I thought the hard part was going to be making the wine’, bemoans a new entrant to Australian wine production. ‘Then I have to package it, then sell it, but before I can do either, I have to gut through all the red tape.’ Lucky he’s Australian. Lucky the Australian government doesn’t take a hands-on role in wine regulation, as European governments have done readily for centuries. But he does have a point. There are still plenty of people in Australia whose job is to tell the wine maker and marketer what they may or may not do. The most obvious cases relate to wine labels… Whichever way you look at it, the cynical Australian would dip the lid to the brilliant negotiating prowess of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation. In a deal which more resembles an old-fashioned rout than a true bargaining process, the Australian wine industry has begun to rid itself of the most worthless of its generic name terms in turn for a multitude of concessions from the EEC which have not only prised open the door to that most lucrative market but have put out the welcome mat as well. Our accomplished negotiators have managed to put a hold on the issue of removing the names that really grieve and should go – like Champagne, Chablis, Burgundy, Graves, Port, Sauternes and Sherry – to an unspecified future date which will take into account their ‘commercial significance’ back here in good old Oz. Furthermore, we can hang onto ‘Hermitage’, ‘Lambrusco’ and ‘Riesling’ (as a generic name) as long as we want to for home use! Personally, I’d rather see them go as well. In a gesture which looks more like Marie-Antoinette’s famous concession of ‘Let them eat cake’ the closer you look at it, by the close of last year we surrendered such crucial names as Beaujolais (which the courts had already done for us), Cava, Frascati, Sancerre, St Emilion, Vinho Verde and White Bordeaux. And by the end of 1997 we will need to have determined how we are to survive without such nomenclature as Chianti, Frontignan, Hock, Madeira and Malaga. Who were these AWBP people, what are their telephone numbers, and what they will charge to talk on my behalf next time I end up in trouble? As part of the agreement between the EEC and the AWBP, Australia has marginally tightened its own regulations concerning the labelling of varieties and regions to comply with the EEC’s own standards. No longer can a wine be 80% chardonnay to be called ‘Chardonnay’ on the label. It must now be 85% chardonnay, which for my mind still permits 15% too much doradillo. Similarly 85% of the wine must be from the single region claimed. Other regulations pertaining to multi-regional and multi-varietal wines put us exactly in line with our new chums in the EEC although the qualification that a wine must be 95% of a single year to claim that vintage on the label remains. If we have indeed made a concession which will require some work to implement and supervise, it is that our geographical label listings must now be defined and registered with the EC. The AWBP’s new Geographical Indications Committee will finally have to determine what is Coonawarra and what is not, for instance, as indeed it will for all new areas under development. It could be suggested that the burgeoning use of grape juice concentrate tosses a spanner into the neatly packaged sets of wine rules. It’s undeniable that there is legalised ‘chapitalisation’ in Australia – although we follow the German model of permitting ‘sweet reserve’ of wine juice in addition to concentrate before, during or after the fermentation ahead of the French practice of enabling cane sugar to be added to juice or fermenting must. How much concentrate can you add without putting the varietal or regional percentages at risk? Grape concentrate is around a four-fold concentration of grape juice. To increase the sweetness of juice from 11o Baume to 13o Baume, for instance, you need to add one unit of concentrate to 13.5 units of juice, a concentrate addition of 7.4% by volume. In itself, this percentage should not be enough to alter a wine’s regional or varietal make-up. Alan Russel, who administers the industry’s Label Integrity Programme (LIP), says that some uses of concentrate may push the percentages close to or just over the limit, but is prepared to take some factors into account. For example, a yeast inoculum for a chardonnay fermentation prepared in last year’s gordo concentrate may actually blow the 5% vintage variation, or else a computer may inform the horrified winemaker that his trophy-winning varietal is only 83% chardonnay. For this reason, Russel says the new blending regulations allow the exclusion of inoculum for fermentation and should not push a wine from claiming origin or variety. One of the major uses of concentrate is to make slightly or semi-sweet wine. It’s just too risky to leave slightly sweet wine in tanks for extended periods, so winemakers dose up these wines – even if like many rieslings they require just a brief shot of sugar – with juice or concentrate just prior to bottling. So which is better to add, straight sugar or grape concentrate? In strictly winemaking terms, there is little difference. You add it with a glug, rather than a splash. Although some genuinely varietal-flavoured concentrate has been available for short periods in the past, produced by an adapted reverse osmosis process, most concentrate is created through boiling juice at low temperatures under a vacuum. These concentrates are