Coming back bigger and better is a term usually reserved for rubbish sequels of big blockbuster films, and a bit of a cliché these days, but this is fact, not fiction, and Rootstock 2014 was bigger, and we were all excited to see just how much better it was going to be. Expanded over two … Continue reading The Rise of the Counter Culture – Rootstock 2014
– GO TO ROOTSTOCK! – Just about every Australian and New Zealand winegrower I’ve written about, here on The Wine Idealist, will be at this weekends festival. Taste their natural, organic and biodynamic wines and meet them all in person, along with an entire two days jam packed with international winegrowers, artisan food, beer and … Continue reading Go! to Rootstock, Sydney – 2014
Standing on the front porch of his home, the Settler gazed out in to the dark, breathing in the evening’s cool air. Sipping on his hot tea, he listens to cicadas as they cut through the night time silence in broad stereo sweeps. A soft breeze moves through the trees, lifting momentarily, stirring the cicadas … Continue reading Interrupted By A Thousand Candles – Yarra Valley, Victoria
“Mum used to say ‘quality, not quantity’”, says Vanya Cullen, managing director, and chief winegrower at Cullen Wines, in the Margaret River sub-region of Wilyabrup, Western Australia. Promised to pioneers as the land of milk and honey, Margaret River was anything but that in the early years right after the Second World War, as ancient, … Continue reading ‘Quality Not Quantity’ – Cullen Wines, Margaret River, WA
Three scientists walk into a bar. A neuroscientist, a biochemist, and a cardiovascular physician. They order a bottle of red Burgundy, and after a few hours “spent solving the worlds problems”, and being enamored with the red juice inside, they decide to plant a vineyard, run it biodynamically, and make wine from it… haha! Having … Continue reading The Science of Winemaking – Lethbridge Wines, Geelong.
May, 2012. Having quit my job at the BBC, and swapping it for a full time gig in a wine bar just down the road, I was asked by, my boss, to attend the first ever Real Wine Fair, in London. I was to attend, as a representative of the west London bar, Albertine, and report back, … Continue reading An Origin Story… Genesis – The Wine Idealist Is One Year Old
Driving along a rough dirt road, up towards the cusp of the Great Dividing Range, clouds streak and roll over lush green hills, casting some parts in shadow, making the silver rock boulders shimmer and shift colour from black to grey to comic book blue, and back again. It has rained recently, and all the … Continue reading Executing Organic Aspirations – Cobaw Ridge, Victoria
The rain is incessant, from Sydney all the way south, past the the New South Wales/Victorian border. After 8 hours of driving, the tedium that is the Hume Highway, coupled with the drizzly conditions outside, it’s a welcome sight when we arrive in Beechworth, as lush green hills slope and roll underneath giant granitic boulders, … Continue reading Simple Tools, Elegant Complexity – Sorrenberg Wines
Sitting 200m above Port Phillip Bay, on top of Red Hill in Victoria, Shashi Singh is plating up a vegetarian pasta dish while black smoke begins to billow out from the oven in her kitchen, which over looks 10 ha of vineyard, planted exclusively with shiraz vines. The black smoke obediently dissipates into the exhaust fan … Continue reading Avani – Magic on the Mornington Peninsula.
The Marlborough, well-known as home to one particular style of wine, where drinking it is, “like having sex for the first time“, that is, awkward, fumbling, constricting, and intoxicating, with a laughter track courtesy of a Seinfeld episode playing loudly on a TV in the next room. Oh yes, and that faint whiff of cat’s pee. … Continue reading Marlborough’s Rock Scene – Rock Ferry Wines
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