The fact that its UK and Europe general manager, Paul Schaafsma, has decided to pull out of the international marketing programs conducted by Wine Australia, the Government-based organisation responsible for the institutional marketing of Australian wine because of its emphasis on regionality hasn’t stopped Australian Vintage from spending a significant amount of money promoting the success of its Nepenthe Ithaca Chardonnay which won best Chardonnay in the world at the recent Decanter World Wine Awards in London. Schaafsma is on recent record as saying ‘At this point in time we need to be engaging with a broader audience of consumer and get back to what has endeared the UK to Australian wine – consistency, value and flavour’. This rhetoric is as outdated as the notion that the UK supermarkets really want to help Australian wineries. On one hand, Schaafsma says that Wine Australia has spent too much of its time and money promoting higher priced wines, while on the other hand his chief executive Dane Hudson says the company’s recent award will improve perceptions of the quality of Australia’s wine, stating ‘This is an enormous boost for Australian wine at a time when some critics have been knocking the quality of what the Australian industry produces’. Perhaps in this light Australian Vintage might reconsider what a number of well-informed industry observers are jointly agreed is a poorly informed decision.
