A couple of months ago when I was in Valtellina in northern Italy I visited the Fay family winery and was treated to a fantastic tour of their vineyards by Elena Fay. At the time they did not have a website I could refer you too. But now they do, and what a nice job [...]
Macau has moved to follow Hong Kong’s lead and has removed it’s Wine and Beer levies.
Madonna apparently turned 50 a couple of weeks ago, but that’s not why I feel sorry for her. After all I think she’s doing fairly well for her self and family. The reason I have some sympathy for her is that for her birthday party they served Krug rosé or “pink Krug†as it has [...]
Wine New Zealand starts this weekend at the ASB show grounds in Auckland. Plenty of exhibitors and it’s a brilliant opportunity for off-premise retailers in Auckland to research the diversification of the their wine range. If your a wine retailer and your not going your missing a really good oppertunity. Those who are, I’ll see [...]
I was thinking about the NZ Winegrowers comments about excise tax, particularly the minimum price for wine that was suggested in the article on stuff. Because excise tax is levied at a volume based rate of $1.857 per 750ml bottle (and the additional ALAC levy comes in at $0.052 per litre) it means that the [...]
Excise tax is levied differently in every country. New Zealand winegrowers is concerned that the local version is placing an unnecessary burden on smaller producers. The current Excise rate is $1.857 per 750ml bottle in New Zealand.
A cool start to the season and a couple of hail storms have made a significant impact on the Burgundian growing season. Decanter has details. Heres the Clos de Perriers in Meursault on a nice day back in spring.
You may have noticed that I’m often banging on about tasting old or aged wines. Be they ancient wines from the worlds greatest producers or some dodgy Pinotage/Pinot Noir blend. Why I enjoy these tastings more than any other is the unpredictability and the surprises that often occur. Now heres a great opportunity for those [...]
I just discovered Kirk Bray, wine maker for Sandihurst winery has started a blog (after posted a comment here). It will make an interesting addition to the local wine blogs given that this one is from the perspective of a wine maker.
Not down the drain, but into the Australian Market at a staggeringly cheap price of $3.50 per litre. Thats the report on stuff today. I heard about this a couple of days ago but thought that it couldn’t be correct. Over the last week I have posted some data on export prices per litre. The [...]
I posted some graphs last week, about the export value. They also showed that we were getting $6.89 per 750ml bottle on average. Heres a little bit more in the way of graphs. You can see below that the bulk of the volume comes from white wine receipts. As a consequence, they have a large [...]
I heard yesterday that Alana Estate of Martinborough was for sale. It prompted me to do a little search for local vineyards for sale. Bayleys listed 65 although some are not what you would consider to be conventional. Theres a few on Trademe and also at PGG Wrightsons (sorry, can’t link to the specific search [...]
Why bother having supposed wine experts with no personality, when you can have an electronic gadget that does the same thing and is equally entertaining? Well, it’s a good question isn’t it? Spanish scientists may have sounded the death knell for professional wine bores with the invention of a portable device that can potentially detect [...]
Whilst trying to illustrate a point to a client (I’ll spare you the gory details) I produced a few graphs. A couple of them I thought readers of this blog might be interested in. First up is total New Zealand production and tons per hectare from 2000 to 2008. Next is New Zealand wine export [...]
The weather of late has been extremely bad here in New Zealand. A series of depressions have blown up off the Queensland coast of Australia and then in turn beset the entirety of New Zealand with high winds and heavy rain. These depressions are particularly strong and have dropped a huge amount of rain even [...]
I heard an Auckland wine store advertising on the radio yesterday that all their wines were “approvedâ€. Fantastic! Exactly what or who they were approved by, was left out of the commercial. Hopefully at the very least they “approved†of the wines themselves.