Reenen Borman of Boschkloof and Patatsfontein was recently announced as a new Cape Winemakers Guild member. Membership is by invitation only and many of South Africa’s leading winemakers are members of the Guild. The CWG meets regularly as a technical tasting group, providing its members with an opportunity to evaluate wines from around the world […]

Normally, this podcast tells the stories of the winermakers in the Vine Street Imports wine portfolio, but today we have a special guest for you, and while he wears many hats, winemaker isn’t one of them. This holiday bonus episode is with Ronnie Sanders, Vine Street Imports’ founder and CEO. In today’s show, we discuss […]

For Club Oenologique, Jacapo Mazzeo chats with winemakers from across the globe about how to make high-quality low and no-abv wines. Vacuum distillation, a process that lowers the boiling point of ethanol, is the most popular choice by winemakers. Mazzeo elaborates that vacuum distillation is performed at “reduced pressure, which significantly lowers ethanol’s boiling point. […]

Trevor Clough is the owner and head blender at Digby Fine English based in West Sussex, England. Digby is a sparkling wine brand, and they’re the first wine producer to operate under the négociant, or blending house, model in England. This means they source their grapes from growers in places like Kent, Sussex, and Dorset, and blend […]

Frederick Stevenson is the brainchild (and longtime alias) of Steve Crawford. Steve launched this small-scale winery based in Adelaide, Australia as an antidote to the industrial scale and trophy winemaking that he felt had overwhelmed the Aussie wine scene. What Steve prefers to make and drink are the fresher, livelier styles he had become accustomed to […]

Australia’s Riverland is an area known for its high-volume production, and, when combined with areas like Murray-Darling, is often considered The Land of Yellow Tail. But Ashley Ratcliff of Ricca Terra is changing that. For Wine Enthusiast, Christina Pickard writes, “Today, Ratcliff’s farm is planted to 46 different grape varieties across 10 vineyard sites covering […]

In this episode, you'll hear how John came to be known for his textural whites, and how he learned to embrace a model for winemaking that fit his terroir (read: not trying to be a copy/paste version of Bordeaux or Burgundy). You'll also hear John's take on why getting South African wine to be mainstream in the US is still an uphill battle, as well as his adoration for Japan and, yes, McDonalds... 

Alder Yarrow recently published a piece for Vinography called “Putting South African Chardonnay in a Global Context,” in which he positioned South Africa against some of the world’s great Chardonnay regions (Chablis, Sonoma, etc.). Among those reviewed was the 2020 Van Loggerenberg “Break a Leg” Chardonnay, which Yarrow calls “bright and delicious.” Read more here.

Today's episode is with Alastair Reed of Konpira Maru, which is based in the Whitlands subregion of the King Valley in Victoria, Australia. In this episode you’ll hear what Konpira Maru really means (no, it’s not a Japanese whaling vessel) and how owner Alastair Reed and his former student-turned-business partner Sam Cook almost turned Konpira Maru into a Sherry company. We’ll talk a bit about the grapes and the geography of Australia, and why “diner pepper shaker” is the only kind of pepper aroma Alastair and Sam ever seek to extract from their grapes.