My Winning Whites Of '08

Basking in the limelight is a Margaret River chardonnay that is truly a five-and-a-half star experience.

Wine

A new breed of chardonnay - lean, tight and bright - is upping the ante for this food-friendly varietal, writes Peter Bourne.

Spanish Acquisitions

Patterson Lakes doesn't immediately spring to mind when talking about wine, unless the conversation is with Rollo Crittenden. As it turns out, that's exactly where he's making wines now. He leases the modern winery to accommodate all the work, but this young winemaker also produces pinot noir and chardonnay with a fair smattering of Italian varietals and has added Spanish to the mix. Just for fun. And it's good. Crittenden's latest label is Los Hermanos, meaning siblings. Not surprising, as his ...

Packing A Punch

Sometimes it just helps if your family, in this case David and Catherine Lance, had the wherewithal to buy a patch of land that would one day prove its worth as a pristine cool-climate vineyard site. Back in the mid-'70s just two rows of chardonnay were planted at their Yarra Valley property but more followed and over time, their winery known as Diamond Valley became renowned, in particular, for outstanding pinot noir. Fast-forward to 2005. Diamond Valley's brand and wines have been sold but the ...

Wine Lesson 181

Chardonnay is still worth drinking

Watch This Face - Sarah Fagan

A young winemaker is helping to change the taste of Australian sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.

Hitting The Cool Notes

Maybe Ian and June Marks are going to have the last laugh. They own the coolest Yarra Valley vineyard and with all this talk and evidence about global warming, theirs might be one of the last great sites for pinot noir and chardonnay. Cool climate-loving varieties. "We ripen about two to three weeks later than the Yarra Valley floor," says Ian Marks, "and we're more similar to the average Tasmanian vineyard than Victorian." Remembering the first vintage in 1987, he adds that "we now pick a month ...

A Strange Silence On Sexy Teens

I MIGHT be the only person in the country who follows both the work of Bill Henson and Australia's Next Top Model so I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the whole art/porn/exploitation discussion. Though I may turn out to be one of those latte/chardonnay-sippers that the previous government taught us all to look out for, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with Kevin's "revolting" call. I thought perhaps that moral conservatism and timidity might be receding in the new, post-Sorry Day ...

A Vintage Worth Keeping In Reserve

Phenolics, texure, minerality, structure, site and season. These are some of the key elements that winemaker Steve Webber likes to reflect on when De Bortoli's top wines, the reserve releases, are in discussion. And that outstanding line-up includes a sauvignon (as in blanc), chardonnay, pinot noir and syrah (as in shiraz).

Love's Killing The Country Soundtrack

Those of you (and I know you're out there) who visualise me attached to a permanent intravenous drip of three parts latte to one part chardonnay - the ratio shifting tidally during any diurnal period - may like to know this. I've found my inner frigger.

Regrets And Chardonnays: I've Had A Few, Says Thorpey

JOHN THORPE is not a man prone to admitting mistakes. But ahead of his retirement on Tuesday, the outspoken Australian Hotels Association president has admitted his decision to oppose Lord Mayor Clover Moore's small bars proposal and pronounce that Sydneysiders did not want to "sit in a hole and drink chardonnay and read a book" was an error.

Tales To Tell

Tales to tell THERE are interesting backgrounds to two wines the Sevenhill 2007 White Spider Semillon-Chardonnay and Sevenhill 2007 Lost Boot Rose that I reviewed on March 19.

Wine

Tyrrell's 2005 Single-Vineyard Belford Chardonnay

Hard Graft, Easy Drinking

IT'S TAKEN Richard McIntyre close to 20 years but he's done it. Lopped the tops of his cabernet sauvignon vines and grafted pinot noir on to them instead. Bravo! Brave because, as he admits, "Persuading anyone that the Mornington Peninsula can produce a decent cabernet is hard work." Dr McIntyre's Moorooduc Estate has become synonymous with refined chardonnay and pinot noir (although the shiraz is mighty good too). When he and wife Jill planted vines in 1983, with no one else in the immediate ...

Loopholes Can Lead To Violent Encounters Late At Night

IF MELBURNIANS only read books as they sipped chardonnay in hole-in-the-wall bars, life would be much easier for Superintendent Stephen Leane.

Play At Misty For Me

AS OUR barfly cousins in Coathanger City take to the streets, demanding their right to sit in a hole and drink chardonnay, Melbourne's bars are filled with a generation of drinkers who have never known (night) life without the bar-hopping option. And while the seemingly endless parade of new bars captures most of the noise and flurry, it is the places with a few miles on the clock that are the solid foundation of our local bar scene's success and reputation.

Chardy Sledge Passed Its Use-by Date, So Put A Cork In It

THE left of the Labor Party and the right of the Liberal Party are united in a strange delusion - they think this is a nation of beer swiggers and tea sippers. They use "chardonnay socialists" and "the latte set" as synonyms for minorities whose views are not worthy of consideration because they are not part of The Real Australia.

Bottler

$29.95 Poole's Rock 2005 Hunter Valley Chardonnay POOLE'S Rock proprietor David Clarke rates this the best wine he has produced and it certainly is a beauty.

Don't Inflict Effete Melbourne Ways: Hotels

MELBOURNE - a land of skivvy-wearing, chardonnay-drinking book readers - is fundamentally different from Sydney in its drinking culture.

Wine Lesson 130

Chardonnay is not passe