This is big news and it concerns one of Australia’s most sought-after wine brands, Giaconda. It’s good news for people who have never bought Giaconda before, like about two-thirds of those on its rapidly expanding mailing list. It’s also good news for overseas wine buyers who have read about, but never tasted Giaconda’s wine. Furthermore, it’s bad news for the so-called wine investors who scour the environment for scarce wines before selling them into the auction market just a few months later. So I guess it’s also bad news for auctioneers. What, then, is going on? In what is believed to be a world first, Giaconda is offering for sale by tender its entire but depleted 2000 wine release. And it’s doing it over the Internet, at a new website: www.giaconda.com.au, which will be open for business between August 1 and September 30 this year. Giaconda’s owner and winemaker Rick Kinzbrunner is keen to stress that the price offered by those tendering will not be the only basis on which his allocations will be made and that he is keen to see that long-term supporters of Giaconda have every chance to continue to source its latest wines. The site does however offer something of a pricing guide to bidders. The wines on offer include the Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs from 1999, a Warner Vineyard Shiraz 1999 plus two vintages of Cabernet Sauvignon, being 1998 and 1999. I’ve tasted them and they’re all terrific, right at the cutting edge of style and complexity and where Kinzbrunner likes to be. While Kinzbrunner envisages returning to more conventional means of selling wine next year, the Federal Government’s WET rebate for small winery cellar door sales may well encourage many other small makers to follow Giaconda’s lead, radically changing the way the wine industry operates.
