Can Australia supply the good alimentary wines that men of all countries demand now-a-days, and which commerce can transport to and from every corner of the globe?’ Hubert De Castella, John Bull’s Vineyard, 1886. A century later to the year, Australian wine finally began to justify De Castella’s enthusiasm. Now the Australian wine industry has set its sights on exporting 529 million litres of wine per year by 2010, worth $1.6 billion to the national economy. Given that the present level of exports are 114 million litres (up from 9 million in 1986), worth $385.5 million per year, there’s every reason to believe it can. Like an albatross nearing the end of its runway, Australian wine is nearing the end of a thirty-year acceleration and is ready to take flight. In 1965 Australians drank beer, spirits and tea. We drank just 5.5 litres of wine per head per year. We drank six times as much port and sherry as we did table wine, if we drank wine at all. After the record 1962 vintage the Australian Wine Board said that a further large vintage could ‘prove to be an embarrassment’ since there might not be sufficient demand to warrant the manufacture into wine of ‘all available crops’. Our major wine-producing regions were the Barossa Valley, the Southern Vales, the Riverlands and northern Victoria. The Yarra Valley was considered a fine place to nurture a cow, the Mornington Peninsula had a name for its surf, the Margaret River was a haven for those disillusioned by the rigours of the Perth lifestyle and the only place you could get a decent feed in the Hunter Valley was the Cessnock Hotel, provided you were on your way by closing time. Our wineries could only sell white wine by demanding that people took some with their purchases of red. Most makers were not even bottling their own wines; selling it instead to merchants who would bottle it themselves, or even direct by the barrel to the few members of the public at large who knew what to do with such things. On the other hand, Coonawarra’s star was on the ascent, Yalumba had begun to develop into the Eden Valley and the East Barossa Ranges and Seppelt had begun the move into the now prosperous Padthaway/Keppoch region in South Australia’s south-east. Australians were travelling to Europe in greater numbers than ever before, Dr Max Lake established Australia’s first ’boutique’ vineyard and winery in 1963 and on January 1, 1965 Len Evans was appointed National Promotions executive for the Australian Wine Board. The consequences of these collective occurrences were remarkable. In the next five years red wine sales increased one and a half times, eventually peaking in the mid-1970s. By that time the white wine boom was under way, a development which put wine in front of more Australians than ever before, peaking in the mid-1980s when Australians enjoyed 21.6 litres of wine per head per year. Modern awareness of drink driving and our renewed health consciousness have seen that figure fall to under nineteen. A snapshot of the 1966 vintage in Australia reveals that of the 184,600 tonnes crushed for wine, only 8% was for premium white wine and 9% for premium red. Of the projected 712, 500 tonnes to be crushed in 1996 – drought and weather permitting – 40% will be for premium white, 24% for premium red. All this in just thirty years – hardly a splash in the bucket of oenological time when you consider that carbon dating places the origins of viticulture around the fourth millennium BC and that wine presses have been found which date back to the Bronze Age. The change in scale and focus of the industry is little short of incredible as it has adapted firstly to the more globally-orientated Australian lifestyle and secondly to the enthusiasm shown by overseas markets to our wines, especially those made from chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz. Now our most important quality wine grape, chardonnay’s own production will increase from 55,000 tonnes in 1993 to 89,000 in 1996. In the same period, cabernet sauvignon’s crush will expand from 45,000 to 72,000 tonnes and that for shiraz from 56,000 to 80,000 tonnes as it becomes our most important red grape variety. If we take the last two decades by themselves, the qualitative changes in Australian wine have been just as dramatic. Firstly was the near-hysterical planting of vineyards in cooler climates, some so cold and marginal that grapes hardly ripen at all. Now we’re preaching the virtues of warmer and hot climates again. We ignored shiraz for decades; now we can’t grow enough of it. Even grenache is making an overdue comeback! Our lack of appellation laws and organisation constraints leaves our growers and winemakers able to experiment in ways that leave Europeans green with envy. Look out for the next big thing – the introduction on a large scale of premium Italian varieties like nebbiolo, barbera, sangiovese and pinot grigio. Our wine is still an evolving thing and long may it be so. Stormclouds loom, however, which could yet rain on our parade. Our ambitious export programme could yet the threatened by the improving standard of our non-European competition: from South Africa, Chile, Argentina and New Zealand. Within Europe Australian winemakers are playing an active role in the dramatic improvements in certain parts of France, Italy, Spain, Moldova and Bulgaria where, thanks to a combination of cheap labour and generous export assistance, it is often cheaper to bottle wine than we in Australia can bottle air. And they’re getting much better at it… A threat of equal magnitude is a domestic one. The Federal Government must decide whether to exploit or to nurture the wine industry. It can increase the tax burden on an industry not yet half way through its adolescence, or it can encourage it to fulfil its undoubted potential. Unlike the manufacturers of beer and spirits, who simply turn on a tap to increase production, the base material for wine is grown and nurtured on a vine. A century later Hubert De Castella’s question remains unanswered. It goes without saying that every other wine producing nation hopes for the negative and will be at present kneeling in prayer for an increase in the tax burden on Australian wine, already the second highest in the world after New Zealand.
