STATE OF PLAY
Each year, James Halliday chooses his Top 100 wines, and his 2021 selections were once again an excellent cross-section of the nation’s best. Here, James considers what these wines reveal and some related emerging trends.
MY TOP 100, published in November, was chosen against the background of Covid-19 and the collapse of the China export market on one hand, and the glorious 2021 vintage on the other. Within those two events was the increase in the consumption of alcohol, perhaps to ease the boredom of lockdowns, the disappearance of all international and most domestic travel, record low interest rates, and surging house prices. Given the broad-based increase in online purchasing, it was inevitable that delivery of goods purchased from all points of the compass would lead to supply chain disruption, and Australia Post buckled under the strain with grossly erratic delivery performance.
THE 2021 vintage was remarkable for its oh-so-rare combination of high quality and high quantity – and put ‘very’ before ‘high quality’, and ‘all-time record’ before ‘high quantity’. The obvious questions are about when the wines come will onto the market, and how and where we will most likely buy them.
Well, the rieslings and other non-oaked varieties are already available. A total of 53 rieslings were submitted, 12 selected,
10 from 2021, and two from 2020. The long-discussed riesling renaissance may at last be taking substance, for seven of the rieslings cost more than $30, though still offering great value for money. It remains the case that the majority of winemakers say it’s their favourite anytime-anywhere wine.
At this point, I should explain the price breaks: 20 white wines from under $30 (for 2020, the price break was $25), and 20 white wines over $30. For reds, the price break is $40, thus 80 Australian table wines were chosen from these pre-determined price points. I’ll come back to the varietal population shortly, but first, I cover your likely mode of purchase in a post-Covid manacled world.
Direct to consumer (DTC) outperformed other sales channels in 2020-21, according to Wine Australia’s October 2021 third annual survey of DTC sales. DTC itself is composed of four main categories – cellar door, online, wine club and database/digital. For those of us who live in Victoria, it will be amazing to hear that over the year, cumulative (all states) cellar door sales performed better than other channels. We in Victoria were locked down (and out of cellar doors) for four months, most other states a matter of days.
Why should cellar doors have fared so well with virtually no clickand-collect sales? Shopping for all commodities used to be an experience, enjoyed even if no purchases eventuated. Those days are long gone, but for cellar doors, it’s the reverse, although there are puzzling differences depending on the state.
As one of the co-founders of Brokenwood in the Hunter Valley, we grudgingly opened for cellar door sales in the mid-1970s and operated by standing on opposite sides of a trestle table in a multipurpose tractor shed. I departed Brokenwood in 1983 when I left for Melbourne and the Yarra Valley, and it was still pretty basic; yet to move visitors inside and offered nothing more than a single tasting glass. In late 2018, Brokenwood opened its $8-million multipurpose, multifunction sales and entertainment building that
comprises casual bar samples, as well casual seated, structured seated and group tastings, plus food and wine matching in the restaurant.
That’s all a little extreme, but it covers every conceivable offer for visitors. The Wine Australia survey shows that in Western Australia, 57 per cent of visitor experiences are casual bar tastings. In South Australia and New South Wales, structured seated tastings are the dominant format, while in Victoria, casual seated tastings are most common. The various patterns were not influenced by winery size, and the one ongoing certainty is the wine, food and travel industry is going to continue to become more sophisticated. But what you get depends on where you are, not who you are.
What will also continue is the inverse relationship between winery size and importance of DTC sales. For wineries producing 100,000 to 500,000 dozen cases, it’s eight per cent of sales volume and 19 per cent of value. At 5000 to 20,000 dozen cases, it’s 37 per cent of volume and 44 per cent of value; and at 1000 to 5000 dozen cases it’s 68 per cent of volume and (coincidentally) of value.
The majority of wines you select from the Top 100 and purchase by one of the DTC channels will come from wineries in either of those last two brackets.
So, to come back to the wines on offer, there were three semillon and four sauvignon blanc; thence to three semillon sauvignon blanc blends, two fiano, and one each of pinot gris, grüner veltliner, pecorino, marsanne and marsanne roussanne viognier. Only one of the fianos being over $30 in this bracket of ‘other white varietals’. The seven varieties make sense given Australia’s warm climate, and they compare with the much smaller number of ‘other red varietals’ (nero d’Avola, durif, mourvedre) in the selected red wines. A total of 11 chardonnays completed the two white wine brackets, with four wines under $30.
Pinot noir (four in 2021) will demand a much larger place next year courtesy of the ’21 vintage, and chardonnay may try, but there may simply be a different regional split within the 11 chosen. The major takeout of the 40 red wines is that 22 had an alcohol of 14 per cent or less, and 14 wines in the 13 to 13.5 per cent range. Not one had more than 14.5 per cent.
Now, I know you can’t make wine using a recipe book numbers game, but I firmly believe there’s a mouthwatering freshness in medium-bodied reds in the above alcohol ranges. It’s not a big deal with white wines, but the majority (21) were less than 13 per cent, a single wine at 13.6 per cent being the only one over 13.5 per cent.
The 2021 vintage was remarkable for its oh-so-rare combination of high quality and high quantity – and put ‘very’ before ‘high quality’, and ‘all-time record’ before ‘high quantity’.