Some wonderful comments past & present on 100 Best Australian Wines
As I rev up for a 100 Best Australian Wines Roadshow, planned for early 2023, it is extremely exciting to reflect on this initiative’s past and also its present. Here are two wonderful passages, one from Richard Hemming MW, writing in jancisrobinson.com and a second from Roger Jones, writing an article in today’s The Buyer.
A past quote about 100 Best Australian Wines.
Is this the best Australian Tasting Ever? (Richard Hemming MW, www.jancisrobinson.com)
The stars aligned in several ways for Matthew Jukes’ 100 Best Australian Wines tasting. Firstly, the room in Australia House was a veritable who’s who of the British wine trade, attended by dozens of top writers, buyers, importers, and retailers, all of whom were tasting keenly – no mean feat for spoilt professionals who so often get access to great wine from all over the world. Secondly, the wines themselves were a pantheon of celestial names, hand-picked by Matthew Jukes for this annual guide, designed to be the best-in-class examples for their price, variety, and origin – and which must also be available in the UK. Finally, and most importantly, the wines themselves were absolutely stellar. I can’t remember an Australian tasting with such a consistently high strike rate, both from those with a reputation to uphold and from new names.
Present quotes about 100 Best Australian Wines.
Roger Jones writes in The Buyer…
The 17th edition of Matthew Jukes’ 100 Best Australian Wines was back with a bang last week after a two-year absence. Held at Australia House, the London tasting showcased wine critic Jukes’ top wines that are available in the UK, across a range of categories from sparkling to fortified. 100 Best Australian Wines is an essential event, not only for the trade and consumers alike but also for winemakers to judge their own status against their peers. Matthew Jukes is the Crocodile Dundee of the Australian wine industry searching for that rare or new wine that may have been hidden in the ‘outback’, under a rock. The only criteria to be in the report is that every wine on the list must be available in the UK, although many will be in tiny numbers, even more so once he starts his roadshow across the UK highlighting these wines to his fan club. For those of you who have not seen sight of these reports in the past, let me assure you they are a wine collector’s dream, with each wine listed given the full Jukes attention with detailed notes not only on the wine but often with great background information, and certainly this year it became a full 34-page document. Here is a link to the full article. THE BUYER 100 BEST
Justin Keay’s Best of 2022 in The Buyer mentions…
Anyone who had doubts that Australia is at the top of its winemaking game will have had them dispelled by Matthew Jukes’s superb 100 Best Australian Wines tasting at Australia House, the first to be held there since Covid. As Matthew reminded me – and demonstrated in his impressively detailed tasting booklet – this selection was the result of three years work.
