WOLFIE'S BLASSTARDISATIONS

Wolf Blass, left, mit frauleins

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ITEM: from a recent seminar in the Barossa, sent by a reader, quoting the great Wolf Blass:

“Wolf also revealed the burden of being one of Australia’s biggest wine businessmen. ‘I used to be six foot when I came here 40 years ago, now I’m only four foot two—talk about bloody knockers in Australia. That bloody Philip Vite and those other writers said I couldn’t do it, but I showed them all and I’m bloody proud of it’.”

This arrived while I happened to be browsing the April 1983 issue of Winestate, which I edited. I had invited Wolf to be a judge at a tasting called “Dry White Blands”. It’s worth perusing some of his quotes:

On the blends then called “riesling and hock” (“riesling” was usually semillon, crouchen, or both, in those days, mixed with only Bacchus remembers what; real riesling was generally called “rhine riesling”):

Blass: “I’m amazed at some of the leading wine companies ... so many winemaking faults that show not only in the bottle here today, but will show in their balance sheet next year and into the future. They’re just not competitive and it will be absolutely detrimental.

“It’s in the media’s hands at the moment to slander the wine industry because we are not truthful enough about what we are putting on our labels.

“I don’t think we should use the word ‘riesling’ – I honestly believe it’s a bastardisation of the real variety. For this style ‘hock’ or simply ‘dry white’ are better.”

On the blends then called “traminer riesling” (which often contained neither gewurztraminer nor riesling, but were blends of semillon and fronti):

Blass: “This has become a very popular blend with wine-makers recently, but it isn’t an easy one to market, so only the fittest and best will survive. To say this is a style of the future is wrong.”

In those days, Wolf was determined to prove that chardonnay would never become popular in Australia. He fought the new chardonnay trend with his Classic Dry White, which was usually colombard and crouchen, sometimes with trebbiano, whacked with overt oak, usually American. Wolf contributed to the following tasting notes:

Wolf Blass Classic Dry White 1982: “A top wine by all standards, showing a ton of fruit amongst the strong wood characters imparted by both American and French oak. The wood has given the palate a lot of flavour without overbalancing the fruit, and when left a few more years the bottle, this one should become a true classic.”

Wolf Blass Classic Dry White 1981: “Another very clean dry white from the Blass stable, showing similar wood treatment to the 1982, but perhaps in restrospect lacking the flavour of chardonnay that the 1982 features. Still, a well-balanced and integrated wine in a style that improves with short-term cellaring.”

And finally, to summarise the class then called “white burgundy”, which could quite literally contain anything:

Blass: “I’m sick and tired of the dishonesty of many companies putting chardonnay on their labels – it’s a bastardisation of the grape variety.

“We cannot make top class burgundies without blending, however I think we need to explore new winegrowing areas and new varieties at this time.”

As I continue perusing such ancient writings from the archive, perhaps I shall occasionally publish Herr Blass’s astute observations here as Blasstardisations.

AND FURTHERMORE:

Wolf Blass’ recent derisory volley, fired, I think, at my repeated suggestion that Australia should be experimenting with new varieties and new flavours, pushed me further back into my old tasting notes.

Wolfie summoned me to a tasting of his Classic Dry Whites in September 1982, delighted to point out how these wines were generally defeating the chardonnays at wine shows.

Always averse to chardonnay and the idiotic marketing extant in those days, he said that day of his white blends “I refuse to call it burgundy or chablis because we’d confuse the marketing issue overseas ... the law will prohibit the use of these words anyway”.

In those days, every company had a burgundy or chablis, made from whatever entered their little crushers. Generally, burgundy meant oak; chablis, none. The oaking was terrible. Wolf used mainly American, a little French, and mainly barrels rather than chips.

