Regular correspondent Bruce Routley had good feedback on this article.

It happened recently, with a well known etailer, and when I sent an email to have a whinge, guess what, no reply. They keep on advertising the same fantastic prices, which are not that fantastic at all. I suppose if people don't do their homework, and pay too much, its their fault. But when regular buyers like me get done, I think about the average wine buyer, and how easily they can get done.

Only last week one of these etailers offered a wine, that was at a genuine half price, and I rang them 25 minutes after I got the email, to order. The website said 500 dozen available, and guess what, they were all sold out. 500 dozen wines sold in 25 minutes. Huh! I wish I had a business that could sell 500 dozen of one wine in 25 minutes. Of course, I was offered a lesser vintage, which I declined.

Another story, just last week, and expensive wine won a big tasting, and I wanted some. The winery sent me an email bragging about the win and stating that there was a little bit left, so I ordered a six pack. Three days later a well know wine store had the same wine on special, at a price 20% lower than I just paid. And this was an expensive wine.

Martin Phillipson make a couple of quick comments and asks a good question.

Is there a prize for spotting the real name of the winery in question? If defamation laws etc prevent, so be it. I thought her reply was fascinating, particularly in relation to not changing the price on the Schild 2004..good on her!

Feedback to a news item - France becomes creative with wine labels (9 August)

Feedback to Desperado and Drugs of Addiction (9 August)

This is one of your best articles. I support most of the points of views expressed by our colleagues. However, we make a mistake to look at this as a uniquely Australian wine marketing problem.

Americans know at best the geography of California's wine regions and the basic regions of France Germany and Italy. Few know that Australia has wine regions and there is little knowledge of the major cities or states.

And yet we are most like you and visa versa. So let's try to get to know one another. We never even had a "blind date" and now you propose marriage. We don't know why you should be attractive to us. Your wine history is unknown to us. What you are trying to achieve is misunderstood. You appear to be copy-cats and yet you are great innovators.

Why should we switch or experiment from what we currently consume? It's a zoo out there and you are the keepers. Not a great image.

What we need out here is more point of purchase information for the consumer. More differentiation in wine regions and their wine styles. A tour of the U.S. organized by the major wine regions every 90 days until the story is understood.

I'm not sure that the small grower/winery needs to know about wine by the glass programs as much as he has to understand the international competition with whom he or she competes. Packaging is relevant, style important, and consistency essential.

And one of Ken's customers, Tom Caufield, an excellent retailer in Iowa, wrote to him with this comment.

I just heard the giant Constellation Brands is moving its portfolio of "Pacific Wine Partners" wines to the same California liquor distributor that's run the Rosemount, Penfolds and Lindemans' ship aground.
These brands are listed below:
 

After a second vintage of tasting this guy's wine, I sent Parker a letter saying he's either got it wrong and cannot taste Pinot Noir or, more likely, they have submitted a wine different from the wine they sell. Parker responded suggesting my bottle had been "cooked" and I wrote back to say, "Listen, Buster...I'm a hundred miles from the winery and paying for these bottles with cash...hard-earned money. You are 3,000 miles away and being given 'samples'".

Bruce Routley wrote in with his thoughts on Plonk Oz.

It was good to catch up, all be it rather briefly. I thought I would give you my comments of the day. Overall, I was disappointed, mainly due to the vast lack of wineries. I remember a previous one, where Stephen Henschke was pouring Mt Edelstone to everyone. There was not that many wineries there that had wines I wanted to try. McLaren Vale was pathetic. At least Hardy's was there, and had Reynell and Eileen on the table. Barossa was a bit better, but still pretty poor. It was brilliant to see Torbreck dishing out all their top reds.  I did ask for some under the counter wines, and had some luck, but forgot to ask O'Leary walker about the Clair Reserve. NSW was pathetic. I had trouble finding it. I found McWilliams, and asked for a taste of Lovedale, but was told they had none. The 04 Graveyard was disappointing. If I owned a winery, I would be there. I spoke to the Scarpantoni boys, and they said it was really expensive to have a stand, plus the wine they give away. Maybe the organisers should cut costs to have cheaper stands.  There must be a reason why so many smaller wineries didn't come. It must be the cost. And Fosters, that's pretty slack.
At least Constellation was there.

