What Would Make Your Day in 1987?

Like policitians’ election promises, New Year’s Resolutions tend to fall flat. Speaking personally, mine are about as permanent as our Prime Minister telling us he will never tax wine. They need a `use-by’ date. It’s time to consider what could happen in 1987 to improve the lot of the wine industry, which needs all the help it can get so help me…

I have enlisted the help of three of its most active minds, Brian Miller Fine Wine Manager at the House of Seppelt , Dr John Middleton legendary Yarra Valley vigneron of Mount Mary fame and Peter Woollard founding director of Melbourne wine wholesaler `The Wine Company’ to develop a `think tank’ to sort out everyone else’s New Year’s Resolutions.

I’d like to begin with the suggestion that all coolers, be they in bottles, bags, boxes or tanks be tipped into the Pacific Ocean. They are eroding the wine market and have more in common with fruit cocktails than with wine itself. Since they do not look like wine, taste like wine and are not packaged or marketed like wine, I do not see for the life of me how they are supposed to attract the unwashed into the civilized pursuit of drinking wine.

Here’s one for Mr Keating. “The Sales Tax is the hardest thing facing the industry”, says Peter Woollard. “It is effectively killing a growth industry”. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has some numbers which suggest that the wine industry might be entering a period of negative growth, and the sales tax must carry the lion’s share of the blame.

John Middleton concedes that if the tax has to stay, it might as well be on the basis of quantity, rather than on the value of the wine. “The better the wine, the more expensive it is to make, and it could require a longer maturation period in the winery prior to release.” The number of immature wines on the market today suggets that he has a point. “The tax is a direct impost on the cost of production – if you make a better wine you have more penalties to pay. The whole thing is counter-productive”.

Like many wineries, large and small, Mount Mary has to borrow money at bank overdraft rates to finance the sales tax, which is payable on the 21st day of the next month after the sale. This hurts the producer, who is often forced to accept payment terms in the region of 120 days from his customers.

Miller puts a broader case, in typically eloquent fashion: “One of the events that would just Make My Day in 1987 would be for the Australian Government to realise what the French Government has known for centuries, that wine exports are not just `products’, but also represent a prestigious and beneficial advertisement for the exporting country and should therefore be encouraged and not discouraged.”

He refers to the essential lack of a long-term commitment of Government support to Australian wine export, and that wine companies will shy back from expensive export drive for fear of insecure granting of export incentives.

The anti-alcohol lobby cops some flak from both Miller and Middleton. Brian Miller hopes that in the New Year that the individuals concerned “will learn that there is a difference between fine wine consumed in moderation and just `boozing'”. Dr Middleton echoes these thoughts, adding that “more people should use wine with food as part of a meal rather than just lining them up in long tastings”.

I’ll let Miller continue: “I’d like Australia to perfect that most obstinate of grape varieties, Pinot Noir”. A pipe dream? I hope not. Perhaps it’s a reflection of some of the Australian attempts at Pinot Noir that prompts Peter Woollard to wish for “a more equitable relationship between quality and price in Australia”. I couldn’t agree more, although that would doubtless confuse the legions of label-drinkers out there. Woollard does add however, that there is room for higher prices in quality Australian wine, and that the prices of French Champagne is getting beyond his reach. Hear, hear.

John Middleton wants to see more encouragement for our quality at home. “If we spent less time worrying about the snobbery that surrounds wine and cutting down our tall poppies we would have a better product. I wish that things would cool down a bit, and the hype would go from the industry. If we could remove the mystique we would make it easier to understand.”

More from Miller: “I hope for an eminent scientist to discover what we have long suspected but have never been allowed to suggest: that Sparkling Burgundy really is an aphrodisiac”. Something to do with those secluded drives at Great Western, or does Miller still believe that a romance with wine extends beyond early mornings at Alphington House? Peter Woollard also reveals true marketing colours with the New Year’s wish that “I’d like to see Andrew Garret Pinot Noir Champagne No. 1″.

A potpourri of wishes: John Middleton would like to see an acceleration in the depreciation rate of oak casks for maturation, especially as most of the top quality wineries would like to be rid of their wood after about four years, but which are depreciated over a lifetime of several decades. A valid wish – I hope that somebody is listening.

Peter Woollard looks forward to “an improvement in the quality of four-litre casks”, which I heartily support. I can’t believe that all the best material is going into those coolers, so where is it? Surely if coolers take over the price bracket currently occupied by cask wine, then with a little more quality, casks will be able to receive a more realistic price themselves?

So this is what some very different people with completely different roles in the wine industry have to say. Of course they could all say more, and so could many like them. But for an idea to become reality we need others to listen and implement. The wine industry is short of listeners – everyone wants to do their own thing, whether at individual, company or Governmental level. So on that note it is appropriate, although potentially self-destructive for me to end with Brian Miller’s final wish. “For the Victorian Government to initiate an “Authenticated Victorian Winewriter” scheme and that the `Queen Victoria’ symbol be tattooed on the forearms of those who qualify to that we can identify them”. Maybe I should go back to throwing Frisbees. Happy New Year. Please login to post comment