“What’s being done with chardonnay in this country is parallel only by the stupidity of the red wine manufacturing in the ’sixties”, he said. “I think the chardonnay belongs in the champagne. There’s a few companies who can make good chardonnay. Those should specialise. But at the moment, every company in Australia, in every region and every state, is trying to bring a chardonnay out. There’s no room on the shelf. The public is so confused that in a couple of years chardonnay is just a joke.

“If chardonnay of sufficient quantity and quality becomes available, we may replace the tokay [which was actually muscadelle] in the Classic Dry White with it” he concluded.

Also present at this tasting were Brian McGuigan, Brian Barry, Peter Fergusson, Ian Mackay, Paul Lloyd and George Truby, whose scores I have averaged with my own.

The wines were as follows:

77.5 points

Wolf Blass Dry White 1974 - 60% sauvignon blanc; 40% riesling

81.5 points

Wolf Blass Dry White 1975 - 100% trebbiano

75 points

Wolf Blass Dry White 1977 - 40% muscadelle; 30% riesling; 30% crouchen

75 points

Wolf Blass Dry White 1978 - 50% crouchen; 25% muscadelle; 25% sylvaner

79.5 points

Wolf Blass Dry White 1979 - 50% crouchen; 40% colombard; 10% muscadelle

82 points

Wolf Blass Classic Dry White 1980 - 40% colombard; 40% crouchen; 20% muscadelle

86.5 points

Wolf Blass Classic Dry White 1981 - 40% colombard; 40% crouchen; 20% muscadelle

91 points

Wolf Blass Classic Dry White 1982 - 40% colombard; 40% crouchen; 20% muscadelle

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THUS SPRACH THE LORD

Tony Lord photographed in Chesser Cellars by Philip White 1982

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by PHILIP WHITE - Interview in WINESTATE July 1982

Tony Lord is the editor of the prestigious British wine magazine, Decanter. In Australia recently, on his way home from New Zealand, Lord delivered some scathing criticisms on the way Australian wine marketing is conducted abroad, especially in London itself.

Lord believes that since the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation closed the Australian Wine Centre in London, an invaluable twenty years of effort in promoting Australian wines there has been almost entirely wasted.

Pointing out that the number of cases of Australian wine imported into Britain escalated steadily from 11,000 in 1977/78, to 48,000 cases in 79/80, Lord is particularly reproachful of the fact that this figure dropped to 33,000 cases in 80/81, neatly comparing the situation to the number of Californian cases imported: that figure has jumped from 40,000 cases to 400,000 in two years.

Explaining that the established European wine producers are almost operating at their maximum production levels, with very little room for expansion, Lord believes these suppliers have little choice other than to charge higher prices for their shrinking market share, and is adamant that the gap will be filled by wines from the New World countries, like Australia, California, South Africa and New Zealand.

However, Lord explains, Australia, unlike the others, appears now to be disproportionately focusing its attention on the much more difficult markets of the USA and Canada, both areas requiring relatively massive investments for the slightest market share.

A jovial expatriate Australian, Lord displayed a rare and irreverent candour when confronted with the Winestate microphone, and fairly large chunks of his dissertation proved far too spicy for these pages. A pity, but there’s plenty here:

Will we have to send our best wine to Britain to establish a market?

It’s always better to start at the top and work down, but given the quality of the wine selling there now, the wines like the ones Yalumba are shipping are very good flagbearers.

If you look at what’s happening in Australia at the moment, you’ve got a glut of wine and you’ve got price discounting. Everybody’s moaning about there being no profitability in wine, but those companies that are exporting are making money. Any company that’s built up a substantial export base, even on a modest scale, at least they’re getting some reasonable profitability with their wines, which may help the subsidise the furtherance of what they’re doing.

I was talking to Max Lake the other day, and he’s firmly committed to exports, and he said ‘It might be that I do have to cut down the amount of wine that I release in Australia’, but, he said, ‘I just can’t rely on the Australian market for my livelihood if we’re starting to get these price discounting problems with people undercutting and stuff selling for a buck a bottle’.

