MOLLYDOOKER'S VELVET GLOVE INCIDENT

MOLLYDOOKER OWNER/WINEMAKER SPARKY MARQUIS WITH WINE DAMAGED WHEN A SHIPPING CONTAINER WAS DROPPED, TRIGGERING AN INSURANCE CLAIM FIRST REPORTED TO BE IN THE VICINTY OF $1 MILLION ... CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO HEAR THE WHOLE SORRY STORY photo MOLLYDOOKER

The Fist In Marquis' Velvet Glove
Southpaw Winery Drops Bundle
PR Machine Rings Out Last Drops
by PHILIP WHITE

So. Mollydooker Winery’s export shippers somehow managed to drop, shatter or damage a lot of cases of very expensive McLaren Vale Shiraz.

In all the international fluff and bluster surrounding the dropping of the shipping container filled with Sparky and Sarah Marquis’ Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz ($185 per bottle), nobody bothered to mention that the source of the wine, the revered Gateway Vineyard owned by rival David Paxton and a consortium of McLaren Vale A-Listers, is immediately adjacent to the Seaford Heights property that the Labor government and its developer mates are determined to cover with housing.

In all the front-page tears and grief that the busted boxes triggered, nobody has mentioned that Marquis’ possible $1.025 million loss is piffling compared to the income that site would trigger were it sensibly put to clever vineyard.

Sell it for houses; it’s gone forever and you get one quick squirt of cash. Plant it to vineyard, and you’d get those very big numbers every year, ongoing, ad infinitum. Many ordinary vineyards on lesser land may come and go according to the wine industry’s crazy splurge-and-retreat cycles, but only this intellectually decrepit Labor mob would seriously consider cementing this one over.

DAVID PAXTON IN HIS GATEWAY VINEYARD, THE SOURCE OF MOLLYDOOKER'S $185 PER BOTTLE VELVET GLOVE SHIRAZ ... THE SEAFORD HEIGHTS SITE IS THE HILL BETWEEN HIM AND THE GULF St VINCENT, PATRON OF VITICULTURERS photo KATE ELMES

While the priceless 650 million year-plus siltstones of the Reynella Member and the Wilmington Formation have been almost entirely built over on the northern third of the McLaren Vale Geographical Indicator, the only bit of this geology in the Willunga Embayment is the Gateway Vineyard and Seaford Heights, just across the road. David Paxton has never had a shard of doubt as to its importance and its potential, and had sought fruitlessly to purchase the Seaford Heights land for more super-premium vineyard some years ago.

Another small outcrop of the same geology, just north of the Onkaparinga Gorge between Cox’s Hill Road and States Road, is home to the Ulithorne Vineyard, source of prized fruit for many canny Vales winesmiths, including Rose Kentish, who just a couple of years back won her Bushing Crown with it. The houses are creeping toward those fences, too.

But back to matters of publicity, which the Marquis family is determinedly grim at reaping. After gaining significant coverage through its distribution, they “withdrew” their original press release, and issued another statement requesting that “journalists and other readers should disregard the news release Years of Tears and Sweat and More Than $1 Million Worth of Fine Wine Go Down the Drain, issued 25-Jul-2011 over PR Newswire.”

The news of this turnabout seemed to garner more international press than the first, presumably erroneous one. While that apparent backflip sizzled around the internet and the tittering tippling classes, they were left awaiting yet another release to correct the first: a dramatic pause that the Bard himself would find savoury.

Even London’s pompous Decanter magazine had a huffy hissy on its website, complaining that while “a revised release 'will be issued at a later time' … it has not been possible to contact Mollydooker for more information.”

I scoured the first release for possible legal hitches and insurance problems – the container had been fully insured – and thought I saw a few claims and suggestions there which some lawyers may think to be possibly contentious to one party or another, but surely in a very minor way.

CLICK ON THIS MOLLYDOOKER PROMO IMAGE TO WATCH VID OF THE MARQUIS RESPONSE TO THE GOODWILL THEY'VE HAD SINCE THE VELVET GLOVE INCIDENT

Just fishing, I thought I’d ask the Mollydooker owners which parts of the release were inaccurate. Janet Gawith, Sparky’s Mum, was quick to respond. She said the release I had was in fact the third one, with all the corrections in place.

“Somebody accidentally sent out a draft of the first release”, she advised. “It had the wrong heading; the wrong facts. You’ve got to be very careful with these things, with big insurance claims pending and so forth,” and assured me the release I held was the correct one.

She also thanked me for bothering to check, and said no other journalist had done so.

Surprisingly, Sparky himself then sent me a copy of the erroneous one – the one you wouldn’t want falling into the hands of the press. Again.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see what the differences were from the press release that was the draft and mistakenly put online and the correct one,” he explained. “I found the draft on the Coca-Cola internal web site (that in itself made me laugh – maybe we are competing against Coca-Cola).”

Attached was a link to that initial, presumably erroneous document. It’s fascinating to compare the two.

The headline – “Years of Tears and Sweat, and More Than $1 Million Worth of Fine Wine Go Down the Drain” - had disappeared from the third release. But Mollydooker had already got that tearjerker into circulation in both the first release and their second one, which “withdrew” the first.

How anybody can “withdraw” a press statement which had gone around the world, won the winery a front page in The Advertiser, this state's only metro daily, and even made the internal mailing list of Coca-Cola staffers, is a baffling notion, but there you go.

In the corrected version, the line about the container falling six metres “and doing away with one third of the winemaker’s annual production” was gone. As was the bit about the failure of the forklift’s “security locking device … sending the wine more than 18 feet to the ground.”

Another paragraph down, however, the revised version then re-inserted the line “luckily we still have two-thirds of our production left so we still have plenty to share with our friends.”

So, we’re half way in, and there’s barely a scrap of difference between the withdrawn document and its replacement. But then the revised version adds a plug for “International Mollydooker Day”, when the wine was intended for release in the USA on September 15th.

ANOTHER OF THE PROMO PHOTOGRAPHS MOLLYDOOKER DISTRIBUTED TO THE PRESS AFTER THE VELVET GLOVE INCIDENT

“The Marquises and insurance assessors are now checking each bottle by hand to determine if any of the $1.025 million shipment can be salvaged,” it added, dropping the initial claim that “at least 70 per cent of the cartons have been reported damaged.”

The revised version also includes a new plug for the confounding “Marquis Fruit Weight” index, which is trademarked, and apparently helps determine which parcels of fruit make the Velvet Glove appellation. Then it goes on to add more breathless claims to the wine’s quality, as measured by the equally confounding USA wine press in the form of that dreaded lover of jammy gloop-gloop high alcohol wines, Robert Parker Jr., who has awarded the Marquis tribe “more 94-99 point scored than any other winemakers in the world” and dubbed them “Top Wine Personalities in the World.” The equally adoring Wine Spectator magazine has included four Mollydooker wines in its Top 100, and so on, and so forth. They’re not missing any opportunity to rub in the bling, but nowhere do they advise us that the Gateway Vineyard, the source of the fruit in the dropped bottles, is owned by David Paxton and his partners, and not Mollydooker.

So there you go. Three waves of press attention in place of one, and now I hand them a fourth. At least this should sit in neat counterpoint to the tear-jerking stuff they’ve put all over Youtube and Facebook.

Just between you and me: the Northern Hemisphere’s fascination for late-picked wines of incredibly dense fruit is waning as blogosphere rabble dilutes the opinions of the few US critics mentioned above. On top of that, the Aussie dollar now buys 110 US cents. So if I were Sparky, I’d be happy to see a successful insurance claim deliver the money: it could be safer and quicker than waiting for the USA salesmen to cough up. Sparky’s former USA partner, Dan Phillips, comes to mind. Their bitter court battle was not so long ago; Phillip’s Australian operation is still in receivership.

