The Auswine Forum

Was offered the Australis here in San Diego by a local wine shop a couple of weeks ago for $100/bottle: just bought the one bottle. Told on the weekend that they ended up selling 60 bottles in a few days. Not sure where the wine came from - this shop tends to pick up Aussie wine that has been laying...

Last purchase of RED was the 2005 St Henri. Still have bottles going back to '92. Average retail price in the US (from Wine Searcher) for St Henri is now around $USD75 - there are boat loads of better wine for the price.

Mike

Good luck with it. Penfolds corks are notoriously bad and while I drink far more St Henri than Grange I have reverted to using the twin prong cork puller or Ah-So on any bottle with any age on it. This is because almost without fail a cork screw pulls through the bottom half of the cork, the cork th...

In his Getting into French Wine thread waistcoat asked for ideas about where he should start looking particularly for wines under $30 a bottle. So here is one that I got for under $30, although that was a discounted price and I have no idea what it would cost in Oz, but it is French!. Betts and Scho...

Here is San Diego you can strike the same sort of problem but fortunately not very often. More often you find a good deal. It was restaurant week this week where prices are $20-40/3 courses to attract new customers. At The Wine Vault we paid $20 for the 3 plates (admittedly small) and $5 for a 5oz p...

Are French wines overrated? Underrated? Just different? All three. Some of the best and worst wines I've had have been French; certainly the worst wine. I can't comment on what's available in Oz but in the US $30 would just buy you a reasonable bottle of either Bordeaux or Burgundy, double it and y...

Great article. I especially liked The meaning of the Jimmy went completely awry the following year. Max won it again – with a barrel sample of his 1965 Grange! Drinking a one-year-old barrel sample of Grange is more like sitting down to a bowl of ground-up road metal than slurping away at an ...

The clear winner for me in 2012 was the 2010 Nuits-St. Georges, Clos L'arlot, Dom. L'Arlot. Beautiful Pinot.

Mike

Excellent, thanks Cam.

Can anyone tell me who makes "Galway Pipe Tawny Port" these days? I had always thought it was Yalumba (the label image looks like Yalumba to me) and the label of the wine we drink is identical to that on CellarTracker where it is called Yalumba Galway Pipe but the back label of the bottle ...

Sean Thackey is a California winemaker with pretty strong opinions on winemaking and wine tasting. His wines are hard to get but the two I have had, Sirus (Petite Sirah) and the nonvintage blend Pleiades, are beautiful wines. This link goes to a video of Sean talking about wine and wine making - wel...

One of the wine guys at Dan Murphys told me i should decant wine 1 hour for every year past the vintage year on the bottle. How can this be right? This advice was quite common in the "old" days. By old I mean '70s and before. I'm not sure of the exact reason but it may have had to do with...

I've not been following this SA story in great detail but several things are very clear from past experience in other parts of the world including here in the US. Phylloxera infestation is no joke. If a vineyard has to rip out their vines, replant and then wait to have fruit suitable for wine they a...

Was in Paso Robles last week. Certainly very diverse but its best known for its Rhone style wines and Zinfandel (or Tribidrag for those following its history). Not too sure I'd want to put Cab Sauv as one of their better wines.

Mike

Polyer, take a Valum or something. For everyone else "The take-home message seems to be that there is an urgent need for the wine industry to come to grips with oxygen pick-up at bottling--and then oxygen transmission by closures--because these important variables have a large effect on wine de...

Wow. Great arguments here and a lot of good information. One last question for all. If you were offered the same wine under cork and stelvin that will need say 5+ years in the cellar which one would you buy? For me it's a no brainer. And another. Is air ingress via a cork part of the aging process?...

Polymer wrote:...You're reading into the numbers how you want to but ignoring the others which is why your analysis is flawed........

I'd say that's a two way street. Just my opinion, of course. No survey to back it up!

mike

Geez Polymer, you really do have bee under your bonnet. I would have though that an 80% acceptance rate was pretty good for screwcaps. OTOH, you seem to be impying that all wines in the US should be under screwcap, only then will you believe that the US market has accepted them. Here is a question f...

Having lived in California for almost 30 years now I’ve experienced and seen a few changes in the wine scene. But let’s see what the industry says about screwcaps. A recent survey by Tragon Corp (reported in Wine Business Monthly in Feb 2012) does argue that the appeal of screwcaps may...

How wines age confuses me, and I'll bet quite a few who study it for a living. I doubt its all explained by the closure.

Mike

You can certainly find wines with screwcaps in the USA. Most are from Oz or NZ, although I did find my first Italian with a screwcap a couple of weeks ago; try looking for screwcapped wines in Rome! Some US winemakers like Carlisle have offered buyers the same wine in cork and screwcap while produce...

Not sure what the price will be here in the US for 389, but I stopped buying St Henri once it hit more than $50/bottle and that was just a few years ago because we had much lower prices over here for years. It was almost as if Penfolds were dumping the wines into the US market but these days I see f...

Helm is a unique experience, at least when hosted by the proprietor; here are my impressions from 5 years ago: m I think it's a terrific winery. GG Agree. The wines can be very special and if you have Ken serving and you don't get his display of how to open a screwcap bottle, make sure you ask for ...

Fruity Lexia clearly has its admirers on the forum, but my favorite wine is the mead, or honey wine, made by a good friend because..... 1) It is possible to drink it (just), 2) At altitude it turns into a sparkling wine, and 3) Its an amazingly good floor cleaner. I'm sure it has other qualities whi...

.....and for the sophisticated wine enthusiasts there is, of course, Ratatouille.

Mike

Not known by many but Dean Spanley (Brian Brown, Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill) is a real treasure jim Agree. An excellent little film, esp. for those who are also dog lovers. Add Babette's Feast for food and wine. And also Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer which is not about wine but something that ...

Good to see you back blogging mate. Good luck.

Voted for ya!

Mike

Many thanks for posting your notes Graeme. Truly envious of you. The Sydney International Wine Show has to be one of the most unique judging formats anywhere. And everyone should visit their web site – so here it is once again - http://www.top100wines.com/main/default.asp

Mike

The Marquis Philips wines were unavailable in Canada but I was able to taste it when someone who hade visited the United States brought over a bottle. He was terrible smug about it, thinking that he had brought over a highly rated Parker wine but to the majority of us at the table it was crap, alco...

Hi Mike Don't expect too much. The quality really dropped on these into the 00s. Good luck Michael For a $10 wine it wasn't too bad - went well with spare ribs, Swiss Chard and sweet potato fries. Might be a stop gap quaffer as I continue to look for a reasonably priced Aussie red for everyday drin...