All the smart people in this industry are the ones who are exporting. In the future, and I’m certain that in the not-too-distant future, there’ll be a huge wine glut in this country again, and in the next minute we’ll see Boeings full of Ockers coming over to London and trying to offload what they’ve got in their warehouses, with little regard for the poor bloody importer who wants continuity of supply, and this time the people in Britain certainly already know what they can expect. They’re not gonna touch these guys with a bargepole. But they will go for the companies like Yalumba and Rothbury and Petaluma, and those companies that have been in Britain for five or six years, and all release a certain quantity of wine to that market each year.

See, that’s very important. The poor bloody importer. I just heard the other day about two companies from Australia that have been exporting to Britain and have decided not to send them any more wine. They’re getting top dollar over here, but when they’re not getting top dollar, they’ll be back over there, and that’s stupid short-sightedness. It really is.

Is there any way around the problem of trying to attack a big market like that with four or five pallets of cabernet?

If the maker finds a good importer and he’s prepared to say ‘Yes, I’ll let you have a thousand cases each year”, and if they’re honest about it ... you see Whitey there’s far more possibility for consistency here because of the climate, if for no other reason.

If the importer gets a duff one, he’s gonna make a decision what he’s gonna do about it. The first and foremost problem is that most of the poor buggers who are in London trying to sell Australian wines – and there are some of them who are putting far more effort into it than their profitability would ever justify – what they want to know is that they are going to get wine. I mean, one of the people who have pulled out rang up the UK importer and said ‘Look I can’t let you have any wine for the next two years’. Well now, what is the importer expected to say? He’d been building this thing up, and he’d had the winemaker over. He’d been holding lunches. He’d been getting press coverage, and then he gets this telephone call. He only wanted two or three hundred cases!

But you need about two or three thousand cases there to start with, to make any sense in terms of profitability, and there are very few wineries here that are even prepared to let an export market have that much wine. And they’re silly. The Californians will let you have as much as you want. They realise what the future is! The South Africans will let you have as much as you want.

The New Zealand industry thinks far better about the future than the bloody Australians!

See what they don’t realise is that London’s a prestige market. The Californians aren’t there to make a noticeable profit within five years. It’s a prestige market. They’ve got to see you represented. Every decent wine merchant in the world goes to London, if only because it’s the stop-off before you go to France. But they see your wine, you’re talked about, and the West Germans feed off it, the Belg feed off it, the Scandinavians feed off it, and the Dutch feed off it. And it’s a very big deal to be there.

The north-west Americans feed off it very heavily, too. But the Australians have got tunnel vision. And this is where I ... well, for a highly-placed person in an Australian wine corporation to say, effectively, that Poms wouldn’t know a good bottle if it hit them over the head, is just the end. If they think it privately, keep it to themselves but you don’t go saying it where it’s going to be quoted back at you in an influential trade publication. If the wombat’s doing these things, you bury him in a very large hole!

There are no marketing skills within the industry that apply to the international market that I’ve ever seen. If you’re dealing with Canada, you must have somebody who understands that market. If you’re dealing with America, you’re dealing with a totally different market, and you need somebody who understands that market. And ditto for Germany and the UK. But what we have here is a Coca-Cola salesman who goes around and thinks he can apply Australian marketing techniques in four totally disparate markets. And what he’s doing is – they open the door and they see this turkey coming from ’way back.

There’s an advertising agency in Toronto who are I bet are still laughing at the rip-off they got over Kelvin the Koala. Jesus, they must be bloody in hysterics! “Half a million in your pocket? Great, we can do you a beaut one!’ And, of course, what everybody forgot was by putting this French-speaking koala on the market was that they immediately alienated all the English-speaking Canadians who thought they had a strong bond with Australia through the old Commonwealth. And I mean that’s just a fundamental marketing mistake.