GLENTHORNE FARM: ONCE AGAIN UNDER HOUSING THREAT photo LEO DAVIS

And, sorry, but one last plug for the viticultural worth of the ground which produced this expensive luxury. There IS one more bit of it left unplanted. That’s the 209 hectare Glenthorne Farm at the top of Taps. This, of course is the farm we taxpayers bought from the CSIRO, and gave to the University of Adelaide for $1, provided it set about using the land for desperately-required viticultural, horticultural, and winemaking research.

As Planning Minister, Deputy-premier Rau is the only one who could release the University from the solemn deed it signed a decade back, promising to carry out such research, and repeatedly forbidding it from any sub-development. As Attorney-general, he is the appropriate Minister to advise the Planning Minister as to the legal hitches which might be encountered in scrapping the deed, which the University desperately wants to do, so it can sub-divide and develop the site. It has never really attempted to keep its pledge and use the site for viticultural, horticultural, and winemaking research.

In his suggested plan for “saving” McLaren Vale from further ghetto spread, the same Minister makes it clear this land should be excluded from the preservation zone, meaning that once again, it, too, would be ripe for another outbreak of dreaded villa rash.

Given their phenomenal international reputation and respect, their skill at the gathering of such fame, and the fact that they can get so much money for a bottle of Gateway which may cost them, say $20 to produce, perhaps the Marquis family might exert some influence? Do something civic-minded?

BOTRYTISED SHIRAZ WITH SEVERELY STRESSED LEAVES IN THE MOLLYDOOKER VINEYARD BESIDE THE WINERY, VINTAGE 2011 ... MOST OF McLAREN VALE HAD PICKED OR GIVEN UP BY THIS STAGE OF VINTAGE, AND YET MOLLYDOOKER WAS STILL WATERING THESE VINES DURING THE SECOND WETTEST VINTAGE IN HISTORY ... CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO LEARN ABOUT MOLLYDOOKER'S TRADEMARKED FRUIT WEIGHT INDEX

And that's not all they've trademarked. There's also the Marquis Vineyard Watering Programme (sic) ™ ...

On April 28th, the Mollydooker Facebook entry said "The Marquis Vineyard Watering Programme™ tells us how much water we need to apply each day in the weeks before harvest to keep the canopy working and to hold the grape sugar levels down. Because we are watering, we can leave the grapes on the vines for an additional 10-14 days to accumulate extra flavour and colour. We don't pick grapes for Mollydooker until the flavour levels reach Awesome, and the juice has a Marquis Fruit Weight™ of at least 60%. It is our guarantee of quality to you. Janet."

On April 16, the site had reported: "We are watering to keep the sugar levels down and the canopy flourishing so that the Mollydooker grapes can continue to bask in the beautiful Indian summer sun. The vines are maturing and sending ripe tannin signals to the grapes, which gain extra flavour and richness every day."

VINTAGE 2011 - 2ND WETTEST IN OZ HISTORY

THE AUTHOR ADDRESSING THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN WINE PRESS CLUB IN THE NATIONAL WINE CENTRE AT THE 2010 VINTAGE ROUND-UP LUNCHEON. BILL MOULARADELLIS IS TO THE LEFT, WINEMAKERS FEDERATION AUSTRALIA LOBBYIST ANDREW WILSMORE IS PEEKING OVER THE SPEAKER'S SHOULDER, AND THAT'S CLUB PRESIDENT BRENTON QUIRINI ON THE RIGHT photo LEO DAVIS

2011: Year Of Moulds & Misery
Far Too Much Bad Fruit Picked
Wine Lake Still The Same Size
by PHILIP WHITE


AT last year’s annual South Australia Wine Press Club post-vintage lunch, which I had been invited to address for many consecutive years to appraise the vintages just finished, Bill Moularadellis stood up at the lectern and said not one Australian vine should be uprooted because his company wanted every grape it could get.

Bill, who has recently been appointed to the board of Wine Australia, the industry’s governing body, is the managing director of his family’s Riverland winery, Kingston Estate. Wine Press Club Chairman, Brenton Quirini, of Empire Liquor, who introduced Moularadellis to a full house in the National Wine Centre, had just taken on the distribution of Kingston Estate. The event felt like a re-launch of the brand, with the wines being poured liberally to the throng of businessmen, bankers, and wine industry identities.

I quite liked the Sauvignon blanc.

Some readers may recall Kingston temporarily losing its export licence in May 2000, after I’d written about it using, amongst other things, silver nitrate, a clarifying agent used legally in some countries, but banned in Australia. Respected wine consultant Dr Tony Jordan, who works for the French giant Louis Vuitton Mőet Hennessey, is also on the board of Wine Australia. He suggested to me at the time that there was a good argument to permit the careful use of silver nitrate here; Moularadellis was fully co-operative during the investigations and soon had his licence reinstated.

GOOD-QUALITY SHIRAZ PICKED BEFORE THE 2011 WEATHER WENT AWRY

While it took some time for the Kingston Estate brand to rehabilitate, in the Adelaide market particularly, its was then our ninth-biggest wine exporter, contributing $12-15 million worth of Australia’s $1.2 billion total export.

There was no hint of anything other than enthusiasm for Bill and his wine at the Wine Press Club lunch. But when it came to his suggestion that not one vine should be uprooted, I spoke, shall we say, contrarily. I had suggested we were in a terrible glut of wine internationally, and Australia would suffer, pointing out that about a third of the wine grapes grown here were not required by winemakers. I explained there were three massive presumptions our wine industry’s success had depended upon, and these were hubristic, false, and finished. Over. Kaput.

This unholy trinity of presumptions included an ongoing weak Aussie dollar (it was stupidly undervalued, given our natural resources); a tax regime illogically, unfairly and enormously biased towards the makers of inferior swill (incurring staggering environmental, social and economic damage); and an endless supply of impossibly cheap water (which we knew was no longer there until we had the second-wettest vintage in Australian history – which is not, shall we say, normal).

REASONABLE-QUALITY HAND-PICKED GRENACHE

I had suggested that viticulture as we knew it - in the vast Murray-Darling Basin - was over, and would never return to its glory days of five years back. The world has too much wine; Australia has insufficient water to sacrifice in ratios like 1000:1 to grow and make wine which sells more cheaply than Evian water.

I suggested that contrary to the opinions of the industry councils, which seemed to believe their punch-drunk business should shrink by around 20 per cent, I felt that 40 per cent would be more realisitic, and looked set to occur whether it was organised or not. In the most likely latter case, I said a disorganized deconstruction would be very messy, and entire inland communities would need lots of money, relocation, restructuring and assistance.

Recently, I received a fascinating email from Bill Moularadellis’s brother, Jim, who calls himself Chief Enthusiasm Officer (CEO) of pre-eminent bulk wine brokers Austwine, a 20-year-old “grey market” merchant this year celebrating its 500 millionth litre of bulk wine traded. Jim has written the Moularadellis family version of Vintage 2011.

PURE BOTRYTIS STRIKE ON A SHIRAZ BERRY. A LOT OF FRUIT LOOKED REASONABLE ON THE VINE, BUT WHEN IT WAS TOUCHED, THE BOTRYTIS SLIME BENEATH THE SKIN SAW THE BERRIES FALL APART photo JAMES HOOK

Put broadly, Jim agrees with my contention that while the vintage crush total was a much bigger figure than anybody predicted, given the oversupply and rotten vintage, the 1.6 million tonnes crushed includes large amounts of juice which was reduced to concentrate to bolster other batches of fruit which could not ripen. And much of the rest of the crush will make wine so rotten it cannot be cleaned up sufficiently for sale anyway. So the 1.6 million tonnes is not an indicator of how much potable wine was made, but an indicator of how much bad fruit was picked.

