Business people have been easily seduced by the sheer size of China. Surely, the argument seems to go, if I can sell just one widget for every ten of the 1.3 billion population, then I have a market for 130 million widgets. But in China – as in every market – the devil is in … Continue reading Wine exports to China — it’ll be a long march →

Do we really need to breathe or decant high quality wines to get the most enjoyment from them? For most wines, the answer is no. Breathing is almost never necessary and often detrimental. And the only practical reason for decanting is to separate clear wine from sediment in the bottle. The idea of breathing wine … Continue reading Decanting wine — a romantic notion or purely sedimentary →

In late April The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation tipped a 2006 grape harvest of around 1.96 million tonnes – about one per cent down on last year’s record harvest. AWBC’s estimate includes the assumption that, just like last year, two to three per cent of the 2006 vintage will be left on the vine … Continue reading Vintage 2006 — an Australian report →

Turn your back on a pinot noir vine and it’s likely to mutate. No kidding. Not that it has much chance to these days because, like all grape vines, they’re bred pure from cuttings — avoiding natural reproduction and the mutation that does with it. Thankfully French monks maintained pinot’s purity through the Middle Ages. … Continue reading Pinot grigio, pinot gris — call it what you like, it’s still grey →

Surrounded by cries of doom and gloom and real pain being suffered by many winemakers and grape growers, it’s easy to overlook the huge and continuing success of Australia’s wine industry. In many ways it’s a model, market-focused, export-driven agricultural industry, delivering, in the main, highly-value-added exports – totalling $2.8 billion dollars in the year … Continue reading Exporting our way out of surplus →

They say that history never repeats itself.  But in the Barossa Valley, the grape oversupply crisis of the mid 1980s could be about to repeat itself. This time around, it’s not just the small growers being caught in the spiralling price decline, but the owners of the broadacre plantings of the 1990s. It’s in tough … Continue reading History repeating itself in the Barossa →