Australian wine is in a very exciting place in 2024, for reasons completely missed by the headline news. This is a year in which reporting has been dominated by dramatic oversupply, diminishing consumption, waning exports, drought, frost and economic calamity. Many wineries find themselves at a particularly challenging moment in the cycle. But there’s a […]

Together with Australia’s premier wine auction house Langtons, it’s my great pleasure to invite you to join me as a participant in the largest fine and rare champagne auction ever held in Australia, as announced in The Australian Financial Review last month. Champagne: Auctioning the World’s Finest will be an annual champagne platform hosted online for the […]

This year’s best buys from Penfolds are Bin 600 Cabernet Shiraz 2021 ($90), Bin 704 Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 ($125), Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 ($130), St Henri Shiraz 2021 ($135), Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 ($300) and – if you happen to win the lotto – Bin 180 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz 2021 (at a […]

It’s my immense pleasure to announce my biggest and most anticipated book launch yet – The Champagne Guide Edition VII! The Champagne Guide Edition VII is in a new magnum-sized format! It’s more than 50 percent bigger than the previous edition and more than three times the size of the first five editions, featuring a record […]

I met Charles Heidsieck’s new Chef de Cave Elise Losfelt on an intense morning at a particularly pivotal moment of her career and asked her how a newcomer can carry on the legacy of one of the greatest lineages of chef de caves in champagne history. Charles Heidsieck was one of the very first houses […]

The 2023 Penfolds Collection release comes with a particularly high level of anticipation this year, thanks to the exemplary 2021 and 2022 harvests across south-eastern Australia, hailed by Peter Gago as the two best back-to-back vintages for reds in Coonawarra since 1990 and 1991.

The sister champagne houses of Piper-Heidsieck, Charles Heidsieck and Rare Champagne have become the first in Champagne to join 21 other wineries globally in achieving B Corp certification to strengthen their commitments to both social and environmental issues. When I first met Émilien Boutillat after he joined Piper-Heidsieck as Chef de Cave in October 2018, […]

Another highly anticipated Penfolds Collection lands on 4 August! The inaugural Bordeaux release showcases that a vision of classic Penfolds winemaking makes for a compelling offering in the landscape of Bordeaux (scroll down). And the Napa set is evidence that Penfolds’ fit here is a confident one, too. For what it’s worth, the two wines […]

The creation of the legendary Champagne Charlie is surrounded in incredible secrets that have remained buried since 1976 – secrets unknown even to colleagues who worked alongside its creator Daniel Thibault himself. With the rebirth of Champagne Charlie, all is now revealed.

While the world was locked down last year I visited the sparkling folk of Tasmania to share their incredible stories with our friends around the world. This five part series is not a paid presentation. Very much a labour of love! Thanks to the winemakers for sharing their journeys, to Joe Chelkowski for filming, and […]