|
|
 |
| |
Vineyards in the Barossa Valley |
The turbulent state of Australian wine
The Aussie wine industry is in real trouble
YET again wine is in the news. The TV and newspapers all carry stories on the plight of European winemakers. Thousands of acres of vines are to be dug up in an effort to curb over production. Reporters and pundits explain that the French and other Europeans are losing sales to new world wines.
One-time English rugby union hero, Brain Close – the Sun newspaper’s wine columnist – berates the French and advises them to copy Aussie winemakers and start producing consistent and fruity wines. According to this view the Australian wine industry is in great shape. The truth is different.
There are two strands to Australian wine making, the grape growers (usually small farmers) and the winemakers. Together they vitalised a moribund local wine industry and launched it on to the British and American markets. Wine makers, many of them larger than life characters with good marketing skills developed, large scale wine making. The wines were aimed at new emerging wine markets mainly, the UK and the US. Young drinker’s particularly young women, – large numbers of whom had begun to drink in pubs and clubs, and at home – were targeted.
These new Australian wines were strong and tasted sweeter than traditional wines. For a generation brought up on Coca-Cola they were an ideal alcoholic drink.
Australian wines sales grew and thousands of acres of new vines were planted, with the usual international grape varieties, Chardonnay, Cabernet etc. Today these grapes are no-longer as fashionable as they once were and Australian growers struggle sell their produce.
In the 1960s Wolf Blass – a colourful East German migrant – arrived in Australia’s Barossa Valley and established a wine-making business. By the mid-1970s, faced with limited sales potential in Australia, he began to export. By 2001 The Wolf Blass winery was producing 34 different wines and had a total capacity of 75 million bottles.
Forty years before Blass was a migrant, now he headed one of the world’s biggest wine companies. But, like many other Australian winemakers he was in trouble. Wolf Blass decided to sell up and his company was taken over by the Australian beer company Fosters.
Fosters now own 63 wine brands and produce several hundred different wines. Mostly Australian but with a sprinkling of US, New Zealand, Italian and even a couple of French, including Lanson champagne. Nearly all belonged, until recently to independent wine makers.
Fosters’ portfolio of brands reads like a who’s who of Australian wines. They include most of the UKs top selling Australian wines, Penfolds, Rosemont Estates, Lineman’s and of course Wolf Blass. They do not produce Hardy’s the biggest Australian brand – that’s the property of Constellation Brands, a huge American drinks conglomerate – which recently, due to acquisitions became the biggest wine-maker in the world. The entrepreneurs who created the modern Australian wine industry have been dispossessed. The partnership between growers and wine-makers has dissolved. Contracts are been cancelled and grape-growers have no alternative but to dump their grapes on the open market, driving prices down further. On the supermarket shelves Australian wines are sold with bigger and bigger discounts.
A large part of the Australian wine industry is in the hands of corporate accountants and faces an uncertain future. European wines such as Bordeaux, or Rioja are linked to place, Australian wines are identified with grape varieties and brand names and could be produced in other countries with similar climates but cheaper production costs. Would Jacobs Creek drinkers care if their bottle was produced in Brazil or Thailand instead of Southern Australia? |
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
