Fine wine profile: Bruce Tyrrell

He talks to Graham Holter about his view of the fine wine market, the challenges it faces and why great wines are not monsters.

How has the global recession affected the fortunes of premium wine exporters?

I don’t think anyone in the world isn’t feeling the pinch at the moment. It’s slowed down for wines that aren’t perhaps very high end. The great wines are probably holding their own. The $150 wines that were given 98 by Robert Parker and were never worth that are struggling, but truly great wines perform all the time.

The proverbial US$100 Cab from Napa is lying unsold in warehouses as US drinkers trade down – happily, it seems – to $10 Malbecs from Argentina. Is this simply a recessionary blip or a harbinger of a long-term trend?

I don’t think it’s a long-term trend. The top 10% of earners over the last 20 years have got used to a certain lifestyle and if they have still got a job, they’re not actually changing their lifestyle that much. Maybe they’re not buying as many bottles, but they have still got aspirations to get back to where they were.

I had a couple of wines selling at A$40 and I brought them back to A$30 and sales have gone up dramatically. A$30 seems to be a bit of a barrier. But our cellar door average continues to rise: A$1,200 a case is not a problem – throw the black Amex on the counter and it’s all done. There’s still a lot of people out there with a lot of money.

Is enough being done to persuade consumers to climb the quality ladder?

Probably not. But at the top end of the market there are still plenty of journalists, and the internet has made writers like Jancis Robinson MW and James Halliday more accessible. To be honest I find now that a write-up from a good website gives you much more coverage than if you’re in the paper.

Given the proliferation of winemaking technology, which is raising all boats in terms of quality, how can fine wine producers differentiate their offer?

It’s interesting – we’re making better wine now using a hand press! The thing that defines fine wine, in winemaking, is the attention to detail from the winemaker. If you’re going to go home at 6pm during vintage, you’re not going to get fine wine, the very best. It’s the same in the vineyard. You’ve got to be out there to make sure you don’t miss the right time to pick by a day. I think that’s the difference.

On the retailing side that’s why getting fine wine to the consumer is hard, because there’s been this reduction in the number of retailers. Yes, supermarkets get wine to a lot of people, but by jeez they dumb it down.

Everyone repeats the mantra “education is the key”. But do consumers really want to know more? 

Christ yes! Anywhere you put on a masterclass, boom – it’s full. You look at the sip-and-spit shows where people wander round and taste everyone’s wine – people have no idea what they’ve tasted. But put on a masterclass – they sit, and they learn. I was at a Decanter event hosted by Anthony Rose and was sitting next to a young couple, and you could see the lights go on. Suddenly they could understand the difference between a £5 wine and a £20 wine. The best opportunity we have is to put a glass of wine in people’s hands. We underestimate our consumers sometimes.

Which market is most exciting for premium exports?

China. It’s a fascinating market. In places like the USA or Australia, you go there and there is an accepted route to market. In China that doesn’t really fit. It’s a bit of a Wild West market, which makes it a huge amount of fun. There is a market for very good wine, and wine at every level. There’s a fair-sized middle class in China and it’s growing rapidly. There are a lot of people there with a lot of money, who want to improve their lot, and who want to be seen to be improving their lot.

Can multinational corporations succeed in the fine wine world?

Yes. In fact a very big winery, or a medium to large winery, has the advantage of having the technical back-up, the laboratories and the research team, the technicians that run their bottling line so the wine is bottled under perfect conditions. In some smaller wineries the wines are buggered up with bottling.

Len Evans once said that the Foster’s group will revere Grange, and will look after Grange, and probably lift the quality another notch. However they will never come up with the next one, unless they get a renegade like Max Schubert within the company. Max was told not to make it. With the corporate structures these days, who knows if that could happen again.

What role do regional specialities, like Hunter Valley Semillon, play in the premium wine trade?

I think every region does a lot of varieties quite well, but they normally only do one thing uniquely. We make Semillon here in the Hunter differently to anywhere else in the world and make wines that are unique. The other thing about great wine is it has to perform in the bottle. It can’t be brilliant for the first five years and then fall over. Great wine, you open after 20 years and think “bugger – I wish I had left that a bit longer”.

Should there be a more stringent set of rules regarding the usage of fine wine terminology like “reserve”?

We’ve always used Winemaker’s Selection, and still do. But if you bullshit the wine drinking public, they stop buying your wine. If you’re using the word “reserve” to position a wine above its intrinsic quality level, the public will see through it.

Is fine wine at risk of becoming a category purely for investors and the very rich?

Yes. I was lucky enough to be here in the 70s and 80s when we could drink things like 1962 La Tâche for 20 bucks. During the last World Cup we were discussing who could afford to buy en primeur 2005 Latour for $1,000 and we heard that the Italian goalkeeper was earning €65,000 a week. He could have it on his cornflakes if he wants.

My son and his mates drink some of the very best wines but they drink them very occasionally. I hope the Italian goalkeeper develops a great palate. 

Are you looking forward to experiencing Ribera del Duero?

Yes, I haven’t been. I was going three or four years ago – we’d been to Vinexpo. We’d started to see what was coming out of there and the improvement. Unfortunately at the last minute something happened and I had to go home and I missed it. I hear there may be a tasting at Vega Sicilia, which is something I’d give my right arm for. I like the Spanish style – it’s spicy and it’s clean.

What messages are you hoping to get across at Fine Wine 2010?

Firstly to reinforce the point that fine wine must perform in the bottle. You see these 99 out of 100 Parker wines that are undrinkable after 10 years because they were too big and out of balance when they were made. The great wines are fine, they’re not monsters – they have got to have finesse and it’s a duty of our industry to find the really best bits of vineyard, and get the best out of them, and make sure the wines they produce are in front of the world. Because otherwise we’re just breweries.

 

Graham Holter, 11.02.10