A Wine Intelligence survey, released at the London International Wine Fair in May, reveals that wine drinkers in the USA and the UK – our two biggest markets – show little awareness of Australian or New Zealand wine regions.

Even after a decade of dominance by Australian wine imports in both countries, just 38 per cent of the 1002 UK drinkers and 10 per cent of the 2069 Americans surveyed were aware of the Barossa Valley. Marlborough, New Zealand’s largest wine region fared even worse, being recognised by only 27 per cent of UK and 12 per cent of USA drinkers.

While the report partly quantifies the challenge ahead for our wine regions, it also confirms the important role regions play in consumer wine-buying decisions.

In both the UK and USA, about half of wine drinkers rated region of origin as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ cues when buying wine. Strangely, though, two thirds of the British but only half of the Americans rated country of origin as important or very important.

Not surprisingly, UK wine drinkers showed the highest level of awareness, and understanding of the wines, of the long-established European names, Champagne, Burgundy, Chablis, Bordeaux, Chianti, Beaujolais, Cava, Rioja, Cotes du Rhone Loire and Provence.

Americans seemed familiar with fewer regions and their wine styles than the Brits, with the Napa Valley (USA), Champagne, Bordeaux, Chablis and Chianti at the fore. However, even though the Americans showed little recognition of the regional names Beaujolais, Alsace, Cava, Rioja and Prosecco, they made valid comments about the wine styles behind those names.

This suggests a wider importance for regional names to Americans than the figure for buying cues suggests. Clearly there’s an understanding of wine styles behind some regional names even if the buyer doesn’t recognise their geographic meaning.

Repeating this pattern, only 10 per cent of American buyers were aware of the Barossa as a region, but about three quarters of them showed some understanding of the region’s styles. Figures for UK buyers were about 38 per cent regional awareness and 80 per cent familiarity with the styles. This suggests that in both countries the Barossa name is synonymous with a wine style rather than a region.

Wine Intelligence asked respondents what words came spontaneously in response to regional names.  When asked about ‘Barossa’ the commonest British responses were ‘Australia’, ‘red’, ‘good’, ‘shiraz’. The American response was a less emphatic ‘red’, ‘Spain’, ‘good’, ‘wine’, ‘Australia’, ‘great’, ‘Italy’ and ‘California’.

From the English, ‘Marlborough’ prompted ‘New Zealand’, ‘cigarettes’, ‘strong’, ‘white’ and ‘sauvignon blanc’. And the Americans weighed in with ‘cigarettes’, ‘New Zealand’, ‘good’ and ‘sauvignon blanc’.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for Australian and New Zealand exporters lies in the tremendous goodwill towards us in the UK and USA – especially in comparison to other exporting nations.

Asked to rate their affinity to various countries, their people and their cultures, 78 per cent of British and 73 per cent of American respondents rated Australia as ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ – putting us at the top of the list. New Zealand came in second with the British at 70% and third for the Americans 61% (behind second placed Italy on 71%).

Italy and Spain fared well in the affinity test, but poor old France, creator and doyen of so many classic wine styles, rated just 56% with the British and 46% with the Americans.

Perhaps this lack of empathy is a countervailing force to the widespread knowledge of their regions and styles – and a continuing opportunity for our winemakers.

And a warning bell I hear in the survey figures applies as much in Australia as it does in the UK, but probably not to America. The most powerful cue affecting buying choice in the UK is ‘promotional offer’, rated by 73% of respondents as ‘important’ or ‘very important’. In the USA ‘promotional offer’ rated only fourth, behind grape variety, recommendation by a friend or family and familiar brand.

The primacy of the retail offer in Britain reflects the enormous power of the major national retail chains. The same applies in Australia where our two biggest retailers now account for perhaps half of all sales.

While competition is unquestionably a force for good, keeping a lid on prices, too much market power can limit entry to markets for smaller wine players, especially when the focus is more on price than on quality. The power of our big supermarkets could well stifle our wine industry’s planned focus on regional identity.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

The truffle book (Gareth Renowden, Limestone Hills Publishing, New Zealand, 2005) says that this expensive little black tuber turns off perhaps as many people as it turns on.

But whether we like it or not, the truffle’s extraordinary, penetrating aroma can’t be ignored. It gets up our nose and stays there a long time. Indeed, it’s so pervasive that if it tasted exactly as it smelled, there’d be few, if any, wines on earth capable of standing up to it.

