Contrary to much Australian opinion, Europe is today a fast-moving centre of wine and wine ideas. If this country is not only to hold its beachhead but increase its penetration into European wine culture, the presit needs to stay well ahead of a hungry, but creative pack made up of traditional wine producers toying with modern ideas and New World makers like Chile and South Africa. They’re introducing new viticultural techniques in Tuscany and encouraging viticultural innovation all over Italy. In French wine regions like Burgundy, a reassessment of the importance of viticulture has almost eliminated truly poor vintages, once the bane of the Burgundian’s existence. Makers of Bordeaux reds have responded to the challenge of the New World by introducing more new oak to their wines to capture more American support. And in London, focus of the European wine trade, countries like Chile, South Africa, the USA and New Zealand frequently have as much shelf-space as Australia which, for the time being at least, remains acknowledged as the modern non-European master of wine making and marketing. As the guards are always changing at Buckingham Palace, it’s possible to sniff a possible change in the wind developing in UK wine consumption. To wander from one cluttered UK wine store and through another, or to browse over miles of supermarket wine display, it’s difficult not to arrive at the impression that our former colonial masters appear to have found for themselves a pleasing mix representing the best of worlds old and new. It’s rare not to find a slab of shelving devoted exclusively to Australia, but today that might be wedged in between California and the Cape. Several Oddbins stores I visited displayed a wider selection of South African pinotage than Australian shiraz.
