Wine Australia and Skillogalee Gewurz - ridiculous

[ChrisV]

I tasted through some of the Skillogalee range at an instore yesterday, thought their 2010 Gewurztraminer just the ticket for some Thai food, and snaffled a bottle. Then a fellow taster clued me in to this article from The Weekend Australian, published the very same day:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ex ... 6023347053

Summary: A bureaucracy I barely knew existed, called Wine Australia, apparently has to approve all Australian wines for export. A UK importer who had tasted the wine was very keen to import it, but Wine Australia decided to reject it as having too much VA, even though it tested well under the legal limit. So it was just their subjective opinion that the wine was faulty, an opinion apparently not shared by the sommelier at some two-bit restaurant called "Tetsuya's", where the wine has been on the by-the-glass list.

In a time of wine glut and a toughening export market, why exactly we need a government body denying overseas customers the chance to purchase Australian wine is beyond me. If anyone feels like writing a letter, Wine Australia falls under the ambit of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Joe Ludwig.

[ticklenow1]

All I can say is...what a bunch of absolute muppets! What sort of bureaucracy does this to an Australian company. They are happy to pass Yellow Tail which isn't fit to put in a car battery, yet knock back some of our best wines. How can the Yellow Tail and Jacob's Creek cheapies be a good representation of our wines and Torbreck Struie, Castagna Genesis, Hewitson's Old Garden and the wine in question aren't? It looks to me that maybe the brown paper bags were not big enough. This is a disgrace. When the industry is struggling to export wines because of the GFC and the strength of our dollar, they put another hurdle in the way.

I guess the published critics and some of the best sommeliers in the land, don't know anything after all. And to think I took their advice. I'll ring Joe Ludwig next time I'm in a wine shop looking for a special bottle!

[Polymer]

I don't understand why these types of things exist within Australia....They already have an overly strong protectionist policy that basically ends up hurting the consumers. I've heard things such as it's better for the consumer in the long run, it protects Australian jobs, etc, etc. BS. Lack of competition and what ends up being only a handful of large companies that dominate the industry is not better in the long run. Other countries don't complain about the policies because the market is so small they don't care.

You then have policies like this which hurt smaller companies and favor the really large ones (as the examples given, it's not like any real quality control happens anyways). Not to mention it only hurts the Australian Wine industry because you have people making decisions on what people outside of Australia should actually get to buy rather than letting the market determine if it's "good" or not. The rest of the world only sees a small fraction of what Australia actually produces and it's not like the general opinion is it's all fantastic. Far be it for someone to actually want to import/export something different and give people a look at something else for a change...

It's not even like the Australian Wine industry needs to be protected because everything being produced is at such a high level they're worried that something might damage that reputation...The main reputation for Australian Wine overseas is for making cheap plonk so there is no reputation to actually protect...

[Waiters Friend]

There must be a little more to this story. Why should there be a regulatory authority checking the credentials of a wine like passport control before it may leave the country? Can't producers just sell to who they like overseas?

And if VA is an issue, then why does Penfolds have such a strong export market?

There is something missing here.

[Wizz]

There must be a little more to this story. Why should there be a regulatory authority checking the credentials of a wine like passport control before it may leave the country? Can't producers just sell to who they like overseas?

And if VA is an issue, then why does Penfolds have such a strong export market?

There is something missing here.

No, producers cant just sell to who they want to overseas. New Zealand has a very similar process. No export certification - no customs clearance is how I understand it works.

Its compelte shit, and I agree it doesn't seem to be doing whats it was intended for.

[GraemeG]

I don't have a problem with an industry body having to give approval for export. I don't have a problem with enforcement of a threshhold of 1.5g/l of VA, or whatever it is.
But the era of some style-nazis saying 'although it complies with the law we're rejecting it anyway' is long gone.
It's a regressive form of reverse protectionism and has no place in the wine trade today.

Whoever these individuals are, they're simply the modern incarnation of the 1956 Penfolds board who forbade Schubert from making any more Grange.
And don't they look stupid today.

cheers,
GG

[ChrisV]

As the article points out, one of the major problems Australian wine faces internationally is the perception that it is all undifferentiated industrial wine. The last thing we need is style police. I wonder how many of the wines France exports would not pass muster at the Wine Australia board. I'm guessing it would be a lot.

[odyssey]

Who is this "team of inspectors (winemakers, retailers, show judges)" in Adelaide? How does the approvals process work, is it majority rules or a veto system that allows for only a few to have more control? How rapidly do the big producers have their new releases approved for export in comparison to the small winemakers?

Or worse, is there the possibility of some conflict of interest here? They are in the wine industry after all and from all the reports of show judging etc you really have to have mates and provide what might, god forbid, be misconstrued as gifts to really make it in the show circuit, right? If that were the case (no pun intended) could there be similar practices on such a show-like panel?

The problem with a murky, secretive and subjective approvals process is the ease with which it can instill the cronyism, favoritism and nepotism that bureaucracy is infamous for. Transparency and accountability are sorely needed.

[Moredsir]

As someone who has tried this wine, and in fact bought it, and as someone who is very sensitive to VA, I am baffled.

But they allow Hardy's stamp crap out of the country? Dollars in the right palms?

[ChrisV]

I wonder if maybe they allow greater leeway in the case of cheap industrial wine, under the rationale that it is cheap industrial wine.

Really the question is moot since it's pretty obvious to me we don't need such a regulatory authority at all. We don't have an Australian Literature Board who regulate which novels are allowed to be sold overseas, lest poor writing corrupt the perception of Australian authors. I would struggle to name any other industry who labours under such a restriction.

I should mention at this point that having no formal training in wine whatsoever, I wouldn't know what Volatile Acidity looked like if it smacked me in the face, however I like to think I know a decent wine when I drink one. Wine Australia's tasting panel apparently have the opposite problem.

[ChrisV]

btw odyssey, I can't find the link, but I read somewhere that several "inspectors" have to reject the wine independently before it gets disallowed, but really I couldn't care less. If you set up a tasting panel with members of this forum, I bet we would reject a lot of the Sav Blanc coming out of NZ as being good enough for import into Australia, but you would have to be an idiot to think that justified blocking the wines, many of which would no doubt be extremely popular.

[ChrisV]

I have my bottle of this open now. I can certainly see the issue they had - there's a definite acetic acid component to the wine, which is somewhat intrusive as I drink the wine by itself. The thing about Gewurztraminer though it it's frequently broad, sweet and lacking focus, so the acetic acid kick here does whip the wine into shape, and I think if I were drinking it with food it wouldn't be an issue. I think the Beaujolais I had a couple nights ago had more of a problem with acetic acid, and I definitely don't consider this wine faulty. I'm less keen than I was at the tasting and would not buy the wine again at the price, but I don't feel ripped off and still consider it ludicrous that this wine should be barred from export.