Bright flavours, fresh and light in style - and lighter in alcohol too with 9% ABV. Sauvignon Blanc is well suited to lower alcohol wines because it's so intense in flavour and this lively wine expresses that with its tropical fruit aromas, fresh herb tastes and its fresh zesty acidity, which adds balance and length of taste.

A great wine to drink when you want less alcohol but still want to enjoy a drink or two. That little bit less alcohol makes a big difference... and here's a tasty example which is also dry in style with 5 grams residual sugar (that's natural sugar from the grapes, retained from stopping the fermentation early). 

The Vasse Felix Filius Chardonnay is pale straw with a green tinge in the glass. The nose is lifted, elegant and complex with honey nougat, pineapple and lemon notes. The palate is restrained and complex with some creaminess coupled with natural acidity. Notes of lemon pith with hints of lime and toasty vanilla carry on to a long, dry finish.

Grange is Australia's most collectible wine on the auction market and is listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It was first created in the 1950s by the late Max Schubert, winemaker at Penfolds, whose aim was to create a Shiraz to end all Shirazes. His wine was controversial when first tasted with others at the winery but has since grown to become a liquid expression of South Australia's hot climate, its most planted grape variety and winemaking with all the bells and whistles. It's always youthful when first bottled and can age for decades, in the correct cellaring conditions. 

"Strongly marked, as always, by its 100% American oak elevage, the 2017 Grange backs up cedar and vanilla notes with ample blackberry and cassis fruit. Full bodied, ripe and decadently creamy, it's loaded with substance, concentration and rich, but, in the context of Grange, a relatively light and elegant finish. Only the seventh ever Grange to be exclusively Shiraz, it originates from Barossa Valley (86%) and McLaren Vale (14%); Shiraz from other growing regions in South Australia failed to make the grade this year."

Rating 96/100 Joe Czerwinski

Drinking date from 2023 to 2040

This Grenache, Shiraz, Mouvedre show a classical bouquet of blackberry, raspberry, spice, and cocoa. The palate is full and round with concentrated dark fruits, keen acid and silky tannins. Winemaker Corey Ryan "cut his teeth? at Henschke where he worked for ten years.

Here's a red fruited, perfumed Grenache from Australia with a light touch and a refreshing backbone of acidity adding depth and length to this wine. It is made from certified organic vineyard planted in 1946, dry grown in red loamy clay with ironstone over deep limestone. It has spicy aromas, concentrated flavours of red and a note of wild thyme and white pepper. 

The grapes in this wine were all hand picked, given 65 per cent whole bunch fermentation with some carbonic maceration and all fermented with wild yeasts. It was aged in French barriques then bottled unfined and unfiltered. It has a modest alcohol content of 12.2 % ABV.

We have small volumes of Ochota Barrels wines in store at Regional. Get in quick.

Ripe powerful aromas of blackberries combine with black olives and spice in this great expression of Cabernet Sauvignon from South Australia. The wine is deep crimson with aromas of lifted berries, spicy oak and a medium body.

A keeper for at least a decade and also drinks well now, decanted for two to three hours and served in large glasses to accentuate its ripe dark fruity flavour spectrum.

Langmeil is owned by the Lindner family, which has been making wine for six generations in the Barossa Valley.

Pirrimimma was the first winery in Australia to grow the thick skinned Petit Verdot grape.

It's renowned for being an early budding, late ripening red grape with thick skins and powerful depth of colour, flavour and weight. This late ripening dark skinned grape is originally thought to come from Bordeaux in south west France where it can often struggle to ripen fully, hence it is most commonly used as a blending component to add depth to wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Ironically, it ripens best when it is least needed, as Master of Wine Jancis Robinson writes in the bible of grape varieties, Wine Grapes. 

In the warmest, driest best years, all of the grapes that struggle to ripen (Cabernets and Petit Verdot in particular) all tend to ripen well. Another good reason for seeking out good quality Bordeaux in dry vintages.

Which leads us to the Southern Hemisphere and to South Australia where Pirramimma Wines is based and this lovely red comes from.

Noble Riesling from the King Valley in Victoria.

Fresh lifted aromatics and classic botrytis characters like orange marmalade, citrus and honey, the complexity, richness and elegance of this wine make it a delicious partner to desserts as well as cheese platters.

One of Australian wine's great collector's pieces. This smooth, soft and structured red is made from Grenache, Mataro (also known as Mourvedre) and Alicante Bouchet. The grapes were fermented with their skins to gain maximum colour (which says a lot, since Alicante Bouchet is a red fleshed 'teinturier' grape). The result is a super likeable, spicy and flavoursome red with a full body and layers of baking spice, red fruit and dried fruit aromas. 

An icon wine from a maverick trend setting winery.

Rockford Wines' legacy

Rockford Wines is an icon itself and a relatively new one, established in 1971 by Robert O'Callaghan, who has forged a reputation for preserving winemaking tradition and saving many of the world's oldest grape vines from being pulled up in the Australian Government's vine pull schemes of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Rockford vintage shed houses equipment from 50 to 100 years ago, which was discarded by other wineries as modernisation took over.

From the winery...

Our Mackenzie William Riesling is named after our eldest grandson. Our Eden Valley Riesling is delicately picked from our longstanding vines planted in the 1960s, and 1980s, and from our cherished, deep-rooted 1890s vines – believed to be some of the oldest in Australia. Each batch of fruit bestows its unique attributes, creating quintessential Eden Valley citrus and minerally characteristics which our region is so well known for, and a complexity that ensures our dry style’s impressive length of finish.

This wine is a deep red with a bright magenta hue. On the nose there are vibrant aromatics of red and black berry fruits, a lift of violet florals, clove spice and mixed garden herbs. The palate is dominated by a lively burst of berry fruits, which are well framed by fine, powdery tannins. Juicy plum and blackberry flavours persist through the finish, with sweet spice to close

Volumes of small and quality is high of this supple, smooth and savoury Gamay from the Adelaide Hills winery, Ochota Barrels.  Fresh red fruit flavours are held together in a medium bodied, dry red wine made from vines planted in 1985 in the Piccadilly Valley. This is a concentrated red from a quirky grape planted in a climate that is well suited to it and made with care and attention. 

We have small volumes of Ochota Barrels wines in store at Regional. Get in quick. 

Mitolo's Nessus Shiraz is a rich, dark and smooth wine from McLaren Vale, South Australia. This impressive wine is all about rich, ripe, dark fruit flavours held captive in a soft and smooth Shiraz with layers of complex spicy notes and a hint of that characteristic peppery taste we know and love in great Shiraz. 

A bargain at more than this price and exceptional drinking for now or the next two to three years.

Buy at least two bottles.