Another interesting article this week in Epicure the food & drink lift out in Melbournes Age
The Australian wine industry could become a victim of its own successful marketing. By Felicity Carter.
Remember when Monty Python made jokes about Chateau Chunder? When the words "Australian wine" were code for "undrinkable"? Critics don't make fun of us any more. These days, they stick the knife in.
"Where is the excitement that Australia used to provide?" wrote English wine correspondent Tim Atkins recently in The Observer.
"At the lower end of the market, Aussie wines are in danger of becoming the new liebfraumilch: bland, confected and boring. Our retail shelves are dominated by virtually interchangeable brands, most of which are overpriced."
Or this: "It's time for the Australian wine industry to wake up and smell the bad wine," from Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher in The Wall Street Journal.
"We bring a huge amount of goodwill toward these wines, which in many cases are old friends. But they have gone downhill, and fast."
Does it matter what wine critics think? A stroll through the average American wine store reveals aisles crammed with Yellow Tail, while six of the top 10 wines in the UK are Australian.
Advertisement AdvertisementHazel Murphy, the former CEO of the Australian Wine Bureau in London, says Australia should not only worry about what critics are saying, but also about what they're not saying.
"It's not just the negative comments from English critics," she says. "Some aren't mentioning Australian wines at all any more."
Murphy is credited with introducing Australian wines to the UK. She says Australia is now in the position France was when Australia came along. The French ignored the critics.
"Look what happened to them. It's not at crisis point yet, but Australia has to listen."
In the spirit of listening, The Age rang Tim Atkins. Despite his stinging words, he likes Australian wines - some of them, anyway.
"I'm a child of the Australian revolution," he says. "When I came into wine writing there was an unspoken assumption that France was the best. Australia broke up that cosy assumption."
Although Atkins wants it known he admires wines such as Penfolds and Peter Lehmann, he says he's hearing complaints about Australian wines.
"The big companies are producing some pretty awful wines," he says.
"Australia doesn't produce faulty wines, but it's the blandness which is almost depressing. In the under-£7 ($A17) market, individuality has almost disappeared."
Petaluma winemaker Brian Croser has long warned that Australia is pigeonholing itself as the producer of interchangeable commercial wines.
"We used to be a country that overdelivered on price points," he says.
"But it's not based on quality any more."
"I dispute that," says Stephen Strachan, chief executive of the Winemakers Federation.
"I think the quality is better than it was last year. It's an area where the industry is continuously improving and where Australia is a world-beater."
What about the criticisms that commercial wines are losing their individuality? Industry stalwart Len Evans says homogeneity is almost inevitable in a highly competitive market that's pumping out large volumes of wines at the same price point.
"An irrigation chardonnay is an irrigation chardonnay," he says.
"But they're very good value for money, and that's the success of brands."
Australia's ability to build reliable, value-for-money brands created its export success in the first place.
Commercial brands kicked off a revolution by using simple labels on bottles filled with reliable, pleasant wine. Brands took wine off the top shelf and made it into a drink that everybody, not just a select few, could enjoy.
But the brand impetus is now changing the very nature of wine. Take Beringer Blass's new Cartwheel range, developed after the company decided its portfolio needed some Margaret River wines.
The packaging is lively, the taste is pleasant and they're good value, at under $20 a bottle. None of that happened by accident. The name "Cartwheel" came out of market research, with consumers connecting the word to fun.
The wines came out of research, too. Beringer Blass has a technologist who analysed the taste preferences of consumer focus groups, developed a biochemical profile and used it to create a recipe for the value-end range. A winemaker was then flown from the Barossa to Margaret River to make it.
Depending on how successful the brand becomes, Beringer Blass might even build a Cartwheel winery. It's reverse-engineered wine, if you like.
That's only the beginning. According to Jamie O'Dell, managing director of Beringer Blass, the day is coming when some Australian brands won't necessarily have Australian fruit in their bottle.
"Why wouldn't a brand like Yellow (a big-selling sparkling wine) be made in France from French fruit, if it's sold in France?" he says.
The day of the virtual wine, that's not tied to place or person, has arrived. Wine is now just another alcoholic beverage, interchangeable with beer or spirits.
No surprises there: most of the wine industry's big players are brewers and distillers, such as Beringer Blass' parent company Foster's, or Lion Nathan and Constellation. The wine landscape has also become a homogenised place that's dominated by big players, and will become more so once Foster's has absorbed Southcorp.