Let me reiterate: vast fields of rotten, mouldy, brown pus was indeed picked. I watched it picked, and watched winemakers in many regions struggle to know how to deal with bins of machine-harvested mildewed and botrytised grapes that turned to slurry before they reached the crusher.

All this uncertainty is forcing up the price of bulk wine in store from previous vintages – bulk wine whose poor quality had prevented its sale, even at much lower prices, until this ocean of much worse wine arrived at the hoppers this year.

Jim Moularadellis writes that this confusion has brought about a situation where the expected price has artificially levelled, so that vendors are asking the same price for bad wine as others expect for less buggered wine. Since vintage, there has been much chatter about price, but few actual sales. This, he thinks, will correct itself as the year progresses, as more wineries realise that whatever they do to clean up the mouldy swill they picked, whatever they spend on whatever chemicals, colorants, bleaches, thickening essences or reagents, the wine simply will not make the drinkable grade.

Jim concludes that good quality supply of all the staple varieties is very tight and lean, and remarks particularly on the sudden spike in demand for Moscato. (This is the variety BRL-Hardy had wanted to plant on Adelaide University’s 206ha viticultural research property at Glenthorne Farm in order to fund the establishment there of further wine and grape research facilities, but was refused by the university – Deputy chancellor, Brian Croser, reportedly preferred Chardonnay.)

Then, to finish his sad song of wine gone wrong, Jim says:

“2012 vintage promises more of the same due to the likely modest level of vineyard removals, at least average winter rainfall on top of already moist soils and a persistently high Australian dollar.”

MOULDY MACHINE-HARVESTED GRENACHE

In other words, he’s not expecting the wine tax imbalance to be corrected. Nor, for that matter, was he expecting the current powerful move toward higher base alcohol retail prices by people like Woolworths, led by Coles, a swelling band of politicians, and the health lobby. Any such inevitable correction will very quickly see an increase in the removal or abandonment of unprofitable and marginal vineyards, believe me. There’s one of the three presumptions – which I call stupid – being blindly clung to.

Here’s another: Jim agrees that the dollar will stay “high” but seems to think it’s artificially so; he seems disappointed. I think it’s normal, given our natural resources, which will take some time to extract. I heard this morning one analyst suggesting the dollar will stay roughly where it is for twenty years.

So where are we? In spite of all the deserted and uprooted vineyards, and the vast amount of the 2011 crop being used for concentrate, it is now evident that the Australian wine lake is about the same size it was a couple of years ago. The biggest difference is the quality: it’s worse. Around 40-45 million cases worth of wine was made from fruit which should have been cut to the ground and left; those vineyards should go.

BOTRYTIS-INFECTED RIESLING IN THE BAROSSA 2011 photo DAVID LEHMANN ... CLICK HERE FOR LOUISA ROSE'S REPORT FROM YALUMBA

But many growers who couldn’t sell their rotten crops this year don’t have the money to uproot vineyards or even prune them. So they sit there with the husks of the 2011 fruit intact, acting like perfect incubators for disease which will bloom and infest healthy neighbouring vineyards unless 2012 is back to the Big Dry that preceded the second wettest vintage in history.

However, given the weather we’ve had since vintage, anything can happen. It’s perfect in McLaren Vale as I write: those who can afford to prune have done it; the whole region’s sprouted and the weather’s perfect. Yesterday a mate complained that for the first time in his life he’d got sunburnt whilst pruning; earlier in the year I saw grape pickers wearing wet weather gear usually reserved for pruning in the winter.

As for the South Australian Wine Press Club: I wasn’t invited to summarise 2011. I think they invited Tony Love.

MACHINE-HARVESTED SHIRAZ ROTTEN WITH MILDEW AND BOTRYTIS

To read Jim Moularadellis's full report, click here.

GLENTHORNE CARVE-UP BACK ON TABLE

Hard-core Vineyard Researchers Could Learn From Gum Guardian: Do Science On Glenthorne Farm!
by PHILIP WHITE

Having seen enough vineyards rotting away this vintage, your correspondent was delighted this last week to attend what is Australia’s leading arboretum of eucalypts at Currency Creek.

This amazing plantation is largely the work of one obsessed man, Dean Nicolle Ph. D.; B. Sc. (Hons) Botany; B App Sc. (Natural resources Management). By the age of eight Dean (above) knew he would be dedicating his life to botany, by his sixteenth year he knew his focus would be the eucalypts, and was hard at work collecting and propagating seeds for his collection. He plants four trees from each source tree, and preserves other seedlings which are stored in scientific repositories elsewhere.

He now runs an arboretum of over 900 species and sub-species, totaling some 9000 plants. He talks of individual source trees in the Kimberly, the Simpson Desert or Cape York with the sort of familiarity most of us show our nephews and nieces. With other scientists, he is constantly running essential trials and experiments, and showed us an amazing study in progress examining the carbon-storing capacities of different types of eucalypt. To scientifically test the effect of bushfire on the different types, he even burnt a large part of his original plantings to a cinder, with the help of the local fireys.

It is alarming to realize that the knowledge of our most common indigenous tree rests so much in the zeal of one man, who has tirelessly done most of this off his own bat, working as a consultant to raise the funds to keep the whole complex exercise alive. To visit this quiet corner of the Fleurieu is a humbling, confounding experience.

Which brings me to Glenthorne Farm, the 206ha research station on O’Halloran Hill. In the late ’nineties, the late Greg Trott and I fought for some years to have this saved from sub-division and established as a research vineyard and winemaking site as part of the campus of the University of Adelaide. With some acute wheeling and dealing, and the assistance of Senator Robert Hill, Minister for Environment, and Di Laidlaw, local Minister for Planning, we eventually convinced the CSIRO to dramatically drop the fee it expected. The State government bought the land and a deed was drawn to have it transferred to the University for a dollar.

This deed was very specific. Amongst its Recitals are the following:

B. For many years the CSIRO has used the land for purposes of agriculture and as an agricultural research facility.

D. The CSIRO has only agreed to sell the Land on the proviso that the Land will be preserved and conserved for agriculture and other related activities and will not be used for urban development.

E. The University, as the person nominated by the State, has agreed to purchase the Land from the CSIRO, to preserve and conserve the Land for other related activities and not use, develop or permit the Land to be used or developed for urban development.

Furthermore, the Obligations of the University included the following very specific clauses:

4.1 The University covenants with the Minister that it will, subject to obtaining all necessary statutory approvals, do all reasonably necessary things to ensure that the Land is

4.1.1 preserved, conserved and used for Agriculture, Horticulture, Oenology, Viticulture, Buffer Zones and as Community Recreation Area, and

4.1.2 is available for Project Research Activities, University Research Activities, Education Activities and operating a Wine Making Facility.

4.2 The University covenants with the Minister that it will not at any time hereafter:

4.2.1 use or permit the Land to be used other than as provided for in subclause 4.1 unless such other use is approved in writing by a Minister acting as agent of the Crown,

4.2.2 undertake or permit Development or seek to undertake Development of the Land for uses other than those specified in subclause 4.1 unless such other use or Development (excluding Urban Development which will not be approved) is approved in writing by a Minister acting as agent of the Crown.

4.4 The University covenants with the Minister that it will not at any time hereafter sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of the whole or any portion of the Land unless it shall first procure from the purchaser or transferee a binding undertaking either to be bound by this Deed or to enter into a Deed with the Minister on the same terms as are contained in this Deed.

The University spent almost two years considering this deed before affixing its seal; Trott eventually set up a joint venture with BRL-Hardy, which would buy fruit from the first commercial-scale vineyard there, providing some of the funding for the further development of the facility according to the deed. The transfer eventually went through smoothly, and in the University newspaper, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mary O’Kane promoted the deal as a sensible triumph for the future of viticultural research in Australia.

