Foster's Group, Australia's largest brewer, says the split of its beer and wine divisions was on track for next year, but was silent on growing takeover talk for its profitable $12 billion beer unit.

China's impact on the luxury French wine market has been enormous. The French fine wine index (Liv-100 index) is up by roughly 37% from a year ago, 24% year-to-date, and its upward momentum remains strong.

BREWER and winemaker Foster's Group has posted an annual net loss, and says it remains on track for a possible demerger of its beer and wine businesses in the first half of calendar 2011.

I was lucky enough to visit esteemed chef Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar & Grill on Melbourne's Southbank last Monday. It might just have been my most revered long lunch ever.

The Australian wine industry's $143 million trade with China could be threatened following the discovery of fake Australian wines in China.

Shiraz has been Australia's boon and bane. It has taken blame for the tanking of the market for high-end Australian wine - cursed as the grape that strove to be both fancy and populist at the same time.

Local wine grape growers are struggling. The combination of drought, increasing costs of production and a drop in the grape price are conspiring to make life difficult for local producers.

To develop a taste for wine, keep tasting — and write down as many specifics as you can when you find a wine you like. Is it red or white? What grape? What region? And so on, so that over time you can see a profile of the particular qualities that please you.

THE CANBERRA district is the talk of the wine world after a local red picked up one of the country's most prestigious wine awards. Collector Wines scooped the pool at the Sydney Royal Wine Show, picking up four trophies including the coveted gong for best red wine of show.

THE Australian winegrape crush declined in size in 2010 for the second consecutive year, with the 1.53 million tonne harvest down 12 per cent on 2009. This means the total annual crush is almost 300,000t less than it was two years ago, according to figures released in the Winemakers' Federation of Australia 2010 vintage report.

AS Australia's oldest wine-growing region, the Hunter Valley blends tradition and history with innovation and forward-thinking. Recognised as the world leader in the production of dry white wines, the Hunter's low-alcohol, age-worthy semillon is widely regarded as unique in Australia.

SALES of NSW wines have grown 15 per cent in the past year, yet many Sydneysiders are still refusing to buy them. While sales of NSW bottled wine rose $10.2 million to $69 million in the year to December, sales of NSW wine accounted for just 7 per cent of bottles sold, according to the NSW Wine Strategy.

Now that the harvesters have been safely returned to the shed and pickers have long since moved on, attention has turned to evaluating the size and quality of the 2010 winegrape harvest.

Despite being described by a panel of wine buffs as ''excellent lighter fluid'', Casella Wines' Yellow Tail brand transformed a small family business into one of Australia's largest wine companies in less than a decade.

Fosters has unveiled Treasury Wine Estates, the umbrella branding for its new demerged wine business. “The announcement today does not pre-empt any outcome for our demerger, nor does it represent fundamental change in our business model. It does, however, represent the acceleration of a cultural change for those of us working in the wine business as we return to a dedicated focus on viticulture, wine making and the marketing and sale of one of the world’s most outstanding portfolios,” said Fosters CEO Ian Johnston.

For Australia's wine industry it is the final frontier. But cracking the enormously lucrative Chinese market, with its 200 million customers, has so far proved elusive.

Vineyards occupy a tiny fragment of the Australian landmass: less than 0.02 per cent of the continent. Their psychological importance, though, is wildly disproportionate to their size. The unparalleled export success of Australian wine over the past two decades has won more friends for the nation than sporting conquest, iron ore or marsupials on yellow road signs.

Security is a reluctant purchase in most markets, but not in the self storage market in most cases. The difference is that self storage operators can use security as a marketing point and therefore, devote more attention to security than virtually any other commercial enterprise. The only other industry sectors that place such reliance on security are the military and prison services.

An industry report on private-label foods has underlined the growth and earnings potential the category represents to the nation's leading supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths. Nearly a third of trolleys are expected to be filled with private-label items by 2015.

Supermarket home brands, once the domain of dried spaghetti, cotton buds and other essentials, are getting an extra kick, with Coles and Woolworths set to greatly increase their ranges of beer, wine and spirits.

The US company Constellation Brands, which owns Australia's largest wine business, BRL Hardy Wine, has called for up to 30 voluntary redundancies at its historic Tintara winery in South Australia as it responds to the drawn-out malaise in the international wine industry.

Keeping a watchful eye over his member's prized bottles, Wine Ark chief executive Dean Taylor. Penfolds Grange has topped the list of most collected wines in the country. One of Australia's largest wine cellaring companies Wine Ark has reviewed more than 3 million bottles stored by its members and come up with a list of the top 50 wines Australians love to keep. Awards were given for the most popular wine of each varietal.

There's always been a fond relationship between the legal profession and the grape. Whether as a lubricant for client/firm relations, relief from work stress or an all-consuming hobby, wine holds an irresistible lure for lawyers. Just think of fiction's most famous barrister, Horace Rumpole, propping up Pommeroy's bar while sipping his beloved "Chateau Fleet Street", a cheap wine as dubious in character as the scoundrels he loves to defend.

Penfolds, whose flagship wine is ultra–premium Grange, is the most popular brand among Australian fine wine collectors, one of the country's largest wine storage companies claims.

If you're serious about drinking wine, chances are you're serious about cellaring it too. And if you're serious about storing it, you'll know that under the stairs isn't the best place for your precious collection.

According to a survey run by Australian market intelligence business Food and Wine Insights, women wine drinkers are drinking less, drinking more at home and spending less per bottle at wine retailers and restaurants than men since the global financial crisis (GFC) began.