Modernist wine author Nick Stock completed his second edition of this utility guide to wine late last year.

Having heard the book had changed dramatically since first published under the authorship of Sydney writer Huon Hooke and Melbourne columnist Ralph Kyte-Powell, I bought a copy.

Nick says his mission with writing this book is to be up-to-date and be relevant to wine buyers about what’s on the shelf.

He says it’s all about the wines and nothing more. “If you require winery ratings I have left that to James Halliday’s Wine Companion which is an incredibly comprehensive dictionary of Australian wines,” he adds.

And Penguin 2010 is not just about Australian wines as was the publisher’s original concept.

However, from the 70s imported wines dominated Australian wine lists until the rise of Australian product during the 80s, and imports fell away significantly again save for Champagne which has kept this country as the 7^th-9^th world ranked consumer for decades.

A new segment of import wine has steadily grown for the past five years, quite broad in content, good value rather than the highly expensive Burgundy and Bordeaux which has always found a select niche.

The Penguin Guide surveys the ultra-modern varietals coming from Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Chile, Argentina and more recently South Africa.

Importeds are about 10 percent of total wine sales, and last month shipments increased by 15 percent.

The greater proportion is Kiwi wine which forces Nick to taste sauvignon wines in great profusion to stay relevant – even though this style is a wine for “sheep followers” rather than for drinkers who think through what they buy.

Nick has a complete section on Champagne, probably one of the most thoroughly published recent reviews on French bubbles for some time.

Curiously his points scores commence at 90, and I wondered if that was his starting point.

When asked if there were poorer champagnes not reviewed in this section, the answer was yes, and really his scoring system is only applauding silver medal level wines and higher, unlike a wine show where there are plenty of bronzes around.

And again like a wine show Nick asserts that he does not know the identity of the wines he tastes until after the notes are written and the score assigned.

It appears that few book authors take this stance – and in conversation with the current writers of the Big Red Wine Book who have the wine label in front of them, the same way as wine drinkers would have it, the assessments are made.

You can draw your own conclusion about the potential level of bias that can creep in with open tasting, but that is not my interest in this review.

Nick spends extra effort to be relevant which therefore means tasting the current vintage wines before each edition straight after the vintage, and this gets a little controversial because the wines are unbottled (tank sampled) at tasting.

His method of achieving this is to visit the region rather than have a pile of ex-tank samples pointed towards his Melbourne tasting bench.

So for the 2010 edition he visited Clare to taste the entire new riesling vintage on site, and repeated that in other regions where this type of pre-publication tasting is important for styles which lose their vintage relevance and drinker interest very quickly (riesling and sauvignon blanc).

The Penguin Guide was once perceived as a value book of value wines. That’s no longer the case because a book called Quaff reviews the bargain basement wines around.

So reading this blog review: http://stubbyholder.blogspot.com/2009/10/penguin-good-australian-wine-guide-2010.html shows how times will change.

The Penguin Guide has a top section on pinot noir (our most expensive red grape varietal). Nick has accessed many rarely reviewed Tasmanian drops which now lead the country in quality as hotter ripening temperatures grip the mainland and dumb down this heat-shy variety.

As a final play Nick promoted the reduction of the Guide’s selling price from $32.95 in 2008 to the current $24.95. http://www.penguin.com.au/lookinside/author-profile.cfm?AuthId=0000006023

Increasingly buyers of Australian wine will see it marketed by region of origin and not multi-regional blends.

And to date there are 61 Australian regions of which the Barossa Valley is most well-known.

But one region to emerge as producing a few per cent of Australia’s best and 15 per cent of super-premium wine is Margaret River.

That position could not be clearer after digesting the results of their 2009 show held last November.

I am astounded by the gold strike. Never before in any Australian regional show has there been such a cluster of gold medals in the wine classes that matter.

That is: chardonnay, cabernet and cabernet blends. Two hero styles recognised internationally.

The 2007-2008 chardonnay class gave up 7 gold, 6 silver, of which Lenton Brae Wilyabrup 2007 (AUD 45) triumphed with top gold and best white of show.

Hot on its heels were Brookland Valley 2008, vasse Felix Heytesbury 2007, Stella Bella 2008, Devil’s Lair 2007, Brettenay Reserve 2008 and Cape Mentelle 2008.

Add to these the four big guns who do not exhibit a Margaret River chardonnay-Leeuwin, Pierro, Cullen (Vanya was a judge) and Moss Wood.

Their recent scores in Jeremy Oliver’s Australian Wine Annual were 93 (2006), 95 (2007), 94 (2007) and 95 (2007) respectively.

Given that the judges included some modern palates: Ben Edwards and Philip Rich (Melbourne) and Tony Harper (Brisbane) it is clear that many of Australia’s best chardonnays come from this region.

