Rediscovering Australia’s wine mojo
A reality check
Nothing would make me happier than to publish that today, in 2024, the quality of fine Australian wine has never been better. That the iconic cabernet producers of Margaret River, such as Moss Wood, Cullen, Vasse Felix and Cape Mentelle, whose stunning legacy from the 1970s to the first decade of this century, were still going from strength to strength. That the current generation of ‘new Australian’ expressions of ethereal but often flimsy and green-rimmed medium-bodied reds really deserve to be celebrated. Or that the contemporary Australian chardonnay, whose acidity often threatens the existence of your tooth enamel and which is all too often almost entirely deficient in flavour, is in fact a wine of world standing. Or that the thin, green and sappy pinot noirs we fall over ourselves to purchase and extol are actually worthy of a place at any table, even in Paris or London.
Except none of that is about to happen. Because, if it did, everyone who reads my words would know that I have sold out. And that would mean selling out on the readers who for decades have bought wine on my recommendation. Their trust means more to me than the next free lunch (something I haven’t attended in years). And I need to sleep at night.
Over recent weeks there’s been an impassioned response to my assertion that there’s not as much top-level Australian wine made today as there was in the 1990s. I’ll now take this a step further by suggesting that in addition to this, Australia is actually in danger of losing its fine wine culture. Which, according to the owner of a prominent Western Australian wine brand I spoke to recently, has already happened.
Bistro food, bistro wine?
Decades ago Melbourne, the city in which I live, had a genuine fine dining culture. Other Australian capitals had some of this, to a lesser extent. People would (because they could) sit in immaculate and superbly managed restaurant dining rooms and experience the kind of magical combination of food and wine that you simply cannot do in contemporary Australia, with perhaps some extremely rare and expensive exceptions.
Then it all changed. Changes in taxation and work culture had a bit to do with it. Steadily, Australia lost its true fine dining restaurants, which were replaced by a plethora of very smart bistro-style operations, offering a diverse range of cuisines. And the best do indeed offer excellent levels of service and presentation. But Australian cuisine has largely become a bistro culture. And our wine has followed suit. With a small number of exceptions, Australia has devolved into a country that largely makes bistro wine.
And it’s totally unnecessary. We could easily be doing much, much better than we are.
A gap in commitment or comprehension?
Where are we falling short? Look at the extraordinary trouble and expense that’s needed to create great wines from the world’s best wine regions and then ask if that same approach is being adopted here by more than a handful of producers. Great wine only ever comes from great sites, under the guidance of very significant winemakers.
The nurturing required to make great wine begins in the vineyard, the real showcase when it comes to wine quality. This very basic concept is still constantly overlooked in Australia. It’s each vineyard’s unique combination of aspect, soil quality and composition, drainage and management philosophy that does most to define the potential quality and style of its finished wine. And if there’s a deficiency that’s significant enough, that site will never grow great wine. No matter what.
Once in the cellar, great wines demand an approach to winemaking that Giaconda’s Rick Kinzbrunner once described as ‘making sure you do whatever it takes not to lose 0.1% of quality’. Sadly, that philosophy is confined to but a tiny percentage of Australian wineries.
Ultimately, if wine is made from sensibly cropped fruit from excellent sites in good seasons, it’s the site’s terroir rather than subtle changes in winemaking technique that eventually talk the loudest. But not all sites are not created equal and there are far too many sites in Australia whose fruit is used to make expensive wine that are simply not up to the task. The disconnect between high prices and wine quality is growing.
For if you went on price alone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that every second site in Australia was outstanding or close to it. Australia is submerged by a tidal wave of wine priced at $100 and more per bottle. Most are perhaps worth about half the price being asked. If you think I’m kidding, check out the imported alternatives – which would be half their Australian asking price in their own country – and make an honest comparison. Just by slapping on a high price tag alone doesn’t mean you can elevate a wine from bistro to fine wine status, even if the back label references the fact that only the finest rows or the best-tasting barrels were used to make it.
So herein lies a paradox that’s all too common in Australia today: we have top sites that are clearly under-performing, but also a plethora of wannabe wines whose price tags far outweigh their merit. Who’d be a wine buyer?
Fine wine checklist
If a maker sets out to make truly fine wine, there are several essential requirements. Here’s a short list of the most important:
- An outstanding site or sites.
- An understanding of how the site relates to potential wine styles and varieties. Elite wines are not imposed on a site simply because there’s a demand for a particular variety or style. Instead, they – with some exceptions of course – are usually chosen by the site itself. Their owners have typically decided what the site does best, or how the site and its management need to evolve to deliver its best possible wine. Don’t forget that the Bass Phillip vineyard, source of many of Australia’s best pinot noirs, was initially planted to cabernet sauvignon and its family.
- Rigorous attention to detail that results in a balanced vineyard capable of the quality required at an economic yield to suit the price the wine commands or is intended to command.
- An uncompromising approach in the cellar to retain and enhance every ounce of quality resulting from the site, its management and the season.
