AUSTRALIAN industry veteran Wolfgang Blass has urged winemakers to create new beverages to woo Asian drinkers rather than trying to convince them of the merits of existing products.
This year's local grape harvest is expected to produce at least 1.4billion litres of wine, 250million litres more than is needed to satisfy export demand of 700million litres and domestic demand of about 450million litres.
The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation's "Directions to 2025" strategy, released last year, advocates an export marketing plan based on "raising awareness and expectation of an Australian wine story founded on an international reputation for regionally distinct and fine wine production".
This has led to such initiatives as a program in partnership with the British-based Wine and Spirit Education Trust to make top-class international sommeliers aware of the merits of Aussie wines in the hope they will recommend them to restaurant customers.
But Mr Blass, founder of the Wolf Blass wine group bought by Foster's in 1996, says the industry should instead be looking to the methods Australian winemakers used to capture the attention of beer drinkers back in the 1950s.
"We were in a hillbilly era," he says of the period.
"There was no hospitality, there was 6o'clock closing, no wine drinking as part of the lifestyle, we were drinking 130litres of beer each a year and 1 1/2 litres of wine and that was mostly port and sherry."
The turning point came with the introduction of Barossa Pearl, a light sparkling wine introduced by Orlando in 1956 and quickly emulated by Australian Grape Growers Co-operative, which later became Kaiser Stuhl.
In 1961, Mr Blass was hired from Germany to work on Kaiser Stuhl's sparkling wines, and he introduced cherry and pineapple flavoured versions of Pearl.
Sales were given a further boost in 1963 when Kaiser Stuhl began selling its fizz in a waisted bottle known as the Mae West, for its sumptuous curves. Kaiser Stuhl, also owned by Foster's, is now reduced to producing cask wines, and so is among the list of brands scheduled for imminent deletion as Foster's exits low-value market segments in order to concentrate on higher-margin areas.
But Mr Blass said today's winemakers could still learn from the successes of the past. "Our industry is in diabolical trouble with a surplus of 250,000 to 300,000 tonnes of grapes. Why doesn't it turn around and look again at these wonderful flirtatious products with an excellent packaging and go to China and the east to entice people who are drinking spirits and beer to get into a wine product," he said.
"We idiots think they should know something about Cabernets, that they should learn something about grape varieties when they haven't got a clue, which is exactly what happened in this country."
But rather than the fruit flavoured plonk that tickled the palates of novice Australian wine drinkers, Mr Blass said new export-orientated products should be more sophisticated. "No sweet lolly-water, we're talking about something that is flavoursome, a nice, well-balanced product, fizzy and it has to have a characteristic to appeal to women, because all over the world women control the hospitality industry," he said.
Winemakers also need to make the buying process easier for drinkers, he said, creating more recognisable packaging by which they can more readily differentiate varieties.
It's an idea Blass first hit on in the 1970s -- inspired, he says by the silks worn by jockeys and the team colours of football clubs.
"It looks good, people don't know very much about it, so bring out the Wolf Blass Yellow Label," he said.
There followed green, brown and black label varieties, the last of which won the prestigious Jimmy Watson Trophy three years in succession between 1974 and 1975. This simple but effective marketing technique has now been picked up by other brands such as Glenfiddich and Johnnie Walker, both of which have colour-coded labels to denote various levels of quality.
"And now even the bastards in Bordeaux are bringing out all the colours," Blass joked. It is only through innovations in products and packaging that the industry will survive the current downturn, he said, after Australia's wine exports posted their first decline in 13 years during 2008.
"The executives, the new generation, the board members, the executives, have never seen a downturn," he said.
"I've seen five breakdowns in this country and each time we survived because we came up with innovative ideas. Our guys today wouldn't bloody know. They only know one thing -- discounting, and that's the end of the bloody industry."