“The partnership agreement between the University and BRL Hardy—two of the icons of the South Australian wine industry—will strengthen South Australia’s position as an international leader in wine research and education,” she said.

“This is a strategic, long-term investment based on sound financial principles and an assessment of the future needs of the Australian wine industry.

“In addition to state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment at the Waite campus, the University will now have access to a large commercial vineyard managed by one of the world’s fastest-growing wine companies. This will be a tremendous advantage in ensuring that the University and the South Australian wine industry stay at the forefront of viticulture and oenology research and education.”

Professor O’Kane said most of the land would be put under vines and some research facilities would also be located on the site. The commercial vineyard would contribute further money for research at the University.

“We expect that the vineyard will begin to generate income for research from the third vintage,” Professor O’Kane said. “We have entered into a long-term contract with BRL Hardy for the management of the vineyard and sale of the fruit, more than 50% of which will be available to other winemakers.”

Through hopeless mis-management, and perhaps some nefarious long-term scheming, none of this occurred, and after nearly a decade the University attempted to sub-divide enough of the land to build a thousand houses. BRL-Hardy was absorbed by the giant Constellation Wines of upstate New York, which has now sold everything at bargain basement rates, dumping $1.6 billion, and virtually left Australia. Your correspondent nevertheless spent over a year lobbying to ensure the University kept its side of the very generous deal, and eventually then Planning Minister Paul Holloway ruled that the University should conform to the agreements it made in the deed.

Two short years later, now with Robert Hill as chancellor, the University is again angling to wriggle out of the deed and grab some cash, so the writer is dumbly preparing for another battle, the third, to see this land used to avoid some of the destruction and mismanagement we have seen in Australian viticulture in the last few years.

There are countless trials and tests which urgently need to proceed in the world of viticulture in this time of extreme climate, global warming, and ever-changing wine trends. There are thousands of grape varieties never even trialed in Australia. We need urgently to source better flavours, and more drought and disease resistant grape sorts. There is a desperate need to research better irrigation practices and recycling of water, and scientific tests of organic and bio-dynamic procedures must be commenced to keep international shelf space as the whole world of gastronomy moves toward more wholesome, eco-friendly farming and manufacture.

To think that all the billions invested in the wine industry sit there awaiting their Dean Nicolle leaves me angered and frustrated. With the disappearance of Constellation, and the possible fragmentation of Fosters wine group, now called Treasury, McLaren Vale suddenly has no big winery presence to rekindle that sensible JV arrangement and get on with it.

But now Angoves, the giant Riverland winery more aware than most of the troubles of irrigated viticulture is moving into McLaren Vale with a new cellar door and vineyards, perhaps it’ll take one of the last great wine families to rekindle some sense and some hard, cold science. Any company that saves precious southern vineyard and farming land from ghetto rash would rise immediately to hero status. Internationally.

GLENTHORNE FARM: THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE IS ATTEMPTING ONCE AGAIN TO WRIGGLE OUT OF THE DEED IT SIGNED, IN WHICH IT PROMISED TO USE THIS RESEARCH STATION FOR VITICULTURAL SCIENCE, WINEMAKING STUDIES AND HORTICULTURE WHILST PRESERVING AND CONSERVING THE ENTIRE 206 ha PROPERTY photo LEO DAVIS

McLAREN VALE AT WAR WITH GHETTO GOVT

GOING: DAVID PAXTON IN HIS GATEWAY VINEYARD OVERLOOKING THE SPARKLING GULF St VINCENT, THE PATRON SAINT OF VITICULTURERS, THIS VINEYARD IS QUITE LITERALLY THE OPENING TO THE McLAREN VALE WINE DISTRICT. THE HILL BEHIND PAXTON IS WHERE THE LOCAL ONKAPARINGA COUNCIL HAS CONSPIRED TO DUMP AN INTENSIVE MULTI-STOREY DORMITORY SUBURB SURROUNDED BY A "BIG BOX" LIGHT INDUSTRIAL "EMPLOYMENT ZONE" photo KATE ELMES

Council Shafts Winemakers Abandons Planning Pledges Here Comes The Ghettoby PHILIP WHITE
This July article was the first to report the treacherous situation at Seaford Heights. Since this, intense lobbying saw the Council backflip on its approval, Mayor Rosenberg castigate Council for spoiling her plan, and the Labor Party government ministers obfuscate and bullshit about whose plan it was and how the backflip will forever hurt development in the region, et cetera, ad infinitim ... In the meantime, government is intent on continuing with the development. An update on the situation will be published here soon.

Here's the original story:


McLaren Vale has had enough.

Three years ago, Lorraine Rosenberg, Mayor of Onkaparinga, launched Trott’s View, the late Greg Trott’s weighty conservationist tome about what and whom he loved and feared in his beloved McLaren Vale.

Rosenberg spoke precisely and brightly about a new era of council-community co-operation: a new environmental morality. Trott could now lie straight in his grave.

This speech was a shock: when Rosenberg was the Liberal Member for Kaurna in the Olsen government, she ruled as if no hillside was nice without colourbond.

Late last week, Vales winemakers discovered it was the end of the ten days Rosenberg’s Council had given them to peruse and comment on a tasteless development many years in the planning.

One can hear Trott roaring from the Strout Road cemetery. He died believing he’d secured a solemn vow from government: no more villa rash east of South Road.

GOING: GLENTHORNE FARM ON McLAREN VALE'S NORTHERN BORDER ... CURRENTLY IN LIMBO AS THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE, WHICH WAS GIVEN THE LAND FOR VITICULTURAL RESEARCH, FAILED IN ITS RECENT ATTEMPT AT LUCRATIVE SUBDIVISION, BUT CONTINUES TO FAIL TO KEEP THE SOLEMN PLEDGES IT MADE IN THE DEED IN SPITE OF PRECISE INSTRUCTION FROM THE PREMIER THAT THE DEED SHOULD BE HONOURED photo LEO DAVIS

The 1,700 new houses of Seaford Heights will be east of South Road, bang on the entrance to McLaren Vale, opposite Paxtons’ prestigious Gateway Vineyard. These vines grow some of the district’s best fruit. Trott had been scheming to hang a giant bell on that hilltop, to peal every morning at eleven. Tasting time.

For McLaren Vale, the location couldn’t be worse. David Paxton is livid.

“McLaren Vale is striving for world wide recognition as a first-class wine region,” he fumed. “Do you think the French would build a housing estate on the edge of Burgundy?”

The new suburb is opposite his vineyard, bordered by Main South Road, Wheaton Road, Ostrich Farm Road and Victor Harbor Road: a tagger’s paradise of eave-to-eave dormitoria, industrial “big box” sheds and colourbond fences. Its name alone should enrage creative sprayers. How can you have a ford on the sea in the heights?

The plan ridicules the long-term conservation and development promises the Rann Labor government devised before it dribbled in at the election.

The Labor Member for Mawson, Leon Bignell, is suddenly under a spotlight he wishes would pop. He works hard for the winemakers; his angry opposition to Constellation Wines’ destruction of John Reynell’s 1839 vineyard helped get him re-elected with an increased majority.

Seaford Heights also ridicules the November 2008 assurance of Planning Minister Paul Holloway.

“Because the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale are important economic areas of the state,” he promised on ABC radio, “because they’re wine regions, also significant tourism regions, it would not make sense to have urban encroachment to a significant extent into those areas.

“So we’ll avoid those areas and the areas that we’ll be looking at for future expansion are those areas where there’ll be less impact on the important tourism and economic areas ... it’s simple common sense: why would you want to encroach on areas that are important to the economy … Clearly that would be put at threat if we allowed rampant urban development within those areas.”


