It is almost two years since I enjoyed a blind tasting of (mostly) Australian Pinot Noir with Tom Carson, winemaker at Yabby Lake in Australia's Mornington Peninsula (profiled here by Jancis...

Oh dear.  In a few hours' time I'm supposed to set off on a very brief visit to the Most  Famous Wine Region I Have Never Visited, the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.  And what...

Feb 14 - see heart-warming correction re Rupert's Ridge at ** below. Stories continue to pour in of the devastation and terrible fatalities wreaked by the Australian bushfires. As you...

Some time after being vanquished in the battle for Montana by Allied Domecq, Australasian brewers Lion Nathan have finally acquired a New Zealand wine operation. But far from being an...

Updated 29 Nov 2011  Peter Forrestal updates us thus: It would seem that truth is not only the first casualty in war but also in serious bushfires. The following is an update...

22 Jul update - By the time I flew out of Okanagan yesterday late afternoon, all the fires seemed to have been extinguished and all that was left was an unusual haziness. It could well be that...

As a wine writer I don't expect to be caught up in an international news story, much less a national disaster. But I found myself in Victoria, just south of Melbourne, on Saturday 7 Feb, the day...

Leanne De Bortoli sends the following report from the heart of post-bushfires Yarra Valley. We have been and are still a little vulnerable from what has occurred with the fires. It was...

Dr Tony Jordan of the Yarra Valley Winegrowers Association sends the following report. Since the statement we released on 13 Feb 2009, more details have come to hand which sadly...

In the aftermath of the deadly Australian bushfires, San Francisco will host a tasting and silent auction of Victorian wines this coming Friday 20 Feb, with all funds donated to the Victorian...

Here's a statement just issued (so recently that it is dated tomorrow) by  Dr Tony Jordan, president of the Yarra Valley Winegrowers Association, keen that the 2009 Yarra vintage should not...

There is something quite remarkable about the Australian spirit. Below you will see a very brief pan in a particularly pink sunset round the supper table last Sunday night at De Bortoli right in...

As I reported here on Sunday morning after the bushfires, I was due to visit the badly affected Yarra Valley that day. Because of the terrible death toll, and because of potential danger, I...

All the talk between wine people has been of the exceptional Australian heatwave that has been ravaging the country and the devastating bushfires that have killed and destroyed, as reported over...

Bushfires are still raging in the Australian state of Victoria, claiming dozens (now hundreds - 12 Feb)  of lives, hundreds of buildings and several vineyards, including that of...