THE NEW WINES OF THE NEW WORLD
‘Benefits of wine unproven!’, ‘Wine can make you feel skinny, wise, and happy!’, ‘Beware! Red wine can lead to headaches!’
If I had an Australian dollar for every time I came across an article that claimed to have decoded wine and its effects, I would start a winery of my own. Personal experience aside, the claim that drinking wine makes you feel happy seems to have a scientific basis—curse that damn dopamine! The jury is still out, though, on wine’s health benefits. In my search for definitive answers—and the best wines—I embarked on a journey through the southern region of Australia this fall. Europe may have had a head start in viticulture and winemaking, but Australia is no bush-leaguer.
A MOUTHFUL OF MCLAREN VALE
‘FIVE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD DRINK WINE EVERY DAY!’,
Australia has 65 distinct wine regions, and its winemakers aren’t afraid to break the mould. “Here, no technique goes untested and no convention goes unchallenged… we have a proud tradition of starting new traditions,” says Andreas Clark, CEO of Wine Australia. Nowhere is this aversion to convention more evident than the bewilderingly imaginative d’Arenberg Cube in McLaren Vale, a 45-minute drive from Adelaide in the state of South Australia.
The fourth-generation winemaker at d’Arenberg Wines (), Chester Osborn, first pitched the idea for the Cube—a five-storeyed museum and cellar door—in 2003. It was promptly laughed at by his family. The project finally took off in 2014 and finished three years later. Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, Osborn literally sways from end to end
