After sixteen years of publishing this website, you’d think I’d know how to write a birthday card, right? Happy 16th birthday Australian Wine and Drinks Review. Lots of love, Andrew. Job done! I was reminiscing with Mrs Ozwinereview tonight about writing this annual birthday card seven years ago from our sun-bathed Airbnb balcony in La Morra (good times, pictured above) and how it felt like yesterday. Time flies when you’re having fun/children! Skip forward from 2017 to 2024, and my wine world is different (even from a year ago), while the whole Australian wine media circuit is basically gone ..read more

Not all wines can be great. Plenty are just ‘ok drinks’, and some are just bad… Here are 13 wines that almost made the silver medal grade in April 2024. Some are just easy drinks; others are just disappointments… (more…) The post The Almost Club April 2024 Edition. 13 wines that almost made it appeared first on Australian Wine and Drinks Review ..read more

After three days of wine show judging (and three days of wine dinners) in Canberra for the 2024 Winewise Championships, my tongue is black, my teeth are sore, and my guts are complaining. But it was worth it. By the third day of full-time judging, you’re seeing wines like beachballs – they bounce on in and you see all the flaws/glories. You sit down, taste through lots of wines – circa 15 brackets of young Australian Shiraz on the last day – and you just look for the specialness. It’s that easy! Except it’s not easy at all. What is easy is complacency. With large brackets of similar wines, yo ..read more

Would you look at that sunshine? Day 2 of judging at the 2024 Winewise Championships dawned with a crisp Canberran day, which proved ideal for me to run up Mt Ainslie, scare a few roos (which weren’t really scared or keen to move) and take bad photos. (more…) The post More wines, more Canberra appeared first on Australian Wine and Drinks Review ..read more

It’s a beautiful time of year, visually, to be in Australia’s capital city, with yellows and reds colouring the usual brown/green Canberra landscape. Late April is pretty, if also unpleasantly cold for warm-blooded Sydneysiders like me who run at dawn. Conversely, it’s also the perfect time to judge in a wine show! Hence, I’m writing this post (in a jumper) here in Canberra for my favourite wine show on the calendar, the Winewise Championships. A unique show in the kingdom of local wine competitions, where every wine entered needs to have won a gold medal at an Australian wine show (hence the ..read more

It’s that time again. Time to inspire me to spend more money on drinks, even though the WineArk cabinet can’t be closed properly and the Amex is maxed out. So, what wine, beer and other drinks have you been buying this month? This month, I dipped into more German Riesling, including some of the Loosen Auslese and other bits. I also missed Giaconda allocations (sold out in sub 10 minutes, again?), but this is perhaps a good thing as we need to sell wine (probably Australian Shiraz) to make space as the wine stack is spilling into the lounge room. First-world problems and all that. In beery ne ..read more

While I have exactly zero time for grape days, today I present the grandest way to celebrate International Viognier Day with the seriously world-class Yalumba The Virgilius Viognier 2022. As I talked about on Viognier Day two years ago, Yalumba goes deeper on Viognier than nearly anyone. A labour of love? Maybe, but this, and the rest of the Yalumba Viognier range, has an extra level of detail that screams passion project, and the world is better for it. What I like about Virgilius is the width. It’s full-bodied, full-flavoured and proud to be a Viognier. Grapes are picked ripe, the juice spe ..read more

Will the wines of Juniper change now that Mark Messenger has left (after twenty-five years)? It’s too early to tell, really, but it is interesting to see how Andrew Bretherton (ex-Deep Woods) does at a winery that makes smart under-the-radar Margaret River wines. This Cornerstone Chardonnay is a beautiful wine, to get back to the task at hand, if maybe a little on the stern side. Grapefruit, whipped butter, nutty golden hints, and restrained power. I wonder if it would be even more convincing with a little more malolactic richness and riper fruit, but the sacrifice would likely be the pristin ..read more

I’m working through some Aldi-exclusive wines this month, with plenty of value highlights in the collection. This is a thickset Margaret River Cabernet from the Aldi lineup that feels plush and chunky. Lots of dark, dried blackberry flavour, a eucalyptus edge, a thick lacquer of oak and then minty, slightly short tannins. It’s a big wine and a round wine, but largely through the mid-palate rather than being long. That plushness is bound to be popular, even if it’s a bit diffuse. The post Blackstone Paddock Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 appeared first on Australian Wine and Drinks Rev ..read more

A Mesh Riesling that fulfils the label potential (side convo – why are the wines up and down? Is it because this super Riesling, made by the legendary Jeffrey Grosset and the Hill-Smith family, is overthought? Someone help me here). Super intense lime juice marks this Eden Valley Riesling in a mode that feels almost metallic in its pure green limey fruit freshness but with serious mid-palate intensity. Yes, yes, please. It is generous but not to the point of being anything but dry and a really enjoyable drink. The post Mesh Riesling 2023. Back to where it should always be (ie good to great) a ..read more