Hunter Valley winemaker Andrew Margan responds to David LeMire MW’s column in WBM – Australia’s Wine Business Magazine titled ‘Shooting the Messenger.’
I wouldn’t want to shoot the messenger, even if the messenger happens to be involved in both South Australian and Tasmanian wine brands, but modern day journalism is becoming increasingly frustrating with a lack of research and understanding of topic.
The topic at hand is the frustration of most of the NSW wine industry with the lack of support being shown for the wines of NSW.
Currently around 12 percent of wines listed in on-premise NSW are wines from NSW.
Having been involved in selling NSW wine for a long time and having been VP of Marketing and Promotions for the NSWWIA for the last three years I also feel I may have some understanding on why we are only at 12 percent.
I certainly have some strong arguments that support the need for that to change.
Up until about 20 years ago one would argue that there wasn’t really anything you could call NSW wine.
You had the Hunter, Mudgee and Riverina and they all existed in their own little orbits.
If you wanted to support the concept of NSW Wine back then you would have struggled to find the right wines to make a wine list and you wouldn’t be providing your customers with much choice.
Twenty years on and the NSW Wine industry has evolved into 16 regions with hundreds of producers making wines of all varieties, styles and price points.
One of the biggest issues that NSW Wines have in gaining more market share in their own State is that there are an increasing number of venues who have been contracted by a small number of distribution houses or large wine companies.
These contracts offer significant incentives to have their lists dominated by only the wines sold by that distribution company. Some of these companies have no NSW wines to sell and the others have a very small proportion of wines in their portfolio that are from NSW.
This means there is less opportunity for venues to access NSW wine, and their customers also.
One of the unfortunate results of this circumstance is that the public are getting less choice on wine lists across the State.
One of the main points that came out of the last EDG survey was that people are drinking less wine because they are being offered less choice in wines.
Naturally it is important to all the other States of Australia to have as much market share of the NSW wine market as they can.
NSW is the largest wine consuming State.
The proportion of NSW produced wine sold into the other States of Australia is minimal while the proportion of other States wine sold into NSW is significant.
A tourist travelling in NSW has a much greater chance of drinking Barossa Shiraz or a Tasmanian Pinot than they have a Hunter red wine.
This wouldn’t concern the average South Australian or Tasmanian but it should concern the people of NSW.
Why wouldn’t we want to show visitors our unique wine offerings?
When we travel, don’t we all like to drink wines made form the area we are visiting?
Imagine if we delighted our visitors with a Hunter Valley Semillon and a plate of Sydney Rock oysters enough that they told all their friends who then decided to come to Australia.
Perhaps even to leave Sydney and visit our wine regions, they enjoyed the wines of Orange so much.
Or should we just serve them a NZ Sauvignon Blanc they like so much they organise their next visit to NZ.
Thirty-four percent of international travellers say they come to Australia for our food and drink offering.
Without trawling through wine shows or Halliday ratings there is plenty of evidence that suggests that the wines of NSW have achieved lots of excellence through farming and oenology (but possibly not through their marketing).
Quality, style, price and variety are not the problem.
Accessibility and an awareness by wine buyers are holding the wines of NSW back.
The NSW Wine Industry Association are working tirelessly to solve awareness and we have our third year of NSW Wine Month coming up in November.
We also may have solved accessibility by partnering with Paramount who can sell and deliver all NSW wine brands that register.
This a is a long journey and there is no doubt that the considerations of parochialism and ESG considerations will have their part to play along the way.
In the meantime we will continue to attack the NSW Government who do nothing for us as an industry.
The Art Gallery and a hundred more examples of our State Government not supporting its own industries begs protest.
And protest we shall!
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