A Featured Australian Shiraz Article

Stanthorpe - Queenslands Wine Capital

Stanthorpe is a picturesque town known for its amazing national parks, historical buildings and wineries, located on the New England Highway close to the New South Wales border. It has become more popular over the last few years as a tourist destination with so many rural activities and sightseeing options available.

There are a large number of bed and breakfasts if you are stopping over for a night or two, and self contained cottages are available for a longer stay. Black Creek Mountain Cabins are a unique accommodation option, located five minutes south of Stanthorpe.

The locals of Stanthorpe experience the four seasons of the year, which is not common to Queensland. Winter is a fantastic time to visit, and with low temperatures, a popular retreat is in front of a roaring fireplace with local wine and great food. Make sure you pack your scarf and mittens as there is even the occasional snowfall.

With such high altitudes the frosts are perfect for excellent grape harvests, and perfect wines. There are over 50 wineries in the Stanthorpe district on the Granite Belt as well as stone fruit and apple orchards.

There is so much to see and do in Stanthorpe, with vineyards such as Bald Mountain Vineyards, Aventine Wines and Kooroomba Vineyard and lavender farm all deserving a visit. North of Stanthorpe is also the famous Old Caves winery. Winery tours are popular, and each year in August the famous Jazz in the Vineyard is attended by almost 1000 people each year. Opera in the Vineyard, held in May, also promises to be an amazing cultural experience.

In February, the Apple and Grape festival is held every second year, along with the Food and Wine Festival. With Mediterranean food on the main menu and a favourite with the locals, it has all ingredients for a memorable cuisine experience.

You cant miss the Historical Society Museum, located in the town centre, with a shearers hut, preserved school and goal, along with interesting artefacts from the mid 1800's.

The four major national parks surrounding the city provide an unspoilt wilderness beckoning you to drive further on and explore at your own pace. Easily accessible by car, each park offers a contrasting experience.

Girraween National Park is perfect for bushwalkers of all levels, with picturesque walking trails ranging from 25 minutes to six hour hikes. With massive granite rock formations, wildflowers in Spring and eucalypt forests, it is a nature lovers dream. Girraween is easy to find if you take the turnoff from the New England Highway at Wyberba.

Bald Rock National Park is famous for its name, Bald Rock, which is Australia's largest exposed granite rock. With magnificent views, rock formations and bushwalks this park is accessible from the Mt Lindsey Highway, 39 km from Stanthorpe. Camping areas are available.

Boonoo Boonoo National Park is well known for its river system and impressive waterfall. Take a picnic lunch and relax for an afternoon by the rock pool that is above the cascading falls, and surrounded by open forest and lush vegetation.

Sundown National Park is located on the Queensland/New South Wales border. You can leave your car at the entrance of the park and then travel by foot to experience the remote wilderness. There are steep gorges, rainforest and waterways and there are places to picnic, camp, swim and just relax and enjoy the amazing birdlife and beauty of the park. You can also explore the impressive Red Rock Falls, Mt Lofty, Red Rock Gorge and Carpenter Gully.

More than just a stopover, Stanthorpe is a unique and relaxing destination and perfect for your car hire holiday.

Short Review on Australian Shiraz

Stanthorpe - Queenslands Wine Capital


Stanthorpe is a picturesque town known for its amazing national parks, historical buildings and wineries, located on the New England Highway close to ...


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Australian Shiraz Items For Viewing

The FTD Daylight Bouquet - Standard


All of our favorite flowers from the garden are in this gorgeous bouquet. Arranged in a glass vase, the bouquet contains orange lilies, pink tulips, white roses, yellow orchids, purple freesia and more. An impressive gift for any occasion. B19-3466S


Price: 145.99 USD



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Sweet Wine For Your Reading Pleasure

Restaurant Wine List Review - Wine Taste, Why Keep It a Secret?

We?re your customers. That?s right, we pay your bills ? so listen up. Why can?t we understand your wine list? We know what we like, but your wine list doesn?t give us a clue. Ok, so we?re not wine knowledgeable, don?t hate us because we?d still like some wine that we?ll enjoy. We really like wine, especially with a good meal. But we don?t want to study the stuff so we can understand your wine list and know how a wine will taste.

Count these up: 1) County of Origin, 2) Producer, 3) Vintage date, 4) Appellation, 5) Variety of Grape, 6) Vineyard, and 7) season the grapes were picked (Ice Wine, Late Harvest, etc.). That?s right, seven items of information must be catalogued and understood to give us a chance at knowing what a wine tastes like when reading your traditional wine list. Keep six of these, change the seventh, and all bets are off on how the wine will taste. We get as confused as a blind dog in a meat house.

If you hear a lot of us saying, ?Just give me a glass of your house white,? you have a wine list problem. Hey, we?re not too cheap to buy a bottle of wine; we just don?t want to make a sizeable investment in a bottle we may not like. So why keep us in the dark, trying to decipher your wine list code? Why not tell us how the wine tastes, and we?ll pop for a bottle or two.

Expensive restaurants once solved this problem with a sommelier whose job it was to discern our taste preference, analyze the menu we?ve ordered, and recommend a wine we would enjoy with our meal. There are precious few qualified sommeliers around these days, especially in affordable restaurants. When your wait staff recommends, it?s usually wines they like.

The only thing worse than a traditional wine list is one with ?winese? puffery descriptions.
Example: ?This wine has hints of dark tree fruit, root vegetable, autumn leaves, pears, berries and vanilla, with a strong finish of cigar box.? Amazing! Do you have something that tastes like wine?

In January of 1980, Grey Moss Inn in Grey Forrest, Texas, implemented the ?Customer Friendly Wine List.? Customers could order wines by the way they taste for the first time ever. The wine list was divided into categories:

1) Slightly Sweet, 2) Light, Soft, 3) Light, Crisp, Fruity, 3) Fuller, Rounded, Dry,
4) Elegance, Finesse, 5) Robust, Complex, Full Flavored 6) After Dinner Sweet

Red, white and rose wines all appeared in most categories. Some wines like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon appeared under as many as three categories. As customers, we knew that by staying within a category we could be experimental ordering wine and still enjoy our selection.

Jill Goolden published the book, The Taste of Wine, around 1990 , and about a decade later Fiona Beckett published Wines by Style. The thesis of these books is to classify wine by how it tastes, rather than the seven criteria above. These books led to a rash of wine lists offering up their contents by taste profile ? but these glimmering lights seem to be flickering out.

If you lack the confidence to develop a wine list for your restaurant that lets us order wines by the way they taste, hire a qualified wine consultant, or work closely with your vendors to achieve your goal. Then watch your wines sales grow from glasses to bottles, as we feel comfortable ordering from your list.

Another short Sweet Wine review

Restaurant Wine List Review - Wine Taste, Why Keep It a Secret?


We?re your customers. That?s right, we pay your bills ? so listen up. Why can?t we understand your wine list? We know what we like, but your wine list...


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Featured Sweet Wine Items

Blaufraenkisch Ausbruch


The Blaufraenkisch grape is cultivated in Hungary and picked at a very late stage, when the berries are shrunk. The result is this full-bodied, sweet red wine which is recommended as a delicious aperitif, but also to accompany fine beef in a creamy sauce. Blaufraenkisch Ausbruch is a perfect gift for the sweet wine-lovers. 102660 102660


Price: 23.99 USD



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