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Row sparked over Aussie export warning
Producers have expressed dismay at a warning over poor-quality Australian wine exports.
Following last month’s comments from Treasury Wine Estates chief executive David Dearie over poor-quality and low-priced Australian wine, a number of winemakers and Australian brand owners have spoken out.
Dearie said that the quality of inexpensive exports off the back of a rain-soaked and high-volume harvest had the potential to do long-term damage to the image of the Australian wine industry.
Kate Giles, business development manager at Byrne & Smith Wines in Adelaide, commented: “Many of the wines produced this vintage are stunning. As in any vintage, there are highs and lows, and perhaps the water and mould factor will have some impact, but to write off the majority of production is unethical and incorrect.”
She added: “My 11 wines are looking pretty good. I hope many others are too, because the reputation of Australian Wine is not the preserve of one company, but of the nation’s producers.”
Steve Knight, a lecturer in Australia at Bond University on Australia’s Gold Coast, also expressed his anger.
“This from a so called ‘industry leader’ who makes bald and unsubstantiated comments to push his own brand barrow, at a time when most of the industry is working hard to improve our export position and maximise $/litre return,” he wrote on thedrinksbusiness.com.
Not everyone disagreed with Dearie, however. A reader, known only as “Jerry”, wrote on db’s site: “Dearie’s comments are correct – there is millions of litres on the bulk market that are not worth bottling but will end up in a bulk shipment somewhere further eroding the status of Australian wine. We should be talking about the real issues in the wine industry and wine quality from 2011 is one of them.”
Further, Justin Knock MW, managing director of the Purple Hand Wine Consultancy, pointed out that almost all grape growing regions suffered record levels of rainfall in 2010/11 which brought high disease pressure and dilution.
He also wrote on thedrinksbusiness.com that it was important to be transparent about the problems faced and that there should be stricter quality controls when it comes to Australia’s bulk wine production.
“Wine Australia must run a tighter rule than ever over bulk exports or Australia’s image is up for tarnishing and consumers will lose out,” he noted.
“I’d rather see this poor bottom 10% of Australian production disappear down the drain than a wine-lovers throat,” he added, referring to around 300,000 tons of grapes that “should not have been picked”.
Meanwhile, Julia Angove, PR manager for Wine Australia, told db that the organisation had been particularly attentive when inspecting wine quality this year.
“Wine Australia maintains a panel of highly qualified wine inspectors who are charged with testing wine to ensure it is sound and merchantable.”
She continued, “The wine inspection panel has been particularly vigilant this year throughout the testing process given the challenges that the 2011 vintage provided.”
The upcoming September edition of the drinks business includes an extensive article on Australia’s attempt to improve its upmarket positioning through education as well as comments from leading winemakers and brand owners on the state of the 2011 vintage and resulting wines.
It seems both parties are going too far in both directions. Winemakers should be ready to pull sub-standard wine out of the system if they want to be perceived as makers of premium product and lesders of the community should have a little discretion on how they speak to their industry. The over-excitement caused by this doesn’t speak well for how it will all turn out.
Unfortunately the so called leaders of the wine industry have a habit of speaking out before they have fully thought through how their words might be taken either as a driest quote or out of context. A few years ago Fosters were reported through ABC Rural as saying that they weren’t paying more than $300 a tonne for Riverland Chardonnay for the following vintage (the figure might not be quite right but it will do). This was reported in the UK as Fosters weren’t going to pay any more than $300 a tonne for Chardonnay for the following vintage. The insinuation was “anywhere”. Can you imagine how that felt if you were a producer anywhere other than the Riverland? And furthermore it eroded the UK’s perception of Australian Chardonnay when they were being told that the country’s largest producer thought Aussie Chardonnay wasn’t worth more than $300 a tonne.
More recently the WFA reported that the 2011 vintage saw an increase of a tiny (my word) 1% on the 2010 Vintage. However, this was reported in the UK in Decanter as “another huge vintage”. When in fact the 2010 was less than the previous year. Again Australia was being cast in a poor light.
What David Dearie says is essentially right but it needs to be qualified by saying that a lot of good and sometimes excellent wines were made from the 2011 vintage. An illustration is an Adelaide Hills Sauv Blanc 2011 that recently won a Gold Medal at a regional wine show. And the Adelaide Hills was one of the wettest places in 2011!
Do what now? With the likes of Yellow Tail, and other sub-$5 “bargain” wines from the likes of Jacobs Creek and Hardy’s dominating overseas sales for years, NOW you’re worried about damaging Australia’s reputation as a quality wine producer? That ship sailed long ago. What you’re talking about is repairing the damage, not protecting the reputation.
We had a small export business to Continental Europe for 10 years.We’ve closed our doors, as with the financial meltdown,increased base costs, due to the value of the australian dollar, increased costs for the customer in freight, plus the lowering of quality in the product provided,from the Riverland our distributors have chosen to go elsewhere, to domestic in europe, plus South America, plus, the Kiwis stole a march on us with Sauv.Blanc The AWBC let things slip, when they started to OK bulk shipments of wine, Continental Europe is awash with Australian wine with brandnames that don’t even exist here-resultant in eroding the brand “Australia”-the AWBC can approve a wine-what happens to the wine, in Europe, they’ve got no say in it. The consumer in continental Europe has turned away from our products-check the statistic numbers plus the average per litre price to different countries-2011 might have been an ordinary vintage, but, the ‘mould’ has set in about 2-3 years ago.So we worry about 2011?-we’re still selling 2009/2010 wines.
Philip White last month:
“…while the vintage crush total was a much bigger figure than anybody predicted, given the oversupply and rotten vintage, the 1.6 million tonnes crushed includes large amounts of juice which was reduced to concentrate to bolster other batches of fruit which could not ripen. And much of the rest of the crush will make wine so rotten it cannot be cleaned up sufficiently for sale anyway. So the 1.6 million tonnes is not an indicator of how much potable wine was made, but an indicator of how much bad fruit was picked.
“Let me reiterate: vast fields of rotten, mouldy, brown pus was indeed picked. I watched it picked, and watched winemakers in many regions struggle to know how to deal with bins of machine-harvested mildewed and botrytised grapes that turned to slurry before they reached the crusher. ”
…
“So where are we? In spite of all the deserted and uprooted vineyards, and the vast amount of the 2011 crop being used for concentrate, it is now evident that the Australian wine lake is about the same size it was a couple of years ago. The biggest difference is the quality: it’s worse. Around 40-45 million cases worth of wine was made from fruit which should have been cut to the ground and left; those vineyards should go.”
http://drinkster.blogspot.com/2011/08/vintage-2011-2nd-wettest-in-oz-history.html