And the 2007 and 2008 harvests, vintage conditions and eventual outturn are positively outstanding. Margaret River avoided most of the heat dumped on the Eastern states during this pair of stellar years.

The next boomer of a class was 2007-2008 cabernet sauvignon. The result gave 10 golds, 9 silver-what a thumper of a result; 6-2007 and 4-2008, with Rosabrook 2007 (AUD 25) taking the gong for top gold in the class.

Remember that Fraser Gallop 2007 took a recent trophy in the UK, and they backed up with gold for 2008 also.

Equally important is the cabernet blend class-essentially cabernet blended with merlot.

This class gave 4 golds (2-2007 and 2-2008), 7 silver with Voyager Girt be the Sea 2007 (AUD 24) topping the class for the trophy.

The most intriguing result, not a judging aberration is best cabernet of show-the only gold from the more mature 2005-2006 class, Evans and Tate The Reserve 2006 (AUD 35) took the trophy.

Without demeaning all associated this is an outstanding outcome when 2006 was a disaster vintage in this region, and this company has made such a great wine.

One endearing aspect of Margaret River cabernet is that the good ones age well, develop a terrific backbone of tannin and keep their aromatic herbal overtones over time-hallmark cabernet and rarely disappointing.

Check out the show results-you may never see so many golds at one show again! http://www.margaretriverwine.org.au/documents/2009WineShowResults.pdf

During the past two months there have been reports by German authorities who have used new sophisticated systems to detect the mould inhibitor natamycin in Argentinian and South African wines.

Now this fungicide (also known as pimaricin) is not nasty stuff but it creates concern about what origin wine you’d prefer to drink in future.

Natamycin is registered for cheese products in both the EU and US (FDA approved in 1994) as a mould inhibitor in sliced cheese.

As is usual Australian wine scientists have been pro-active in seeking the nature and cause of these reports and the Australian Wine Research Institute came out on January 20 with some good advice.

“The recent detection of the fungicide natamycin in Argentinean wine sent to Germany serves as a cautionary reminder to all winemakers to be vigilant when purchasing and using additives and processing aids.”

Natamycin is a fungicide that can legally be used in Australia during cheese production and in the production of certain meat products.

It cannot be used in wine making in either Australia nor, we believe, in Argentina.

At the time of writing the origin of this material in some Argentinian wine has not been confirmed, but it has been suggested that oak chips, treated with this antimicrobial agent, might have been the source.

Details of the AWRIs analysis capability to detect natamycin in wine can be found on their website.

Also, with these contamination reports circulating the French cork manufacturer Oeneo was proactive to clear its name earlier this month.

However, the natural cork industry has been remarkably silent, showing its lack of proactivity (too busy falsely chirping about how taint levels have declined).

As a result of recent industry wide concern over the presence of natamycin in a number of South American and South African wines, closure manufacturer Oeneo has completed an extensive study into any possible relationship between its technical closure DIAM and natamycin.

The analysis, completed by leading UK laboratory Campden BRI, concluded that natamycin was not present, at any level, in any DIAM closure analysed.

Oeneo analysed some of the wines in question, and batches of ‘virgin’ DIAM for traces of natamycin. The results were negative for natamycin.

Commenting on the development, DIAM commercial director Dean Banister said: “The moment we were alerted to this issue we requested samples of DIAM closed wines from various winery partners to be analysed.

“There had been unsubstantiated rumours that natural and technical cork closures could be responsible for the levels of natamycin found in the banned South American and South African wines recently banned in Germany.

“Being proactive we have moved swiftly to reassure our customers that DIAM does not contain natamycin at any level.

“We do not use natamycin in the production of DIAM, and have received statements from our suppliers confirming that natamycin is not used at any stage within our tightly controlled supply chain.

“Even if it were present in a supplied raw material, the process used to produce DIAM would eradicate any possible natamycin contamination.”

It’s great news that modern wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk from New Jersey to come down to Australia next April.

This guy has revolutionised online wine retailing from his humble NJ wine shop by connecting with social networks.

All the content and the production have been Gary’s own design over the past five years, the most important being his video Wine Library TV; check it out www.garyvaynerchuk.com

Gary spoke late last year at a large media conference in Spain, and is being courted widely to attend wine conferences and express his secrets of success in receiving over 80,000 hits a day on his social networks.

Such as tweeting to @garyvee, which in US terms translates to a lot of wine sales.

His mission in Oz is to address a social media conference ConnectNow www.connectnow.net.au which runs for three days at Sydney University from April 7.

As part of the proceedings the Australian wine industry thru Wine Australia is running a competition to win an interview date with Gary Vaynerchuk while he is around.

He will also be adding content to his outgoing video clips in the famous Wine Library TV featuring Australian wine people (rather than just brands) which is the social network thing.

Aussies can enter the competition closing March 19 at www.wineaustralia.com and tweet @winehero.