GONE: JOHN REYNELL'S 162 YEAR OLD VINEYARD ... LOST TO INTENSIVE GHETTO SUBDVISION EARLIER THIS YEAR AS CONSTELLATION WINES, COUNCIL AND GOVERNMENT DIDDLED HISTORY AND HERITAGE WITH SOME VERY SWIFT BACKROOM DODGES photo KATE ELMES
 We heard a lot more of that from Premier Mike Rann before the election.

“The McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association represents approximately 500 grape growers, wineries and tourism operators,” said its chairman Dudley Brown in his last-minute submission to Council, “with combined revenues exceeding $800 million per annum ... the single largest group of employers, landholders, ratepayers and tourism attractions in the City of Onkaparinga ...

“The Seaford Heights development plan and amendment goes to great lengths to discuss how ‘integrated’ it is with the 30 Year Plan for Adelaide and the Council's own plans,” he writes, “but seems entirely divorced from the economic reality and planning needs of its neighbouring communities … [It is] a very poor reflection of the Council's regard for its most successful worldwide brand and economic backbone ... and is likely to haunt the region for many decades to come.”

This belated rage is accompanied by many good suggestions about how to make the new burb look better, indicating to some that the Association has already thrown in its towel because the development deal was done before the newest restrictions were imposed.

The Association kept schtum when the Rann government, Rosenberg’s Council and Constellation Wines willfully destroyed the famous Chateau Reynella vineyard. Some Barossa winemakers equate that to replacing the Hill of Grace with slums.

Speaking of really dumb names, perhaps it was envy that kept the McLVGW&TA silent when the Onkaparinga Council recently began an official rebranding of its plant and properties: Onka is the new word. Parri means river. Onka means women.

Ponkepurringa, Unkaparinga, Ingangkiparri, Unkerparingga, Ngangki-parri, Ngangki-parri-unga … Onkaparinga was where the Kaurna secured their women and kids when invaders came to steal ceremonial ochre, and savage wars were fought. It meant “the place of the women’s river”, or “women’s place by their river”.

That old parri, with its deep protective ravines, still flows by, just a spear’s throw from Seaford Bloody Heights. But todays’ attack comes from within: from the only council on Earth with WOMEN painted on its garbage trucks.

“These pages are dedicated to all who live within this beautiful and bounteous region,” Trott wrote in the book Rosenberg launched, “trusting that they will always remain guardians of its heritage and will plant its future carefully and sensitively, while forever maintaining a level of sympathetic creativity.”

NEXT: HAVING BOUGHT THESE VINEYARDS AT MANY TIMES THEIR CURRENT VALUE, THE KARIDIS DEVELOPMENT GROUP WANTS TO REPLACE THESE HISTORIC VINEYARDS ON THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF THE McLAREN VALE TOWNSHIP WITH OVER A THOUSAND UNITS FOR THE ELDERLY. photo KATE ELMES

LETTER OF RESPONSE FROM THE MAYOR

I was intrigued by ‘McLaren Vale tempers boil over villa rash’ (Independent Weekly, 16 July) with its selective and unbalanced reporting. The article failed to indicate the State Government’s primary role in the development of the land at Seaford Heights. This site has been earmarked for housing since 1962 and zoned as residential since the late 1980s. The State Government’s Land Management Corporation owned the land until 2008 when it contracted to sell half of it to Fairmont Homes. The City of Onkaparinga had no role in this sale. It must also be noted that the State Government has set SA’s population growth targets, which Council must adhere to.

Had I been given the opportunity to comment in the article, I would have explained that Council is trying to achieve the best outcomes for the region regarding Seaford Heights. This is through involvement in a Development Plan Amendment, which seeks to reduce future demand for urban expansion. As it stands, the new landowners could apply for development approval under existing rules, which we believe would exacerbate urban sprawl. I also wish to comment on the sexist remarks towards the end of the article, which add absolutely nothing to the content.

City of Onkaparinga Mayor Lorraine Rosenberg


Speech to Onkaparinga Council - 15 Septemberby Dudley Brown, Chairman of the McLaren Vale Grape Wine And Tourism Association

(This speech was critical in council's backflip over its plan: local government elections are in November, and the strength of the anti-development lobby saw council vote against its own plan. So now we lobby the state Labor ministers!) 
 
I would like to make the first of a few extraordinary claims tonight.

The first is that this beautiful new map on the wall is the finest geology map of any wine region in the world. Each of the different colors represents a different geological formation between 2 million and a nearly a billion years old in our region. Each of these imparts different flavors to grapes and creates diversity that most regions dream about.

My second claim is that this very unique geology is the foundation of what makes the McLaren Wale wine region so special on the world stage.

My third claim is that your decision regarding Seaford Heights is not a decision of local importance. It is of international importance.

Whether you know it or not, there are wine journalists and bloggers and consumers and wine tourists worldwide watching what happens tonight.

There’s an old saying in politics that where you stand depends on where you sit.

As Councillors from all parts of the city and as grape growers, winemakers and tourism operators in the McLaren vale wine region, we typically sit in different places.

However, in decision-making, we all try address the same three things: facts, context and process. I would like the council to respectfully consider all three from where our 500 members sit.

First the facts:

The McLaren Vale wine region’s borders are recognized by international treaty to be roughly contiguous with the borders of the City of Onkaparinga. Like you, we represent the entire city of Onkaparinga and not just the town of McLaren Vale.
Part of our charter is to maintain and preserve the rural amenity of our region for future generations to enjoy.

The grape industry of McLaren Vale contributes average annual revenues of approximately $80 million to the local economy. It employs sustainably managed and renewable water for over 95% of its irrigation needs while employing over 700 people on a full-time basis. Another 300-500 people are engaged as a second source of income and many more on a contract or part time basis.

The wine industry of McLaren Vale accounts for over 10% of the national wine output by value, employs over 2000 people full time and contributes $700 million per year in revenues.
The tourism industry of the McLaren Vale area just within the Willunga Basin contributes $160 million per year to the local economy comprising over 240 different tourism businesses in accommodation, food, wine, arts, transportation and other areas.

Any conservative multiplier would suggest that our industries support another 3000 jobs locally and another 3000 across the state.

McLaren Vale is consistently recognized by key media such as Australian Gourmet Traveler and Delicious as the number one wine and food region in Australia.

It has the #1 regional restaurant in Australia at Fino, it is the #1 region in Australia for local produce, the home of the best wine list in South Australia at the Victory, the host of Australia’s richest landscape art prize and the most valuable vineyard land in Australia.

THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE McLAREN VALE VIGNOBLE IN THE WILLUNGA EMBAYMENT, LOOKING SOUTH. THE ONKAPARINGA GORGE IN THE FOREGROUND DISSECTS THE DISTRICT: THE NORTHERN HALF OF ITS AREA OF THE BEST OLD GEOLOGY FOR VITICULTURE HAS ALREADY DISAPPEARED BENEATH THE HOUSING YOU CAN SEE APPROACHING IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT - photo STACEY POTHOVEN

Now some context and a few more facts:

When the planning decisions for the proposed Seaford Heights suburb were made between the 1960’s and early last decade, the McLaren Vale wine industry was:

a) Spread out with many vineyards in the northern half of the current City of Onkaparinga

b) Much less intensive in nature relative to other crops

b) Less than 10% of its current size economically

c) Insignificant in terms of tourism

Since that time, a large portion of the historic viticultural areas in the northern part of the city have been developed for suburban development with the oldest vineyard in Australia bulldozed with this Council’s acquiescence at Reynella last year.

