But I have missed the constant attention to wine bloggin and will be getting back into it next week.  We will be three weeks in The Hunter Valley, which has been a source for previous wine writing inspiration!  It will be great to have both the time and a glass by my side most days.  As Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”  I never write drunk, but do enjoy a taste or two while putting fingers to the keyboard.

I also wanted to be in The Hunter Valley to validate and finalize some of places I will be recommending for Parts Two and Three in the four-part piece on The Hunter Valley I am writing.  I am certain there will be some disagreement over my choices of best places to stay and eat, but I will hopefully introduce you to some exciting new finds.  There are so many great reasons to visit the Hunter Valley.

I am very excited about Wine Sense and what it has to offer.  Further teasers and information will be released in the next few months which hopefully excites you to read the book.  We have established a writing and publishing company, InkIT Publishing to handle our writing and training needs (yes, we are also doing an online training course on wine appreciation!), including the release of Wine Sense.  I wanted to prove to myself and others that they can write and publish a book of merit without using a major publishing company.  I spent the last three months analyzing and evaluating this decision and have concluded I wanted to go it alone to truly understand the process required and be able to then help others write and publish.

But for now and the next few weeks, it is back to wine blogging!  I had a lovely 1993 Penfolds Grange yesterday which will be the focus of my next post!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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• Places to stay in Hunter Valley
• Places to eat in Hunter Valley
• Hunter Valley events and activities

But visiting The Hunter Valley is first and foremost about wine, so we will start there.  With over 150 wineries in The Hunter Valley, there is bound to be some differences of opinion, so let me start off by saying that my recommendations do not mean I am recommending the very best wines in The Hunter Valley, even though that is a large component of my ratings.  I often get asked what are the best wineries to visit, often with the qualification of wanting to find a secret or lesser known one off the beaten path, and not just be directed to the ‘big boys.’  But it would be a discredit to some of the big boys to leave them off the list.  I am offering my opinions based on (1) wine quality, (2) landscape and ambiance, and (3) any other unique or interesting features to consider.

#1 overall winery in The Hunter Valley:  Tyrrell’s Wines

From my point of view, the clear winner as the best winery in The Hunter Valley is Tyrrell’s Wines.  They are located on Broke Road in Pokolbin.  This is the safest stop of any winery as they have the best wines from whites to reds and in every price range.  Everyone can find a wine here they enjoy.  The prices are very reasonable.  Tyrrell’s is also an Australian First Families of Wine and is one of the oldest multi-generational winemaking families in Australia.  They have beautiful views, are host to the annual Jazz in the Vines jazz day and concerts and provide interesting tours of the vineyards and winery.

Tyrrell’s is known for their iconic and numerously awarded Vat 1 Semillon and Vat 9 Shiraz among many great wines.  The 1999 Tyrrels’ Vat 1 is listed as one of the 1001 Wines You Must Taste Before You Die.  The 2005 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 received so many Gold medals they have to overlap them to fit them all on the bottle!  They also offer a very nice loyalty program.  If I do not know who the audience is who asking where to visit, I will state Tyrrell’s is a must stop.  Many of the very best Australian winemakers got their start at Tyrrell’s.

#2 overall winery in The Hunter Valley:  Meerea Park

Similar to Tyrrell’s, Meerea Park has excellent wines, both white and red in all price ranges.  The winemaker, Rhys Eather, is one of the annointed six Next Generation Winemakers in the Hunter Valley.  He makes truly outstanding wines.  Their top-end Alexander Munro series museum wines will last a quarter century or longer.  The biggest, best Shiraz I have ever had is the 1998 Meerea Park Alexander Munro and it is still tight at 15 years of age!  On the other end is their XYZ series of wines, which are outstanding wines and great value for the money.  Meerea Park just moved into the Tempus Two complex at the corner of MacDonalds and Broke Roads in Pokolbin.  They also are a small family-owned business with Rhys making the wine and Garth selling it.  I have learned a lot about wine just chatting with Garth who is open and friendly.

#3 overall winery in The Hunter Valley:  McWilliams Mount Pleasant

McWilliams Mount Pleasant is another winery with great selection of whites and reds in all price brackets.  They have excellent Semillons and Shiraz and a very nice Muscato from Evans & Tate.  They have magnificent facilities in terms of cellar door, tasting rooms, a nice restaurant, and also have some of the most beautiful vistas in The Hunter Valley.  McWilliams is often a starting point of breakfast followed by a mid- or late-morning tasting before heading off elsewhere.  If you are into the facilities and scenery, you would place McWilliams as #1 or #2 winery in your list of Hunter Valley wineries.  One of my very favorite wines is the 2007 Maurice O’Shea Shiraz which Campbell Mattinson awarded as the best Australian Shiraz for that year.  McWilliams is also in the elite Australian First Families of Wine group.

