Author:
Source:
Date: May 2026
“Warm and very late” seems a contradictory description of a grape harvest, but that indeed describes the 2026 vintage from Tapanappa’s three distinguished site vineyards, a harvest that finished on the 30th of April. After the hottest, driest and earliest vintage in 2025, the 2026 harvest stands in stark contrast.
» Read more about: Vintage 2026 – A Vintage of Contradictions. »
Author:
Source:
Date: Mar 2026
Brian Croser has been in the Australian wine industry for over 50 years. He helped build it. Now he’s watching it struggle — and he’s got a lot to say about why. This is a big conversation. Brian sits down with Brendan Carter from Bottleshock to talk about what’s actually going wrong, what the industry refuses to confront,
» Read more about: The Australian Wine Industry Is in Trouble – Bottleshock »
Author:
Source: Wine Business Magazine
Date: Mar 2026
Highly decorated winemaker Brian Croser ponders the future of the Australian wine industry which he says is held back by a structure that is no longer fit for purpose.
Everyone knows the Australian wine industry is a basket case. We keep telling the world that is the diagnosis. Additionally, the industry projects forlorn hope of any recovery because of the apparent negative change in the global demand for wine.
» Read more about: Wine industry structure ‘no longer fit for purpose’ »
Author: Brian Croser
Source:
Date: May 2025
The word exceptionalism was invented to describe the USA as an economic entity, or at least to describe the way it used to be.
Now the word has morphed to apply to the whim of the weather gods for the 2025 vintage in South Australia.
I have always advocated that every vintage is different and after 56 of them in South Australia and many elsewhere,
Author: Luke Slattery
Source: GoodWeekend - Saturday Age
Date: Dec 2024
Grapes rotting on vines; billions of bottles’ worth of wine sitting in tank farms, wanted by no one. Australia’s inland bulk wine producers are in crisis, causing an image problem for the wider industry.
BRIAN CROSER claps a heavy hand on my shoulder and drags me in from the cold.
Author:
Source:
Date: May 2024
After 55 vintages in Australia, you might surmise I have seen it all. Hot years, cold years, wet years, drought years, big crops, small crops, no crop. In 1983, the “Ash Wednesday” fire year, the fire was followed by a tropical deluge. We harvested no grapes from Clare or Coonawarra. Piccadilly Valley was not yet in production.
Author:
Source: www.jancisrobinson.com
Date: Apr 2024
Brian Croser sends a first-hand report from Tapanappa in the Piccadilly Valley on a small but promising harvest. Above, Croser scrutinizes the Chardonnay grapes in the Tiers Vineyard.
We all know what comes in small packages, but can they be a little bigger than the 2024 vintage from our Tiers,
» Read more about: South Australia 2024 – a view from the Adelaide Hills »
Author:
Source: Wine Business Magazine
Date: Feb 2024
RESPECTED AUSTRALIAN WINEMAKERS BRIAN CROSER AND LOUISA ROSE SHARE THEIR VIEWS ON THE WORLD-RENOWNED AUSTRALIAN WINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE BEING BLED DRY BECAUSE OF EVER-DECREASING FUNDING.
The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) is 70 years old next year.
One of us has been admiring and utilising their work for more than 50 of those 70 years,
Author:
Source: WBM – Australia’s Wine Business Magazine
Date: Jan 2024
by Brian Croser
The Australian wine industry has squandered three decades being confused about the differences between premium and non-premium wine and where the opportunities really lie. Brian Croser reports.
Imagine the world without America and China. I don’t mean their geographic absence, rather imagine after the Australian wine industry’s 1990s growth spurt,
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: May 2023
On 11 April we were yet to begin the harvest for all but a young block of Foggy Hill Pinot Noir that was harvested on 5 April.
In an average year we would have harvested all three of our vineyards by April 11.
After 54 diverse vintages, none the same as any other,
Author: Brian Croser
Source: Jancis Robinson
Date: Apr 2023
Brian Croser of Tapanappa provides the sequel to his report on the nerve-wracking 2023 harvest. Above, the vines at Tapanappa are finally free of the netting that kept the berries safe from the birds.
It is 18 April, a gloriously typical autumn day in the Adelaide Hills.
Author: Brian Croser
Source: Jancis Robinson
Date: Apr 2023
Author: James Halliday Top 100
Source: The Australian
Date: Nov 2022
James Halliday’s Top 100 wines for 2022 have been revealed!
We are thrilled to announce our 2019 Foggy Hill Vineyard DEFINITUS Pinot Noir has made the prestigious list.