If they can’t see such elementary mistakes, God knows what happens when they get down to the fine print with dealing with these Americans who are so bloody sharp that they’ll eat you before breakfast. In fact, that’s probably when they got this bastard, before breakfast, and tied him up then. You know, while he was still half asleep. They’ve all had a jog and a shower and a jacuzzi and a screw and they’re into the office at seven-thirty in the morning, bouncing and raring to go.

You know me, and any Pom I know, we stagger and say ‘Jeez, I need a glass of good bloody Champagne!’ And you know, these Americans: ‘While you’re signing the documents we’ll open the Deutz, Sir’.

What do people in Britain look for on an Australian wine label?

Well, the varietal name. Area definition, and perhaps a little back label information about the product. It’s getting to the point now with these bloody EEC bureaucrats that by the time you’ve got all the crap that they want on the label, you’re lucky to be able to fit the producer’s name.

Fundamentally, what they want is attractive labelling, and like every other market, there’s just ... well you take a Wolf Blass label. There’s eye-catching shelf appeal, with the varietal name, and the area information, and the vintage. Varietal name and vintage are the key things at the moment because they imply immediately that this wine is quality wine.

It doesn’t necessarily follow-through in the bottle, but, at the moment, anything that hasn’t got a vintage date or a varietal name in Britain is considered real cheapo junk.

But what about an indication of style?

There’s a fine balance in Britain now. You’ll find that, say compared to ten years ago, there’s far more descriptive stuff on labels. “Dry red’, ‘medium white’: very much more indication to tell the consumer what’s inside. People make automatic assumptions in Britain now that if they buy cabernet they expect a certain style of wine. 99.9% of the time they’ll get it. But if it’s a blended wine, like say cabernet-shiraz, you can do that on the back label. But the only thing you don’t want to happen is to go to the California extreme where they literally tell you what socks the winemaker was wearing when he made the wine. I think that’s the sign of a fairly unsophisticated wine-drinking market.

The primary considerations must be shelf-appeal. Eye-catching visual stuff. The South Africans, say, might just call it ‘premium dry red’. We’re not allowed to use the pejorative name in England, but you can in some other markets. You know, in Belfast the soldiers think it’s a good day if they get hit on the head by a bottle that says ‘premium’.

What about the state of Australian wine writing?

I think the wine writers here pussyfoot around a bit too much. There should be much more criticism, because no industry’s going to really top if it’s not criticised, and if it’s not criticised constructively.

There’s this stupid Australian insularity problem. Australians know they’re making good wine. Some of them mistakenly think they’re making brilliant wine. There’s a person I went to university with who’s now a winemaker, and he’s going to charge $14 a bottle for his next release of cabernet sauvignon. Now, this guy’s a doctor. Well, he’s a butcher at medicine, and his winemaking’s even more execrable.

Now it’s awkward. I’m a magazine editor, like you, and we’ve been criticised because we don’t mention bad wines. But a newspaper journalist who has no problem with that sort of thing can come out and say ‘Look, this wine’s been released at $14 but in my humble opinion it’s just not worth the money ... I went down to Chesser Cellars and bought a bottle of Lindeman’s riesling as well as a bottle of so-and-so for under $14 and I think the money was better spent’.

They can’t do anything about that.

What can we, as an industry, do to correct some of these problems?

I’d like to see a lot more of the Wine Board bringing down good journalists and good people from around the world, who know what they’re talking about when they’re talking about wine. More scribes and trade people from different countries. You know, you should be saying ‘OK, the biggest wine buyer from the biggest wine chain in Germany is coming to town, and if anyone in the trade wants to come and meet him for lunch, come along, because he’s going to talk about how to sell wine in Germany’. That’s the sort of thing you should be doing more of, instead of giving your boys first class air tickets to go and whoop it up in the ritziest hotel in New York, wasting growers’ money, when they bloody well need it back here.