The top wines I wrote down are:
Kilikanoon Covenent - best wine on the day
Kilakanoon Oracle
04 Reynell Cab
03 Wirra RSW
04 Heritage Rosscos
04 Torbreck Struie
04 Torbreck Factor
03 Jim Barry Mcrae Wood Shiraz
04 Jim Barry Armagh
04 Fox Creek Reserve

Mike Pollard, an expat Aussie now living in San Diego, who is well respected for the thoughtful comments and research behind his prolific internet forum posts as well as his own Shiraz Blog, wrote in with a very interesting perspective.  Here is what he said.

I can’t let the comments of Martin Edwards (see below dated 26 July) on Open Mouth and Extract Foot go without a reply. In terms of questioning Cam’s background as a critic, one might ask what qualifications does Martin have that certify him to judge Cam?

I am unaware that there is a qualification requirement for wine critics? Robert Parker Jr had none when he started; I believe he had no formal training in wine appreciation at all. He is a partner with family members in a winery, but that occurred well after he achieved success as a critic. What qualifications did Campbell Mattinson have before he started? I believe he was a journalist. James Halliday? Like Parker, a lawyer. Its true that Halliday was a partner in Brokenwood by 1970, some 7 years before he became a wine show judge, and while his biography lists tremendous experience I don’t see any formal qualification as a Wine Critic. Len Evans? Among his multitude of achievements, Evans was the first regular wine columnist in Australia, but again his bio does not list any formal qualification as a wine critic. Quite possibly, like many of us, these individuals started out with some serious formal (and informal) wine appreciation at various levels, and coupled with their innate abilities as well as good old fashioned hard work, and no doubt the odd bit of luck, have achieved well deserved success.

The other attribute these individuals have in common is passion for their subject. Having shared a few bottles with Cam its pretty obvious that he is passionate about wine as well. And taking the time to run a wine blog certainly shows commitment. Does he have to tell everyone that he may write about their wine? Do journalists do this? It may well be that one of the reasons that we see so little commentary on wines that fall into the not recommended category is because critics don’t wish to deal with wineries complaining about the bad press. But wine blogging will very likely change this as the numbers of individuals critiquing wine grows. It is true that there will be/are wine bloggers of dubious talent and intention on the internet. And so the potential for abuse is great but from Cam’s experience it seems that (some) wineries already have their response to that worked out.

 

Thanks to David More for sending me this one. The Australian cork spin witchdoctors are at it again. Have a look at the section "Cork the Perfect Fit" (follow the instructions on the linked page to view the text). This cork mob states corks are "impenetrable to both water and air".   If that is the case, next time you have have a bottle that leaks ask yourself how is it possible? Obviously its just good the "good stuff" leaking and the water in the wine stays in the bottle!

Martin Edwards, once again has comments that are worth thinking about.

While I agree with the basic thrust of your article (ie. that Graeme Miller Wines handled the criticism of their wines extremely poorly, both at the Show and later by email), I can't help thinking that Cam was also a tad out of line. His TNs could have been a little more circumspect and I certainly don't believe he should have attached numerical ratings to wines he believed were faulty.

It would have been much better to email the winery and ask them whether they wished to provide alternative samples before he wrote up the wines as he thought the samples he had tasted were faulty. If the winery said they stood by the samples he tasted, then he is entitled to bucket them on his blog if he is so inclined. As you said, most wine writers would not write the wines up at all if they thought the sample may not be representative.

I don't know what Cam's background to qualify as a critic is and his site doesn't really provide any information on that but I can't help seeing this as part of a wider concern relating to the way the internet allows one person's opinion to become attached to a commercial product without any real control...It's all very well to stand on the principle of free speech but there is a inferred requirement for anyone holding themselves out as a critic, as you do when you create a site and publish your opinions, to give a commercial operator the opportunity to redress a problem before you publish. I have no doubt the wine tasted like crap and I understand that he did question the soundness at the time, but I doubt he told them he was going to publish. That's the "ethics" issue. With publishing freedom goes responsibility to ensure the "story" is correct.

I think a lot of people are still coming to grips with the responsibilities which go with the power of internet publishing.

Gary Walsh of Wineorama on the other hand, had a different perspective.

I don't see much point in you directing level of negativity to a small winery. One could almost say you are as much of a 'bully' as the winery was in the first place. More importantly, publishing email correspondence between two parties on the internet is a loathsome habit. Really bad form.

TORB's Comment: Whilst I am not trying to defend or justify my comments, without quoting the emails, the story would not have made any sense. As long as the topic is not of a personal or private nature, (or correspondence between friends), I see no difference between quoting what someone says in person, or quoting their comments from an email. People have to take responsibility for their own actions.
 

