These Top 5 drinks lists will introduce you to my favourite wine regions, bars, wines, cocktails and wine folk.
There’s nothing like bubbles to get everyone in a party mood. While Champagne is the traditional fizz of choice, sparkling wines from other French regions, Italy, Australia and New Zealand can also do the job – often at a fraction of the cost – especially in these five popular cocktails. Keep the snacks French by […]
Top 5 Sommeliers I’ve become a bit of a sommelier groupie of late. I’ve found myself deciding where to eat based on who’s likely to be pouring my wine. The role of sommeliers (wine waiters) has come a long way in Australia in the past 10-15 years. My interest started with the likes of the […]
I love food – and I love wine. But best of all I love it when the two come together in a marriage that is greater than the sum of its parts … when each lifts the other to new heights. And I love eating in restaurants where the staff know their stuff well enough […]
Trust me to have a thing for the ficklest (read: most expensive) wine grape varietal. I love pinot noir for its complexity, subtlety, funky-earthy-barnyard aromas and soft fruit, for the way it marries with foods as diverse as duck, beetroot, tapenade, mushrooms and curries. It’s a challenging grape to grow, more prone to disease than […]
I have to confess that sparkling wines aren’t a passion of mine … I’d generally rather spend my alcohol quota on still wine … but some occasions just seem to call for fizz. I find good sparkling rosé a little more savoury, and therefore more versatile, than its white counterpart … and I love the […]
There’s nothing like a cocktail or two to get everyone in the mood for a party. While purists might argue that mixing Sherry with other ingredients is a waste of good wine, Sherry cocktails have been around since the 17th century. There were simple blends with vermouth and/or bitters (Adonis); or raw egg and sugar […]
Manzanilla is the style that started my addiction to the delicious fortified wines from southern Spain. So distinctive that it has its own appellation within the Jerez designation, Manzanilla Sanlúcar de Barrameda is in almost every respect a Fino: produced from palomino grapes and aged in a solera system under a layer of flor (yeast). […]
I visited the ancient city of Jerez de la Frontera in the very south of Spain to learn more about my favourite wine: Sherry. Alongside the beautiful bodegas, I also discovered a charming old town with narrow cobbled streets and Moorish architecture, rustic bars serving great charcuterie and other snacks, flamenco music, friendly locals and […]
I love a good bottle shop – it’s as exciting as a fabulous book store or specialist kitchenware shop – once I walk in I can be lost for hours. The best bottleshops are owned and staffed by people who are passionate about wine, and passionate about educating us about wine – they run free […]
I’m more a wine drinker than a beer drinker – but somewhere along the way I developed a taste for Guinness, which led me to explore other dark beers and realise that they too appealed. Roasted barley and malt generally give dark beers their colour and coffee, chocolate and caramel flavours. The most common dark […]