2019 Foggy Hill DEFINITUS Pinot Noir
Bramble, briar and black tea aromatics set the scene for a very complex pinot that needs encouragement to release its perfume.
» Read more about: 2019 Foggy Hill Vineyard DEFINITUS Pinot Noir has made James Halliday’s TOP 100 »
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: Nov 2022
WBM, September/October 2022 Issue
SAM (Southern Annular Modulation) is determined to go south again as the Australian spring arrives. In southeastern Australia that means another summer of cool south-easterly winds, generated deep in the Great Southern Ocean, that arrive on our southern shores at the top of the counterclockwise revolving high-pressure systems as they transit from west to east.
» Read more about: And it was all yellow… and green and orange and red and purple »
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: Aug 2022
WBM, July / August Issue
The word sustainability buzzes around the internet incessantly and now rings in my ears, replacing that persistent Leonard Cohen anthem as my new ‘ear worm’. I am about to tread in a place that better angels would avoid, but there are some things about sustainability that need saying.
First and foremost,
» Read more about: Let’s Not Forget Economic Sustainability »
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: Jul 2022
Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard, Photo by Jodie Pilgrim
A distinctive attribute of fine wine is that it endures, reposes in cellars often long after the maker and collector have sipped their last, to re-emerge at family celebrations or in more mercenary circumstance at fine wine auction.
At the auction of a bottle of aged wine,
Author: Brian Croser
Source:
Date: Jul 2022
Tapanappa, Brian Croser
Timing is the well-spring of opportunity.
My generation, the “Boomers” have enjoyed pretty good timing and I know I have, and I am grateful.
My career as a vigneron began with my training in the later 60’s and early 70’s, paralleling the birth and development of the modern Australian wine matrix.
» Read more about: Timing is the well spring of opportunity »
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: Jul 2022
The CSIRO has sort of announced the redundancy of at least three senior scientists, experts and researchers in grapevine genetics and physiology at the Adelaide CSIRO offices located at the Waite Research Institute.
A further number of technical support staff and rumour has it more to come, have been or will be laid off in parallel.
Author: Brian Croser
Source: WBM
Date: Jul 2022
Since 1929, a levy derived support system for the Australian wine community’s research and promotional programs has generated very large benefits.
The core rationale for these levies is that they are used to address market failure, those activities that have identifiable benefits for the whole grape and wine community and the nation, that otherwise would not be funded by enterprise.
» Read more about: Levy Reform In The Australian Wine Community »
Author: Brian Croser
Source:
Date: May 2022
Vignerons the world over, live with the caprice of nature, the weather God in particular.
The optimal result of a bountiful crop of outstanding quality grapes is a small sliver on the roulette wheel of weather dictated outcomes through a seven-month growing season, regardless of provenance.
More often the combination of a small crop of outstanding quality creates a consumer demand that can’t be met,
Author: Brian Croser
Source:
Date: Apr 2022
Image of the current harvest at Foggy Hill Vineyard by Jodie Pilgrim.
It’s 3 pm on the first of April, April Fool’s Day, but nobody anywhere in the world is in prankish mode.
In the Piccadilly Valley in the centre of the Adelaide Hills it is 17 °C, the maximum temperature of this mid-autumn day.
Author: Brian Croser
Source:
Date: Mar 2022
Veteran of 52 vintages and the varying weather they have exhibited, Brian Croser, of Tapanappa in South Australia, wonders whether they’re in for a cooler period.
For the avoidance of doubt and of a fusillade of online scorn and abuse, what I am about to describe is the beginning of a cool vintage against a backdrop of inexorably increasing temperatures.
» Read more about: A century of South Australian climate change »
Author: Anne Krebiehl MW
Source: Falstaff
Date: Feb 2022
As a pioneer of Australian cool-climate viticulture, Brian Croser was the first to plant Chardonnay in the Adelaide Hills – now his latest vintage is out.
Few people can claim pioneer status in the 21st century but Brian Croser can: he was the first to plant vines in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills in 1979 – in the Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley.
» Read more about: Tapanappa Unveils Latest Chardonnay Vintage »
Author: Tim Atkin
Source: Tim Atkin MW
Date: Oct 2021
Listen to Brian’s live podcast “Cork Talk” with Tim Atkins MW on Brian’s thoughts about Australian fine wine and the future of fine wine world:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XSErrxRTCziVWJziLbmjw?si=57ErAnmzQRmdN3oUGtzt-A
» Read more about: Live podcast “Cork Talk” with Tim Atkins MW »
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