There’s absolutely nothing rustic or rural at all about the meat section of a modern supermarket. City kids have no idea how the perfectly presented and packaged cuts of beef, lamb or pork happen to appear where they do. Surely there’s some kind of factory that churns this stuff out, right? There’s a similar trap with wine. Stroll down the packed and colourful isles of a major liquor store in a big city and you could be forgiven for thinking that wine is product that’s been manufactured within an inch of its life.
Of course that’s not the case, but as our population is steadily corralled into sprawling megacities it’s little wonder we tend to forget how wine comes about. And in case it’s slipped your mind, even on a micro scale, packaged wine whose label pleads for your attention as you mender down the aisles wine is the result of a vertically integrated business whose raw material comes from the land. That’s right: the wine industry begins with winegrowing – a process that comes with all the inherent risk and effort of any other traditional agriculture. But too often in these days of over-supply, for little reward.
And before any of you reach the conclusion that if a winegrower-maker loses some crop due to one or more of the many inherent dangers in growing them, grapes are not interchangeable. If you’re a winegrower/maker in Clare and you have just lost 70% of your crop to Spring frosts, as happened the other day to the Pike family of Pikes Wines, you can’t just ring up a mate near Renmark and place an order for a few hundred tonnes of riesling from which you’ll create the 2025 edition of one of the best and biggest-selling Rieslings in Australia. Take fruit from somewhere else – usually anywhere else – and your wine will be unacceptably different in style and quality and down the toilet goes your integrity and reputation. Your entire credibility around your wine coming from your place and being a pure reflection of your site and its qualities will take a hit from which your brand might not recover.
Several incidents of Spring frost in mid to late September have decimated the coming 2025 crops from several South Australian wine regions, including the Barossa Valley, Eden Valley Clare Valley and the Riverland. Spring frosts are nothing new to many winegrowers in Australia, but this time around it’s been exacerbated by the extended drought experienced by much of South Australia. Dry winters mean soil temperatures stay warmer than usual and consequently the vines’ budburst – the most susceptible period for vines in frost conditions – comes earlier in the year while temperatures are likely to be cooler. A large cold air mass from the south then arrived to execute the coup de gras. Many wine regions in the state will be praying to get through October without further damage.
Spring frost actually burns the vulnerable young buds and shoots, causing them to shrivel and brown. Unless the vines can shoot some secondary buds – which never produces the style or quantity of a normal crop and which can throw out the life cycle of the vineyard to some extent – your coming crop is gone. Riverland growers have reported 20% losses, while some vineyards across the Barossa and Eden Valleys have seen their crops wiped out. It’s estimated that 25-30% of Clare vineyards have been affected to some extent. Kilikanoon’s viticulturist Troy Van Dulken describes the Clare frosts as ‘most likely the worst frost event’ he has seen in his 18 years in the region.
Grape growers are farmers and by any definition are gambling against the habitually erratic and extreme Australian climate, just like every other practitioner of traditional farming or horticulture. Winemakers are manufacturers and often then marketers of the product they grow and make. You can’t be any more all in than that.
So please spare these guys a thought. With only a few exceptions, winegrowers and makers are not in the game to reward themselves with fast cars and fancy houses. Most, when they’re able to make a positive return, reinvest profits to shore up the chances of their company to become a generational business for their family or to enhance its resilience against the more aggressive extremes of nature wherever that’s possible. There’s barely a winegrowing business in Australia whose owners and operators are not trying to leave their land in better condition than when they found it. You don’t have to print terms like ‘organic’ or ‘biodynamic’ on your labels to be actively focused on that goal.
How can you help? Most of the alcoholic beverages that are these days seen as alternatives to wine do actually have more in common with a fully manufactured product. The base beverages from which spirits and their like are distilled can come from interchangeable places and ingredients. You don’t hear big brewers complaining they can’t get enough barley or hops because of a bad season somewhere. Beer, spirits and mixed drinks don’t suffer from seasonal variations in climate to anything near the extend that wine does.
So, if you’re one of the new cohort of modern wine consumer who also splashes around with other alcoholic beverages, maybe for a time you might readjust your dial a little towards wine? Good, hard-working families are in trouble right now and you have the ability to help them without affecting your overall spend. Please consider that. People like the Pike family in Clare whose wines typically punch way above their weight and whose commitment to their place and to quality remain unquestioned will thank you.
