by Tony Keys
Australia’s once-in-a-thousand-year drought, which is predicted to lower the 2008 wine grape vintage to somewhere between 800,000 to 1.3m tonnes, mayresult in risinglevels of imported wine. Much of this
wine will be destined for the entry-level two or four litre cask market, a potential situation that has prompted prompting debate about the merits of this approach.
Veteran Australian wine writer and wine show judge James Halliday says, "some of the casks may be 100% [imported], and who knows how far the big companies will go with imported wine from New Zealand (especially Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc), South Africa, Chile and Argentina."
UK Journalist Tim Atkin MW is more direct: "Ideally, you shouldn't have to do this but if the volumes are low, why not import wine from Argentina or Chile? It might improve the quality of Aussie cask wine," he says.
Not everyone is sympathetic to blending. As Julian Alcorso, a Tasmanian winemaker puts it, "Once the Australian wine industry starts blending imported wine into whatever container - cask or bottle - we will be on a slippery slope that can only end in disaster.”
Others are more pragmatic. "I don’t see a problem with it at all in the cask wine market. As long as the producer abides by the labelling laws it’s fine," says assistant winemaker at Jim Barry Wines, Luke Steele.
Stephen Strachan CEO of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) argues: "If you think about the issue from the perspective of the brand owner, they are faced with two equally unpalatable decisions: as the source of low-cost Australian fruit disappears they could watch their brand dwindle in the marketplace, while retailers develop their own brands of imported wine to replace it. Or, they could supplement production with imported wine to keep their brand intact, and suffer a backlash from some consumers.”
Emphasising "these are my views, not necessarily those of the WFA Board,” Strachan says "the real issue, in my opinion, is whether Australia can sustain a profitable cask business in the longer term, given rising water costs and availability of good quality, low-cost wine from competitors.”
