The one thing you can guarantee about wine is that is brings out the delusions in those of us capable of being deluded. Thirty years ago, having released several vintages of some of the most exciting cabernets ever made in Australia by Moss Wood, Cullen and Vasse Felix, Margaret River was already being recognised as one of the hottest wine regions on the planet. Yesterday the ABC’s website posted a comment from a certain John Heslopp, vice-president of the Queensland Wine Industry Association, which leads one to assume that neither a knowledge of recent wine history nor an ability to discriminate between great wines and what is largely mediocre were a prerequisite to his getting the job. According to Heslopp, who apparently says he is aware ‘of the many comparisons being made between the wine industry in the Margaret River area and where Queensland is at right now’, Queensland’s wine industry has the potential to achieve the same success as Western Australia’s Margaret River. In the twenty-five years I have been writing about wine, I have never heard anyone talking about wine from Margaret River and Queensland in the same conversation, let alone the same sentence. As for comparisons, John, Margaret River even has better surf!
