Wine Australia tries not to mention alcohol. To put it bluntly, the wine industry tries to pretend it is not really a part of the alcohol industry. The body at the top of the industry pyramid just published its draft One Grape & Wine Sector Plan with barely a mention of the subject.
There is a nod towards the need to drawing customers away from unnamed competitors by supporting “the development of new Australian products that help us to compete in new and emerging product categories, such as no, low and mid-strength alcohol.”
Then the Plan’s section on environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials notes a need to “undertake ongoing assessments of scientific, community, and government positions relating to alcohol and health, and support initiatives aimed at promoting responsible drinking and community welfare programs, while asserting our right to grow, produce and sell wine as part of consumer’s balanced lifestyle.”
And for alcohol references, that was that.
Not much has changed since 40 or so years ago at a major industry conference dinner speech in Adelaide my opening remarks were “Fellow drug-pushers”. That was greeted with shaking heads and silence and the wine trade still prefers to pretend that it is in a different category to those spirits and beer fellows.
In the make-believe-world of wine, people drink their form of alcohol for higher and nobler reasons than just enjoying its effects. To me that is a mistaken and underlying premise of the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan. There is no single “sector” to plan for unless you think, like Wine Australia, that wine at its core is simply an agricultural product.
