A real man is a woman's best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down. He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day.

Of all the wine types there is no more seductive grape than Pinot Noir, maker of the best red wine. With its brilliant ruby colour, complex aromas of earthy summer fruits and silky texture, Pinot Noir is the grape that many find irresistible. While Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay impress with power and dexterity, it is the subtlety and elegance of great Pinot Noir that can soothe the savage beast.

The simple art of finding those special wine labels can needlessly bring on a mild anxiety attack in many inexperienced wine drinkers as they search for the best Australian wines to serve at home. I have seen it happen – the wine drinking equivalent of a fish out of water. The plethora of grapes, countless regions, and abundance of labels leaves our shopper flat-lining, sweating and sometimes almost trembling with fear, all of which in an ever increasing world of grapes, wine regions and labels, is completely understandable. So how do you find that killer wine on the shelf?

It is human nature really – to stick with the tried and true and shy away from new types of wines. Sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir, syrah/shiraz, merlot, Marlborough, Central Otago, Yarra Valley, Barossa Valley.

Silky, lacey, fat, heavy, dense, chewy even rustic. – these are  descriptions of the textural wine club rather than the usual wine talk of cranberries, wet stones and a partridge in a pear tree. While texture is very much the forgotten dimension in a bottle of wine, with flavour king, the bottles I treasure most have always been sublime textural bliss. Sure the wines have been complex – recently a young 1996 Champagne, bristling with sweet, crisp green apple, brioche and almond aromas while a 2006 Martinborough Pinot noir seductive with a black truffle and red cherry perfume. But it is their texture that takes these wines to the next dimension – the Champagne showing a heavenly mixture of crisp vitality with the creaminess of age just beginning to build while the Pinot Noir was pure French silk and satin.

AUSTRALIA will today launch a multi-million-dollar push to try and boost its market share in the booming Chinese wine market. The industry expects the Chinese market to become its biggest customer by 2015.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke has announced a $429,00 0 grant from the government’s Promoting Australian Produce program for Australia’s First Families of Wine (AFFW), a collaboration of high-profile Australian winemakers. The grant is being used to present a series of promotional events in the UK in an effort to bolster Australia’s second largest export market for bottled wine - worth almost $489 million a year.

nese consumers’ growing thirst for premium Western Australian wine has led to a new book profiling top local wineries.Agriculture and Food Minister Terry Redman will tonight launch the ‘Western Australia Wineries’ book, as part of a WA wine masterclass in Shanghai. The publication is printed in Mandarin and features 100 local wineries.

Here in Western Australia the Department of Agriculture and Food is trying to sell off more WA wines. This week representatives are busy plugging local wines at the World Expo in Shanghai.

This is Australia’s highest profile wine flavours style, and arguably its best red wine. The grape is believed to have come to Australia first from its home, Hermitage in the Rhone area of France many years ago. Some believe, again arguably, that due to extensive re-planting in France due to Phylloxera, our older vineyards are more like Hermitage used to be, than that region is today. Some vineyards of Chateau Tahbilk for instance date back over 100 years unchanged (and small amounts of wine are still made from these old grapes.)