10 tips for buying wines in 2022
Smart investors change their strategy in response to fluctuations in the market. Savvy wine buyers do the same. The past two years have seen the wine world change gears dramatically. Halliday Wine Companion chief editor Tyson Stelzer shares 10 tips to avoid the pitfalls and guarantee you’ll be first in line for all the best buys this year.
THE DYNAMIC of wine supply and demand has been thrown into chaos by environmental, economic and political instability. When China imposed so-called anti-dumping trade tariffs in late 2020, the effect was to shrivel Australia’s biggest wine export market by 97 per cent. There was also a slight drop in Australia’s next five top export markets in 2021. Domestic consumption of Australian wine likewise saw a decline in volume and an even larger decline in value. Meanwhile, the record national crush of more than two million tonnes in 2021 landed at precisely the wrong time. The net effect of this perfect storm has been to overload the national wine stocks to more than two billion litres, the highest in 15 years. In response, the retail world has swung back to a cycle of wine dumping, with inboxes bombarded with a daily parade of discounting. Even brands with no presence in China have been impacted by this domestic discounting frenzy.
This stands in stark and dramatic contrast with the dynamic at the top end of the market. Australians spend $20b more overseas each year than incoming tourists spend on our shores – at least they did before Covid. For the past two years, a decent amount of our discretionary travel and entertainment spend has been rediverted to fine wine. The result is that, while an ocean of wine is being flogged off for a song, the great wines of the world have never been more highly sought after or more scarce. Our most celebrated estates around the country have enjoyed unprecedented demand, while wine imports continue to inflate in both volume and value. Champagne alone smashed all records and shipped almost 10 million bottles into Australia in 2021.
How to respond to this particularly volatile, unusual and perhaps unprecedented dynamic? It’s never been more important to distinguish the truly great wines from the ocean of mediocrity, to anticipate the top vintages, and to be ready to pounce the instant they land.