The Auswine Forum

Penfolds Bin 389 1996
Still very young, needs another 10 years (or more?). Can understand it's one dimensional and feels locked in time but the quality and potential is palpable. I can imagine how the '96 Grange must be showing about 25% about now. Must find more Bin 389 from 1996 ... more I say ... Excellent+ (now).

fine dont invite me then!!

bout time we saw you on here

Craig(NZ) wrote:

Penfolds Bin 389 1996
Still very young, needs another 10 years (or more?). Can understand it's one dimensional and feels locked in time but the quality and potential is palpable. I can imagine how the '96 Grange must be showing about 25% about now. Must find more Bin 389 from 1996 ... more I say ... Excellent+ (now).

fine dont invite me then!!

bout time we saw you on here

Family do with rellies from middle earth sorry engerland who don't quality wine is produced outside of France ... thought you'd drunk enough of this Aussie red rubbish and didn't want you to suffer ... It was only 107.3+ points.

Jay60A wrote:

Craig(NZ) wrote:

Penfolds Bin 389 1996
Still very young, needs another 10 years (or more?). Can understand it's one dimensional and feels locked in time but the quality and potential is palpable. I can imagine how the '96 Grange must be showing about 25% about now. Must find more Bin 389 from 1996 ... more I say ... Excellent+ (now).

fine dont invite me then!!

bout time we saw you on here

Family do with rellies from middle earth sorry engerland who don't quality wine is produced outside of France ... thought you'd drunk enough of this Aussie red rubbish and didn't want you to suffer ... It was only 107.3+ points.

You know what I love about this board? Reading posts like this and sniggering all by myself in nearly the middle of the night.

Funny!

Jay60A wrote:

Craig(NZ) wrote:

Penfolds Bin 389 1996
Still very young, needs another 10 years (or more?). Can understand it's one dimensional and feels locked in time but the quality and potential is palpable. I can imagine how the '96 Grange must be showing about 25% about now. Must find more Bin 389 from 1996 ... more I say ... Excellent+ (now).

fine dont invite me then!!

bout time we saw you on here

Family do with rellies from middle earth sorry engerland who don't quality wine is produced outside of France ... thought you'd drunk enough of this Aussie red rubbish and didn't want you to suffer ... It was only 107.3+ points.

Middle Earth??!!
What is it about my fellow English and their reluctance to stray from French wine? I was recently discussing wine with my mate for his Wedding and when I suggested a couple of Aussie Labels, he told me that his soon to be Father-in-law to be only wants French wine!!

Cheers
Ollie

Ollie wrote:
Middle Earth??!!
What is it about my fellow English and their reluctance to stray from French wine? I was recently discussing wine with my mate for his Wedding and when I suggested a couple of Aussie Labels, he told me that his soon to be Father-in-law to be only wants French wine!!

Cheers
Ollie

good that leaves more for us!

Scanlon wrote:

Ollie wrote:
Middle Earth??!!
What is it about my fellow English and their reluctance to stray from French wine? I was recently discussing wine with my mate for his Wedding and when I suggested a couple of Aussie Labels, he told me that his soon to be Father-in-law to be only wants French wine!!

Cheers
Ollie

good that leaves more for us!

To be fair it may not be just the snob thing ... I suspect a few factors at play. I LOVE aussie wine. But let's place Devil's advocate for a moment.

First, while the big brands including Penfolds, Wolf Blass can be a lot cheaper in UK than over in Oz as you are simply being stuffed (don't know how else to say it but look at Grange or WB Platinum prices you can get in UK), a lot of the interesting/niche Oz stuff is appreciably more expensive than in Oz. This should not be the case given WET but is because a lot is only brought in by smaller retailers like Noel Young, Philglass & Swiggott, Ozwines etc in small amounts for the wine-geek market.

Secondly, in the 10-15GBP price range there's a lot more very good French wine easily available at good prices ... esp. CdP, Hermitage, Rhones, lesser Bdx gear in supermarkets like Waitrose, Sainsbury. Just avoid Burgundy and poor vintages! So in the UK an educated wine drinker's palate will (by default) likely graduate to a more European flavour profile without knowing that the New World can and do offer equivalent or better wines in a similar style sometimes executed better ... Seppelts, Clonakilla, Voyager Estate are good examples.

Which is back to the main issue facing oz now - increasing production, marketing and therefore distribution of the really good wines to the point where there is a critical mass AND AVERAGE PEOPLE KNOW AUSTRALIA MAKES TOP WINE. It would be interesting to know some market figures by country of origin of wine sold in the UK say 15GBP or over.

To ask the aussies here: I am a Pom back in NZ buying a lot of aussie stuff because I grew up in NZ in the 80s and developed a taste for it. So I now know what to go for (or not). But why should any punter in the UK choose high-end aussie wine over Bordeaux, Rhone, Barolo, Rioja etc?
It's a rhetorical question really as it's what the marketing industry has to answer. Suspect the answer may be "get st*ffed"

Don't know how I got onto this. Better get back to work now!

Jay,

This is quite an interesting article on the cusomer trends for wine buying in England, its nearly a year old but is still relevent information.

http://www.skalliandrein.com/bizreview/news005904be.php

Cheers

Ollie

Ollie,

Thanks! Yes it's interesting though not so surprising. The power of the supermarkets in UK is scary.
I'd love to see it a Sales/Total Value/Avg Value analysis of the market segmentation by country and price points through price bands say in GBP 3-5, 5-8, 8-10, 10-15 and 15+

I guess I'm interested in that 10+ GBP "fine wine" in the last paragraph and how Australian wines are going to crack that market. FWIW Wynns Black Label from Oddbins then = Fine Wine (which I'd dispute but anyway ...). At 3-6 GBP I think people want "nice and fruity and smooth" and don't care about country or regionality. Lots of good South American stuff keeping prices honest also so Penfolds Bin 28 is slashed on special by 30% (again).

On reading it I realised NZ and Oz have more (and more interesting) wine reviews in the general press than UK imo.

Cheers -- Jay.