Stomper wrote:Ozzie W wrote:asajoseph wrote:Is it just me, or does anyone else find that South African, Portuguese (excluding Port) & USA wine is incredibly difficult to track down here?
I can maybe understand the US, given the prices, that there may not be enough of a market to bother, but the other two see incredibly scarce.
+1
Same for Greece and Eastern European countries. I guess these aren't mainstream wine producing countries and given the alternatives there's little demand.
Take out Barolo and Sicily snd their isn't much Italy going on either. It's so hard to find Italian wines outside of Piedmont, Florence and Sicily in Oz too. Then again it's hard to find anything from NSW in Victorian bottle shops, particularly semillon.
A shame as there is plenty to enjoy, be it Taurasi in Campania, Teroldego in Trentino, Fumin in Aosta, Montepulciano in Abruzzo, Sfursat in Lombardia, or any number of lesser seen wines. They're hard, but not impossible to find over here, yet I could see it being an impossible challenge in Australasia or much of Asia.
Portugal certainly captured my interest over the last 2-3 years via a friend who lived there for a while. Plenty of misses, but also some great value. Plenty of knob-waving prestige cuvees that lack charm, but also plenty of really solid wines that are a cellaring joy. Vinho Verde was the surprising star for me, with a handful of producers making anything but the battery acid (sweetened or not) that I recall being the reputation. Quinta da Soalheiro might be the best chance of making it south of the equator, and even the basic bottling can open out beautifully at a decade old.
Meanwhile South Africa has become the rising star in the UK, with seemingly endless innovation. I've not explored this new wave at all, with my experience now having been mostly dormant for 15 years. Is the greatest obstacle for South Africa, that it doesn't have enough difference to the Aus/NZ wines in your local market?