News

We recently received a new publication “Advances in Wine Science” – celebrating 50 years of the Australian Wine Research Institute. The book reviews current knowledge of chemicals contributing to wine aroma, the nature of tannins, role of yeast and bacteria in modulating wine flavour, olfaction and taste, cork taint, and effect of wine on health,…

The Swan Valley has historically been a source of sustenance. The Swan Valley was a bountiful location for the aboriginal tribes of the coastal plain prior to the British colonisation. The British expedition of 1827 recognised the Swan Valley as having superior soils and a general abundance of freshwater, with the advantage of an open…

I first became interested in studying “Wine Science” when I was about 15. Attending a typical Christian Brothers school it was clear that the point of your education was to accumulate maximum marks to get accepted into the university course offering the best career prospects. Unfortunately I didn’t have any commercial instincts and I was…

Wine shows have become ubiquitous in Australia. It seems there are more awards than wines! The wine shows started out as a section in the agricultural shows – just like the cattle, cake baking, spun yarn, and poultry. The purpose of the shows was to promote improvement in all forms of agricultural endeavour, with the…

It is an almost universally held belief in the wine industry that quality and quantity are related. Great wines can only be produced from vineyards yielding low quantities of fruit, and conversely high yielding vineyards would produce low quality grapes. There is ample empirical evidence to suggest such a relationship is true, with most of…

The use of oak in winemaking is a tradition, as the most successful means of storage and transport, and to influence the taste of the wine. It is the later role that modern winemakers incorporate into the craft of winemaking. Coopering is described by Kilby in “The Cooper and His Trade” as an ancient trade.…

In the recent The Age guide to Summer Drinking the authors recommended avoiding any white grape starting with a “v”. This sort of smart Alec nonsense really was disappointing. Frankly these wine writers don’t deserve the title because they clearly haven’t made any effort to investigate the merit of at least one of the “v”s…

When John went to Roseworthy Ag College to study oenology in the early eighties the very learned professor had students draw flow diagrams in blue and red ink for white and red grapes. The grapes flowed from the crusher to the press then fermenter and so on. This gave our callow youth an understanding of…

We see a lot written about the mystery of wine quality or the “art” of winemaking. Well, we can state that without good grapes no winemaker stands a chance. In fact we believe that the quality potential of our wines start at 100 per cent when the fruit is picked and we aim to make…

Faber Vineyard was established in 1997 by John Griffiths and his wife Jane Micallef. Faber is the Latin word for craft. We chose the name Faber because we believe winemaking is a craft, a skill learnt but never perfected. Our dream is to grow regional distinctive grapes and craft wines that are rich and flavoursome and complement…