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Andrew Nugent from the Bird in Hand winery in McLaren
Vale in Australia |
Between a rock and a hard place
How can we avoid bland mass-produced wines and where can we go to find the more interesting varieties ?
WINE-MAKING has changed. Today’s wine market is part
of a globalised industry. Thanks to skillful supermarket wine
buyers, choosy consumers – guided by the nation’s
wine writers – have access to the finest wines in the world.
Mass-produced New World wines are, of course the best and Australia
is the world’s leading wine producer.
Old world wine nations – France, Italy, Germany and Spain
– are finished unless they adapt to the new reality. But
it seems they do not understand the modern wine market. They
persist in believing that wine is a natural product – made
by farming types. Marketing for them is an impenetrable mystery.
If only they’d follow the example of countries like Chile
and offer tax breaks and grants to multi-national wine producers.
Production costs will fall, profits rise. Old low yielding vines
and quirky local grape varieties can be dug up and all those
silly rules and regulations ignored.
Instead they waste money on grants for small farmers. This is
the British wine industry’s jaundiced view of today’s
wine world as described in various wine articles. It is of course
complete nonsense.
Eighty per cent of the world’s wine is produced and consumed
locally.
Australian wine consumption peaked in 1988 and nearly all the
wine drunk is local and cheap.
Kiwis taking part in a tasting of New Zealand wines in Islington,
told us their wine is not available, in Australian cities. It
is only a slight exaggeration to say, that the globalised wine
market starts near Land’s End and finishes at the last
wine shelve before John O’ Groats. It is largely an UK
phenomenon.
The Bordeaux region of France produces and sells more wine than
all the Australian wine regions combined. Italy produces and
exports more wine than any other country.
French, German and Spanish wine makers also export more wine
than the Aussies. Australian wine export volume ranks alongside
Portugal and Bulgaria. Its great success comes not through dominating
a global wine market but from its ability to sell cheap mass
produced wine, at inflated prices to British consumers.
Until recently, UK wine shelves contained a good range of interesting
wines, produced by small – mainly French – farmer
wine makers. These hand- crafted wines cost more than mass blended
bottles. With the arrival of Australian wines onto the UK market
this began to change.
Initially, Aussie wines were made by relatively small, independent
companies. But as market share grew they began to consolidate
and most were taken over by big drinks companies. Supermarkets
were beginning to dominate UK wine retailing and wanted to cut
costs, by buying from big drinks companies who were already
supplying a range of beverages.
Many in the UK wine industry suspected French suppliers were
taking advantage and dumping poor quality wine onto the British
market. The combination of Supermarkets, big business and resentful
wine writers proved irresistible.
Hand-crafted wines – including Australian ones – began
to disappear off the shelves, replaced by mass-produced wines,
cleverly marketed and subject to rave reviews in the press.
These wines may be more consistent in quality than hand-crafted
wines but overall they are bland, predictable and overpriced.
The British wine drinker keen to trade up to better quality
wine is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Although there are hundreds of small independent producers –
including some English – trying to sell reasonably priced,
interesting wines, they are frozen out of the UK market.
Jamie Goode, wine critic of the Sunday Express writing on his
website, the Wine Anorak before he was a national wine writer,
stated: “Wine drinkers need to be told the truth…The
wines recommended in most newspapers are the best of a largely
indifferent bunch. At what point are the leading wine writers
going to turn round and tell their readers that they’ve
been leading them down a dead end?”.
The situation is not all doom and gloom; there are a few hardy
individuals struggling to bring the world’s best hand crafted
wine to the nations wine drinkers. Try these two - both based
in central London.
For powerful fruit driven and concentrated Aussie wine visit
www.austvine.com
or call 0845 8387566.
For more artisan-style European wine, with a little bit of finesse
visit www.agentsforwine.com
or call 020 7486 5353. |
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