Events

Chalk Hill Wines has teamed up with Never Never Distilling Co. and VPO (Vera Pizza Oztalia) to open an exciting new venue in McLaren Vale called Chalk Hill Collective.

Last Friday (24-01-2020), Matt visited Tomich Wines, who lost about a third of their vineyards in the recent Cuddle Creek Fires, to help out pruning some of the fire-ravaged vines.

Adelaide Hills winery, Sidewood Estate previewed its new cellar door, cidery and restaurant on River Road, Hahndorf last week to industry friends. Situated next to the well-known Apple Shed, the venue is perfect for anyone wanting to spend a lazy arvo in Hahndorf or the surrounding Adelaide Hills.

Our Italian Imports have landed!

We tasted hundreds of wines earlier this year at the massive German Trade wine fair, Prowein, at the Italian wine expo Vinitaly and throughout various Italian wine regions. Overseas we tasted and reviewed the wines at least twice and then we did it all again as a panel back in Australia, tasting and reviewing the best wines from those shortlisted for consideration. We settled on a very select few - just the 17 superb wines which are now in stock. Drum roll please…

Here’s a little info on each of the wineries from which we have chosen to import these beautiful wines:

Ca’ de Lion is a boutique producer which has been based in the Piedmont since 1655, making wine for many, many years. We’ve chosen to start with two of their brilliant Barberas from Asti. These are exceptional examples of Barb

Done and dusted for another year, the Adelaide edition of the Urban Wine Walk proved solid success as thrones of vino fiends trampled through the East End of Adelaide to experience a range of current wines on offer from some of the country's finest, including plenty of local talent. One of our WD family members Elspeth Love walked a purple stained mile on behalf of us at winedirect.com.au sampling a variety of wines. Some boutique, some well known, some less known, most of them excellent. El's pic for the day: Ministry of Clouds 2017 McLaren Vale Tempranillo Grenache Here are some snaps she took on the day. Don't be jealous.

Just like great food and bad jokes, we believe the joy of wine should be shared... If you like snapping a pic of your favourite glass of vino, all you have to do is upload it to Instagram, tag @winedirect.com.au and use the hashtag #winedirectpic to be in the running for a free six pack of wine.

[caption id="attachment_2126" align="aligncenter" width="625"] Instagram: @winedirect.com.au Use #winedirectpic[/caption] Whether it’s a cracker of a food and wine combo or a snap of your favourite purchase from us featuring your pet donkey, we don’t mind so long as it’s got wine in it! We’ll choose the winning photo based on how much it made us laugh, cry or tell our friends about it

Here at winedirect.com.au we're more than chuffed to announce that we've supplied the wines for the 8th season of 'Everyday Gourmet' featuring ex-Masterchef and renowned television chef, Justine Schofield! The series is aired on Channel Ten, Australia. To stay in touch with the series, head to the Everyday Gourmet site. [caption id="attachment_2076" align="alignnone" width="625"] Everyday Gourmet with Justine Schofield[/caption]

From time to time we all need a small break from the hustle and bustle of life, as hard as that is to accept for someone like myself - a full time professional musician. As a self professed workaholic, I often fill every bit of down time with some sort of career busy-work. However, as my partner had a few days work interstate, we decided to make use of my 'musician's weekend' and spend Monday through to Wednesday morning in Melbourne, being sure to return to Adelaide just in time to continue the working week in the orchestra for a matinee performance of 'Matilda the Musical'.

Melbourne. It's a great city.

Many of us Adelaideans share a strong affiliation for this neighbouring capital city. With its distinct artistic vibrancy, multiculturalism and ever-evolving food and drink culture, there's always an adventure to be had in some way or another. As musicians, Sally and I have individually spent large amounts

2017 will be known as a very late vintage with an unusually long growing season delaying vintage by nearly a month. In the southern Adelaide Hills, many of us who had staved off disease and kept our canopies healthy chewed nervously on our fruit and glanced hopefully at our weekly analysis with itchy trigger fingers poised to get bird nets off and rip into harvest. A burst of warm weather in early April provided great relief to us and our neighbours as beaumes (sugars) strolled into the low to mid- teens. One last visit to our winemaker Phil Christiansen con rmed what we all suspected, a perfect balance of sugars and acids, fruit poised to make wine with amazing flavour without the usual belting of alcohol we’ve all become accustomed to... time to pick. Enter the weather. With ‘substantial’

We packed Matt off to Prowein and Champagne again this year to hunt down some quality reds from Europe and perhaps another Champagne producer or 2 to add to the 3 awesome producers we already import... Click here to see the Champagne houses we currently import and you can check out some articles on our previous expeditions via this search query. Prowein was especially nuts this year, with 6,500 exhibitors from over 60 countries showing their wares (that’s around 4,000 more producers than there are in Australia) and about 60,000 trade visitors tasting and buying.

We launched the 2016 Official Royal Adelaide Wine Show Dozen on the 29th October 2016 at the National Wine Centre. This year's Wine Show Dozens are the best we have curated to date - every single wine, at a minimum, scored a Gold Medal with a few picking up Trophies as well. Thanks to those that shared a glass and had a chat with us - it was great putting some faces to names!. Here's the wrap.

You might not know it, but The Royal Adelaide Wine Show Dozen is actually steeped in history dating back to the very early years of The South Australian Agricultural Society’s first Produce and Livestock shows which began in 1840. It would be five years before South Australian wine was exhibited for the first time in the 1845 Show, though there didn’t seem to be much competition with only two classes and two exhibits. Pretty good odds that year, eh old chap? However, by 1871 there were in excess of 320 entries for the wine classes at the Royal Adelaide Show, necessitating a completely separate Wine Show to be created. Fast forward 144 years and that number has increased more than seven times with last year’s 2,771 entries evaluated from 377 Australian wineries. That’s an awful lot of sniffing, swilling and spitting... So how are the wines judged? Wine entries are broken into separate classes and assessed over four, gruelling days. The poor,