I know its winter and the cold & flu season has well truly arrived, especially in the hospitality segment where we are on the front line, coming into contact with each and every nasty bug. With this in mind when I had a day off I headed straight to Spirit House at Yandina knowing Helen Brierty and Annette Fear specialise in producing traditional and modern Thai dishes utilizing the freshest seasonal ingredients available. Lucky for us Queensland continues producing an amazing variety of fresh fruit and vegetables even through the cooler winter months!

The first of the bi-annual Working with Wine course was held in Brisbane on April 19. The program is held every two years with admittance to the course being offered to the best performers on some reasonably tough questions on wines of the world and wine industry current affairs. As if this exam were not enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, a blind tasting test of 3 wines is given to assess the level of taster and their ability to write a correct tasting note.

Australia makes great Shiraz and Chardonnay but there are 140 grape varieties grown in Australia and the average wine drinker can only name about dozen of these. In November the annual Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show celebrated its 10th Birthday!  This show was initiated in 1999 by 3 icons of the Australian wine scene and began as the Sangiovese Awards and turned into the Australian Italian Wine Show in 2000.Following the success of these shows the first Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show was held in Mildura in November 2001.

Each year, on the third Thursday of November the season of Beaujolais Nouveau begins. This red wine produced from Gamay grapes in the Beaujolais region of France is the most celebrated young wine or ‘vin de primeur’ in the market. Beaujolais Nouveau owes its deliciousness and easy drinkability to its winemaking method, Carbonic Maceration, or whole berry fermentation. This technique preserves the fresh, fruity quality of the wine, without extracting any harsh bitter tannins from the grapes skins or seeds.

“Wine has shaped my life. I have embraced every situation that has arisen involving wine."

I first became interested in wine as a career while working at a fine dining restaurant in Vancouver, Canada in 1997. Here I had the privilege of working under Canada’s first female Master of Wine Barbara Philip, who was then Wine Director. While in Vancouver I commenced wine studies in earnest with Australian Mark Davidson, received my Sommelier Diploma from the International Sommelier Guild and completed the Wine & Spirit Education Trust  Certificates.