James Halliday’s articles
2014 Delamere Vineyards Pinot Noir
This wine is quite simply breathtaking – akin to listening to Hildegard of Bingen's singing (1000 years ago) in her monastery. It shimmers in its intensity and its piercing purity; the oak and tannins are of minimal importance, but they do serve as...
Vale Tony Smith, champion of Great Southern
The passing parade of characters, large or small, successful or not, who have written the story of Western Australia’s Great Southern region stand in the shadow of one man: English-born Tony Smith, who succumbed to a battle with cancer on November...
Sam Connew’s Stargazer Wine: one to watch
Samantha (Sam) Connew was born and raised in New Zealand’s South Island, where she obtained an arts/law degree in Christchurch and worked part-time at an excellent wine bar at the city’s Arts Centre. After overseas travel, and then postgraduate...
Dawson and James, partners in wine
When 21-year-old science student Peter Dawson arrived for work at Thomas Hardy & Sons’ Mile End winery in Adelaide in 1976, he reported to production winemaker Tim James. Neither could have imagined that 34 years later they would have become...
A toast to Italy
The German Lutherans from Silesia, the Swiss from Neuchatel and the Dalmatians from Yugoslavia all played key roles in shaping the crucible of Australian wine in the 19th and early 20th centuries – in the Barossa, Yarra and Swan valleys...
The making of Singlefile Wines
Singlefile Wines was co-founded in 2007 by geologists Phil and Viv Snowden, with daughter Pam and son-in-law Patrick Corbett. It followed the Snowdens’ sale of their West Australian consultancy business, Snowden Mining, in 2004, and a protracted...
1988 Coldstream Hills Four Vineyards Pinot Noir
I have a handful of bottles of this wine, still with no ullage thanks to the high quality 55x25mm (often called Chateau length) corks. It may – indeed was – different in its youth, albeit overshadowed by the all conquering 1988 Rising Shantell,...
How Penfolds’ premium white wine was conceived
It all began with Southcorp CEO Ross Wilson, a brilliant marketer with a booming voice and a broad smile. In 1993, he summoned Ian McKenzie into his office. “Macka,” he said, “we make Australia’s greatest red wine, and I want a white wine to sit...
Passion project – Paralian Wines
Charlie Seppelt looks back at the run up to the 2020 vintage, with its low points of very low winter and spring rainfall, strong winds in November during peak flowering, extreme heat in December, and luscious rainfall in January. He says...
The making of Prinz wines
It's for long been an often true saying in Australia that all droughts end in floods, but Germany? Well, 2018-20 were drought years in the Rheingau, and the 2021 vintage was pre-empted by flood in some parts – no more than the Ahr Valley, and...