Best red winemaker in The Hunter Valley:  De Iuliis Wines

In my book, De Iuliis Wines under the ownership of Mike De Iuliis makes the best reds available.  De Iuliis, year-in, year-out makes some of the best Shiraz in The Hunter Valley.  He also now controls arguably the best Shiraz vineyard (Steven vineyard) in The Hunter Valley.  Michael is also one of the six Next Generation Winemakers in the Hunter Valley.  Visiting the cellar door at De Iuliis is a great experience.  The produce great white wines also, but I focus on buying my reds from DeIuliis.  They also have a nice restaurant and craft shop.  De Iuliis is located on Broke Road just down past Tyrrell’s.  The thing I love about De Iuliis is that you often find Michael behind the counter or just around the corner and their cellar door manager is among the most knowledgeable around.  You always get great service and tastings at De Iuliis.

Best white winemaker in The Hunter Valley:  Scarborough Wines

There is a lot of great Semillon and Chadonnay wine produced in the Hunter Valley and based on vintage, a number of wineries could qualify for this award.  But overall, year-in, year-out, one of the best tasting experiences of white wines comes at Scarborough.  They have two locations in the Hunter Valley and I still like the original location on Gillards Road as the best in terms of scenery and ambiance.   Their newer location is on Hermitage Road.  They make three quite different style Chardonnays and I personally like the White Label the best.  Their tastings are one of the best run I have been involved in and it is always a privilege to bring people to Scarborough for a tasting.

View from Audrey Wilkinson winery

Best all-around visit, landscape and architecture:  Audrey Wilkinson

Audrey Wilkinson’s is perched up DeBeyers Road in Pokolbin.  It has beautiful vistas and the architecture and buildings are among the most beautiful of any winery in The Hunter Valley.  But they would not make the list unless they had great wines also.  They have some excellent whites and reds in all price ranges.  Their Wrattonbully Cabernet Sauvignon is among the best I have had.  This is a great place to visit, taste and take pictures.

Best new-found winery (by me anyway!):  McLeish Estates

I had heard of McLeish Estate for some time, but with so many other great Hunter Valley wineries I was already familiar with, I never made it by to try their wines.  But when I read that their 2007 Reserve Semillon took global honors, I knew I had to stop by and try them out.  And so glad that I did!  They have an excellent lineup of wines, with the Reserve Chardonnay and Semillon really being outstanding.  They also have an excellent Rose which got me drinking Rose again after 30 years and I am glad I did!

McLeish Estates is on the other  side of DeBeyers Road (from Audrey Wilkinson) and behind Lake Folly’s so you know they have some excellent parcels of land for growing grapes.  What I love about McLeish is that it is a true family run business.  If daughter Jessica is not behind the counter, then parents Bob and Maryanne are.  Bob tends the vines when not serving and Maryanne the accounts when not serving.  This is a great place to visit and show your visitors you know The Hunter Valley and all of its special spots!  And Andrew Thomas is the Chief winemaker, another one of the six Next Generation Hunter Valley Winemakers.

Other wineries of note and worth a visit

I have picked out 7 of the 150 or so wineries in The Hunter Valley and each deserves a visit.  The other great thing about these wineries is that they are within kilometers of each other and it is possible to do all 7 in one day or over a weekend.  But there are so many other good wineries to try including Lindemans, Brokenwood (both in the heart of Pokolbin), Margans (past Tyrrell’s and De Iuliis) for tasting and food, Two Rivers in the Upper Hunter Valley (about 75 minutes away), Waverley Estates for some of the best aged white wines you can find, De Bertoli for stickies, Tamburlaine for organic wines, Tintilla Estate for Sangiovese and Shiraz, and so on.

Another one I am going to try is 201 in Rothbury.  They make wines out of secondary grapes such as Durif, Chambourcin, and Barbera in addition to Semillon.  I have heard good things about this winery and it being another family-run labor of love.  I am going to check it out next time I am in The Hunter Valley.

These are the wineries I take my visitors to first and make for a great day or weekend out.  But, of course, one has to eat when drinking wine all day, so my next post on The Hunter Valley will focus on where to eat.  Until them happy drinking!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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But the focus of my blog posts will continue to be on wine tasting and enjoyment.  We will review wines, match wines with food and also provide useful tips for buying wine, storing wine and most importantly, drinking wine.  These ideas are being consolidated into the book and should provide you with a great read in the coming months.  I have found that in blogging about wine and then researching and writing a book on wine that I learned a great deal – much more so than just by drinking wine.  I feel a responsibility to ensure what I communicate and share to be accurate and well articulated.  I feel a responsibility to provide insight and make your reading of my writing worth your investment in time.

