FOREWORD
2022 marked my 43rd year in the Australian and International wine trade. And while many things have changed, much has remained the same. The greatest winemakers in this country are still those that show curiosity, never rest on their laurels and are constantly working tirelessly in their vineyards and wineries to make something that resonates. They do this standing on the shoulders of generations that have paved the way before them. In late 2021, wine writer and co-publisher Angus Hughson and I launched The Vintage Journal , a free resource primarily published for the fine wine industry and wine collectors. We specialise in Australian and International fine wine reviews, tasting notes and scores, opinions, essays, and podcasts. We also publish snippets of Australian wine history from my forthcoming 3-volume work The Australian Ark which charts the path of our wine industry from 1788 to the present day. Angus and I plan to build The Vintage Journal into a leading forum that promotes the cause of fine wine while highlighting Australia’s remarkable and often little-known wine history. Throughout 2022 Angus and I have travelled the world and tasted an astonishing range of wines. Trips to the Barossa and Clare Valleys as well as Margaret River and Bordeaux highlight the diversity of wine available to Australian wine drinkers and beyond. It has been fascinating to taste multiple vintages of some of Australia’s greatest wines with more frequency than before. Tasting reviews of Leeuwin Estate Chardonnay, Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon and Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz reveal their storied journeys. We also enjoyed tracking the development of emerging stars such as Ten Minutes by Tractor Pinot Noir, Frankland Estate Olmo’s Reward, Cloudburst, Chapel Hill and Idée Fixe. Of course, no year is complete for wine collectors without a review of Penfolds, a wine brand that forms one of the foundations of the Australian collectible wine market. This Wine Journal 2023 is a collection of our favourites moments, stories and discoveries from 2022 peppered with opinion pieces and vignettes of Australian wine history. These unfolding pages are the wines and stories that left us with the most lasting impressions. This wine annual is very much a collaborative project and we hope that you enjoy the wines that we would happily revisit again and again.
Andrew Caillard MW
Foreword vii
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