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ATLANTA NO ATLANTIS FOR OZWINE ENTHUSIAST

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The Non-existent Presence

Interview by PHILIP WHITE – Winestate June 1983

Frank Stone loves wine. A softly-drawling Georgian, he is headmaster of a body called the Wine Academy of USA, and is also president of the Society of Wine Educators in America.

While he talks, Stone pulls wine marketing and import/export statistics from his memory with an uncanny flair, and he pauses now and then to ensure his last gentle barrage of figures and ideas has properly settled on his listener.

Also a merchant, Frank owns Skinflints, a chain of six supermarket-sized bottle shops in and around Atlanta, Georgia. These shops specialise in quality wines, and they turn over $25 million each year. That’s quite a lot of wine. Frustrated with the difficult task of getting solid and up-to-date information about the Australian wine industry, Stone eventually made time to come and find out for himself.

Philip White intercepted him in the middle of Victoria, and found an interviewee fired with enthusiasm for what he had so far found, and similarly fired with criticism of Australia’s bumbling in the international marketplace.

How do you see the Australian wine presence in the USA?

There’s virtually not a presence. It’s a non-existent presence. Currently, Australian wines are usually put in the “all other wines” section. Perhaps merchandised along with wines from Jugloslavia; less prominently than Hungarian wines; next to Chile and Turkey.

Partially, my criticism is for the really piss-poor PR that your wine marketplace has generated for itself, both within and without the country.

Has anybody ever been to talk to you about it?

No. Not one. Nobody. Not one wine shipper has been to Atlanta Georgia and seen me. Let me tell you even worse than that – much worse than that: as the president of an international wine education association with 1,600 members who teach in universities and colleges, adult education and trade education course – get it: I am the clearing house for all wine information for that group, and have subsequently regurgitated a catalogue of every piece of information available on the subject of Australian wine, and every other wine – do you know how many times I’ve been contacted by anyone from Australia? Never.

Can you make some comparisons between what Australia’s doing and what other countries are doing?

Aw shit. As an example, let’s talk about France and Italy. For the last five years, the French wine imported marketplace has been taking it in the ass in America – at the expense of expanding market share for Italian wines, OK? The French are selling the same amount of wine, with proportionate increases each year, accounting for inflation. However, on the other side of the scale, the Italian wine-producers and importers are accelerating their rate of growth and their market-share percentage by tenfold extrapolated over the French.

Five years ago, 9% of the wine consumed in the United States was imported. The Italians’ share of those imports was less than 11%. Today, imports account for 24% of consumption, and the Italians’ share of that is 67% okay? From 11% of 9% to 67% of 24 – that’s quite a jump in four years! And you know how they’ve done that? First, a media program that’s second-to-none. Advertising, point-of-sale material, maps, charts, books ... they run five trips a year to Italy for wine writers, all expenses paid. All you gotta do is show up at the airport. Five trips a year for forty people apiece! That’s 200 writers a year, every year for the last five years, taken to Italy. OK?

Let’s take Marquis Antinori. You know him? He owns Villa Antinori. Seven years ago, he was shipping 40,000 cases of wine, total. Last year he shipped 2,500,000 cases of wine. Let’s talk about Villa Banfi. Seven years ago they didn’t exist. Last year they shipped 17,000,000 cases of wine. That’s just the States. 17,000,000 cases!

Could they have done that on the quality of the wine alone?

They didn’t do it on the quality at all. They did it by marketing. There’s this body of merchandisers who have been put in New York City. They opened a wine-tasting room, just for the media and the trade. They had an outreach and hand-holding program that went to every village and every city, starting at the population centres and working out like tentacles, making friends, giving tastings, holding seminars and holding classes; correspondence courses.

Last year, imported wine constituted 7% of America’s total balance of trade deficits. Now ponder on that.

The word is that Australia, and Australians, are all fairly popular in the USA at the moment. Is that true?

