winebiz

A site firmly focused on evangelising for Australian wines in general, and its own signed-up wineries specifically, is hardly the place for objective criticism or recommendations. But the Australian Wine Online site is also a rich resource with quality reference materials, excellent articles from top contributors and good links to all things Australian on the Web. The site is made up of reports drawn from many sources so quality is variable, but generally quite high since much of the material is drawn from industry sources and official publications.



The homepage features a navigational panel centre screen with more than a dozen links to feature sections of the site. Within most of these navigational choices appear down the left hand edge of the screen, though not exactly the same set as the homepage. The navigation links are repeated at the bottom of longer pages. On some interior pages the side panel disappears and only top and bottom of page links are available.



Updating varies in different areas of the site. A News section appears to be updated several times per month. The rest of the material is largely static.



SPECIAL FEATURES


Winery Search The site also has a section entitled Wineries but it is only a very limited selection of their paid-up members. This is far more useful: a service that will let you query a database on winery name, brand name, state, even wine-maker first or last name. The result is a very comprehensive little fact sheet with contact information, a list of all brands produced, visitor information, export information and a brief company profile. There is also a link to their website if they have one.

Varieties Varietal reports on grapes: Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Semillon, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. These are drawn from the Australian Wine Industry Journal (as is much of the site's content). The reports are excellent: in-depth, crammed with information and complete with tasting notes for several wines in each category. It's odd that two of Australia's most prominent grapes, the Shiraz and Riesling are not included.

Vintage Reports Very thorough overviews of vintages from 1996 to the present, covering all wine producing regions. There is also a drop-down list of specific regions containing detailed reports filed by wineries in that region.

Regions A very odd section which opens with a clickable map of Australia, yet only four out of literally hundreds of regions are highlighted. The four regions that are covered (Barossa, the Lower Hunter Valley, the Mornington Peninsula and Koppamurra) are dealt with in considerable depth, but this is obviously just a collection of re-printed articles rather thoughtlessly thrown together.

Quiz Everyone loves a bit of trivia, and this ten question quiz on the Australian wine scene will be instantly scored.

OTHER FEATURES

There is a Discussion Forum on Australian wines (though it is not terribly active). A section of Feature Stories has an extremely nice piece on wine pricing in restaurants written by Andrew Corrigan MW, but unfortunately it's the only one! Wine Tours links to a commercial operation organising a wide variety of luxury tours in the wine country.