More Readers Feedback on Foster's to Unload a Crown Jewel (Wednesday 18 July)

Andrew Sutherland-Smith of Warrabilla Wines had some interesting ideas about the sale of Seppeltsfield.  He wrote....

I have heard there is 14 million litres of inventory and the sale price quoted at $35 million, which equates to $2.50 a litre, not including the 100 acres of vines or the value of the fixed assets like buildings infrastructure etc.

Now if that’s 14 million litres of old stuff, the price is a bargain!

If there’s 13.85 million litres of two year old gear, with the really good stuff (or even a large part of the old gear) shived off to Penfolds etc, it’s a lot less of a bargain.

The big question is how much damage has been done to stock by Fosters. How much old stock (like Grand) has been pumped quietly into the marketplace?

The sale of Seppeltsfield could be done really well if the stock is intact and the incoming owner could
A) Park it for a period to remove the Seppelts labelled stock from the marketplace
B) Relaunch a new label with wines being made to much lower volume requirements...i.e. instead of 5000 cases of Grand Muscat a year make 1,000 cases and make the Rare really rare. It would be sustainable and you could make these already world class wines Stellar! The new owners could take on Chambers/ Morris Antiques head on.

Imagine what the company would be worth in five years time with a world class reputation and lots of 98+ scores from RPJ, especially a leaner finer organisation! Double/ Triple/ More?

It would cost naff all if they released trickles of stock to the bulk market to fund new wines (effectively swapping inventory.)

The All Saints fiasco fifteen years ago (with only one million litres) of fortified wine effectively depressed the fortified market for 5-6 years. What’s the effect of 14 million badly handled?

If AMP or the big Superfunds aren't looking at this in a big way, I'll write to them myself!

To sell 20,000 cases at $500 average a case still equals $10 million per anum. If I was sitting on 14 million litres of fortified that would be a piece of cake! 180,000 litres per year sold with 14 million litres in stock........ Hmm that’s 78 years supply if you don't make another drop.

Oh what the heck….. I'll just borrow the $35 million myself..... in for a penny, in for a pound!

TORB's Comment: Unfortunately I have no way of verifying Smithy's numbers; they could be accurate or they could be completely inaccurate. I did approach Fosters but received the expected "no comment." 
 

Readers Feedback on Foster's to Unload a Crown Jewel (Tuesday 11 July)

Readers Feedback on Reporting or Advertising? (a parody) (Sunday 9 July)

Campbell Mattinson of Wine Front recently wrote in with the following, and as usual, it displays a well balanced and thoughtful perspective.

I just saw your piece on "magazine journalism" where you queried whether or not Nick Ryan's feature on the Southern Highlands was influenced by advertising. While I had nothing to do with that article and haven't discussed it with Nick, I have written many similar features and so feel fairly well versed with how it all works. Basically I think (in the case of Gourmet Traveller Wine) it goes like this:

* magazine commissions freelance writer to pen a feature on *insert winery region here*.

* freelance writer pens feature article with complete independence

* freelance writer submits article to magazine, and that is that last the writer sees of the article until it appears on newsstands. The writer does not view the edited article, and not the way it is laid out, and certainly not the list of advertisers at any stage of the writing process

* magazine lets the region know that an article has been written on it, and tries to sell ads off it. This does not influence the article itself in any way. During this sales process it is possible that individual wineries ask whether or not they have been mentioned in the article - but this does not influence the article, as it is after the fact of it being written.

* the magazine is then published.

I've been writing for newspapers and magazines for 20 years, and I've seen many instances where the editorial process is "tainted" by advertising. I do not, however, think that the above process is. The writers of these "regional guides" work independently and never see nor hear anything from anyone on the advertising side of things.

 

“The recent comment regarding grapes never being a viable source of ethanol for cars worries me.

Never is a long time! They did a trial on growing grapes at 100t/ha which would have been a success if they reached 10Be and they got it to 12.0~!!!!!

Now if those grapes were beside the still so that freight wasn’t an issue, and we could get an extraction of 800 L/t that equals 9,408 litres ethanol per hectare.

Stills are very bloody efficient in removing alcohol for a low price (they recover the heat used against the feed to the still) and can use crap fuel (we used unrefined black heavy oil {$hit} at McWilliams Robinvale;) though if you could use LPG near the main pipeline it would cost very little.

The mistake made is to say that wine made for human consumption at current cropping levels doesn’t equate to viable fuel; there is no argument there: but could a bio-fuel industry at big cropping levels near stills be a different and possibly viable alternative to growers stuck in this government made shemozzle?

