“The name of your mission is WINE and you must rescue Soldier AUSTRALIAN”

Editorial by Guillaume Jourdan

Name of the Mission: WINE. Name of the soldier: AUSTRALIAN. All the information you require is on www.allforonewine.com and will self destruct on the day after Australia Day. This may sound like a James Bond scenario which happens in beautiful Australia but this happens now for real. Pure Reality. As you can read today in VitaBella Wine Gossip, Giovanni Morelli commented in Irish Medical Times about the situation in Australia: “Australian wine has come under a lot of pressure since the great days of the 1980s and ’90s. Oddbins was a great advertisement for Australian wine, and the taste for oaked Chardonnay was undoubtedly initiated on many palates by such wines as Rosemount. Now all is not well. According to Harvey Steinman and Tyson Stelzer in the Wine Spectator in September, a number of large Australian wine producers are in receivership and face bankruptcy. I presume this is a result of overproduction of wine in Australia, competition from South America and the world economic depression.”

So Stephen Pannell, Award-winning Australian wine maker, decided to launch a great initiative in Australia to rescue wineries: a new website which asks Aussies to drink only Australian wines from January 1st until Australia Day. In fact, the scenario in Australia can not get worse: the value of Australian wine imports has risen again, as Australians continue to favour foreign varieties. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for the September quarter show wine imports increased in value by 4.5 per cent during the last year. New Zealand continues to dominate imports, sales of French wine also grew…So will this initiative supported by more than 500 winemakers help? At least it is a very smart communication initiative. It will also mobilize Australians (and maybe even more particularly those living abroad, and they are numerous!). But this “rescue mission” should also bring on the table some key questions such as “What kind of wine do Australians want to drink in 2010?”. Discussions with my australian friends regularly come back to (please add the australian accent to the following sentences): “I am fed up with strong alcohol”, “I do not appreciate anymore too powerful red wines”, “I need a balanced wine, not too strong”. In fact, there are many wines adapted to this new taste in Australia. But we need more.

So YES, I will participate to this initiative and drink australian wines during this period of time. Maybe more than usual thanks to this very clever communication. But I will be very selective also and this unfortunately won’t help the huge load of australian wines on the market now. Will the soldier Australian be rescued? I sincerely hope so but, like in any rescue mission, there are always huge risks of casualties on the ground…