PART OF THE NORTHERN HALF OF THE McLAREN VALE VIGNOBLE, SHOWING NEW HOUSING SURROUNDING CHATEAU REYNELLA, WHICH IS OWNED BY CONSTELLATION WINES. JOHN REYNELL'S ORIGINAL 163 YEAR OLD VINEYARD IS CIRCLED. CONSTELLATION, WITH THE CONNIVANCE OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS REPLACED THIS PRICELESS HERITAGE ITEM WITH GHETTO EARLIER THIS YEAR.

At the same time, the southern part of the region has been much more intensively planted to vines. This part of the city is now, by far, the most intensively planted wine region (relative to other crops) in Australia.

The result has been an economic explosion of wine production and tourism in the region. McLaren Vale now accounts for: 25% of state grape and wine production by value, the highest per litre price for exports of any region in Australia, the highest total value exports of any wine region in Australia, the most successful job creator relative to water and grape inputs of any wine region in Australia and is the largest contributor to tourism of any SA region outside of Adelaide.

Moreover, as McLaren Vale is the highest cost region in SA for wine production, the economy is increasingly dependent on tourism and cellar door visitation as a path to profitability. Evidence of this is that cellar door numbers in the region have expanded from about thirty ten years ago to over eighty at present. This success story has evolved despite major wine companies withdrawing over 50% of their grape consumption and production from our high cost region over the past decade.

The result of this adaptive response to adversity is a wonderful and diverse set of tourism experiences that enable visitors to return many times and always have new experiences available to them. This is the exact type of organic economic development that state and local governments should be protecting and promoting rather than threatening with unsuitable development.

No other industry or area located in the City of Onkaparinga can list so many “best in Australia” gongs. None of this was true ten or twenty or thirty years ago when plans were originally made for Seaford Heights.


The Seaford Heights development is located at the entrance to the gateways to the tourism regions of McLaren Vale, the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. The land adjoins the beginning of the vineyards of the town of McLaren Vale on the Victor Harbor Road and the open spaces of South Road. It is the point where suburbia fades away and the holiday experience begins for more people than any other region in South Australia.

Any development that occurs here should be designed from the context of the site’s importance as a place of transition from the suburbs to a major wine and food tourism region not as an extension of the suburbs.

Further, the site should also leverage the assets and possibilities presented by its proximity to an international airport for tourists, the city of Adelaide, major universities, one of the most economically important wine regions in Australia, a two-way freeway and a reliable supply of reclaimed water. Aside from the freeway, the current plan for this site ignores all of these assets.

For this reason alone, the Council should reject the current DPA as a hasty and inappropriate outcome for the entire region.

My final really big claim is that this site is the viticultural equivalent of Olympic Dam.

The 650 million year old exposed geology of the land in question is possibly the most important and valuable unplanted site for viticulture in the world.

How do we know this? Because

1) the PIRSA geologists who mapped this site are some of the best in the world

2) this map tells us how old the geology at this site is and

3) old rocks produce great wines.


The only place where there is an exposed geology of at least 650 million years old in the entire world of viticulture is in pockets of the Greenock area in the Barossa and the Polish Hill area in Clare Valley. Vines in these areas have produced more perfect wine scores ever received in Australia many times over that of any other area of Australia combined. Even McLaren Vale.

There is nowhere else with geology this old or of this size exposed in a suitable viticulture area anywhere in the world.

Despite this information being available from PIRSA, the DPA’s brief section on soil and geology section simply says that the site has gray brown loams suitable for foundations and gardens.

For this reason alone, the Council should reject the current DPA as a hasty and inappropriate outcome for the entire region.

Serendipitously, there is also an ample supply of reclaimed water for irrigation located directly across the Victor Harbor Road. If this parcel was developed as agricultural land, effluent to the sea could be reduced by as much as 800 million litres per year or 20% of the total remaining outflow of pollutants into the Gulf. This is not mentioned anywhere in the planning documents either. How can a Council that is a partner in the $120 million dollar waterproofing the south strategy that supplies this water not know this or mention it in a DPA?

The process employed by the City with regard to the planning and public consultation about the Seaford Heights Development has been badly flawed.

Released on 13 May 2010, the Council’s DPA, listed those with whom the Council undertook to consult with on a statutory basis. It also committed to consult with “relevant community and business groups active within the City of Onkaparinga.”

At no point did the MVGWTA receive any formal or informal communication from the City regarding the consultation process for Seaford Heights.

We were completely unaware of this process until the 7th of July. Only on the 9th of July were we able to make our members aware of this situation. Submissions closed that day. As our Council and city staff did not consider us “relevant”, our members did not have the same opportunity to respond as other stakeholders.

How can the largest employer in the city that is acknowledged to be the best in Australia in so many ways, that contributes a billion dollars of year in revenues in the mostly highly taxed industry in Australia that also physically adjoins the property in question not considered ‘relevant’ by either staff or Council? “ We believe that this is more than an oversight.

The lack of relevance of McLaren Vale and the food and wine tourism economy of the region isn’t just confined to the DPA’s invitation list however.

In the many hundreds of pages of planning and research documents that I read - including the DPA - from surveys of job location and creation to zoning and building densities – nowhere did I find the words “McLaren Vale,” “wine and grape industry” or “tourism” anywhere.

Nowhere in the employment assessment did the research mention the words McLaren Vale or wine industry or tourism – it only looked north and west of Seaford Heights and to other industries like retail. It turns out we supposedly don’t have enough grocery stores despite there being two large ones around the corner with an empty parking lot.

Nowhere did I find any risk assessment of the impact on the $160 million per year tourism industry.

Nowhere did I find an assessment of the risk posed to an $800 million dollar per year grape and wine industry that depends on tourism for profitability.

Nowhere did I find any reference to the authoritative research of Kym Anderson from the University of Adelaide on the economic impact of Australian wine regions undertaken last year.

Nowhere did I find any assessment of the risk or impact posed to the locally owned Main Street merchants across the Willunga Basin by the proposed retail development at Seaford Heights.

Nowhere did I find any reference to the community consultation undertaken by the City in 2006 with McLaren Vale to regarding the maintenance of the rural amenity and character of our region.

In short, there was absolutely no consideration of the impact of this proposed development on our region or industries or alternative uses at any point in the planning and consultation process. The “oversights” in this DPA are entirely too many and too serious to be simply brushed off. Remarkably, the city conducted an appropriate community consultation process about the location of a Leopard tank in a park but not about a new suburb with the population the size of McLaren Vale.

For this reason alone, the Council should reject the current DPA as a hasty and inappropriate outcome for the city.

Tonight, we are asking for three things from the Council:

1) That you reject the recommendation to extend the DPA process until January 2011 as it can only result in tinkering with a fundamentally flawed plan that is inappropriate to the site in question and does not meet Council’s own objectives.

2) That you take a non-binding vote as to who on the Council supports or does not support this current DPA as it stands. You owe the voting public the respect of standing to be counted on this issue prior to the election.

3) That you vote to abandon the current DPA process altogether and that you inform the Minister that any new DPA for this site needs to be undertaken with the full involvement of the Council, the community and industries affected as part of a long term strategic plan for the Willunga Basin that includes the LMC sites at Aldinga, Bowering Hill and Sellick’s Beach.

While it is easy to blame the State or the developers or the staff for the squeeze you find yourself in tonight, you can put them all on notice that it is the elected officials of this City who take responsibility for well considered and appropriate outcomes for our beautiful region.

A lot more people than our members are watching your decision tonight. The world is watching.


Comments posted on original DRINKSTER publication:

Nigel: .

