About Australian Wine Magazine: Reviews, Regions & Wineries
Honest, independent talk about Australian wine — from the team behind Australian Wine Magazine.
Every episode digs into the questions ordinary drinkers actually have but rarely get a straight answer to. Is expensive wine really better? Which regions are wildly underrated? What are you actually paying for in a $12 bottle versus a $60 one? And how do you walk into a bottle shop, or a restaurant wine list, and choose well without pretending to know more than you do?
We cover:
• Independent reviews and value picks — what's worth buying right now
• Australia's wine regions, from the Barossa and Margaret River to the ones nobody's talking about yet
• Winery guides and cellar door trips worth planning a weekend around
• Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, sparkling and everything in between, explained plainly
• The myths — ageing, storage, scores, screwcaps, decanting — sorted out once and for all
• What sommeliers know that the rest of us don't
No sponsored scores. No snobbery. No jargon left unexplained. Just useful, opinionated guidance for people who like drinking Australian wine and want to drink it better.
Read more at australianwinemagazine.com.au — and follow the show so you don't miss an episode.
South Australia's $109m wine rescue: loans, not grants
On 18 September 2026 the South Australian government announced a $109 million wine package. The $100 million centrepiece is a loan scheme to help growers pull out vines — repayable, at an expected 7.2 per cent once a two-year grace period ends. Loans, not grants, and that distinction is the whole story. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • What is actually in the package: $100m in loans, $2m for treated vine post disposal, a Global Wine Growth Program extension, ...
19 Sept 2026
Organic, biodynamic, natural: which actually means anything
Organic wine, biodynamic wine and natural wine turn up constantly on Australian labels. Two of those three are certified categories with written standards, independent auditors and annual inspections. The third has no legal definition anywhere in the world. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • The National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce, Edition 3.8, and who certifies against it • Australian Certified Organic, NASAA and Organic Food Chain — and what ...
17 Sept 2026
Yarra Valley wine: the region that won Paris, then vanished
Yarra Valley wine history has an arc no other Australian region can match. In 1889 Yering Station won a Grand Prix in Paris, the first and only producer outside the northern hemisphere ever to do so. By the 1930s there was not a commercial vine left in the valley. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • The 1889 Paris Grand Prix — and why being world-class was no protection at all • Why an hour from Melbourne is the defining commercial fact about the region • The nu...
14 Sept 2026
Private label wine: who really owns the bottle you buy
Private label wine is now everywhere in Australian bottle shops, and most people cannot spot it. That wine that looks like a small producer having a go might be owned outright by the company that owns the shop. Here is who owns the shelves, who owns the brands, and how to tell. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • Who owns Australian liquor retail — Endeavour (Dan Murphy's, BWS) and Coles (Liquorland, First Choice, Vintage Cellars) • Why market share estimates ge...
10 Sept 2026
Wine scores explained: the 100-point scale is really 16
Wine scores decide what sells, but almost every rated wine sits between 84 and 99. Read the Halliday Wine Companion's own published scale and the reason becomes obvious: anything below 84 is tasted and then not rated at all. That makes the 100-point system a 16-point system wearing a bigger label. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • The published Halliday bands, read out in full — 97–99 gold, 95–96 gold medal standard, 90–93 silver, 86–88 bronze, 84–85 acceptabl...
8 Sept 2026
Australian wine: smallest crush since 2000, and prices still fell
Australian wine produced its smallest winegrape crush since 2000 in 2026 — and the average price paid to growers went down anyway. That paradox is the most important thing happening in the industry right now, and it says the problem is not weather and not China. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au The numbers, all from Wine Australia: • A 2026 crush of 1.27 million tonnes — 19% below 2025 and 25% below the ten-year average • Red varieties down 29% to 596,226 tonnes, the lowest s...
8 Sept 2026
Vasse Felix: the vineyard that started Margaret River
Vasse Felix is Margaret River's founding wine estate — planted in 1967, before anyone knew whether wine grapes would work in that corner of Western Australia at all. This is how a wine region starts from nothing: a research paper, a Perth cardiologist, and eight acres planted to find out. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • Where Margaret River is, and why being surrounded by ocean on three sides decides everything • The research that came before the vineyard — ...
6 Sept 2026
Henschke's Hill of Grace: the vineyard planted in 1860
Henschke Hill of Grace is the name that comes up whenever anyone argues about Australia's greatest single vineyard — but what is it actually? Eight hectares in the Eden Valley, named after a Silesian region by way of a Lutheran church, with vines planted in 1860 that are still standing. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • Where the name Hill of Grace comes from — Gnadenberg, a region in Silesia, and the church built the same year as the first vines • The Grandfa...
6 Sept 2026
Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon: what the red dirt actually does
Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon is famous for terra rossa — a thin layer of iron-rich red dirt sitting on limestone in a flat, remote corner of South Australia. We explain what that soil actually does, why nobody agrees how big the terra rossa strip is, and why the Coonawarra wine region spent nearly a decade in a legal fight over its own boundary. More at https://australianwinemagazine.com.au What we cover: • What terra rossa actually is — red clay up to about half a metre deep, sitting over t...
5 Sept 2026
Do Sulphites Cause Wine Headaches? What the Evidence Actually Says
"It's the sulphites." It's the most confidently repeated claim in all of wine, and it's the one with the least evidence behind it. The headaches are absolutely real — but the numbers on the back of the bottle make it pretty clear we've been blaming the wrong suspect for decades. What we cover: • What sulphites actually are, what they do, and why fermentation means no wine has ever had zero — so "preservative free" means no ADDED preservative, not none • Why "contains sulphites" is on nearly e...
27 Aug 2026
Where Is the Best Value on a Restaurant Wine List?
Everyone has heard the rule: never order the second-cheapest wine on the list, because that's the one they get you on. When economists at the London School of Economics and the University of Sussex Business School actually measured it against hundreds of real wine lists, they found close to the opposite. In this episode we go through what a restaurant wine list is really doing, and where the value is actually hiding. What we cover: - Why the markup is calculated on the retail price, not w...
25 Aug 2026
How Long Does an Open Bottle of Wine Really Last?
You open a bottle on Friday. By Monday it's still sitting in the fridge door and you have no idea whether it's fine, faded, or something you should quietly tip down the sink. It's one of those questions that feels too basic to ask — so most of us guess, and most of us guess wrong in both directions. There's a real answer, and it's more generous than you'd think. In this episode: What actually happens the moment a bottle is opened — and why a bit of air is good but time plus air isn'tAcetaldeh...
20 Aug 2026
You're Drinking Your Reds Too Warm: Why 'Room Temperature' Is Terrible Advice in Australia
"Serve reds at room temperature" is the most repeated piece of wine advice in English, and in this country it's close to useless. The phrase comes from a Europe before central heating, where the room in question sat at fifteen to eighteen degrees. An Australian living room in February is twenty-six. Serving a big red at Australian room temperature isn't following the tradition — it's doing something the tradition never imagined, and it's the most common reason a good bottle drinks worse at ...
18 Aug 2026
Does Expensive Wine Actually Taste Better? What the Evidence Says
Stand in front of the shelf at any bottle shop and there's a ten dollar bottle next to a fifty dollar bottle. Same grape, sometimes the same region, occasionally the same company. Is the expensive one actually better? It's the question most people are slightly embarrassed to ask out loud. There's more real research on this than you'd think, and the answer isn't what either camp wants to hear. In this first episode: - The blind tasting study that changed the conversation: more than 6,000 blind...
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