Absolutely. There’s a very strong kinship with things Australian right now. The phenomenal success of the films is evidence of this. Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, and The man From Snowy River – I’ve seen all three of those, and I think the reason Australia has some fascination for Americans is that’s it’s a resemblance of the old west tough-guy-strikes-out-against-all-evil mentality. It’s been so well-received over the years. But more than that: there’s a philosophical, maybe an emotional endearment to a people who speak the same language, and have the same developmental processes, as the Americans have had.

So in terms of potential adaptability to the marketplace, it couldn’t be better than it is right now.

Are there many similarities between the Australian and American wine marketplaces?

God, there are so many. It’s easier to talk about the differences!

To begin, the marketplace is relatively embryonic in terms of marketing positions and in terms of packaging. It’s fairly sophisticated in the sense of wine technology, and the development of new types and varietal characteristics.

I think the technology’s very high here. The experimental things I’ve seen here have been very interesting, but the really good wines I’ve seen here are really one step beyond experiments, and beyond the hobby – I call them gentlemen – winemakers.

Another thing is that Australian makers have a very introspective perception of the marketplace: they can barely see past their sales room or customer list. From what I’ve seen they don’t have much sensitivity to what’s happening outside their own region. They have very little sensitivity to the world marketplace other than for comparative analysis of their own product.

What are the differences in the customer’s approach to the wine store? Do Australians expect anything that Americans don’t?

Well, they’re telling me that the Australian consumer buys low-price, high-volume goods in great numbers and that you have no market for super-premiums. But see, then when I ask ‘OK, where are the super-premiums?’ they’ve sold completely out, and they’ve got a warehouse full of low quality – I’m sorry – low price, high volume goods left. So maybe it’s the numbers that on paper reflect an avalanche of consumption of high volume and low price, but the synergism in the marketplace is for the unique and the high quality, which supports my allegation that although they say there’s no place for it on the market, it keeps disappearing off the shelves.

What I have noticed with striking similarity is the polarisation of the elements: the consumer element; the retail element; and the wine-producing element. They seem to be at odds with one another about their common interests.

At the producer level, they seem to be hell-bent on distribution at all costs. “We want penetration. We want depletions”. And at the retail level they’re caught in the syndrome that more boxes beget greater market share. They prostitute profits.

At the wine consumer level you seem to have an element who are drinking wine as an alternative to beer, or soft drink, or water. Then you have another element who have developed a cognoscenti of wine snobbery. I don’t like to use the word “snob” though ... let’s say “enthusiasts”. You have these enthusiasts who support the expansion of the super-premium wine market. They do it by wine-tasting clubs, wine-buying schemes, wine-drinking organisations, and then, to a lesser extent, through the restaurant trade.

The most unique character I’ve seen so far is in the restaurants. The restaurants here have a better grip of what’s of what’s happening in the regional marketplace. Much better than the retailers I’ve seen. Now maybe it’s because the marketplace is structured differently here than it is the States, but almost every restaurant I’ve been in has had a pretty active wine-marketing program for that region.

Which Australian wine products would suit the American market?

I don’t think all the products that are made here could suitably be exported and marketed successfully in the United States. I came over here looking for very specific types and kinds and qualities. Specifically, premium reds. Cabernets and shiraz. Some very high quality ports, which is a surprise to everyone that I’ve talked to, and sherries. There is an absolutely insatiable market in the United States for quality port.

You can tell from the auction prices in London that there’s a world demand. Look at the Decanter index! The port index is up higher than the Bordeaux prices! The numbers speak for themselves.

Best of the things that I’ve seen, there are least a half-dozen that I’d be proud to sell, not as an Australian wine, not as a wine from another wine-producing region, but a god-damn good seven dollar bottle of red wine! That’s the crux of the thing: I’m dealing in goods that are international in scope. And I’m looking to supply our market with the best quality, within the price range, from anywhere in the world. I don’t give a shit where it comes from. And my customers don’t either. I used to think they were hung-up, but they’re not. They’re buying what I tell them is the best value for money. That’s how I built my business.

