My Article: Searching For Real Australian Wines

It’s a trip I have wanted to make for a lifetime: Australia.

This evening I board a Quantas flight from Los Angeles to Sydney and arrive 15 hours later in Oz. It’s the beginning of a two-week trip Down Under to discover the county’s real wines – those that most express the character and style of Australia.

I am traveling with friend and blogger Master of Wine Ned Goodwin as well as my tastings coordinator Rosanne Quagliata. Both are Australian, and both have been bending my ear for a long time on how great their country’s wines are. And I am dying to see if they are right.

I must say the response from friends in the US wine trade hasn’t been very positive. “Better you than me,” wrote one of the biggest retailers in the country.

Another just questioned, “Why?”

One of the biggest retailers in Asia said that the trip would be interesting, but that they considered Australian wines “mid-market” and “uninspiring.”

We know how hard it is to sell quality Australian wines in the United States. They were the rage about five to seven years ago, but many people bought them and found them overpowering and overdone. Moreover, they didn’t age well. Many are being heavily discounted or gathering dust on retail shelves. Let’s not talk about animal labeled bottles or Yellowtail.

I recently had dinner in Los Angeles with a top winemaker from Barossa Valley and he lamented that their market in the United States was “screwed.” He said that the image of Australian wines in such as market as the United States was for dark, jammy and alcoholic wines. “Not easy to drink,” he said.

But that can’t be just it. I have friends all over the world who tell me otherwise. That’s why I am going on my own dime and trying to find the answer for myself.

May be the real Australian wines are never exported? Or the majority of those that are do not represent real Australian wines?

I asked Ned to email me what he thought our Australian Tasting Road Trip was all about. And he wrote this:

“We are searching for wines of “drinkability” that may come from cooler climates than the stereotypical image of Australia. We seek wines of poise, or a balance between structure and savory fruit, always with an underlying freshness. After all, Australia is the same size as the continental USA with the most ancient soils on earth, including streaks of Cambrian clay, basalt, and granite, in particular, running through the substrata. We are on the search for diversity and wines beyond those that we think we know! Excessive intervention, clumsy oak, excessive extraction and/or other forms of mislead bravado, will be frowned upon.”

I will add to that. We are looking for the REAL Australian wines. I hope to find wines that reflect the soils, the climates, and the true character of Australia. We are less interested in wines that have an imposed style from a particular winemaker. We don’t want over extracted and over oaked wines. We are searching for wines with balance and flavor. We are searching for wines that go with food. We are searching for wines that make you want to drink them.

And so our journey begins.

Stay tuned for regular blogs and video blogs from Down Under.

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