China the Fastest Growing Wine Market

THIS has been a pretty tumultuous year, not least for the world's wine industry. Here's a look back at a few of the winners and losers of 2009.

Sauvignon blanc was a big winner. It now accounts for one in every three bottles of white wine sold in Australia with sales reportedly continuing to rise at a rate of 32 per cent per annum.

New Zealand wine was another winner, principally on the back of the worldwide demand for their sauvignon blanc which now constitutes just under half of the country's wine production.  But they've also managed to position their other wines, their pinot noirs and Hawkes Bay reds, firmly at the premium end of the market. In Britain, for example, New Zealand wine sells at more than twice the average price of wine from Australia. Following two massive vintages, some observers are now warning that New Zealand is in danger of repeating the Australian experience where booming exports led to over-expansion, overproduction and inevitably a decline in quality and a fall in prices.  Are the New Zealand savvies around at the moment at $10.99 the first signs?

Rose styles in Australia are all over the place, but everyone it seems is jumping on to the pink bandwagon _ even, if reports are correct, one First Growth Bordeaux producer in France.

Imports and new varietal wines continued their rapid growth this year and consumers now have the widest and most exciting choice of wines ever with some of our better restaurants leading the way in introducing them to Hobart.

Screw caps  are here to stay and their use is moving up the quality/price ladder in both whites and reds.

The 100 point rating system: For whatever reason, we perceive a wine rated 8/10 to be a lot better than one rated 80/100.  So, as more wine writers worldwide adopt the 100-point rating system, we're seeing almost all their wines receiving scores of 90+ out of 100 _ which is nudging the point where every wine wins a medal, and a gold medal at that. Wine writers' opinions have also suffered an attack of the bloggers (see next entry) and their credibility has recently been seriously damaged in a scandal where critic Matt Skinner published a book containing reviews and ratings of wines that hadn't yet been released and which, when sprung, he admitted he'd never tasted.

The internet and bloggers on everything, but especially on food, wine and travel. There's even a 13-year old blogger in New York whose restaurant reviews are apparently taken seriously (www.fishmanfoodie.com)

At The Future of Wine conference held earlier this year in Spain, more than 1000 wine writers, producers and industry people from 50 countries were told the future of wine marketing was the internet.

Gary Vaynerchuk, a US wine retailer who has 850,000 followers watching his wine tasting videos on Twitter, told the conference: ``There has been a delusional outlook on business in our industry because of how many layers there are between the people who make the product and the people who drink it.''

Robert Parker Jr, perhaps the world's most influential wine critic, agreed:  ``To me, the wine industry is still a dinosaur when it comes to interactive client relationships on the internet.  The challenge for the wine industry is to have active, interactive internet sites.''

Cooler climate, lower alcohol and less oaky wines. There's a move, a slow move, in consumer preferences and producers' response, away from thick oak and high-alcohol syrups to wines of real freshness, energy, character and cooler-climate vinosity and elegance.  Its happening in Australia, at least, and thankfully, at last. But the anti-alcohol lobby is still determined to tax us into teetotalism.

Biodynamics and organics are gaining wider acceptance hand-in-hand with less interventionist, so-called natural winemaking techniques.  But buyers beware: the terms are also being word-napped by marketers.

Climate change  is likely to prove a winner for some and a loser for others. It is already forcing a re-think of varieties and viticultural techniques from Alsace to Australia.  Is a 14.8 per cent alcohol cabernet sauvignon from 2008 in Tasmania simply climate change in a bottle?

China:  While France is still recognised as tops for quality, China is the sixth biggest and fastest growing wine producer in the world as well as the fastest growing market with everyone from everywhere vying for a piece of the action.  Hong Kong is now challenging London and New York as a leading market for the world's best wines and, if you can no longer afford the luxuries of the big names from Bordeaux and Burgundy, it's because they're all going to Asia.

The Australian industry  has suffered multiple whammies during 2009: continuing drought; massive oversupply (a situation that's predicted to get worse); bad international press; declining exports at lower prices and consequent hardship; and an uncertain future for many in the industry.

Sadly, Tasmanian consumers continued to be among the losers with most of our bottle shops still locked into offering the safe, narrow and unchanging range of safe, big-company products.

They lack the buying power to offer Dan Murphy-style $1.99 specials or top French champagnes for 50 per cent off and are insufficiently adventurous to stock the more interesting quality imports that mainland consumers have been enjoying for years.
So here's to the internet _ and to 2010.