"The Onkaparinga is also my river. I can hear the waters when they run, (and remember, Phil, I am deaf.) It's that close to my office window. The Onkaparinga District Council was for so many years South Australia's second oldest local government body, formed just a few months after Mitcham. And then it was swallowed up in the Adelaide Hills Council when amalgamation came about. Gleefully and to our gutwrenching dismay, the southern areas snapped up our beautiful name. The local footy team still enjoys the nickname Onkas. Won't they be thrilled to read their names on the garbage trucks. And believe me, they're competitive. They don't pussyfoot around and play like onkas...." July 29, 2010 7:58 PM

Anonymous:

"This new villages should be for Cambo people who do weeding and pruning the picking for the wines." July 29, 2010 10:24 PM

McLoverAllMyLife:

"that's just nuts" July 31, 2010 9:18 PM

Grant:

"It seems to me that Biggles has lost site of the fact that it is a Labor government that he happens to be part of, that has changed the planning act which is allowing this unbridled destruction. He can't have it both ways. Clearly his voice in Caucus is not as loud as his voice in the public press." August 1, 2010 5:03 PM

Roger Wingco:

"why wasn't he at the meeting?" August 1, 2010 8:43 PM

Philip White:

"If you seek blame, you will get nowhere, because everybody shares the blame for this. Even the street directories have shown this land as a suburb for many years, and the entire community has sat back without wondering why or how. Some locals were tipped off a year ago that this was impending, and never made mention of it. So forget the blame, and get active, and show your anger. Get onto FaceBook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/WE-OPPOSE-SEAFORD-HEIGHTS/133760679996263?ref=ts and offer your support." August 3, 2010 8:51 AM

Anonymous:

"I hear the govt's offer of compromise is ratshit!" August 11, 2010 6:40 PM

Garbage Trucks For Sale:

"Wow nice land it was very environmentalist and beautiful place to live in." August 12, 2010 12:54 AM

Garbage Trucks For Sale:

"Nice land and very relaxing ambiance when taking vacation or lifetime resting." August 27, 2010 6:09 PM
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VINE PULL: THE WORST POSSIBLE PROMO

Post Modern Wine Fire ... Aussie Vineyards Burning ... Bad Billboard For Wine Biz
by PHILIP WHITE - A VERSION OF THIS APPEARED IN THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

Now that the bulldozers have started, the Australian wine business faces one of the most awkward marketing problems it could encounter.

Vineyards are like vast billboards for wine, and for winemaking communities.

You don’t need a sign saying “Australian Wine Industry” in the middle of an horizon-to horizon Nuremberg rally of vinous monoculture. You’re in the middle of a much bigger advertisement for wine than any planning regulation would ever permit a signwriter to erect.

This was recognised in the eighties, when the Vine Pull Scheme was stopped, more on the grounds of the ruination of heritage and civic amenity, than anything much to do with the modern wine business.

Vineyards are dreadfully honest advertising, too. Vignerons have little idea that the droll repetition of the grapeyard can be a pretty good indicator of what flavours the bypasser should expect. By their fruit ye shall know them.

So now that the tourist will be driving through terrain scarred by bulldozers, inhaling the wafting smoke from mighty piles of dead vines, does that person feel like pulling in for a case of premium? Do they recall that just months ago the proprietors were telling us this was a great thing, this vineyard, and its fruit?

Vineyards fried to virtual extinction by drought and sunshine are one thing; vineyards bulldozed and put to the torch are another.

Vine-pulls are bad for the captains of industry. Anybody who encouraged such plantings in order to lower prices – look like greedy, unscrupulous cretins. But they’ll move on: swap boards; swap industries. They’re just as likely to be on the board of the Scrubbed Pine Red Setter Kennel Company tomorrow.

When the vineyards burn, the biggest damage is dealt more innocent folks. The humiliation instilled by a large-scale vine-pull is deadly to those who must pull. I can’t forget the old men weeping openly in pubs in the Barossa in the mid-eighties, after they’d pulled their grandfathers’ gardens out. Pulling the vines was like pulling the teeth of the entire community, without anæsthetic. Families fall to bits. Suicides occur.

The wandering wino may miss this cruel undercurrent, and drive about bathed in the sanctimonious light of the opportunist about to make a killing, buying wine at bargain prices when the international market is overflowing.

But what does gross oversupply really mean to the wine lover?

First, it means quality drops. When the refineries are competing to control the bargain bins of Europe, they must make wine at cheaper and cheaper budgets. Corners are cut. Sawdust replaces barrels. Shovelled acid and tannin replace what trimmed vineyard budgets failed to achieve naturally. The “make” budget shrinks; the “promo and packaging” budget swells.

Second, it means quality drops. When growers suddenly find themselves without a grape purchaser, they’re faced by a cruel choice. They can spend money they don’t have making the wine themselves, or spend money they don’t have hiring a bulldozer to rip the vineyard to make way for almonds (if only) or car yards. Most try to make a wine. Others let the grapes hang, and let the vineyard fall into disrepair, hoping Mary MacKillop or somebody will send a buyer along next year.

(Unlikely. Since her sainthood, Mary has made it essential that a freeway bypasses Penola, which would slash a great swathe of Coonawarra vineyard asunder.)

Whether in a wheelie bin or a contract refinery, 2010 has seen a stupendous amount of wine made on spec by people who can’t afford to do it properly – precisely the sort of wine directly responsible for the collapse of international respect for Australian wine in the first place.

Hoping that some cleanskin dealer will emerge at the last minute with the money to pay for bottling, many Australian working families have turned their 2010 crop into bulk plonk. They’ve done it in mate’s sheds, or pulled the cash sock out and paid a contract refinery to convert their grapes to alcohol, which is at least semi-stable, and may last. As long as they can afford the tank rental.

So, within the next couple of years, the lake of unsold wine in Australia will be joined by a tsunami of poorly made plonk, sold at increasingly diminishing returns out of mendicant desperation.

Which, to summarise, means that, third, quality drops.

If they are lucky, the mongers of this plonk might find some nefarious Flash Harry to sell it in China. If it’s white, forget it. If it’s red, sugar it up, fizz it up, put a golden dragon on it and flog it as an Aussie heritage item that will heal your teeth.

But mark my words, within a few years, we will be buying our teeth etching fluid from China. It will be called Premium Wine Of China, and they’ll put kangaroo dot paintings on it, broken fish plates, Cohiba cigar labeling; whatever we want. It may well be better than what we’ve sold them.

The wines I recommend on this page are not like these. As a buyer, you have the best chance yet of choosing which bits of the business you’d like to see survive.

BETWEEN SCORCHING DESERT AND DERANGED GUNMEN, VINEYARDS ARE BEING PUT TO THE TORCH

Cynicism Aside, This Crap Is No Surprise ... Any Fool Could See It Coming
From the archive: January 2006. This is the sort of writing that led to Melvin Mansell, editor of Rupert’s Advertiser, firing me after twenty years of wine columns.

“The Vine Pull words excite people”, says Paul Clancy, chairman of the new Wine Grape Growers Australia. I’d asked about current rumours of another such episode, when government pays hopeless grapegrowers to uproot vines and leave the business. This last occurred in the mid-eighties.

“There IS talk of a Vine Retirement Scheme” Clancy says. “Just different words. The wine industry doesn’t like too much government intervention, but we’ve got growers going to the wall right across Australia, and a fair slab of the blame lies with Canberra, so we’re having a meeting of appropriate parties there next month. Everything’s on the table.”

Sinister things happen in a big wine flood. Hardest bit to swallow is that some wine might get cheaper, but it never improves in quality. The refineries are under immense pressure to cut their winemaking budgets to compete with speculative bottom-feeders. Things fall apart. Lakes of heartless swill flood Australia’s tankfarms. Drinking a bargain? Toast the poor grower who went broke. Poor fella my country.

