James Halliday’s articles
2018 Marchand & Burch Volnay Fremiets Premier Cru
The deep colour is no false dawn. Red (cherry) and purple (plum) fruits dispute the headlines, neither losing. The palate is rich and sumptuous, and just when you think the fruit might be over the top, ripe tannins take the field, providing...
Penfolds St Henri Shiraz just gets better
Max Schubert made his first experimental Grange in 1951, John Davoren following suit with St Henri in 1953. Schubert presided at Magill, Davoren at Auldana (both in Adelaide) from 1947. In the first (1973) edition of his Australia and New Zealand...
1988 Lindemans Hunter River Burgundy Reserve Bin 7600
The photograph of the bottle of this wine will hopefully show the dark, almost black deposit painted on the upper half of the bottle going through to the neck, on the side which corresponds to the position it held in my cellar for many years. This...
Fino and manzanilla sherries: is this a renaissance?
Anyone who has visited the Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera (home of fino and amontillado) and the nearby town of Sanlucar de Barrameda (home of manzanilla) will have everlasting memories of their age-old bodegas. They are shrouded in centuries...
Meet the Member: James Halliday
James Halliday needs no introduction to anyone in the wine industry, as one of the world’s most renowned wine critics, who has been at the forefront of Australian wine communication for over 30 years. Amanda Barnes interviews him on his career in...
James Halliday’s overview of Australian wine moments in the last 30 years
Australia’s eminent wine critic James Halliday is featured in our Meet the Member interview, and he also shares with us his greatest moments and milestones in Australian wine. In the last 50 years there have been monumental changes in styles,...
Rosé: the odd one out in Australian winemaking
The spectre of Portugal’s Mateus Rosé still hangs over rosés wherever and however they are made. First released in 1942, its peak of popularity in 1978 saw 3.5 million dozen in sales around the world. I have vivid memories of the dawn of my writing...
Clare Valley’s riesling experiment
Talking about the “riesling renaissance” has long been akin to crying wolf. But there’s a twist: decreasing plantings and production has created a demand imbalance for the variety. The 2020 vintage crush of 16,819 tonnes was a decline of 28 per...
Eldridge Estate: This winemaking story is Wagnerian
The Wagnerian story of David Lloyd, his late wife Wendy and Eldridge Estate began in 1975 with 20 litres of shiraz that David describes as a cross between nail polish remover and vinegar. In ’76 the Lloyds planted a small vineyard near Ballarat,...
Big leap for Yarra Valley’s Giant Steps
The headline might cause one to shudder nervously: “Multinational American-owned wine company swoops on family-owned Yarra Valley winery.” Read on, though, and a very different story emerges. The US company is Jackson Family Wines, which made its...
