When you’re on a good thing, overdo it. That’s the Australian wine show system which, as James Halliday and Huon Hooke both suggest in excellent articles published in the April/May issue of Wine Magazine, is in serious need of overhaul. In its present form, the formless, convoluted and contradictory system of wine show judging in Australia is defeating most of its own objectives. If more of Australia’s best winemakers actually entered their wines in shows again, there would at least be some punch to the show system’s claim that it selects the ‘best of breed’ wines which set the standards for trade and public alike. If the system could accommodate the imminent deluge of new wines from new vineyards lining up to enter, it could justify its claim that it’s there to help new entrants to the industry get their quality levels up to scratch. If there wasn’t a show virtually every week of the year, the system might actually produce a smaller number of more meaningful results able to generate positive publicity for its better wines. And if its classes were smaller, if it eliminated all pre-bottled samples, if judges could wind back their schedules, if the shows themselves were smaller, if the big companies couldn’t ‘carpet bomb’ classes, to use Huon’s analogy, and if the large company winemaker judges had less overall impact, the results could indeed be better. At the end of the day, while there are countless wine shows in Australia, the system’s real problem is that there is no system. Other than a few shows like the Victorian Wines Show, which is conducted under the auspices of the Victorian Wine Industry Association, few shows have any tangible link to the wine industry itself. In fact, the overwhelming majority of wine shows are presently the property of various Royal Agricultural Societies and potentially competing commercial organisations. I can’t see too many of these groups surrendering any power or income by listening to what the wine industry really wants from its show system. So should the wine industry get a little more proactive? Should it foster, where they don’t exist, genuine regional shows that focus on the output of one or a small number of regions? Should it support interstate equivalents to the Victorian Wines Show? Should it support the establishment of rival capital city shows in cities like Melbourne whose major wine show is one of the industry’s greatest embarrassments? Personally, I’d get right behind anyone who wanted to set up a genuine Melbourne-based alternative to the Royal Melbourne Wine Show which ran on guidelines approved by the leading sections of the wine industry. Now there’s a thought! Jeremy Oliver
