One of the highlights of the vacation to the South West is definitely the tasting of the Margaret River wine. Whether you tend to be a fanatic of oak as well as dark berries in Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon, a fan of Chardonnay, or a faithful follower of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, Margaret River wine has it all. With the massive selections of red and white wines, this area is a haven for wines.

Having its Mediterranean climate, the South West is actually surrounded by oceans from three sides, creating a perfect location for wines and even more. The gentle local weather is very similar to the French region of Bordeaux, the place of the best Merlot together with Cabernet Sauvignon. Nevertheless, Margaret River wine is strongly affected by the shoreline more than just about any other Aussie wine producing locations. Having 7.6C average temperature and 200 millimeters from the 1160 millimeters rainfall within October to April, the local weather here is very mild. The area’s heat accumulation is so even and the levels of humidity is best for planting grapes as well as some other plants.

The South West’s soils are gravelly deep loams that enable vine grape roots to survive as well as pass through throuhout normally dried summer season. Due to the fact of the sloping ground of most vineyards, the places are permeable and also can rapidly get rid of moisture content, generating the most exclusive taste of grapes. In this correlation, your Margaret River wine is adored for the powerful flavor and an intense color due to its unique character.

Another important wine in the South West will be the Chardonnay with its intensity and elegance. Though they often take longer to evolve in comparison to their Australian peers, once they do evolve, they are generally provided to be the finest in Australia. The Cabernet Blends as well as the Cabernet Sauvignon also are well-known because of their depth of fruitiness and also length. Another essential wine is actually the Shiraz, a comparatively rare wine from the South West. The Sauvignon Semillon together with the Sauvignon Blanc Blends are likewise worthwhile wines that are beginning to increase in recognition.

The Vintage in Margaret River happens between February and May.  The berries are removed with a mixture of machine harvesting as well as hand picking to make sure high quality harvests. The South West is genuinely a wine lover’s paradise. No matter what your preferences are, you will certainly find the best wines here in Margaret River wine region.

If you want to discover more information about Margaret River Wine, visit this link today: http://margaretriverwineguide.com.au.

If you have graduated from casual drinker to wine aficionado then there are definitely wines out there that you would like to try that need cellaring. These are wines that will not reach full potential when tasted now; they need to be stored for a few years, sometimes even decades before you can enjoy the full flavor of a bottle. A custom wine cellar in your home is the way to keep your collection in good condition, however knowing some basics on storing wine will help you to choose the best method of cellaring. For people who show interest in New Zealand wine such as New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or other NZ wine, you can check online.

Besides a suitable wine cellar that allows you to control humidity and temperature, the cork of a wine bottle plays an important role in keeping wine fresh. If air is allowed to oxidize the wine you will lose that amazing vintage and instead will be left with vinegar.

Always store wine bottles horizontally in your wine cellar. This will prevent the cork from cracking, a cork that cracks or shrinks will allow excess air into the bottle. The right level of humidity in your wine cellar is also important. Low levels of humidity and the cork will dry out, too much humidity and you will create an environment for bacteria and mold to grow.

The temperature in your wine cellar is very important. Old cellars were built underground but modern wine cellars look very similar to refrigerators. You can control the temperature but be careful not to make the inside of your wine cellar too cold. The ideal temperature to store wine is somewhere between 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Another thing to remember about temperature is that wine ages well when conditions are constant. Frequent changes in temperature can damage wine. Even if the temperature changes are within the recommended range you could still be damaging the wine by frequently making changes to the temperature.  

The type of lights in your wine cellar is very important as light exposure can lead to disagreeable smell in the wine. Choose incandescent bulbs over fluorescent bulbs where possible as they produce less UV light. Most modern bottles have good UV filters but it’s always better to be safe with the issue of light exposure.  

Try not to move the bottles in your wine cellar around too much as even vibration can affect the aging process of wine. Keep movement to a minimum until you are ready to serve. A bigger bottle is also preferable for wines that you would like to cellar.

Ascend into the small towns huddled around the towering Mount Macedon such as Woodend or Kyneton, which are located an hour North-West of Melbourne, and you can’t fail to miss the faintly Northern European feel of the place. Perhaps it is the crisp bite of a cool Spring day, the historical streetscapes or even the patches of greenery from recent Winter rains but this is a very unique and beautiful landscape; not just in geography but also the climate that envelops it.

Unsurprisingly within this cool environment, which encompasses a multitude of hills and valleys, are pockets of vineyards that are creating exquisite, modern styles of Australian wine. Yet, despite the obvious potential and some brilliant wines, for many the Macedon, surprisingly, remains an unknown.

There is a lack of any one strong brand driving the region’s fortunes. No big company would even consider large-scale plantings here – the challenges are just too large and the yields too low. But for those vignerons that identify the right site and then put their all into grafting a quality product, there are tremendous rewards to reap. To date, the best known wines of the Macedon have been the local pinot noirs and chardonnays from the likes of Curly Flat and Bindi, with others such as Lanes End and Paramoor also showing promise. And there is still an Aladdin’s cave of potential sites yet to be explored; it seems more than likely that the quality of product in the Macedon is destined to go from strength to strength over the next decade or two.