clean, but not varietal, with a neutral, slightly honeyed flavour. Winemakers agree that when made from neutral varieties such as sultana, doradillo or pedro, concentrate is just like adding a sugar and water solution to wine and has no taste in the finished wine. It’s worth adding right away that there’s no way a wine is going to be any good if it relies excessively on concentrate. Commercially, the industry at large does not want to add chapitalisation with refined sugar into its food industry standards. Moves to legalise chapitalisation in recent years have been foiled by the majority of wine producers from warmer areas, who use the argument that Australian wine is ‘pure, controlled and not contrived’. In reality, that’s perfectly valid, since Australia’s international reputation hinges on the purity of its wine, the least adulterated in the world. The document that informs Australian winemakers what they may and may not do to commercial wine is known as the Standard P4, itself part of the Australian Food Standards Code. Each state has a P4 of its own, which the National Food Authority endeavours to keep consistent and up to date. The P4, for example, informs the budding oenologist it is perfectly legal to add evaporated milk, sawdust and shavings of oakwood to wine, while reduced alcohol wine is not allowed to be labelled as port or sherry. No wine can contain more than 200 mg/l of sorbic acid or 1.5 g/l of volatility, while meat or beef wine must contain at least 20 g/l of protein. Many of the world’s best late-harvest dessert wines including some of our own probably exceed this volatility limit, and perhaps certain wine writers could cop a P4 code violation for describing non-beef shiraz or pinot as ‘meaty’. There is a P3 which performs a similar role for spirits and liqueurs, while a draft P6 is presently being refined to deal with such wine-based products as carbonated wine, wine coolers, low-alcohol wines. Without question the greatest amount of wine industry red tape is entwined around those who use spirits to either sell as brandy or to use in fortified wine. Not only do these sad victims of their calling have to deal with the P3, but they have to put up with Australian Customs as well, whose role it is to account for every 100 ml of spirit and ensure the Government receives it exact pound of flesh at around $30 duty per litre. Sales tax and licence fees then are allocated over and above. Spirit must be stored in a special, safe area, often an approved bonded warehouse. Some wineries find it hard to keep pace with the rate at which regulations constantly change. Some supervisors of large operations spend around 25% of their total man-hours just to keep ahead of the mandatory red tape. One tiny McLaren Vale winery habitually kept five litres of spirit for the minuscule amount of port it made. What might seem like an insignificant quantity to the average human is grist to your customs inspectors’ mill. Apparently however, even inspectors tire of visiting and weighing such paltry amounts and checking it is stored safely without risk of fire, so a deal was struck. Three or four hours before their arrival, they would phone ahead to warn the winery to put everything in order and transfer its unfortunate five litres to a ‘safe’ area. Spirit that is purchased by a winery needs a customs number. Inspectors check the quantity used and that all volumes and analyses correlate with the claimed usage. If spirits have been stored in dry barrels, the amount they have absorbed has to be considered, let alone what may leak or evaporate from them! Each of these factors affect the spirit’s concentration, therefore the amount of alcohol in the barrel, and so the duty payable! Even those who push the organic bandwagon to escape the chemical poisons of the modern age cannot avoid its administrative excesses. The Technical Committee of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia and the Organic Vignerons’ Association of Australia have seen to that, with a draft code of practice. According to the code, to grow organic grapes, you must operate in compliance with the National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce issued by the Organic Produce Advisory Committee and have your fruit certified by an organisation accredited to do so by the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service. To label your wine as being made from organically grown grapes, you must then demonstrate an audit trail linking the wine to the grapes and fully comply with the P4 Standard. Additionally, to be able to claim ‘Organic Wine’, an exhaustive list of additional stipulations needs to be followed to the letter, which relate to fruit harvesting and transport, crushing, pressing and clarification, fermentation, storage, stabilisation, preparation for bottling, filling and packaging. Organic wines must also be free of residues other than those on a specified list, must not exceed 30 mg/l and 125 mg/l of free and total sulphur dioxide respectively, and may contain up to 5% of wine made from non-organic grapes, provided that portion of the wine was made in organic fashion. Before any winery may make any organic wine, it must be certified to do so and winemakers are then subject to ongoing audit and inspection by certifying organisations. Clearly, if organic wine is the way to the future as some believe, the various species of audit-checkers, bean-counters and administrative inspectors are in no fear of Darwinian extinction.
