One of the great success stories in the last 30 years in the wine industry has been Australia. Aussie wines burst on to the UK scene in the mid 1980's and took it by storm.
These were big, ripe and juicy wines full of flavour, very difficult to ignore and completely different to the rather dull and dusty wines that much of Europe was producing at the time.
In a wonderful act of serendipity, these big and full-on flavoured wines arrived in the UK just at the time that wine drinking started to gain popularity and they were exactly what the new generation of wine drinkers were looking for. Not only were these wines bursting with character they were also very reliable you could always rely on an Aussie Chardonnay or Shiraz from one company or another to fit the bill. No longer did the individual producer or the year really matter, it was Australian and that said it all. Neither were Australian wine makers limited by the strict regulations their European counterparts had to work within, they were much freer to experiment.
The Australian wine industry also realised it was on to something big and with a combination of ultra reliable wines and aggressive promotions, Brand Australia gained a very strong position in the UK wine market. Wines were created to fit the market and blending from different regions to achieve that end was often the norm. The industry was very much focused on using grape varieties to build the wine’s identity rather than a geographical identity as is the case in so many other growing countries.
However, wind the clock on 25 years and things have changed. Most of the big Australian producers have realised that their heavily promoted wines, whilst still popular, were not making them any profit, indeed many were losing a great deal and going out of business. Wine drinkers can be fickle and there is always another source of reliable wine to turn to and today the gloss has certainly come off Aussie wines in the UK.
Bad news for Australia? Yes and no.
The better producers in the country have moved away from the stylised wines of the past and are creating new wines based on regional identity rather than national homogeneity. Australia has a very varied and, in many cases, ancient geology providing some exceptional soils for the cultivation of the vine. It also has a long history of growing grapes true, Australian wine as we think of it today is a relatively new phenomenon, but the wine industry has been around in Australia for well over 150 years and Australia has many of the oldest vineyards anywhere in the world. It is these quality factors that are today driving the industry.
Recently we tasted a range of wonderful wines from Yalumba, a very fine Barossa Valley producer. Traditionally the Barossa was a source of big and powerful wines that used weight and power to impress. The current offerings from Yalumba however are different. There is no mistaking the character of these wines many are made from vines well over 100 years old but the wines are now tempered by an elegance and finesse that until recently was rarely seen in Australian wines.
The big Australian wine brands that remain are still important, and do a great job at getting consumers to start drinking wine, but more and more we are seeing smaller producers championing their individual regional qualities based on local climate, soil (terroir) and their winemaking skill. The future of Australian wine is no longer in the hands of the huge brands of the past, more it will be influenced by the skill of much smaller producers. It’s time for Brand Australia to make way for the likes of the Yarra Valley, Clare Valley, McLaren Vale, Barossa, Coonawarra, Tasmania, and Margaret River; names, that in time, will be as synonymous with Australia as Chardonnay and Shiraz.
