Houghton has been awarded the 2002 Tucker Seabrook Perpetual Trophy for the best Australian show wine exhibited in all major State wine shows in the year preceding the Sydney Royal Wine Show, with its Jack Mann Cabernet Sauvignon 1998. As such, this award represents a major statement about what our wine show judges are looking for. This time I reckon the judges did pretty well, for while it’s a forward, deeply flavoured, complex and concentrated wine able to flaunt some pretty handy new oak, it’s a helluva lot more than your average show pony. Despite its almost flagrant intensity, there’s a surprising fineness and tightness about this Jack Mann (18.7, drink 2010-2018+), plus a real tautness to its tightly integrated spine of powdery tannin. It might surprise a large number of Australians to discover that not only has Canada become our fourth largest wine export market, but the most successful and visible brand of Australian wine on the Canadian landscape is Wolf Blass. It sales there per annum are more than 350,000 cases of Australia’s annual total of 1.8 million. A major Canadian market is British Columbia, whose people opened 320,000 cases of Australian wine in 2001, an increase of 64% since 1998. Australian wineries are presently responsible for 16.2% by volume and 16.8% of value of all bottled wine sold in British Columbia. Annual growth across Canada is around 25%. It could hardly have done the Wolf Blass cause any harm when its 2000 Premium Selection Cabernet Sauvignon won the only Gold Medal and Trophy for the Best Wine of the Show at the 2002 Victoria (Canada) Festival of Wine, Music and Food held in March. This wine is sold as the President’s Selection Cabernet Sauvignon in other export markets. Perhaps the music experts were judging the wines and the food tasters drinking beer, but it all helps the cause. The Festival featured 37 Australian wineries and many others from other countries. Unsurprisingly, 11 of 12 medals awarded in the ‘Big Reds’ category were won by Australian wines.
