Rolling Pin Pies and Cakes Queenscliff 40 Hesse Street, Queenscliff, Victoria, 3225 03 52 581 533 Officially judged Australia's Best Pie Maker 2013, Rolling Pin Pies and Cakes Queenscliff has taken the humble meat pie to new heights. The famous local bakery has appeared twice on Channel Nine's Today Show and recently featured in the Herald Sun's 'Victoria's Top 100 Food Experiences'.Walk in to either Ocean Grove or Queenscliff bakeries and you will be greeted by an exciting selection of gourmet pies baked to golden perfection, mouth-watering cakes and slices, and a huge range of sandwiches, rolls, wraps, toasted Turkish breads and great coffee.You are spoilt for choice with over 15 different flavoured pies, including jumbo chunky beef (judged Australia's Best Pie), country lamb and rosemary, and their famous breakfast pie (judged Australia's Best Brekkie Pie). Or why not try one of their meat and vegetable, vegetarian wholemeal or Bombay pasties, all of which placed first in their respective categories at the Great Aussie Pastie Competition.If you have a sweet tooth you will be treated to an array of guilty pleasures.

Try the Lemon Meringue Pie or their famous Beesting. For the kids you can't go past a cupcake, a miss piggie biscuit or a dinosaur shortbread. Content: Rolling Pin Pies & Cakes2012 Penfolds GrangeCredit where it is due, this is a stonking great Grange from a great vintage.2013 Giaconda ChardonnayThe leader of the stunning Aussie Chardonnay pack…!2013 John Duval Wines EligoOf course, the man – John Duval – has long been a legend in his own time in the Barossa. Now his eponymous label and this glorious Shiraz are right up there too.2015 Quartz Reef Pinot Noir, Central OtagoRudi Bauer hits pay dirt with his opulent, sexy 2015 Pinot Noir from his biodynamically farmed Bendigo vineyard.2013 Bell Hill Pinot Noir, North Canterbury Bell Hill’s unique limestone slope in North Canterbury continues to yield one of New Zealand’s finest Pinot Noirs. Still a newly established site in the big scheme of things, the future of this already highly sought-after wine is very exciting indeed.2013 Giesen The Fuder Chardonnay, MarlboroughThis was a new release from Giesen, who is now producing a range of these “fuder” (BIG barrel) aged, single vineyard wines.

Coming from what is one of Marlborough’s most exciting vineyards – the Clayvin Vineyard – I’ve had this Chardonnay half a dozen times now, and it has never failed to blow me away!2014 John Duval PlexusYep, John Duval gets two shout-outs from me this year, both for quality and for value. I could not believe the cost of this humbly priced Shiraz, Grenache, Mourvedre blend. Offering amazing quality and cellaring potential, I urge readers to stock up!!  2014 Josef Chromy ChardonnayAs the new-school Aussie Chardonnays continue on their upwards trajectory, they unfortunately get a bit pricey. But, I’m happy to say there is still a lot of value to be found, like this beauty from Tasmania.2014 Sons of Eden Freya RieslingFor lovers of Riesling, this young-gun operation has fashioned a particularly pretty, fragrant and harmonious expression, which just happens to be a great value.2007 Harlan Estate, Napa ValleyThe final wine I tried in a tasting of Napa Valley’s best 2007 Cabernets, this rich, seductive, multi-layered behemoth was mind-blowing great, even at this very youthful stage.1990 Chateau MargauxOur major shareholder cracked open this beauty during one of my visits to Singapore in 2016.

It was a magic way to remember the recently departed Paul Pontallier, who took over as the Managing Director of Chateau Margaux this same year. RIP.2012 Marcassin Chardonnay Marcassin Vineyard, SonomaWow – satiny, seductive and so decadently good. best wine train tour Jim Barry’s The ArmaghI just love it when the story of a vineyard unfolds in the glass throughout a retrospective tasting. famous red wine brands in usaThis vineyard has such a singular, beautiful tale to tell.wine in china 2015 Best Dinner of 2016: Our first Thanksgiving Day dinner in our new homeMy husband is British, my first daughter was born in Tokyo and the second in Singapore, so until this year, all our Thanksgivings living abroad were rather half-hearted affairs. glass of wine transparent

A friend of mine generously gave us a Rudd Farms Heritage Turkey, which made the occasion extra special. The bird was delicious, a bit gamey in fact, and reminded me of the pheasants I would cook for my husband back in London when he was just my boyfriend (donated to the staff by the chairman on Corney & Barrow, after his shooting expeditions). names of wines from a to zI served it with 2006 Mongeard-Mugneret Grands Echezeaux, which was just magic.best wine estate wedding venuesBlackSquare announces an important wave of top-tier, enterprise-level winery clients adopting its Blackboxx direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine ecommerce platform. New international enterprise clients include such industry leaders as Australia’s Brown Brothers, in Canada the Okanagan Valley’s Hester Creek Estate Winery as well as Ontario’s Vineland Estates Winery, and Singapore’s Wine Export Initiative.

