Perception destroyed the Murray Basin wine industry and arrogant gabbling about cool climate and terroir the weapons used.
Those that believe they have a superior ability to talk about and point wines really are the great pests of this remarkable business.
Oh for the days when common sense reigned in wine writing. Days when what ordinary people drank and liked were the subjects of discussion. Days that industry veteran Paul Clancy well remembers in this recent email to Glug.
I have championed Inland irrigated wine regions all my life. I believe the Riverland, Sunraysia and the MIA are grossly undervalued and have been victims of the concerted efforts of others to dismiss them in favour of the so called cool or premium regions.
To make good wine you must start with ripe fruit, tell me a fruit which is better green than when it is ripe. The inland regions can produce premium ripe grapes – but they have been raped and pillaged by the big companies which pay by the weight and not quality.
I recall at the International Riesling Challenge in Canberra in the early 2000s which included Rieslings from Germany and France, the judge off for the trophy for the best wine of the show shocked the judges when it was revealed to them that they had chosen Jacob’s Creek Riesling which retailed at that time for around $11 a bottle. At that price it was clear that it was made from Riverland fruit. So shocked were the judges that Jim Murphy the Canberra wine retailer went back to his shop and got a couple of random bottles from the shelf to compare with the winning wine. They were perfectly matched. The same wine.
The result should have made wine headlines but of course wine writers didn’t touch the story, I presume because they didn’t want to expose their own biases and to preserve their sycophantic relationship with the industry leaders who incessantly push the premium cool climate barrow.
I can see one day, not that far into the future, when the penny will drop that the warm inland regions are the future of the industry because they can produce premium fruit at a much lower sustainable cost than the “premium” regions so that wine can be made to meet the wine market price the world demands – and drinks.
And don’t forget when all the chest beating went on 20 years ago about the phenomenal export success of Australian wine, it was almost 80 percent driven by sales of wine made from grapes from those inland warm regions.
The smoke and mirrors industry that is the wine industry has been lead down the path to crisis by fools who perpetuate the myth that premium wine can only be made in “cool” climates.
The vast majority of French and Italian wine which fills the supermarkets of Europe are grown in warmer regions – such as Languedoc. Rhone Valley, Sicily etc.
