Max Allen

6 days ago | afr.com | Max Allen

May 9, 2025 – 5.00am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Talk about triumphing over the vagaries of fashion. The family-run St Agnes Distillery is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with the release of an ultra-rare brandy created with spirits laid down 50 years ago, when brandy sales were going through the floor.

2 weeks ago | afr.com | Max Allen

Apr 30, 2025 – 5.00am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Surya Palaniappan and Josh Masters aren’t the first Australian couple to fall in love with wine on a trip to Tuscany. Neither are they the first couple to return to Sydney and start a business importing the wines they’ve fallen in love with.

2 weeks ago | afr.com | Max Allen

Apr 25, 2025 – 5.00am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? In 2022, winemaker Wilco Lam reached a crossroads. The winery where he had been working for a decade, Dry River, one of Martinborough’s oldest and most prestigious, was sold. “Under the new ownership, it looked like I’d be losing the team I’d been working really closely with for years,” says Lam.

3 weeks ago | afr.com | Max Allen

Apr 23, 2025 – 5.00am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? I love it when drinks producers push boundaries, try new things, rethink old traditions. The results aren’t always fabulous – I’ve tasted some pretty bizarre concoctions over the years – but they’re always thought-provoking and often delicious.

4 weeks ago | afr.com | Max Allen

Apr 16, 2025 – 5.00am or Subscribe to save articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Likes a digression, does Trevor Gulliver. One minute, our conversation’s happily trotting along a straight wine path, with Gulliver telling me about the claret and burgundy he sells at St John, the Michelin-starred restaurant he co-founded in London in 1994 with chef Fergus Henderson.