No contest: chateau’s rosé trumps sweet and spritzy
Wine columnist RICHARD CALVER rounds up three mates for lunch to compare a couple of rosés, but things don't go to plan. Firstly, only two them turn up.
Wine
"I mostly get the wine matching right, but on a recent occasion my friend’s wine was much better suited to the gnocchi I ordered than the wine I’d chosen to accompany the meal," laments wine writer RICHARD CALVER.
"The supply of wine grapes exceeds demand and this is affecting those grape growers whose economic fortunes are dire because the crop they grow is worth less than the cost of production," writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.
Emma Shaw, wine educator and general manager of Collector Wines, recently established the Canberra Cellar Door at the Canberra Region Visitors Centre. Wine columnist RICHARD CALVER gets a surprise when he calls by...
Wine
White wine tipped a 2025 standout, despite hard season
The wine industry, which in the midst of one of the worst crises in generations, has high hopes for its 2025 vintage, with some makers tipping their whites.
Wine
Thai food tests the battle of the rieslings
Riesling versus riesling when wine writer RICHARD CALVER and friends pit a prize-winning local bottle against a, old-world one from Germany.
Wine
Curtain up on June’s national wine festival
The four-day National Wine Festival of Australia will be held in June, celebrating Australian winemaking and marking the 50th anniversary of the National Wine Show of Australia. Wine writer RICHARD CALVER reports from the launch event.
Wine writer RICHARD CALVER has a copy of the latest Halliday Wine Companion and while he salutes the work of doyen James Halliday, he's not comfortable with numeric scores being attached to wines.
Wine writer RICHARD CALVER finds himself irritated by a book that's trying to explain the world of so-called wine people.
"I felt humiliated but partly victorious in that I’d kept the wine aloft in my left hand," writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER, after surviving a fall in a Sydney wine shop.
When Carla Rodeghiero, owner of Canberra Region winery Sapling Yard, entered her blended red 2023 wine, The Extrovert, into the Australian and NZ Boutique Wine Awards, she knew “it would probably get something”.
"With the necessary amount of respect to avoid impudence, I now offer my recommendations for holiday season drinking. Don’t beat me up that they are all local wines," writes wine writer RICHARD CALVER.
"The anti-Christmas feelings of avarice and anger were elevated when the journalist posed the rhetorical question: ‘Do I dare sully these exquisite wines with food?’" bemoans wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.
Wine writer RICHARD CALVER enjoys the company of a fellow traveller and critic, but in a book.
"A large Yorkshireman, who was tasting at the same time, appeared to be having an out-of-body experience but he nicely summed up what we were feeling about this mouth-filling wine: 'Proper champion'," writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.
"Recently I tasted three English sparkling wines that seem to be getting better and better. All were crisp and acidic, and all seemed an equal to some of the best Australian and French wines," writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.
Wine writer RICHARD CALVER, pining for a taste of the local winning wine of the Jimmy Watson Trophy, discovers the cupboard is bare; it's completely and utterly out of stock.
Wine writer RICHARD CALVER highlights the differences when it comes to handing out trophies for rieslings.
Four Winds Vineyard, at Murrumbateman, has won five awards in the 2024 Melbourne Royal Awards – including the show's top prize, the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy.
