Archive for November, 2009
My Champagne Advice

I have one piece of advice if you are buying Champagne this Christmas season. Buy in magnums (1500 ml) bottles. They obviously cost more but I have found the wine quality to be better. They are also much more fun when you have a group of people as there a sense of occasion. The chilling [...]

‘Tis the Season for Perpetuating Myths

Christmas, it’s that time of year when a few wine writers seem to drag out their sparkling wine grab bag of myths and proceed to spread the contents around any publication they can get their hands on. To be fair, they must face editorial pressure to come up with something “festive”. So it’s easy to [...]

Winemaking Questions

If you have a wine making question, please email me directly. You can find my email on the contact page. Thank you.

Cut Price Sav a One Off, Yeah Right

In Drinks Business there is an article claiming that cut crice New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc will be a one off phenomena. Well I’d agree, if by that you mean it’s going to take a long time to get the price back up. Consumers are never fond of buying something for half price then having to [...]

Worth a Read

A rather interesting article in the wall street journal relating to wine ratings. Well worth a read. A little insight into the problems with wine tastings.

Remove SO2 From Your Wine

I was leafing through a copy of Australian and New Zealand Grapegroer and Winemaker (a publication that could really use a shorter name) and saw an article on a new product for removing Sulphur Dioxide or preservative 220 from your wine. The product is called SO2GO. Essentially it is something you add to to your [...]

Soil Doesn’t Influence Wine, Claim Geoligists

Here’s an interesting story on how the soil doesn’t influence wine. However no Geologist is named so, who knows how accurate this is. The interesting part is that they claim concentration of minerals in wine is below taste threshold. However different mineral concentrations usually mean different growth patterns for plants. In the case of grapes [...]