Cabernet Shiraz

Do you love your food and wine and want to enjoy all that Kangaroo Island can offer? Our farm-grown marron – freshwater crayfish – a KI icon and Two Wheeler Creek Wines, along with speciality bush tucker sauces and more are not to be missed in the heart of KI.

The Marron Cafe offers mouth-watering marron dishes from our well-known chef Joe Hunter and his team but equally superb steak, chicken and daily special dishes in very relaxing surroundings. The marron farm is one of Australia’s largest with farm-fresh stock always on hand for the cafe.

The Marron Shed with the holding tanks also contains our cellar door. Interesting marron life cycle information is presented plus farmgate marron sales.

Wine tastings and sales are available at the cellar door and often help visitors to choose a wine for lunch. Groups are welcome by arrangement.

Andermel, Two wheeler Creek wine - The must-see destination - The Islander

Foster’s for its ‘huge influence’ in building the 'every day' and entry-level wines in the Blass portfolio, like Red and Yellow Labels, but said focus on the top end of the brand had been lost.

Foster’s for its ‘huge influence’ in building the 'every day' and entry-level wines in the Blass portfolio, like Red and Yellow Labels, but said focus on the top end of the brand had been lost. ‘We didn’t talk about wine much in company meetings,’ he said.

The 2007 is the 35th consecutive vintage of the Black Label, which was first produced in 1973 by founder Wolf Blass on the Bilyara Estate in Barossa.

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Treasury 'best thing that's happened' to Wolf Blass - decanter.com

By Victoria Thieberger MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian winemakers are setting up replica cellar doors in China and running wine clubs and tastings as they intensify efforts to win Chinese buyers in a bid to offset shrinking demand in their...

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian winemakers are setting up replica cellar doors in China and running wine clubs and tastings as they intensify efforts to win Chinese buyers in a bid to offset shrinking demand in their traditional British and U.S. markets.

The wealthy Chinese consumer, with a growing appetite for luxury brands, is the main target for premium winemakers such as Penfolds, which next month will launch a new wine, Special Bin 620, in Shanghai.

The wealthy Chinese consumer, with a growing appetite for luxury brands, is the main target for premium winemakers such as Penfolds, which next month will launch a new wine, Special Bin 620, in Shanghai. "We have never done a global launch like this outside of Australia before," says Penfolds' global brand manager, Sandy Mayo. Bin 620 will sell in the same price range as Penfolds Grange Hermitage, widely considered Australia's best wine, at more than A$550 ($548) per bottle.

Australian winemakers tempt Chinese palates to secure future - Reuters UK

WHAT a convivial pursuit to be roaming South Australia's golden Clare Valley, visiting cellar doors and art galleries, lingering over lunch and then napping off such a hard day's work before a fine dinner.

That's the pattern I recommend -- paid for next morning with a walk or cycle ride along the signposted Riesling Trail, which does rather sound as if it should be tackled with a glass in hand and a roll to one's gait. This 35km route, from Clare up to Barinia, follows the course of an old railway line; there's bike hire available from outlets in Auburn, Clare or Burra, or from Sevenhill Cellars.

Base camp for this weekend wander must be Thorn Park by the Vines at Sevenhill, a freshly built establishment opened in February 2009 by David Hay and Michael Speers when they sold their Thorn Park colonial homestead, about 2km away. The original is now used as a Jesuit retreat -- "very quiet neighbours", they laugh.

The two-hour drive north from Adelaide airport to the Clare Valley seems full of purpose as the city limits merge with rolling fields and then meander to historic 19th-century stone villages hemmed by vines. The valley starts at Auburn in the south and progresses via Leasingham, Penwortham, Watervale and Sevenhill to the main township of Clare. Detours off the Main North Road are easy and inviting, especially to Mintaro, home to the Georgian mansion Martindale Hall, featured as Appleyard College in the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, and now open for tours and stays.

Clare and simple - The Australian

That name was Wolf Blass, and the wine was the Jimmy Watson Trophy-winning 1973 Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz blend, the bulk of which came from Langhorne Creek with the balance sourced from South Australia’s Eden Valley. A one-off victory of the Jimmy Watson, the country’s most revered wine trophy, could have been deemed a fluke but when this German immigrant walked away with the trophy at the Melbourne Wine Show for the next two consecutive years, creating a hat-trick that has never been equalled, it caused quite a stir. The reverberations continue to this day.

At that time, much like now, a range of large brands dominated our wine scene and between them there was no love lost. The likes of Lindemans, Orlando and Penfolds traded blows in wine shows across the nation with little or no contact between them. Company men guarded their words so as not to let any competitor gain an advantage.

And when a relatively new name with fruit, not from the revered soils of the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale, but Langhorne Creek enjoyed such remarkable success over a short period of time it really was no surprise that the knives came out in force and from many directions. “They said I wasn’t a winemaker, just a blender, and that the wines wouldn’t last,” laughs Blass. Lucky for him and for us they were wrong. At a recent tasting of all the Wolf Blass Black Labels, the trophy-winning 1973 and 1975 were still in their prime, only the 1974 of the miraculous hat-trick had seen better days.

Today it is varietal wines and single vineyard styles rather than blends that attract much of the limelight – the inference being blending somehow lessens a wine’s appeal and tarnishes its contents. The simple fact, though, is that almost all wines are blends – blends of regions, of vineyards, varietal blends, blends based on differential picking dates and sometimes even vintages.

Follow the blendsetters - The Australian