art or a craft. Winemaker Kevin Judd in New Zealand combines the two…

We were at Joe’s Cafe at Henley Beach earlier in the year. Joe’s is a ten minute drive out of the Adelaide CBD and  our absolute favourite place for an after walk or swim coffee. That morning we bumped into Hazel Murphy and Annie Knappstein. Hazel was the Australian Wine…

Great news!  Wine Ten Questions has a new sponsor and over two thousand subscribers.  Wine Australia like what we are doing and have come on board as a sponsor.  We are extremely appreciative of the support from all our sponsors. The sponsorships mean that the site will be able to…

I attended the Wine Industry Marketing Conference at Uni SA late last month. Even though I don’t produce, market or sell wine, I’ve had a long time interest in the world of wine. I found the day extremely interesting. One of the sessions I found fascinating was Dr Liz Thach’s.…

James Halliday’s ‘Top 100 wines’ were released recently. In a covering piece on this years list he made comment on the quality of today wines compared to that of 30 to 40 years ago. ” I have had the privilege of tasting today’s 40-year-old wines since they were newly bottled.…

A few years ago we were at  friends Marty and Emma Ewer’s house. Marty has a great cellar, and came up with a bottle of Chardonnay. “I hear you have developed quite an interest in White Burgundy, try this” he says, not telling me what it was. I thought at…

Adelaide recently hosted Les Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, ‘Concours International des Jeunes’ (International Young Sommelier Awards) for 2015. Mathias Camilleri a 27 year old Frenchman working at London’s Medlar Restaurant won the award from a field of 14 from as many countries. Heidi Mäkinen from Restaurant C in Tampere, Finland was the runner…

Ian Hickinbotham’s name was one which kept popping up in emails suggesting wine people for this blog. I caught up with Ian recently, he’s quite a man of wine. To quote from Max Allen’s 2012 piece in The Australian (1), “To understand what was so important and influential in what Hickinbotham…

When I started this series I always intended to include wine people I met along the way not only here in Australia but overseas as well. I first met Anthony Rose at a ‘Penfolds Rewards of Patience’ tasting in Adelaide in 1999. I was one of the photographers, Charmaine Grieger…

CHURCHWARD Bottling Club : Celebrates 50 Years. When I started ‘People of  Wine : Ten Questions’, I always planned to include an occasional post on any wine events I was involved in and/or attended. One such event was the 50 year celebration of the wine bottling club ‘CHURCHWARD’. Some weeks…

“This dyin’ business is fuckin’ killin’ me …” These were the last words Big Bob said to me when I called in on him and Wilma on April 1st this year, just three days before we left for five weeks overseas. I’m sure glad I phoned him a few days…