How I’d like just to be writing about wine again! But then I’d feel that I was not doing my job. For as the 2003 vintage makes its way from vineyard to cellar, the road ahead for Australian wine is littered with potholes. The Southcorp issue which recently saw the removal of Keith Lambert has divided both industry and popular opinion. People are worried about the wine brands they have spent a lifetime drinking and want to know if they’re about to change or disappear. Meanwhile, the purchase of BRL Hardy by the US-based Constellation Brands will see our largest present maker fall into foreign hands. The unprecedented nature of this drought is not only threatening the quality and volume that this vintage will deliver, but is now causing people to question whether or not the wine industry is a suitable end use for our country’s scarce supplies of water as well as a suitable land use for its fragile soils. The effect of the brettanomyces yeast in Australian wine is looming as another divisive issue, propelled along like most other divisive issues by imperfect information and arguments based on emotion. New winemaking techniques like micro-oxygenation have been popularly demonised even before most people, including most of their critics, learn the first thing about them. The cork debate continues to rage, as wine companies line up behind each other to expand their use of screwtop caps into a significantly broader range than simply Clare Valley rieslings. With the continued and selective use of hired academic guns and public figures to push arguments on both sides of this ledger, it is becoming harder than ever before to access clear, accurate and independent information. Australia’s volume of export sales steadily increases despite a steadily building crescendo of international critical opinion that our wines no longer cut the mustard in the value stakes. Whether there’s any truth in the issue or not, a rapidly growing number of people are losing faith in the ability of our larger companies to make wines that genuinely reflect their vineyards of origin and don’t simply turn out oceans of formulaic swill. Furthermore, old chestnuts that have traditionally divided the wine industry, such as whether wine should be taxed on an ad valorum or volumetric basis, or how growers should be remunerated for the grapes they provide, appear no closer to a mutually agreed approach. Australian wine is anything but at peace with itself and with the world at large. Whatever your standpoint on any of the issues it faces, you must concede it’s under pressure. Is that a good or a bad thing for its customers? Only time will tell. But it would be a welcome change for the industry to get back into the business of just making wine.