Bloody good question that deserves a better answer than a “never viable ever ever ever” response.

More Readers Feedback on Trouble at the Top End (Monday 3 July)

Bob Foster has been in the wine business for a long time and is Chairman of Judges of a major wine show in the US, so he knows which side is up. He had this to say.

“In the area of lost opportunities-how about giving up on market dominance?  Ten years ago Seppelt was a major player in the US market. Now, they basically import an occasional old muscat or other dessert wine.  Today gems like St Peters are unavailable and thus unknown in the US market.  If you go to the Seppelt web site, they list a US importer. I called them and was told, sorry no. I sent Seppelt an email asking why they had given up. They forwarded the email to their US (non)importer for a response. It's been a fortnight and I've heard zero. From dominance to oblivion! Sigh.”

More Readers Feedback on A Heritage Wine Investor Tells His Story (Monday 3 July)

“Nice article on Max the Heritage investor.  Needless to say, we are starting to see the first signs of the Heritage stock coming onto the secondary market.  Some investors are realistic in their expectations but alas many are not, with some trying to do the hard sell on us. It still amazes me how intelligent and prudent members of the big end of town got involved in this scheme.”

Adam Catford has a background in the investment business so his comments are most interesting.

“In reference to ‘wine speculation’.  Wine was never truly and investment at all…… Various definitions exist for investment – however, after 20 years in the Financial Planning and Investment industry, the following is, in my opinion, factual.

An investment is the purchase of an asset in which one intends to participate in the income (profit – as opposed to capital gain) generated by the asset.  (If the asset manages to increase profit/income over time, the asset may also rise in value).  Perhaps unoccupied land is an exception, but few would argue that land with a property which also generates rent is a better investment than holding the land alone.   

Speculation is the purchase of an asset (whether or not it produces income) in the hope that the value will rise and a capital gain will be achieved. Wine is not and never will fall under the definition of investment to me; nor does art, collectibles or antiques.

The best caveat investor to me is this:  Does this ‘investment’ produce a relatively (compared to bonds/stocks or reasonable other benchmark) acceptable income and/or profit (some companies produce great profits but due to their capital intensive nature reinvest these profits to expand the business – but still create profit without a dividend), and is it possible this income/profit could/will rise over time?

Maybe if we all used these guidelines we wouldn’t buy IT stocks with big ideas and no assets, wine, art or other scams we seemed to be sucked into so easily.

Watch – in 3 years we will be in undersupply. Every industry has a cycle and almost predictably, every industry has a 20 year or so ‘crisis’ – everyone needs to calm down.

Other than the few unfortunate established growers who will go broke, along with 80% of all start up businesses (that is a true stat,) so let the folk who screwed up live and learn. Who bails those 80% of startups that go broke? Answer – No one!!!! Did you hear the Government bail out all those stock brokers who started up in the 5 years before the 1987 stock market crash?  No??  That’s because they didn’t….get the idea.  Victims there always will be; and that is life, or part of it.”

Finally this one was from Neil Charles (and was written up in a previous Irregular Update) who is wine retailer in the US.

“I just finished reading your story about the Heritage fiasco, and found it most interesting, especially when I saw that Balnaves was one of the wineries whose product was involved. I have a long history with Balnaves' (former?) importer here in the U.S., and can reliably inform you that their wines, however wonderful, never caught on in this country. It's a real shame, but I recall as recently as last year trying to sell the 99 Cabernet in Boston and several other markets to almost no avail. We finally knocked it down to around $25US (retail), and moved a few cases. I think the rest of the vintage has since been closed out by the importer for almost nothing.

Had Heritage ever succeeded in getting their wines to the US, I fear that the combination of shipping, taxes and intermediate costs would have pushed the prices well beyond the realm of the reasonable. As you correctly mention, the demand in the US for Australian Cabernet, however good it may be, is virtually non-existent. We have way too much of our own (overpriced) juice to sell. All I can say is Caveat Investor!" As an aside, last week Canterbury Wines in Melbourne advertised a "museum release" of the 99 Balnaves Cabernet for  $29.50 a bottle, much the same price as it was on release a few years ago.”

There was a large amount of feedback to this story, most of it short and in agreement but some of the comments are worth posting in detail. 

I had a few thoughts on the state of Australian wines here in our little corner of the planet.

