Giggly Grapes is an Australian wine site for people who like drinking wine more than they like talking about it. No scores out of 100, no tasting notes that mention wet slate, and no suggestion that you need a cellar to enjoy a Tuesday.
It is written by The Cork Dork, which is a silly name for someone with two decades in Australian liquor retail. That time was spent doing the unglamorous part of wine: buying it, pricing it, stacking it, and answering the same question several thousand times. “I have chicken in the oven and twenty dollars. What do I get?” This site is the long version of that answer.
What we actually do here
- Food and wine pairings. Real dinners, not banquets. Roast chicken, butter chicken, meatloaf, cheesecake, a cheese board at 10pm. What to pour, and what to avoid.
- Grape guides. One grape at a time, in plain English: what it tastes like, where it grows well, what to eat with it.
- Gear reviews. Glasses, decanters, aerators and gadgets, tested at home. We say when something is a shiny coaster.
- Australian wine regions. Where to go, what to drink when you get there, and how long the drive is.
- The wine calorie calculator. Calories, kilojoules and standard drinks for any glass, because the label rarely tells you.
How we choose what to recommend
Every bottle we name is checked as being in stock in Australia on the day the post is written or updated. If it sells out later, our Monday maintenance run swaps it for something else that fits. We would rather recommend a fifteen dollar wine you can actually buy than a famous one you cannot.
Gear is tested before it is reviewed. Where a product is disappointing we say so and explain why, which is why some of our reviews end with “save your money”. That is more useful than another five-star roundup.
Facts about wine, health and alcohol are checked against primary sources: Wine Australia for regional and production facts, and the Australian Department of Health standard drinks guide for anything about alcohol content. If we cannot source a claim, we cut it.
How we make money
Some links on this site are affiliate links, mostly to Just Wines and Amazon Australia. If you buy through one, we earn a small commission and you pay exactly the same price. Every one of those links is marked, and every post that contains one carries a disclosure above the first link, not buried at the bottom.
What that commission does not buy is a good review. Nobody pays us to feature a wine, and we do not accept sponsored posts. If that ever changes, it will be labelled in a way you cannot miss. Our full affiliate disclosure has the detail.
A note on drinking
This is a site about enjoying wine, which means enjoying it sensibly. Australian guidelines suggest no more than ten standard drinks a week and no more than four on any one day. Our calculator will tell you what is actually in your glass. If you are not drinking, the alcohol-free wine guide is for you, and it is one of the most useful things on the site.
Say hello
Corrections, requests and arguments about whether red wine belongs in the fridge are all welcome. We are on Facebook and Pinterest, or you can reply to any edition of the newsletter. If we have got something wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say so.
