I’ve spent much of this issue focusing on two very important aspects of Australian wine as it is today, the Barossa Valley and the Australian wine auction market. Neither of which, incidentally, were anywhere near as important ten years ago as they are right now. How things have changed! A recent trip to the Barossa Valley Vintage Festival was one of the most illuminating and exciting wine visits I have ever taken in Australia. For with the recovery of the region’s wine industry and the rediscovery of its wine identity has come a tangible reawakening of its unique cultural qualities, of which wine is but a single, if central, aspect. As a region and a community the Barossa offers a very special opportunity for travellers to enjoy the sort of cultural experience that we Australians might presently associate with more fashionable but not necessarily more interesting destinations in Europe. The Barossa’s renaissance speaks volumes about Australia’s place in the world of wine and should give confidence to the entire length and breadth of Australia’s wine industry. The Barossa feature in this issue looks it at the reasons behind its emergence from a chequered period of recent history into what should become a golden age for the region. Anyone interested in the secondary wine market could be forgiven for thinking it’s become a little more crowded than it was just five or so years ago when there was just a single wine auctioneer in each of the major capitals. Not entirely without justification, Stewart Langton reckons that he’s paved the way for others to make hay as a fresh crop of auctioneers exploit the market his company has developed. In this issue I talk to all the major players in the auction market to give you the information to make the important choices. And speaking of wine auctions, it’s a delight as ever to welcome the latest edition of Langton’s Australian Fine Wine Investment Guide, the occasionally outspoken bi-annual mouthpiece of Andrew Caillard and Stewart Langton. I’m delighted that my book is listed amongst the recommended guides to Australian wine and especially pleased that the guide reports that my ‘wine rankings are interesting, but difficult to relate to the secondary market at times.’ Thank you, gentlemen. If I allocated my rankings in response to auction prices rather than how good I thought the wines actually were, I should be in another job. You only have to look at the prices certain wines regularly achieve at auction to immediately understand that they depend on many factors other than quality alone. Jeremy Oliver.