There will be more corporatisation of wine, more marketing, more focus groups and less individuality. Not only that, but the big companies have a presence in multiple markets, leading to a cross-fertilisation of marketing and winemaking techniques. Globalisation is making wine across the world more homogeneous.
And here's the thing. If a country like Chile can produce the same type of wine at a lower cost, they could erode Australia's market share.
There is a way out.
"There hasn't been, in my mind, nearly enough emphasis on premium Australian wine," says O'Dell.
"We have very differentiated regions which we're proud of. Coonawarra, Margaret River, the Hunter Valley. Correctly marketed, they could become iconic in their type."
O'Dell says Foster's wants Southcorp for its premium wine portfolio. It makes sense.
The way to keep people buying your cheaper products is, paradoxically enough, to offer them more expensive ones, because the high end adds lustre to the lower end. Penfolds' Koonunga Hill range has credibility from being part of the same stable as Penfolds Grange.
"We need to show that Australia is different because it makes great wines which have real character," says Croser.
"The production that goes into the improvement of fine wine trickles down to the improvement of commodity wine."
Australia does, of course, have many fine wines that are already in high demand. Auction house Langton's will unveil the updated Classification of Australian Wine at Christie's in London in July.
The Classification is Australia's unofficial honour roll, and director Andrew Caillard says 11 more wines have made it to the "exceptional" category.
The Australian Wine Export Council has also just launched an international marketing initiative aimed at telling the world how distinctive Australian wines are.
The timing couldn't be better. As figures released by the Australian Winemakers Federation show, Australia hasn't done a good job of telling its fine wine story.
While export sales of bulk wine and popular wine have risen dramatically in four years, sales in the $10 and above category haven't budged. At the top end, people still want French and Italian wines.
The big companies recognise the challenge. Orlando Wyndham now offers a Reserve range of Jacob's Creek and is looking to develop a super-premium offering.
That's to ensure that when wine consumers trade up, they keep reaching for Jacob's Creek.
Beringer's O'Dell is not averse to using taste technology to create a luxury wine. "There's a case for us understanding more about consumer taste," he says.
"It sounds like a test tube, but it's not. It's understanding the taste profile that people want and then making it through the choice of vineyards and the way you process it."
But can a blatantly commercial approach to creating brands work at the luxury end of the market? Great wine - like great art - has historically been an expression of individuality, not consumer research.
In the end, the job of creating great wine will probably come down to individuals like Rick Kinzbrunner of Giaconda. In 1980 Kinzbrunner bought a vineyard at Beechworth. He didn't have much cash and held down a part-time job while digging holes and grafting vines.
"It took a good 10 vintages before I got recognition," he says.
And now? Although Giaconda only produces about 2500 cases a year, wine buffs around the world will travel to Australia to find them. "Wine people are interested," Kinzbrunner says.
"They travel a lot and talk a lot, and the word can spread."
Giaconda isn't about to produce any more. "You lose your attention to detail and lose your wine quality," he says
Kinzbrunner believes wine reflects the personality of the person who made it, and talks about a recent trip to Burgundy.
"One winemaker was loud and extroverted; one was intelligent and quiet and withdrawn, but a complex character underneath it; and one was really technical, with lots of shiny machines."
He says the wines of the first were big and bold; the wines of the second took time to open up, but were interesting when they did; while the third were modern. Kinzbrunner is clear that if a winemaker has the courage to combine traditional methods with uncompromising attention to detail, the world will beat a path to the winery door.
"Someone who can produce exceptional wines won't find it all that hard," he says.
There are signs that other Kinzbrunners are emerging. Harvey Steiman, the editor-at-large of the American Wine Spectator, says he already sees more winemakers looking to make exceptional wines.
"In Australia there's an impetus from small wineries who already have a vineyard," he says. "They've been selling their grapes to Southcorp and now they're saying, 'Dammit! Let's make some wines ourselves'."
Steiman thinks it's a healthy impulse. "I think in five years there will be a shortage of fine wine from Australia," he says.
What does this all mean for the wine drinker - sorry, consumer? There's a chance, if we play our cards right, that Australia might undergo a fine wine renaissance, with better, more distinctive wines appearing. Of course, commercialism works at the top end as well, so prices will rise.
And at the commercial end? More of the same. Much more.