Fortunately the truffle’s ability to enhance the flavours of other foods gives it a role beyond that first jaw-dropping perfume – opening up any number of wine matching opportunities. Ultimately what wine to serve depends more on the food and sauce accompanying the truffle than the truffle itself. As that could be anything from ice cream to steak we really have the whole wine spectrum as candidate.

But before we attempt any wine matches, what does truffle (specifically tuber melanosporum or the black Perigord variety, now in season around Canberra) smell and taste like?

New Zealand truffle grower, Gareth Renowden, likens it to a mix of unwashed socks, armpits, the whole spice cupboard, crushed garlic, damp leaves mixed with moist soil and a big floral hit: lilies for penetration and roses for sweetness.

Not tempted? Then try this reminiscence of a first truffle hunt by Elizabeth Luard (Truffles, London, 2006), “I breathe deeply. The fragrance almost overpowers me, filling my nostrils with a scent so exciting, so overwhelming, so astonishingly familiar that my head swims and I have to sit down on a tree-stump… What exactly is it that makes the scent of a truffle so thrilling? Well. The chemists tell us it’s the pheromones, the stuff that tells Noireau [her companion’s truffle-sniffing dog] that the neighbour’s bitch is on heat. There’s no other way to explain the effect. It reminds some of us – not all, no doubt – of those nights when we held our first lover in our arms and learned, once and for all, what this thing they talked about in books was all about. Sex, actually – but all new-minted and carrying with it none of the baggage of later years. I breathe deeply again. These words spring to mind: sweet almonds, ripe grapes, thyme, rosemary, juniper, the scent of heather-roots, bonfire embers after rain”.

And 26 years earlier that great food writer, Waverly Root (Food, New York, 1980), described his truffle moment – in a new Parisian restaurant,  “I bit full into it and my mouth was flooded with what was probably the most delicious taste I have ever encountered in my entire life, simultaneously rich, subtle and indescribable. It ate it all, while the other guests regarded me with loathing… I find it quite impossible to pass on any idea of its taste. If I say it was as sturdy as meat, I will start you off on a completely wrong track as to its savor. If I say it was unctuous and aromatic as chocolate, I will do the same. Truffles taste like truffles, and like nothing else whatever; and it is a rare, rare privilege to be able to taste a fresh truffle of this calibre”.

If truffle’s hard to describe it’s also hard to ignore, thanks to that beguiling perfume which does, as Elizabeth Luard says, contain pheromones. But it seems the most important of the roughly 50 compounds behind the perfume’s appeal to animals, including humans, is dimethylsulphide – a compound used in perfume making, and an integral part of the flavour of some beers, especially lagers.

But it’s a complex mix and includes acetaldehyde, ethanol and acetone – which perhaps accounts for some of the soaring floral notes in fresh truffle, one that I described as jonquil-like in my one and only encounter.

In his book, Renowden says German researchers in the early eighties found that truffles shared a sex hormone, androstonol, with boar saliva and men’s armpits. They speculated that sows might be sexually attracted to truffle smell and that this might explain the folklore of truffles as aphrodisiac. But Thierry Talou, a leading authority on truffle aroma, synthesised the aroma, sans hormone, and found pigs to be just as keen to dig for the smell.

So, one way or another, if the truffle appeals, it’ll begin with that haunting, unique, pungent, penetrating aroma. What to drink with it?

What wine can match that aroma in intensity? None that I know of. Even the most aromatic gerwurztraminer, the most floral riesling, the most perfumed, musky pinot noir don’t go anywhere near it. If then, like Waverly Root, we’re tempted to munch right into our truffle (at $125 for 50 grams), why bother with wine. Water will do.

But if, as one equally extravagant recipe suggests, we simply boil our truffle for 20 minutes in dry white wine (with a few strips of bacon and a little seasoning to enrich the stock), then surely a very dry white wine would do the trick – perhaps Chablis or Champagne.

A classic and opulent combination is truffle with foie gras, sometimes cooked with Armagnac, the robust brandy of southwestern France. I can imagine a succulent wine like Sauternes or an Australian facsimile of the style – botrytis semillon – being in harmony with this almost unimaginably rich dish.

The setting, then, drives the choice of wine. It could be an aged, top-shelf chardonnay with truffle and cheese; a fine youthful pinot noir with truffle and chicken; an aged cabernet with rare steak and truffle sauce; a Barolo or aged Rhone red or cool-climate Australian shiraz with game, mushroom and truffle.

To me, and probably to almost everyone in Canberra, the fresh truffle is a totally new world to be explored. There are no rules, then – just one guiding principle: to be adventurous and enjoy yourself.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009