And on it goes. Apart from the abundance of dubious cleanskins and bladder packs, and their massive environment and public health costs, the biggest change to hit the sensitive wino during a Vine Pull Scheme is social. Many grand old families were gutted during the last effort. Walk into any Barossa bar and it was in your face: good people grievously distressed about uprooting their great-grandfather’s beloved vines.

Tourist attraction? Men with blank teary faces gazing into too many schooners of stout? You’d flee outside, to find the whole valley shrouded in wafts of smoke from the smouldering windrows [SUBS: WINDROWS NOT WINDOWS] of ancient vines. It went on and on. The big companies wouldn’t pay enough; so the government paid. To destroy the gardens. Ein prosit.


Whatever it’s called, the next uprooting will be more widespread. With any luck, and with Clancy’s immense capital of hindsight, this time we’ll pay to remove stuff we won’t drink. If nobody wants to buy it, if the growers can’t afford to have it made, then they can’t afford to pick it, much less cough up for the conversion to better varieties. Or pay the bulldozers.

Clancy contemplates government assistance paying for the clearance of failed vineyards, to be repaid by the industry through a small levy on the long-term professional viticulturers who stay in the business and survive. “It’s in their interest”, he says.

Politicians must cease their blithe effervescence over the wine business. A responsible planning and establishment cycle for a serious new winery development is at least twice the life of a government, three or four of them if you were a man of category, like David Wynn. But, just like the big refineries encourage gluts to keep costs down for their shareholders, politicians see the wine business as some sort of Instant Lite: a cute, popular, and safe novelty El Dorado. Forget the water issues: think of the export!

“The tax regimes attracted all the wrong people” Clancy bemoans. “In it for the wrong reasons. Real men of the land in all regions find their livelihoods crushed by a planting boom talked up by big wineries and ignited by tax minimisers who have no interest at all in viticulture or the economic and social impacts on the country. It’s Australian against Australian. Well done those men.

”There are rice farmers up the river in New South Wales, for example, putting in thousand acre vineyards simply because they can. They’ve got cheap water and flat land.

“Then, a lot of others have planted in the wrong bloody places. Like the Hills. The only growth in export sales is below four pounds ninety-nine a bottle in the UK and you can’t possibly grow cool climate grapes at that price. The cool climate regions are now producing forty per cent of our grape supply but generating only sixteen per cent of demand.”

In case your bargain wine hasn’t curdled, consider: you may not have invested in these failures, but you pay three times anyway. When government spends your money paying tax-avoiding speculators to uproot and piss off, it’s not the end of the story. Somebody has to make up for the tax not paid. And then we pay again for the rehabilitation of the land. Not to spend too much time reflecting on all that wasted water. The wine industry hasn’t quite grasped that water is a vital gastronomic item.

Maybe it’s time to kick a wine refinery into reality with some king-hell distillation. Make petrol. Get the McGuigan Simeon mob, you know, Nick Greiner, Perry Gunner and Brian McGuigan, on the job. They blame high petrol prices for the slump of their bottled wine sales. So sort out a few harbours of cheap water with the Member for Schubert and the lass up the river, and plant more. Market it varietally at the bowsers. Mine goes better on cabernet, mate. C’mon Kero, you won’t win by tilting at trams. Go positive! Go Petrol! The punters’ll love it. We could be self-sufficient!

NOTES FROM MY INTERVIEW WITH CLANCY INCLUDE THESE COMMENTS:

For what it’s worth, I have some rather unfinished ideas about removing vineyards at the taxpayers’ expense, even if that cost is eventually reimbursed by the industry.

A formula should be devised which includes the following:

1. Last in first out. Youngest plantings go first.

2. Prices of last crops. Most recent market prices should be included so lowest incomes are the first to go.

3. Water used to achieve that price. A ratio should be devised that sees those who have used water most inefficiently should be at the head of the queue for removal; i.e. growers who use more water to achieve lower income should go.

... and back to 1999: referring to the National Wine Centre ... the budgie syndrome:
Excerpt from my speech to planning students at the University of Adelaide, Wednesday 13th October, 1999. A slightly shorter version of this address was delivered to the Australian Institute of Urban Studies, S.A. Division, at Chesser Cellars, Friday 26th March, 1999.

So what started as a simple, profit-making service for visitors quickly became a State-funded wine museum, which quickly reverted to an office block for bureaucrats and mandarins, partly because nobody thought the word museum was much good in this modern age. On the committee I joined at Premier Brown's invitation, the first wine centre committee, the word museum was abandoned because nobody really knew what it meant.

None of those great brains had heard of Zeus, or Jupiter, the boss of the heavens, nor of his wife, the Goddess Mnemosyne, or Memory. They didn't realise the daughters of this couple, the cover girls of their day, were the official inspirers of all poetry and art. Cleo was the trigger of history, Thalia of comedy. Euterpe was the source of all music; Urania of astronomy, and so on. They were called the Muses, just like my much uglier lot's called the Whites. The Muses lived in the Museum.

No good, no good. It'll have to be the National Wine Centre. It'll have to be in the Botanic Park because:

1 The Gardens already attract 1.3 million visitors a year - more than any other government-owned property;

2 The East End is already a famous tourism and gastronomic precinct (The Universal Wine Bar's there), and

3 It's a nice place to have your offices.

They overlook the fact that the East End is rapidly becoming a violent drug-crazed mirror of the old Hindley Street, where a good deal of the working community are the enthusiastic users of a constant wave of powder drugs; and they don't realise that the very reason that 1.3 million people visit the Botanic Gardens each year is that there are no industrial headquarters, office blocks, car parks, conference centres, or monorails in sight.

Don't laugh - a monorail was seriously suggested, to siphon customers from Rundle Street across the Botanic Garden, which is a dry zone, to the Wine Centre. This was seen as a possible solution to the car parking problem in the Garden. Nobody listened to the traders' complaint about the loss of business in Rundle Street, because there's no real parking there, either. Anyway, show me a monorail and I'll show you a Premier who's just lost power.

The initial concept for a straightforward, self-funding facility for wine enthusiasts was sufficiently attractive to lure a horde of self-interested political amateurs and industry mandarins, whose clumsy and transparent manoeuvres in pursuit of taxpayers' funds and sacred inner city parkland, abuse not just the clarity of the first proposal, but snigger in the face of the uncommonly tasteful and discerning community of Adelaide.

After five years of squandered expense and volunteered energy, this centre is further from its origins than credibility extends.

The citizens of Adelaide now face the construction of an industrial headquarters in their extremely popular Botanic Garden. This $40 million-plus tax-payer-funded Xanadu will have little purpose beyond housing the bureaucrats who will be responsible for the next taxpayer-funded Vine-pull Scheme.

There has been no consultation with the neighbours, none with the community at large, nor anything vaguely resembling consultation with the wine industry proper. The old buildings wisely rejected by the wine industry will now house the unfairly misplaced botanic scientists whose perfectly suitable, unobtrusive buildings and laboratories will be demolished to make way for the imposing new wine industry headquarters.

Those who intend moving into this facility, like Wine and Brandy Corporation Manager, Sam Tolley, refer to it as their "new offices". Winemakers Federation of Australia Chairman, Brian Croser, admits privately that the centre, as imagined by him, does not "necessarily have to be in the Botanic Garden".

And driving force Ian Sutton, Chief Executive of the WFA, Wine Australia Pty. Ltd., Australian Wine Foundation and the Australian Wine and Brandy Producers' Association, says "My job's not to consult the wine industry -- my job is to represent the wine industry".

Now that Glenthorne Farm, a perfectly suitable alternative site for a self-funding centre has been found and purchased on the old CSIRO research site at the top of Flagstaff Hill, those who would raid the public purse, not to mention the Botanic Garden, have become more secretive and even more determined in their nefarious pursuit.