Here’s an example: a year ago I went to South Africa, and became enamoured with the Zeonnebloem cabernet. One particular vintage out of the eight I tried was outstanding. Stylistically, it’s a non-typical cabernet style for America. It’s got a good presence of colour, a good complexity of flavour, long in the mouth, with no astringency and no tannin – it’s as if somebody clipped off the bottom half of the glass.

Slippery, wonderful taste. And I also tasted the same wine-style that they’d been making over the last thirty years. They were that old, and they still had fruit in the glass! I couldn’t believe it! If I hadn’t tasted them myself, I would have thought that that wine would have been over the hill and in the salad dressing within five years. It has a structure unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s because of the climatic growing conditions. You can read about it, but until you see it, it’s an absolute anomaly.

I took a shipment of some of these wines back, along with some Edelkeur, which is a botrytised dessert style white. I took 200 cases back to the States, and I sold it faster than a cat could lick its ass. You know why? Because it’s light, it’s got good colour, good fruit. People can drink it like a Beaujolais. Drink it chilled – not cold – as a complement to food: a wonderful food wine. We don’t have a wine made in America that’s like the wine I’ve just described.

Anyway, 200 cases was my first shipment last March. Before the end of December this year we’ll probably do 80,000 cases.

Have you seen any wine in Australia which excites you so much?

I don’t want to be patronising or partial, but so far the most unique thing is Hickinbotham’s Anakie Cab Mac. It’s exactly the type of wine I’m talking about. Forward, and fruit-like, with not a lot of complexity to it, and easy ... a fun wine to drink!

But that’s coming from one of the smallest wineries in the country!

Well, what can I tell you?

Well, what else can you tell me?

I don’t think the chardonnays I’ve seen have sorted themselves out in a way comparable or similar to the Californians.

But I’ve seen some cabernets and some reds from Coonawarra that are very nice. They’re wines that I have an interest in. I did see a couple of things in the Barossa that were interesting. The Hill Smith outfit has a couple of wines that I’m really partial to. In the McLaren Vale I found a couple that caught my attention. The most interesting thing I found there was Hardy’s Show Port.

We were hoping you’d never discover that! What about riesling? Are we ever going to sell it in the States?

No. We’ve got plenty of that now. The botrytised wines are a definite, although there are a lot of attempts at botrytised wines here – they don’t have the depth or the apricot flavours that I’m looking for yet, but they’re certainly getting there. You’ve certainly got the areas for it.

Can you make just a short comment on what Australia should be doing?

Australian wine products are not recognised in America. By and large, Americans don’t even know that Australia is a wine-producing nation, and that the wines that are being made here are serious efforts towards making universally-accepted wine products.

The way I propose to expediate the development of that awareness is through education.

Last year, the Society of Wine Educators provided wine education for over 600,000 people in America. OK? That body is currently in the process of developing a core educational program for every wine-producing country. This will be disseminated to the Society’s members on, say Italy, or it could be France, or Germany, South Africa, Australia, or Chile. Slides, transparencies, maps, production data, crop information and statistics, contact points, where you get tasting samples ... OK?

You take all that and you get it to 1,600 wine teachers and you start communication.

Another obvious thing would be for your wine-producing areas to collectively develop what I call educational tasting tours through the States. Hit the eight or nine major markets. Put on educational tastings. Invite the trade and the press. Get twenty wine producers to go through the United States on a ten-city tour. A goodwill media blitz. Tastings. A coupla lunches and some breakfasts, handing out maps and charts and photographs. God-damn, you’d get $500,000 worth of publicity out of a trip like that, and they don’t cost that much. Those are the things that are proven ingredients. They’ve worked very successfully for other producers. I’ve talked to dozens of people from here who say “we need a good export scheme”.

You don’t need a good export scheme. Shit, you don’t even export yet. Well?

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