Clare Valley’s Best Riesling

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  • Wines Of Now

    Clare Valley’s Best Riesling

    Riesling may have originally come from Germany, but it has found its Australian home in the Clare Valley. The Clare Valley grows a larger share of Australia’s riesling than any other region by a long margin – it’s currently responsible for 35% of the country’s total annual harvest. And that fruit is nearly-always turned into an instantly recognisable style of wine – crisp, fresh, high in acidity, and bone-dry – that is beloved by wine drinkers across Australia and the world over. In fact, for many people the Clare Valley approach to riesling defines Australian riesling in general. But is there more to Clare riesling than its famous mineral tension and razor-sharp acidity? We took a Deep Dive into the subject to find out.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Grüner Veltliner

    Grüner veltliner is Austria’s signature grape variety – as important to its national wine psyche as shiraz is to Australia’s – and the wines it produces have proven popular worldwide thanks to their innately food-friendly nature. You might therefore assume that it’s widely planted throughout the rest of the world – but Australia is the only ‘new world’ wine country that has a grüner veltliner industry of note. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that we’ve only been making wine from the variety for around sixteen years. With so much quality on show in local examples of this variety, and as the landscape rapidly matures, we thought it was time to once again take the pulse of Australia’s grüner veltliner scene via a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Arneis

    Arneis is a variety full of paradoxes. How can a variety whose name politely translates as ‘little rascal’ create such amiable, easygoing wines? Why do the wines made from this notoriously difficult to grow variety offer such excellent value, with nearly all Australian examples priced south of $40? And what exactly should wine drinkers expect to find when they pick up a bottle? With some great value to be found in Australian examples of this formerly obscure variety, we thought it was time to take a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Dessert Wines

    Australian dessert wines, sometimes called ‘stickies’, offer more than just sweetness – they’re finely balanced wines that offer bright acidity to balance their sugar content, alongside intensely concentrated flavour. They’re also wines that require no small amount of skill and bravery from their makers, who run their grapes through risky processes in the vineyard and winery to concentrate the luscious nectar within. With an incredible diversity of grape varieties on offer and a number of techniques for winemakers to play with, there’s an Australian dessert wine out there to suit anyone and everyone – so we felt it was time to take a Deep Dive into the subject.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Sparkling Rosé

    Both sparkling wine and rosé are seen as ‘good time’ wines – the kind of bottle you break out to celebrate, or use as a convivial poolside drink. So what happens when you combine bubbles and pink wine? The easy answer is that you have a party in a glass – but behind this veneer of frivolity lies some seriously technical and fearsomely difficult winemaking technique. With an extraordinary range of grape varieties, regions, and winemaking techniques involved, Australian sparkling rosé is a delightfully gonzo category – just the type of thing that we like to sink our teeth into via a Deep Dive …

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Sparkling Blanc de Noirs

    Blanc de noirs – literally ‘white of blacks’ – is the enigmatic counterpart of blanc de blancs, the yin to its yang. Crafted from the white juice of red grapes, traditionally pinot noir and pinot meunier, it’s a style that favours depth and beguiling complexity over brightness and immediacy. This makes it brilliantly versatile at the table, capable of accompanying a meal from start to finish – a sparkling wine style that’s just as gastronomic as it is celebratory. With a small but dedicated band of small makers crafting deliciously complex blanc de noirs in Australia, we felt it was time to come to grips with this dark horse of a wine style via a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Sparkling Blanc de Blancs

    Blanc de blancs – literally ‘white of whites’ – is a style of sparkling wine defined by its conceptual and literal purity. It’s traditionally made from one grape variety only – chardonnay – and it nearly always possesses a racy, linear acidity that makes it ultra-crisp and refreshing. But beyond these basics, there’s an impressive diversity of flavour to be found in the category, with winemakers utilising all manner of fruit sources and techniques to build layers of flavour and intrigue. It’s an exciting category for Australian wine – so exciting, in fact, that we felt a Deep Dive was required.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Rosé

    As spring blooms into summer, it’s once again an apt time for wine drinkers to think pink. The landscape of Australian rosé wines is giddying in its breadth and diversity, sporting a Pantone swatchbook worth of hues from the pale and coppery to the distinctly ruddy, and flavour profiles from the juicy and fruity through to complex and savoury. The making is equally diverse, too, with examples to be found in all major wine regions, crafted from just about every red grape variety imaginable, and the pink hue being achieved via a number of different techniques. Whether it’s accompanying sun-splashed poolside languor, or being used as versatile dinner-table foil, Australian rosé is no one-trick pony – so we felt another Deep Dive into the subject was in order.

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Australia’s Best Rosé

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