Just grow grapevines, have wine, spirit and grape seed oil. Fertile soil is the best thing to have! If you grow your vines well and...live in a fruit fly free state (Try saying that after a six pack of coopers stout) like SA bogan, you can easily produce 60 kilos of grapes per vine once the vine is mature...4 years. From each kilo of grapes, you'll easily make 1/2 a litre of wine and...if you know what you are doing, you can have a alcohol resistant strain of yeast that will allow you to produce wine of about 16 - 18% which you can distill to produce good spirit. Then, if you know your quercus (Oak tree) varieties, you can add oak chips to give your spirit or wine a decent flavour. You don't need oak casks to make good spirit or wine, just knowledge of how much oak chip to add to your wine. If you can work-out the surface area of an oak barrel, you can come close to knowing how much chip to add to your wine. It's just surface area, plus time, and a taste now and then of your brew. Edit! PS If you distill wine to make spirit make sure you do so at the correct temperature, otherwise "you" will go blind!
We've been talking on another thread about Green Label being discontinued. Are you certain that your friend didn't mean Green label?
On cigars, the Cubans are way over rated, some of the Dominicans and Hondurans are better. I have brought Cigars into the country in the past, sometimes you get slugged, not others, depends on if they catch them. I have NEVER been charged duty/tax when I bring them in from overseas when I bring them in personally. I have wine, whiskey and other spirits stacked, but they are more for my own purposes. One thing I will tell you, is RIEDEL glasses, unless you have tried them, you simply cannot understand the difference that they make to the wine/spirit, its just amazing. If you get the chance you REALLY have to try them, do a test, use the Riedel and a "normal" glass with the same content and give it a shot. However make sure you use the right glass as they are varietal specific and the wrong glass can totally change the wine almost to the point of making it undrinkable due to the acidic taste
Still Green Label available at Dan Murphy's. I'm thinking about buying a case to offload in a decade or so/drink if the world goes to shit.
No - overrated and bastardised in my opinion. If you like to drink it sure go ahead but not for investment. Also picked up this - ME LIKE
Hype is certainly the word. I've tried a few Grange vintages and always been disappointed given how much people go on about Grange. By contrast, I've had some absolutely fantastic wines in the $30-$40/bottle range and for the same money I'd take a case of Freycinet Pinot Noir over a single bottle of Grange any day. (That's assuming someone is going to drink the wine at some point rather than just speculating on the price though.)
Bought three bottles of Grange back in the 90s. Properly cellared for over almost 15 years at a professional wine storage facility at stupid cost. The $30 bottles of Penfolds bought at the same time tasted better, and there was 12 bottles of them for each bottle of Grange. Biggest. Disappointment. Ever. Thinking of selling the third and last bottle unopened.
Bummer. A couple of times I have shouted myself a +20YO bottle of Grange. Best wine to have ever passed my lips. I fully appreciate why they are priced as they are, but still don't don't think it's worth the money.
Best wine I managed to cellar has been 97/98 Penfolds 389s, and Richmond Grove cab savs from the 90s. Hitting an 04 right now.
Right now I'm hitting a 2007 WA cleanskin shiraz which I picked up this week at Liquorland for $14.50 per 6-bottle case. :lol: I know I'll pay for it in the morning..... just as I did this morning. :|
I've been brewing my own beer, wine and Port for the past 12 months. I reckon the skill would come in handy should the world end. A valuable barter chip. Although the huge amount of clean water required will be a detriment to the supply. I haven't paid more than 65cents/beer for over a year. Ive calculated the cost of buying beer vs home brewing the difference per 24 beers is about $20. Over 12 months, Ive brewed over 480L of beer and wine. At an average cost of $2.20/L (beer and wine) I've managed to save about $700 on beer and about $2500 on wine! Commercial wine is way more expensive than commercial beer... Can you guess where the difference goes?
For interest, if you are brewing a standard 5% 375mL premium beer then $17.18 of your $20/case price difference is the effect of the alcohol excise. Remember how VB recently went back to full strength (4.9%) after being 4.6% since ~2009? Observant VB drinkers have probably also seen that, after the initial promotional period, the case price at Dan Murphy's/First Choice has increased from ~$36 to ~$40/case. Well $3.57 of that is purely due to the 0.3% increase in alcohol content with $1.32 due to the half-yearly automatic indexation of the excise rates. Hence, before getting pissed off at the higher case price keep in mind that Foster's have been slugged with $4.89 in extra taxes in less than six months. Edit: Just noticed you're actually in Canada rather than Australia.
The 2008 Grange received a score of 100 out of 100 from influential magazine Wine Advocate, the first Grange to achieve a perfect score in 40 years. $669 a bottle @ Dan Murphies. http://www.smh.com.au/business/dan-murphys-pops-cork-on-grange-price-war-20130502-2itra.html
Want a surefire consistent performer go for Whindam estate Bin 555. Bottle after Bottle, year after 'hic' year...you can't get a 'hic' more 'hic' consistent..... wait... what are we talking about? buuuurp
