Welcome to our latest stories – here you’ll find everything we’ve published starting with the newest.
From hotel and restaurant reviews to cocktail and food recipes to travel tales, itineraries and adventures, it’s all here.
You’ll also find our regular wine and spirits reviews here and our Flavour Of The Month updates that talk about what’s been going on with us over the last 30 or so days.
Don’t miss this one; often some of the best things we talk about are in these posts.
Peeping out from behind its bigger, beefier brothers, Grenache is the wallflower of wine varietals in Australia that doesn’t get half the attention it deserves. Here are five examples of Grenache you’ve got to try. Wine experts have (of course) known about Grenache’s virtues for ages, but they seem to have kept this card in … Read more
Anthony Bourdain, David Attenborough, Simon Reeve – they all create incredible stories that inspire us to travel through our televisions. But here are seven other Netflix shows and series that activate the travel bug in us all. If you’re like us, you travel as often as humanly possible. And when you’re not travelling, you’re thinking … Read more
Recipient of the Hunter Valley Rising Star and Young Gun of Wine awards, and with names on his CV like Scarborough Wines, Thomas Wines, Hunter’s Dream Estate and currently Bimbadgen, it was only a matter of time before Richard Done started his own label. The Hunter Valley is Australia’s oldest wine region, where grapes grow … Read more
Crisp, lively, flinty and refreshing. That and a funny shaped bottle is what comes to mind when you think of Riesling. But what happens when you lay one down for a few years? Our best answer: you need a vertical tasting! When it comes to ageing wines, stashing them in some subterranean den to gather … Read more
When we think of cocktails, we usually have chilled drinks, ice spheres and frosted glasses in mind. But cocktails can be hot too. Perfect for cool nights, these three hot drinks will keep you warm. Hot toddy with Aberfeldy 12yo scotch You might think of hot toddies as only being remedies for colds, but for … Read more
From farm to table in under 100 metres. That’s how Margan Wines runs their hatted restaurant. Here’s more about this beautiful Hunter Valley winery – its wines, its chefs, its food and its philosophy. I wonder which came first. Have Australia’s wine regions always been beautiful or do the vineyards create their own beauty? Perhaps … Read more
Going on a Colourwalk reveals details of your neighbourhood you’ve never seen before and takes your travel photography from snaps to series. Here’s how to start a Colourwalk of your own. The concept of a Colourwalk is simple and the beauty is in the simplicity. With camera in hand, all you need to do is … Read more
These five gins not only add something different to the classic negroni cocktail, they elevate it to new heights. Switch out your usual juniper juice for one of these masterpieces and see how your negroni transforms. With cocktails, there’s a golden rule of three that most great drinks follow: spirit, sweet and bitter. Together these … Read more
Somewhere between an Indiana Jones movie and the lair of a James Bond nemesis, the Italian city of Orvieto in Umbria has secrets buried beneath its feet. Here’s more about this Etruscan hideaway, perched on the cap of an extinct volcano. Marking the halfway point between the venerable city of Florence and the ancient Italian … Read more
Food, wine, music and olive groves all set to a banquet table between the trees. It’s as European as fast driving and slow soccer, but with the finesse of a top Hunter Valley winery and the spirit of a festival. This is the Continent on our shores. Whispering Brook – the sobriquet of the quiet … Read more