Carmenere is Chile’s biggest claim to mystery wine fame. It was once thought of as a deep purple coloured variant of Merlot that had somehow found a wild and flavoursome new lease of life in Chile, but when a French grape buster by the name of Jean Michel Bousiquot got wind of this, something smelt fishy, or perhaps we should say, it smelt grapey but not as you’d expect it. Boursiquot is a French ampelographer, which means his job is vine identification and in 1994 he travelled to Merlot to discover what this dark coloured Merlot was really all about....

A taste of Sicilia in New Zealand... Italian wine importer Marco Nordio is the new official importer of Benanti wines to New Zealand. He is pictured above (left) with Salvino Benanti at Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington this week, prior to a tasting of two Benanti wines. These are the gateway wines to the Benanti range - and are Sicily's passport to the wine world. Regional Wines & Spirits will soon have Benanti Rovittello in store; this is one of Sicily’s top red wines and most highly regarded from Mt Etna. 2016 Benanti Etna Bianco DOC 12% ABV This is 100% Carricante, was...

Join Joelle for Wine Wednesdays, 4pm to 7pmJoelle Thomson is our resident writer and the Wine Programme Director at Regional Wines & Spirits and every week she runs Wine Wednesday in store, which is a free, fun, low key tasting every week at Regional Wines & Spirits in Elice Street, by the Basin Reserve in Wellington. Tasting starts around 4pm and runs til 7pm every week. Best of all, no bookings are needed. Just turn up, taste an interesting new wine and grab a bargain buy because every wine we taste has a discount for that night only. Regional Wines...

Hats off to Michael, Stephen and the whole team for an excellent Dramfest 2018. Great venue, big crowd but still able to get to the front of each stand to sample the wares. Water stations at the ready, quick fire masterclass sessions, hospitable hosts at the shop and over 300 whiskies in the programme. I missed out on the 25 year old Laphroaig and the new Amrut spectrum but pretty much NZ malts hit my top and hit my bottom scores, with some really crazy bottlings all in between. I worked very hard to search for the best samples on...

Bob Campbell’s Wine Diploma Course is coming back to Wellington for two days this year on Sunday 27 May and Sunday 26 August. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between good wine and great wine, or how to prolong the life of left over wine or why people use decanters, then a one-day wine course in Wellington may be the ideal time and place to find out. Master of Wine Bob Campbell’s Wine Diploma Course is making a come back to the capital after a hiatus of a couple of years, only this time it’s back at his...