WBM columnist Howard Duncan reports from the launch of the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan at the National Wine Centre.

 

After scoffing a couple of complimentary sandwiches (crusts on), pinching the free pens and navigating a clutch of blue-suited bald blokes numbering just shy of a footy team, I’ve left the One Sector Plan launch feeling… deflated.

Yes, the second cut of The Plan is now thankfully void of the consultant wank that consigned the first edition to the ‘more government bullshit’ bin.

Yes, the Plan clearly identifies who does what at each tier of the sector hierarchy across the six strategic themes.

Now we all hold hands and sing Khe San.

The A4 summary would make a handsome fridge magnet.

Wine Australia does the regulating, the thinking, and the collecting and spending of money on plans and logos and consultants.

Australian Grape & Wine will go into bat for the sector in Canberra winning hearts and minds and rattling the donation plate and telling everyone that wine is really quite good for you.

Leaving State and regional associations and grape and wine producers holding the ‘doing’ baby, clutching a roadmap politely seeking sector collaboration.

Cue You’re the Voice.

Dr Martin Cole hailed today “…a great opportunity to come together and network…”

Agreed – because that is vitally important.

We need to get around each other and celebrate what is so good about what we do and what we make.

But these moments of coming together should also provide the catalyst for renewed energy and a determination to get out there to win for Australian wine together and individually – here, there and everywhere.

But what followed – best articulated by the convenor who 48 minutes into the launch landed the audience with this right hook – “As you all know we’re not telling you something you already don’t know” – failed to light the fire.

The barely sustained mood in the room could best be described as somewhere south of subdued heading towards a flat line and a long beeeeeeep.

This launch was exactly what the sector didn’t need.

Lacklustre. Loaded with platitudes, miserable outlooks, neverending empathy – “We know how tough it is out there…”, “Some people are doing it really tough…” – and government speak, complex slides and ongoing restatement of what we already know.

Go-to-market plans that remind you of that old adage, “If you always do what you always did…”

Buried amongst all that was a golden nugget of future opportunity which Peter Bailey ever so briefly highlighted.

There are 200 million wine drinkers around the world that don’t drink Australian wine.

What are we going to do about it? I don’t know – they didn’t tell us.

Maybe it’s time to ask Wolf?

He’d tell us what to do in less words (some of them English), with less slides and at significantly less expense.

He’d fire us ‘cookies’ up and make us feel ten foot high and bullet proof.

He’d say things that shouldn’t be said but need to be said.

He’d be off the stage and onto a plane before you could ask, “Are these biscuits sustainably made?”

Way back in 1975, the great John Kennedy of the Hawthorn Football Club gave us the plan we needed today.

These immortal words delivered in his half time address to his players at the VFL Grand Final beautifully capturing the spirit of determination, intent and action that was MIA today… “At least do something! Do! Don’t think, don’t hope, do! At least you can come off and say, ‘I did this’…”

Cue Holy Grail… “Woke up this morning with the strangest dream. I was in the biggest (wine) army the world has ever seen. We were marching as one. On the road to the holy grail.”

On that note, thanks to all the doers in the Wine Australia team – your efforts to do more with less… and less… are truly appreciated by everyone. True legends.