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In December, we had our traditional annual Champagne tasting. Tasting several Champagnes at the same time is a great way to learn and compare these wines that can have so many distinctive flavors. During the evening, we tasted seven different wines, including some made exclusively from Chardonnay, some exclusively from one single harvest, some exclusively from Premier/Grand Cru vineyards, the last one being a Champagne Ros. Champagne is a sparkling wine from the Champagne region produced with a carbonation method called mthode champenoise or mthode traditionnelle: after primary fermentation and bottling, a second fermentation is induced by adding yeast and sugar in the bottle. The bottle is then sealed and the wine continues to age for a minimum of 1.5 years to add complex toasty and yeasty flavors. When the aging process is complete, the dead yeast cells are removed and the bottle is corked. Champagne is typically a blend of the three official varietals of Champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. They are generally assembled from different vineyards and harvests. Still red wine from Champagne can be added to produce a Champagne ros. Blanc de Noirs is a white sparkling wine produced entirely from black grapes. Conversely, Blanc de Blancs is made only from Chardonnay grapes and mostly produced in the Cte des Blancs .  read more »

Cascabel 2005 Shiraz Fleurieu $29.95
WA 94Pts - Winemaker's Notes - The grapes for this single vineyard Shiraz come from a cooler site at the southern end of the Fleurieu Peninsula, some 25 Km south from us. We deliberately selected this place, to avoid the jammy and overripe...  read more »

Channel 4's Dispatches on Monday night had a go at Champagne not only questioning its high price but also it's terroir and sur latte trading. I think it is important to put the Dispatches programme into context. Viewers were shocked to learn that Champagne has not always had a clean image as it was common practice to use household rubbish from Paris as compost to fertilise the vineyards. It was known locally as les bleus de ville referring to the blue bags that the rubbish was shipped in. This practice was outlawed in 1998 but had been lapsed since the early 1980s when the waste was too expensive to buy. Watching Dispatches you would have thought that every vineyard was laced with dirty syringes, dead batteries and flecks of inorganic plastic blue bags. That isn't the case.  read more »

New Arrivals  read more »

The world's love affair with Champagne is reaching explosive proportions and it doesn't look as if the bubble is going to burst any time soon. Worldwide exports of champagne hit an all-time record in 2007, spurred on by booming demand in Asia and Russia. Champagne producers exported 150 million bottles to 190 countries last year, a 7,3% jump since 2006, and figures released early this month showed overall worldwide sales hitting a new record in 2007 with 338.7 million bottles sold. Outside France, Britain was the biggest champagne drinker, with 38.9 million bottles (that's more than half a bottle for every man, woman, and child in the UK). Sales in Russia jumped 41% to pass the one million mark, while in China exports soared 30% to 650,000, a nine-fold increase in five years. Japan also notched up one of the biggest rises, becoming the world's sixth biggest champagne market with 9.1 million bottles sold - up 14.4%.  read more »

Acacia 2006 Pinot Noir Napa Valley - Carneros $16.95
Winemaker's Notes - The myriad of dark fruit and floral notes in this Pinot Noir come from the cool, windy Los Carneros American Viticultural Area (AVA) in the southern reaches of Napa Valley. Satsuma plum, blackberry, red rose and  read more »

Champagne !  read more »

If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome!  read more »

If you are visiting us for the first time, Welcome!  read more »