- A dispassionate and realistic understanding of the international wines that might be compared to or else might have inspired the wines being grown and made.
- An owner with conviction concerning the style being sought and the challenges that must be overcome to improve the wines further.
Could you make classic wine if you’re missing but a single one of these? I doubt it. There is however a collection of Australian wine brands that still do make fine wine and they deserve to be celebrated.
A list of truly fine Australian wine producers
The list below features brands which release world class wines with a pleasing frequency. On one hand it’s not a complete list. On the other, while these makers regularly excel, it goes without saying that I wouldn’t describe all their wines as true fine wines.
New South Wales
Lake’s Folly
Mount Pleasant
Thomas
Tyrrell’s
South Australia
Grosset
Neldner Road
Penfolds
Shaw + Smith
Wynns Coonawarra Estate
Tasmania
Pooley
Stefano Lubiana
Tolpuddle
Victoria
Altera Terra
Bindi
Coldstream Hills
Giaconda
Main Ridge Estate
Mount Mary
Scorpo
Seppelt
Yeringberg
Western Australia
Castle Rock Estate
Frankland Estate
Peccavi
Swinney
Woodlands
Why is there less fine Australian wine than 30 years ago?
It’s only natural that over three decades there’s been a decline in some wine brands and an improvement in or emergence of others. I believe, though, that the former has outweighed the latter. Why?
- We’ve seen the conclusion of the careers of some of the finest winemakers this country has ever seen. They have not necessarily been replaced by individuals of the same talent or drive. In the second and subsequent generations of a company, it becomes more the role of the brand owner than the founder/winemaker to set the direction, energise the team and to select the right people. We don’t have enough high-level brand owners.
- There was an extraordinary creative energy that accompanied the early development of many of Australia’s now-established regions that is simply not present at the same level today. While it still rates amongst Australia’s finest regions, I’d argue that Margaret River is a case in point. By and large it’s the more recent arrivals (or its re-energised long-term players) that are driving the region’s quality.
- The purchase of some stellar wine brands established by deeply committed individuals by companies with less of a quality focus and understanding.
- The wine industry is facing a major generational challenge. Children entering their parents’ wine businesses might indeed but do not necessarily possess either the ability or founder-driven ambition of the previous generation. Or, having seen the physical and emotional toll that wine production takes out of small owner/participants, many are just walking away towards a safer and less stressful life.
- Wine companies frequently lose their focus and direction. The tell-tale signs are an explosion in the number of SKUs and in levels of brand, especially when we’re talking about relatively small businesses. At the heart of this discussion is focus: what are the wines the company is best suited to making, who are its likely customers, and in which geography do those customers live? The tail begins wagging the dog when a wine company focuses on trying to please every consumer.
- You need to spend money to make fine wine. Vineyards need disciplined management. Wineries need oak budgets spent on oak and not on dividends. Vineyards with the potential to make great wine should have their wine made by seriously talented people, which don’t come cheap.
How can Australia make more fine wine?
I’m going to conclude on a positive note and a challenge. Australia has the world’s oldest rocks and soils. We can boast the world’s oldest commercial plantings of at least ten major grape varieties, so we have some unique and profoundly valuable genetic material out there, which we’re constantly enhancing as great new clones become available. In most of the wine regions capable of making wine at the highest level, our climate is benign and consistent. We don’t have too many wipe-outs in terms of seasonal quality. If any country can deliver fine wine that reflects its multitude of truly unique terroirs, this country is that country. Our potential is limitless.
We have a stable of world-class producers plus a significant number of industry participants and consumers whose level of broad wine knowledge and international fine wine is truly remarkable. Their input and feedback could be invaluable to those producers trying to lift their game to elite levels.
But, as I have written before, while there is an oversupply of Australian wine, there is certainly no oversupply of fine Australian wine. Australia would make a great deal more fine wine if instead of bouncing from one end of the fashion pendulum to the other, our wine producers focused on what they can do best, which means paying attention to their sites. They could play to the established strengths of our best regions (established and emerging), fine-tuning style if needed to ensure their wines stay within touch of consumer tastes.
To follow rapidly changing consumer trends in an industry like wine is to court disaster. Even if you’re happy making bistro wine, you’ll never keep up with all the rapidly changing consumer expectations and even if you do, you won’t have enough time in the sun to reap real rewards before the trend gets up and moves again. Generational phenomena like New Zealand sauvignon blanc and YellowTail don’t come around all that regularly.
Australia has the raw materials, the sites, the people and the climates. While it certainly needs to keep an eye on global demand, our industry does not need constant re-invention. And there’s a world of difference between re-invention and innovation.
More important is to restore our sense of who we are, our conviction and our mojo. Makers might draw inspiration from the very wines this country produced through the exceptional decade of the 1990s as well as those producers, such as those I listed, which are still making genuine fine wine. What’s needed to deliver fine wine to the world is actually staring our makers in the face.
Try as they might, Australia’s wine producers will never please all the people all the time. And that’s quite ok. When you’re making fine wine within internationally recognised parameters of style, you simply don’t have to.