“We’ve already proven our business value by powering ecommerce for small and medium-sized producers. This wave of top-class enterprise producers now validates Blackboxx’s value to our largest market segment, global wineries,” said BlackSquare CEO, Matthew Protti. “It’s impressive that in 2014’s first quarter, we added new Blackboxx enterprise clients that produce over 3 million cases of wine annually,” Protti added. These new Blackboxx clients follow Australia’s McWilliam’s Wine Group, who in 2013 became the first global winery to adopt enterprise-level cloud ecommerce across their many wine brands. Their Blackboxx-powered ecommerce site, one of the first fully-responsive tablet, desktop and mobile websites in the global wine industry, won Wine Communicators of Australia’s 2013 ‘Best Wine Website or App award’. The flexibility of the Blackboxx cloud-based platform, and BlackSquare’s growing reputation for ‘best practices’ leadership in DTC ecommerce, are highlighted by the range of newly-involved wineries:

Brown Brothers is ranked among Australia’s top twenty largest wineries, and is one of the country’s “First Families of Wine”. They are widely recognized for leadership in DTC ecommerce wine sales and best practices. EBusiness Program Leader Andrew Ross explained the decision to adopt the platform, stating, “Blackboxx has the enterprise-level quality we needed to power up innovation in our marketing and ecommerce within Australia. BlackSquare can tackle everything we needed, end to end, allowing us to focus on top marketing practices.” Ross added, “Blackboxx is tailored to the wine industry, offering unique ecommerce capabilities and flexibility, now and for the future.” BlackSquare President David Gluzman said, “We’re proud to be Brown Brothers’ ecommerce platform of choice. They are among the most innovative wineries and really grasp the power of ecommerce to build their business.” Vineland Estates Winery is a popular destination winery in Niagara and has built one of Ontario’s largest, most successful wine clubs.

According to David Hulley, Vineland’s director of customer experience, Blackboxx stood out among several other options: “We shopped long and hard before choosing the Blackboxx platform. It was the clear choice for Vineland because it adapts to our business needs. Every other system we’ve seen would require us changing the fundamental principles of our mature and successful operation. The fact that Blackboxx makes us ‘future-proof’ and delivers totally mobile commerce was also instrumental in our choice.” Hester Creek Estate Winery on the South Okanagan’s Golden Mile Bench is a large, long-established winery property that hosts visitors in Mediterranean-styled accommodation. Wine Export Initiative of Singapore is an online retailer representing over 36 Australian wineries. The company enables DTC sales into various Asian countries by drawing on Blackboxx’s unique multi-currency, multi-lingual and multi-jurisdictional capabilities. The wine industry lags in both ecommerce innovation and cloud computing adoption, but the compelling benefits of these are motivating wineries to move to SaaS.

Meanwhile, traditional vendors have not accommodated this shift in technology and business practices, opening up a large market opportunity for BlackSquare. Wineries traditionally pay high capital costs for basic ecommerce with significant ongoing expenses and complex usage, and rarely with recurring revenue capability. This approach has doomed wine ecommerce because it fails to generate a significant return on investment. With cloud computing and SaaS-based ecommerce such as Blackboxx, upfront costs are modest, ongoing costs are low, and fees are incurred in lockstep with ecommerce success, thus aligning interests of enterprise and supplier. Profitable, recurring ecommerce is not simply a website or an ecommerce cart; it’s a whole new line of business. Blackboxx was developed to deliver low-stress, “in the box” ecommerce from marketing to fulfillment and shipping to logistics, with back-end business analytics on every sale and customer interaction. Since 2010, Canadian-based BlackSquare has been powering the ecommerce revolution for the global wine and spirits industry, and serves clients on four continents from offices in Canada and Australia.