This Month
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
What’s the difference between one whisky glass and another?
The Savu is a new product from Finland, designed to enhance enjoyment of your favourite tipple. We blind-tested it.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Drinking alone? Here’s how to keep it interesting
Finishing the same bottle off over a few evenings can get a little dull. An Australian company has come up with an innovative alternative.
- Max Allen
Ex-Macquarie banker who banked on premium gin hits payday
George Georgiadis left finance to build a gin business with two mates eight years ago. They’ve hit payday with a buyout by Asahi.
- Simon Evans
April
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Gang member turned investigative reporter launches his first wine
Twelve months after his first vintage, Mahmood Fazal is selling a shiraz inspired by a cult label in Spain, Persian poetry and the land of his ancestors.
- Max Allen
Max Allen’s three top picks from a hot new booze maker
Kate Galloway and David Ramonteu pivoted from wine to gin to launch Hastings Distillers in New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay, building flavours in surprising ways.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Tasting Australia 2024: a drinker’s guide
A round-up of the best wine-related events at this year’s festival, from parties to tastings to masterclasses and more.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Australia wins big at World Alcohol-Free Awards
It seems there is no stopping the de-alc trend at home and abroad: the country was the third-biggest entrant this year, after the UK and France.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
How a Gippsland-born hairdresser became a feted winemaker in Burgundy
She was named the best négociant in France. Now Jane Eyre has her own winery in the village of Cissey.
- Max Allen
Mighty Craft in last ditch sell-off to get debt burden under control
The ASX-listed group, which owns a big stake in Better Beer, has sold Mismatch Brewing and the 78 Degrees spirits business to a consortium of publicans.
- Simon Evans
The unlikely menu item now being paired with Champagne
It may seem incongruous to those who equate bubbles with haute cuisine, but experts have long known the tipple’s uncanny rapport with crisp fried chicken.
- Eric Asimov
March
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Precious old vintages from the Barossa set for release
In Australia’s oldest wine region, well-cellared treasures, from wines to whiskies are being unearthed. Here’s a few to earmark.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
This is one of the best wines I’ve tried all year
The latest vintage of Dalwhinnie’s Eagle shiraz has landed – and it’s easily the best young Eagle I can remember tasting.
- Max Allen
Wine glut expected to plague growers for at least next two years
Excavators are “booked out for six weeks” near Griffith as grape growers rip out vineyards in the wake of punishing China wine tariffs and a shift in consumer tastes.
- Simon Evans
Bougie bubbles, lo-fi lovers: inside a next-gen wine show
Max Allen translates a Melbourne hipster drinks event for his generation.
- Max Allen
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
From the name to the palate, this wine’s a charm
New owners and a top winemaker take a Clare Valley stalwart to new heights.
- Max Allen
From retro to romantic: wineries raise the luxury stay stakes
Two Victorian wineries – Polperro on the Mornington Peninsula and Carrajung Estate in Gippsland – give their accommodation offerings a luxe boost.
- Paul Best
Think your wine comes from a boutique winemaker? Think again
An explosion in the number and sophistication of own-brand bottles produced by the largest retailers is creating a war for shelf space.
- Jemima Whyte, Simon Evans and Carrie LaFrenz
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
The innovator defying ‘doom and gloom’ in a struggling wine region
Riverland growers are in crisis. But Ashley Ratcliff of Ricca Terra Wines is buoyed by the region’s potential.
- Max Allen
February
- Drinks With Max Allen
- Life & Leisure
Wine history comes alive in this definitive magnum opus
For this author, Australia’s wine history is personal – so he wrote a lavishly illustrated, three-volume work on it that’s just come out in paperback.
- Max Allen
How this banker supersized his wine-bar dream
There’s a new club in town. 67 Pall Mall started in London, went to Switzerland and Singapore and is about to cut concrete in Melbourne.
- Michael Bleby