I am targeting Wine Sense(s) to be available around the end of 2013 and am working hard to meet that self-imposed deadline.  Yet, I won’t do anything to rush publication if it compromises quality and your reading experience.  I am finding that it is taking much more effort and underlying technology support than writing and publishing my first book, Still Stupid at Sixty (published under the pseudonym, Blake Stevens).  Wine Sense(s) has required much more in terms of structure, research, citation and photography.  I expect the entire effort to be about twenty times the effort it took to write Still Stupid at Sixty.

I have read about twenty books on wine over the last several years and learned a great deal. The have fallen into general categories of:

• Wine tasting and appreciation
• Wine and philosophy
• Wine making
• Wine lifestyle and history
• Specialty wine books (such as on wine language and grape varietals)

Through reading all those books, I learned a great deal and when combined with continued practice tasting wine, I continued to enhance my wine tasting enjoyment further.  Yet, I looked back and felt there could have been a better and far more efficient way to improve my skills and enjoyment.  Wine Sense(s) is about how to improve wine tasting and appreciation.  It discusses how wine tasting works through our senses and how to improve those experiences.  It also provides (hopefully) solid insights and ideas on buying, storing, serving and drinking wine.  I believe Wine Sense(s) will broadly be of interest to people who are new to or moderately experienced in wine drinking and want to improve their tasting experiences and enjoyment.   My aspiration for Wine Sense(s) is to be a more approachable book than Emile Peynaud‘s classic, The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation.  Peynaud‘s book is the best book I have read on wine appreciation, but when I started it several years ago, it was difficult to digest (even though it is beautifully written and translated form the original French into English).  Wine Sense(s) is meant to be the book you read first.

I will keep you posted of expected publication date for Wine Sense(s) as we move forward.  Now back to writing on wine!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
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Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

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Even had I been extremely pleased with my submission, I felt there was only a limited chance of winning.  Many previous winners have been sommeliers, wine makers, vingerons, etc. and I was an immature wine enthusiast!  Yet, my article did match most, if not all, of the characteristics they asked each writer to aspire to.  It was useful to go through the experience.

My losing article still provides some good advice about purchasing wine and I think you will find it interesting, even though it has not been judged to be of magazine quality.  Here it is and I hope you enjoy!

We love convenience, especially as the pace of life seems to be speeding up.  We eat meals out so as not to have to cook them ourselves, or even shop for the ingredients to prepare them.  We have people clean for us, do our laundry, and some will shop at Aldi because they trust the premise that Aldi has made high quality, good-valued product choices for us, so we do not have to take the time to research or make those choices ourselves – just pick up bread, milk, chocolate, and even wine without regard to brand.

Buyers and sellers of wine have different purposes, which can be at odds with each other.  As buyers, we want to get great wine at a great price, have wine we can drink right away or lay down until the wine is more optimally drinkable.  Sellers of wine need to clear inventory and create cash flow every year.  Each vintage, they try to produce the best wine they can and be able to sell it at a price buyers can afford, but more often than not, this proves difficult due to challenging climatic or market conditions.

I have bought a lot of wine over the years and in review, have realized I have been suckered into buying decent wine which I was convinced by the cellar door manager was great wine at a great price.  But now that I have been able to taste and compare more wines, I have come to realize that wine varies greatly in quality vintage to vintage, vineyard to vineyard and wine maker to wine maker, but varies little in price.  For example, the 1996 and 1998 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignons are far better than 1997 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignons, yet the price upon release was about the same for most brands.

I have rarely purchased wine without tasting it first.  Through experience, I have come to know what I like in a wine.  But even if I have not tasted a wine, I can feel reasonably sure I am buying great wines at a great price, if I look at three features of a wine that make it better (or worse) valued than other wines:

• Vintage (year the grapes were grown  
• Where the grapes were sourced (often called terroir, or at least a component of terroir)
•  The wine maker (not the brand, but the actual individual) 

Yes, it may be easier to let the wineries or distributors ‘sell’ you, but they are often pushing what wines are in inventory, regardless of vintage, and touting the brand, not the wine maker.  By combining a bit of knowledge regarding vintages, the source of grapes and who the wine maker is, you can consistently buy great wine at a great price.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014.  Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

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