Trying to fix the Oz bubble that burst!

Getting my late Saturday night UK newspaper fix I found this article from Tim Atkin. A group of well-known Australian winemakers are starting up a new initiative, but I myself wonder if it is too late?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... -australia

I find that sales of some of the higher-end wines are not too bad here in Alberta but cannot relate to the six pound/fifteen dollar wines as I do not normally seek them out. Plus "buy 2, get 3" does not apply here.

Personally I wouldn't shed many tears if most of the offerings from the big drinks conglomerates were to disappear but it would be sad if the smaller artisan producers of wines with personality were to go to the wall. I suspect that they are very vulnerable at the present time with relatively meagre financial resources and distribution networks. So more initiatives like the First Families could help with producers like these.

Thanks Tim. I am not sure why this thread has not created more attention? There are a lot of Oz wine buyers here. Speak up!

Well, if it's attention you want...

I share Tim's viewpoint. The Aussies have made their own not very comfortable right now bed, and it wouldn't hurt the wine world in any way whatsoever to see all that indiscrimant crap disappear...but you can say the same about a lot of other places where the same applies. (California, Italy, France... )

However, it's a shame that some of the small holders and older family operations have been adversely affected by all this. There are some exceptionally good wines coming out of Australia, and many of them don't get their due attention (and that's in large part because the plonk gets the displays and the ads and the customer attention). Hope they survive all this.

I think/hope that we will see more wines on the market from the smaller boutique wine makers. Le Curio is one set up I have found here in Alberta. The various agency reps will have their work cut out though, I think many retail outlets will carry the same old swill.

Brian Croser, a prominent figure in the SA wine industry, was quoted in the local press yesterday with his take on this. http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/sout ... 5828043314

Croser says, inter alia,

"The biggest problem for the fine wine community is the negative and deteriorating image problem created by the behaviour of the branded commodity wine industry,"

I agree with him completely. Whether it is Australia or some other wine producing country - or for that matter whether it is wine or some other consumer goods industry - the market is likely to experience similar troubles if volume-produced goods dominate. I for one won't weep if we see fewer one-dimensional cheapies being produced, but pulling back the volume of production will cause some major economic heartache amongst producers.

We might say, so what, big business has to wear it. Thing is, the big wine conglomerates consist of large numbers of smaller producers that have been bought up and sewn together like a patchwork quilt. When the big guy goes down, little guys get drowned in the splash.

I share Tim's viewpoint. The Aussies have made their own not very comfortable right now bed, and it wouldn't hurt the wine world in any way whatsoever to see all that indiscrimant crap disappear...but you can say the same about a lot of other places where the same applies. (California, Italy, France... )

However, it's a shame that some of the small holders and older family operations have been adversely affected by all this. There are some exceptionally good wines coming out of Australia, and many of them don't get their due attention (and that's in large part because the plonk gets the displays and the ads and the customer attention). Hope they survive all this.

Agree particularly with your last point Hoke. There are some truly exceptional wines being made there, in some cases really unique and singular wines like some of the really old vine Mataros/Mourvedres and Shirazes like Tahbilk's 1860 vines (or others like the fortifieds from the Rutherglen area) - and it is a shame that so many of those aren't even being picked up by any importers because the wines don't sell between terrible marketing and a perception for a lot of people that Aussie wine is generally mass production critter plonk, or high alcohol juice from the Barossa/McLaren Vale that went out of fashion a while back after totally dominating the higher-end end of the export market. Also hasn't helped that quite a few producers have gone the goopy route after 1998 with Parker favouring that style so much. Greenock Creek is probably the saddest example - some of their older wines - mostly the mid 90s stuff up to 98, and a few from 99/01 I've had were generally fantastic, balanced wines and really unique in their depth and range of flavours. And I recollect opening a 1998 Seven Acre Shiraz a couple of years back at only 12.5% alcohol. These days the wines need a fire extinguisher - don't think anything from their '06 range was under 15.5%, and quite a few bottles were sitting around 18%.

That said it's disappointing how much RMP's words seem to have hit Aussie wine from cooler and more diverse areas like Yarra and Mornington - got to try Mount Mary for the first time a couple of nights ago, and three bottles (the '94 and '98 Quintet and the '96 Pinot) ranged from excellent to seriously outstanding. These were wines Parker went out of his way to really slaughter with some brutal prose (up there with the ESJ writeups) - and there've been plenty of others from similar regions (Torzi Matthews and Mount Langi's Shirazes come to mind) that RMP has damned with terms like 'tart, lean, austere, European-styled' and scores that ensured those wines would be generally hard sells in the US market.

Hopefully this venture will improve things - at the very least bring more of focus and more exposure to the likes of Tyrrell's, Tahbilk, Henschke and similar producers instead of the Shirvingtons and other goop bombs.

Groom wines made it into our local market for the first time last fall. I found them to be excellent wines in the midrange price category. Hopefully we will start to see more imports from Australia similar to these wines.

Salil, the company I worked for brought in Tahbilk wines, and the Geoff Merrill wines as well. Despite the highest quality and unique attributes, it was an extremely tough sell. Even though buyers (both retail and restaurant) appreciated the quality, they balked at the price----all they wanted to talk about were the lowball volume wines!

And those buyers who did try, and put the Tahbilk on the shelf or in the list, were almost always disappointed in the sell-through---for the buying public had already been trained to equate Aussie with fat, glossy plonk.

That was the perception the Aussies pushed; that was the perception they got. Then when they turned to the more upscale wines, the market wouldn't follow them. After a few years my company gave up and let the Tahbilk/Merrill wines go. I was a believer, so I talked to another importer and helped engineer that company to bring in the Tahbilk; they actually took over our in-country inventory.

Then Tahbilk raised their prices rather drastically (!?!?). The importer, after a couple of years of almost zero sales, let the agreement go, and I believe shipped some of the wines back to Australia (the museum releases and the 1860).

Meantime the lowball plonkers kept roaring out at huge volumes---only the prices were so low, many of the people weren't actually making any money, they were just moving it around on the board. Eventually the bubble burst.

As it always does.