Follow the Wolf Blass way is something Wine Australia’s marketing team should learn as the country’s wine exports continue to tumble.
To the wine establishment the early Wolf Blass was that brash outsider causing trouble. His success offered a direction for Australian exports, yet this was not to be.
The Wolf Blass style illustrated the difference between fruit concentration and extraction. His soft, voluptuous, rich styles were different to the established practise of firm, extractive, often tannic, European models.
Clever but commercial and they will not cellar, the experts besotted with the French idea of terroir muttered. They refused to grasp that capturing the concentrated, natural flavour of warm climate grapes is the right way for Australia.
It is the Glug way so stay with the Barossa and drink the new releases, Goat Square Barossa Valley Cabernet 2021 and Grandma Raethel Barossa Valley Cabernet 2019.
Wine commentary worries me as again and again I see remarks, based on no evidence, that are repeated as true. My favourite example is how critter labels – those that depict native animals – are seen as bad for the Australian wine image. Why is never explained. Yet with astonishing ease commentary takes the view that Yellow Tail, our great export success, also explains our export failure with premium wines because that dreadful wallaby lowers the country image.
The natural advantage of Australia is in making warm climate wines. Yet a decade ago the marketing ideas for exports swung behind premium cool climate wines. It seems officialdom took the view that warm climate wines, particularly those from the Murray Basin are basic and commercial. The problem is the world market is awash with premium cool climate wines.
Why do I relate these stories, because they provide you with the background that can be used to your buying advantage. If the elite favour wines with less flavour, go to where the sun is and buy what Wolf Blass made so long ago.
Glug makes wines with flavour and finds wines from a hotter vintage in a normally cool region are very nice indeed. We often discover what we like in the Eden Valley. Try the Mount Eagle Eden Valley Chardonnay 2020 for real wine flavour and another I like is the Parawatta Eden Valley Pinot Gris 2022 which puts the flavour back in Pinot Grigio.
