Admiring the vines
Studying hard in class
Dinnertime!
Relaxing at Stella Bella
Fabulous Views!
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Stella Bella Scholarship 2007
Well where do you start, I suppose it should be at the beginning.
The scholarship was created by Stella Bella in partnership with the Australian Wine Bureau and Alliance Wine. The aim of the scholarship is to educate some of the top UK sommeliers about Western Australian wines. It gives a unique opportunity to work with the winemakers and viticulturists at Stella Bella, whilst being able to taste all the top wines produced in the region. The classroom activities took place in the Margaret River Centre for Wine Excellence and was backed up by many field visits.
The scholarship lasted ten days including traveling and the amount of activities packed into such a short time made it the wine trip of a lifetime.
I have been on a few wine education trips and quite a few jollies! This was by far the best! A typical day started at 6 a.m. and finished at 2 a.m. Whilst in Margaret River we visited many of the leading wineries, explored the region point to point, tasted and wrote notes on over 180 wines, spent time at the winery and in a number of different vineyard sites, where all the processes were explained in depth. We had lectures and practical exercises on the influence and use of oak, blending wine, viticulture practices and emerging ideas. Studied the main grape varieties and the styles of wine they can produce, had a vertical tasting of the Suckfizzle wines as well as a blind tasting of the top wines from the Region - not to mention an open session discussing the best ways to market Western Australian wines in the U.K. On the purely fun side we had a 3 hour cliff top hike, went surfing (twice for some including myself), canoed up the Margaret River, swam in the Indian Ocean at dawn & midnight, had a few barbies (barbeques), ran over the odd Kangaroo (not pleasant for either party), went shopping, had a few dinners, drank a bit, visited Freemantle and the Little Creatures Brewery, shopped again, got lost in Perth, met the local police and shopped again in Dubai.
The above paragraph doesn’t really do the trip justice, the word ‘awesome’ was used frequently by Charlotte one of our hosts and it describes perfectly the whole experience. I hope some of the photographs will help convey the stunning scenery.
The wines of Stella Bella are exceptionally high quality from Skuttlebutt to Stella Bella to Suckfizzle. This came out in the blind tasting where, without exception, the Stella Bella wines were voted as either the best in group or in the top selection.
The lasting impression from Stella Bella was one of passion and dedication to their art—this passion was obvious in every member of the team. They did not have an issue with their wines being tasted alongside any of the others from the region, they were simply more interested in producing the best possible examples of wine they could in their own style. |