Recently at the Macedon Show I was again reminded that, while pinot noir and chardonnay have driven the region’s fortunes to date, the region also has a knack of consistently turning out some of Australia’s greatest Sparkling wines. back in the old days that may not have meant so much but from cool mainland regions, today lead by the Macedon, as well as Tasmania, more and more locally produced wines are really challenging the quality of fine French Champagne. The Macedon instils in its best wines a delicacy and purity of acidity that is remarkably reminiscent of fine French bubbly. This is not completely surprising in that vineyards in both the Macedon and Champagne are some of the coolest for these varieties globally which gives the resulting wines their much-praised elegance while keeping intact a rigid core of acidity.

At the 2009 Macedon show, two sparkling wines, in particular, really impressed, and both from the same producer. The first was the Mount William Blanc de Blanc from 2001, a sparkling chardonnay that is still remarkably fresh and alive. And the second is the Mount William ‘Jorja Alexis’ Pinot Noir Rosé from 2003, a very pretty and subtle wine with multiple layers of red berry fruit with subtle earthy nuances in a supremely balanced and silky package.

Different occasions call for different types of wine, although discount wine tastes best of all.

Most wines are quaffers; just made to sip and enjoy without too much thought. But then there are others that are there to impress, with their style and finesse, on special occasions. Sitting at the beach, a cheap yet enjoyably drinkable quaffer will do very nicely. But then as a gift for someone who likes a good drop of red wine, a bit more care is needed. So how do you find a good bottle of wine from the countless number to choose from?

One important factor that is a guide to a wine’s quality is where the grapes have been grown. Like any plant, grape vines grow poorly in some environments or areas and prosper in others. Can you imagine eating pineapples or mangoes grown in Tassie? Probably not which is because the climate is not right for tropical fruits.

Vines are no different as a number of factors can result in some grape varieties producing great wines in some regions and yet producing bland wines in other regions. It all has to do with climate and soils but the important thing to remember is the classic grape/wine region combinations, for discount wines or dare I say, cheap wines.

Here is a guide to some combinations worth looking out for.

Chardonnay
Regions: Beechworth, Margaret River, Adelaide Hills, Geelong, Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Hunter Valley, Orange, Tasmania

Riesling
Regions: Clare Valley, Eden Valley, Frankland River, Canberra, Tasmania

Semillon
Regions: Hunter Valley, Margaret River, Barossa Valley

Sauvignon Blanc
Regions: Adelaide Hills, Margaret River

Shiraz
Regions: Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, Heathcote, Grampians, Pyrenees, Beechworth, Yarra Valley, Hunter Valley, Canberra

Cabernet Sauvignon
Regions: Coonawarra, McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Margaret River, Yarra Valley

Pinot Noir
Regions: Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Geelong, Gippsland, Macedon Ranges, Beechworth, Adelaide Hills, Tasmania.

In the past you could expect to see people drinking wines at family dinners, special occasion, weddings and other types of events. Wine was considered as a privileged drink to be savored by the wealthy who were supposed to know all of the inner workings of wine drinking. This has now completely changed and these days in various places around the world you can see many people enjoying wine at wine bars.

Unlike the wine bars of yesteryear where the wine server (like a bartender) would look like his was the only opinion on wines that mattered, today it is the customers who make the choice of what they want to drink. While having inexpensive wines is still common for many people there are those who don’t mind paying more for a good quality wine.

Those who patronize wine bars are frequently in their 20s to mid-30s. And these patrons are much more knowledgeable about the various kinds of wine and the subtleties of each type’s flavors. In addition these people are not afraid to drink new varieties of wine. This openness to new wines, however, does not mean that today’s wine bar patrons will guzzle anything you put in front of them. With this better-informed customer base, wine bars must be conscious not only of price, but bottles presented must also look palatable.

These new wine connoisseurs have been educating themselves on how to taste a fine wine. While this knowledge is not that vast there is practical experience to back the ideas up. Wine bar patrons know how to properly check a wine for its color, and to “sniff” the bouquet to get a first impression of a wine they don’t know. Most wine bar patrons won’t claim to be experts, but most can tell a Chardonnay from a Riesling.

To cater for these discerning wine lovers wine bars have revamped their look and they now sport a good selection of wines from various countries that produce good quality wines. Expensive wines that few of us could afford to open sit side-by-side with less pricey but still very respectable bottles. There will be a selection of red wines and white wines, sparkling wines and sweet wines. In short you can expect to see many known and new varieties of wines at these wine bars.

A natural extension of the increase in popularity of wine bars has been that people want to take that experience home with them. More and more people now want to maintain wine collections at home that previously only commercial establishments or professional collectors could have housed. A very small collection can very quickly become a mid-size collection of 100 to 150 bottles or more.. And this can lead to a difficulty: how do you store and display a collection of that size in the limited space available in most houses and apartments.

Fortunately, the Danby DWC166BLSRH, a 166-bottle dual zone executive wine cellar offers the perfect solution for the aficionado with a mid-sized collection of wines that need to be cared for. This unit features two separately regulated wine storage compartments, which is critical for storing either red and/or white wines at their optimum individual temperatures. The cherry-wood stained shelving system glides out effortlessly, without distubing the wine, offering easy access to any bottle in the unit. Inside, the DWC166BLSRH uses “Cool Blue” LED lighting, providing sufficient interior light and an attractive effect without the wasted energy and wine-damaging heat of incandescent bulbs. Both the shelves and the tinted tempered glass door (which can be locked) are trimmed in stainless steel, complementing any kitchen decor.

So while it looks like the trend toward increasing popularity of wine bars will not go away any time soon, those who enjoy wine bars now have options for taking the wine bar experience home with them with the Danby DWC166BLSRH.