Australia’s favourite wine guide released yesterday: James Halliday’s 2010 edition
Each year towards the end of the month of July Australia’s wine industry awaits the arrival of the release of its bible: the Australian Wine Companion, published by the Australian ‘wine-pope’ James Halliday. I had the chance to interview James Halliday last year when he was releasing last year’s edition and found him a very pleasant and remarkably relaxed person.
James Halliday launches Wine Companion in Sydney
This year’s guide holds tasting notes of 5,884 wines, it includes 148 new wineries and vintage rating charts for each wine region downunder.
For some wineries, this is the highlight of the year as they rely on sales coming out of (hopefully good) ratings from Halliday. For others, it is not even worth entering as they hardly see any results coming out of this guide. A third category is the group of wineries, that scores well in the Companion but due to the lack of stock runs out of their highly scoring wines shortly after the release of the book.
Tertini Wines from the Southern Highlands is such an example. This year they score 4.5 stars in Halliday’s companion, a very nice result for such a young winery, in particular after being judged a 3 star winery last year. This year’s result is a great endorsement for winemaker, viticulturist and everyone involved, though the success is only one step on Julian Tertini’s long term plans for his wine-making business. The problem though is that its highest scoring wine, a private cellar collection Riesling 2006 only exists in very limited quantities and will not last very long.
Never mind, the companion was launched yesterday and will be great reading material for the wine enthusiast in Australia and beyond.
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Australien’s Weinpabst James Halliday bringt alljaehrlich seinen Wine Companion in dieser australischen Winterszeit heraus, dieses Jahr testete er alleine 5.884 Weine. Die australischen Winzer warten gespannt auf die Ergebnisse, fuer viele von ihnen ist eine gute Benotung in dem Fuehrer bestes Marketingmittel beim Vertrieb ihrer Tropfen. Fuer viele Weine, die besonders gut bei Halliday abschneiden gilt leider, dass deren Auflage sehr knapp bemessen ist und haeufig findet man daher das Schild ‘sold out’ in der Cellar Door.
Ihr Michael Brecht
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