1. Having the giant conglomerate of Southmont or Rosecorp is a total mess from my little perspective. Those firms used to offer decent entry level wines and were competitive in the market for floor-stack space/shelf space. Now that they're lumped together, you have the same company vying for limited space...they're not really doing much of a job of competing. They would probably be better off if they were split up and actually actively competing....

2. The high-priced "carrots" have become so costly there's not much interest in them. That means the "sticks" that are paired with the carrots don't warrant a place in the shop unless the wines are top notch, good values and will bring repeat business.

3. The marketing people here have made some critical mistakes. Within the Southcorp realm, for example, they have Seppelts wine. We can find customers for Seppelts' Tokay, for example. But they've discontinued this wine since it's "work" to sell it. Okay...so now we are not selling Seppelts Tokay, nor other Aussie wines. We can sell Spanish Sherry to our customers instead. I hope the Seppelts people are thrilled. They had a line of "jug" wine which worked nicely for us. It was a basic, bare-bones little Chardonnay and it was not well-distributed, so it worked nicely for an independent shop such as ours. Unfortunately, the marketing folks decided this was, again, "too much work" and so they eliminated the brand in our market. They were hoping to focus on their main labels. But you can't penetrate each market segment with the same labels because they cannibalize the marketing of a brand...if you're going to sell some labels for $5 a bottle at the Trader's Joe's chain, please don't expect independent stores to handle these wines. We cannot possibly expect to pay the $7.15 wholesale price I see in their distributor's catalogue for wines that Trader Joe's is offering to the public at $4.99 or $5.99 a bottle.
When they have "unpublished" pricing and lazy sales reps, how can you possibly expect to get your wines in distribution?

I had asked the sales rep for some bottles of things such as Penfolds' Grange. One day two "suits" came into the shop to see if I was really interested in such a wine. (Penfolds had changed distributors shortly before and the new folks have been a disaster, near as I can tell.) They were trying to point out the Grange was a "reward" for selling their other wines. "Your sales are down." they told me.
"No kidding! Really?" I asked. Then I pointed out that we had to discontinue wines such as Penfolds Sem-Chard because the vintage they were selling at that point in time was three or four years old and the bottles were oxidized and spoiled. The firm had stopped bringing in that little jug Chardonnay we were selling at the rate of 5 cases a week. One other white wine they had was also in a borderline state of spoilage and so we stopped selling that. "No kidding, sales are down?" I asked these rocket scientists. Wow.

I just looked on the web sites of some competitors...one company offers but one Penfolds item and the other major shop has three Penfold items. One of them has Rosemount Shiraz (best wholesale price listed is $6.75) for $7.99 a bottle. Neither of these companies carry anything from Lindemans. A few years ago, these brands were sold in these stores, but when there's no incentive to carry them, well, too bad.

4. Another big player, Jacobs Creek, announced it was selling its wines through Wal-Mart. If that's your idea of marketing, knock yourself out. This sort of sales outlet really diminishes whatever shred of luster you had. We discontinued the stack of Cab/Shiraz we'd been selling for $6.99. My larger wine shop competitors don't handle any Jacobs Creek wines either.

5. All the huge red wines from Australia which have residual sugar have been detrimental to the market. We don't see customers coming in and looking for "Australian wines" as they did a few years ago. It was, perhaps, a bit of a novelty to start. But if you have good wines, fair prices and sensible marketing, you'll find success. But when people taste these huge, monster wines (not that California doesn't also make this sort of stuff) and find they're undrinkable with food and are only good in a blind-tasting, they start looking elsewhere for wine.

6. We've done tastings with wines that have been "highly rated" by various critics. Parker, The Wine Spectator...if these are the best Australia can offer, well, then we can only conclude "Australian wines are not to my taste."

Now Australia is known for "cute" wines. Wines for people who don't drink wine. (That's not my customer...sorry.)
Do wines such as Feral Fox and Lucky Lizard sell in your part of the world? (They're supposed to fetch $30 a bottle here). How about "Shoo Fly" Buzz Cut White??

Well, the whole market for Aussie wines seems to be quite a mess. The big statewide distributor for D'Arenberg, who also has Southcorp to sell, has 2001 Sauvignon Blanc from D'Arenberg in the catalogue. Laughing Magpie Viognier is 2003 vintage presently. They have 2003 Wynns Chardonnay and 2003 Riesling. There's a lot of old wine to be sold.

I've been writing this as we're closing, so it's not the most well-thought out missive I've sent you, but you get the idea.

If you would like to see independent, US wine lovers reaction to this story, it can be found on the WCWN Forum and its worth reading.