At different times of our lives, some of us will say that we have spent our entire life beforehand towards the fulfilment of a particular dream or challenge. You hear young tennis players saying that kind of thing when they win their first US Open. I’m not much of a tennis player – and if I was now entering tournaments they’d have the word ‘Masters’ or ‘Veterans’ in their titles – but I feel exactly the same way about Oliver’s Wines.
I’ve always been a communicator and since the age of six I’ve been a publisher, of a sort! Commandeering part of the wardrobes I shared with my brothers as an office, I’d write and post news and views of what was happening within the family on the wardrobe door. It’s what I’ve since done all of my life, except since I wrote my first book, Thirst for Knowledge, when I was 22, my subject matter has been wine and the wine industry.
It’s taken me a long time to realise it but, like my father, the most important influence in my life, I’m an outsider. I’m no good at playing political or corporate games and I’m not on any committees – other than the Oliver’s Wines Board, for a very good reason. I firmly believe that a critic’s job is to criticise and that the public deserves nothing less than a clearly-worded, independent and informed opinion.
I don’t do magazine wine tasting panels or judge at wine shows because they dilute an opinion or assessment on wine in groupthink fashion that turns opinion into the vanilla of consensus. So I write and publish my own views and ratings on wine, entirely content that others might view them differently. Incidentally, unless I’m given a review to read or I’m researching something very particular, I never read wine reviews by other people. I’m just not interested in them and I’d rather avoid the possibility they could influence mine.
I’ve always embraced the challenge to make wine accessible and understandable to all people. A lack of wine knowledge should not be a barrier to enjoyment from wine. Instead, I see it as a role of mine to bring others along the journey I’ve been fortunate to take. Thirst for Knowledge was written for that reason. Thinking about it today (it was published in 1984), I’m still surprised at how much of an opinion I had back then, and how little I’ve changed in that regard.
I wrote that book while a student of winemaking at what was then Roseworthy College where I was converting my degree in agricultural science into a winemaking qualification. By that time I knew I didn’t want to me a winemaker, but I still felt it my responsibility to know what I was talking about before starting a career in wine communication.
It’s not difficult then to see why I’m so grateful for the opportunity to start Oliver’s Wines. This platform hosts virtually all my work, ever. And it’s given me a chance to go back to my favourite job – that of content creation. So I’m back writing articles, giving opinions, writing tasting notes and allocating ratings to wine. Thanks to the tech now available, much of this communication is now on video and we’re posting this content on a range of external platforms.
Over the last two decades, sixty-five visits, six books in a language I can’t read, four online tv series and hundreds of events, I’ve done a lot within China to help develop its wine culture and to promote Australia within that environment. Oliver’s Wines is already available in Chinese and will shortly have its own presence and store on WeChat. I’m super proud of that. With the reopening of the market there for Australian wine, we have an opportunity to guide the China wine market towards the best from this country.
To conclude, wine is a personal thing and each of us view it slightly differently. However, there’s also a solid basis of knowledge and understanding that isn’t too hard to communicate and which should actually be fun for the recipient – in this case the visitor to Oliver’s Wines. It’s for the user that Oliver’s Wines exists, because with my team I have re-engineered the online wine user experience. So this platform is content-rich, which means there’s plenty of opinion, news, ratings and educational material that’s regularly updated. We have also created the world’s leading wine recommendation engine which recommends to an audience of one based on each individual’s preferences – a Spotify for wine if you like. And all of this is available without cost.
The only time users pay anything at Oliver’s Wines is when they buy from our carefully curated store, stocked only by wines I’ve chosen that over-deliver at whatever price they’re sold for.
My ambition with Oliver’s Wines has been to use modern tech and connectivity to deliver an old-fashioned, personal experience for my users – just the sort of thing we used to experience when visiting our local independent wine retailer, who would remember everything about us and our preferences. Since those days are largely gone, I’d welcome you to give Oliver’s Wines a try instead. I’d truly welcome the chance to be your personal wine coach.
And yes, I certainly feel I’ve spent my entire life leading up to this moment!
