Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Wine with Meg + Mel
Wine News June: Oakridge closes restaurant, De Bortoli ripping up vines, Treasury investing in NOLOW, and Wine Australia's new campaign
Meg and Mel tackle changing dynamics in the Australian wine industry, from restaurant closures to big investments and new marketing directions.
• Meg shares insights from VinExpo Asia where Australian wine received positive feedback and shows a shift toward lighter-bodied reds and more whites
• Oak Ridge restaurant closure highlights broader hospitality industry struggles with profit margins shrinking from 10% to 6-8%
• De Bortoli's vine pulling in warmer regions reflects necessary industry restructuring with significant costs and time investment
• $100 million investment from Vinarki into South Australian winemaking shows confidence despite centralization concerns
• Treasury Wine's $15 million investment in low/no-alcohol technology raises questions about authenticity when flavors are added
• Wine Australia's new "We've Got a Wine for That" campaign receives mixed reviews from industry insiders but positive feedback from everyday consumers
• Industry challenges stem from changing demographics with younger generations drinking less wine than previous generations at the same life stage
Follow us on instagram @winewithmegandmel
Hi and welcome to Wine with Meg and Mel. We are here to help you navigate the world of wine. I'm Meg, your Christian Bay Master of Wine, Meg Broadman, and we are very sorry about the audio for the last three episodes.
Speaker 2:We've sorted it out, though. We've found out what it is. It's the plug on our audio system and I'm sorry that I did sound like I was recording from down a tunnel. I kind of thought it sounded like I was away and I was doing it over the internet, or you know. It was miles away, I know I wish I wasn't but sitting like two centimeters from you.
Speaker 1:The bright side was I got a couple of messages from people who have, like you know, never messaged in before saying, hey, do you know about your audio? So it was nice to you know meet some new listeners. Thanks, guys, hopefully this is better. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully we've fixed it.
Speaker 1:Hopefully we're fixed. We're going to do a One News today. We have a couple of pieces about the industry that are bleak, then we have a couple of pieces that are a bit more uplifting and then, lastly, we are going to chat about One Australia's new campaign and give our thoughts on it. But first, meg, you've been at VinExpo. Can you explain what it is and kind of what are some of the key takeaways you took from it?
Speaker 2:So VinExpo, it started in Bordeaux. It's been going for probably 30 years now and then they just everyone decided that after the air conditioning went out in the hall that was in Bordeaux in June, in the Australian stand hall, that they weren't really getting fair treatment. So a lot of New World wineries felt that it was too European-focused. And so Van Expo, in order to make money because it's Van Exposium is the company, so they run a bazillion of these around the world. So there's one in. So Van Expo Asia is either between Singapore and Hong Kong, so it alternates each year, but there's also one in, I think, shanghai. So it's a global thing. It's trying to attract people. Oh, there's one in somewhere weird in America like Delaware or something. Okay, but the one in Asia is obviously very important for Australian wineries. So Wine Australia, which is our marketing body. They put together a big Wine Australia stand. Some wineries can go. Some dude just popped into my ears.
Speaker 2:Start again.
Speaker 2:So some wineries can go with their importers in the country if they want to, but to have a sort of a national presence, we have a Wine Australia stand and this year it was a lot of small regional bodies. There were individual wineries as well, but more regional bodies. So there was a Gippsland stand, which I'm going to get. We're going to do a fantastic Gippsland episode because I spoke to them all. There was a Wippsland stand, which I'm going to get. We're going to do a fantastic Gippsland episode because I spoke to them all. There was a Wainera Valley stand. There was a little bit of a Barossa area, there was a Clare area and there were individual wineries sort of dotted around. So it was.
Speaker 2:Everyone said that it was quieter than they were expecting, but the people that came through were quite good. We didn't see as many of the chinese that I think we would have seen if we'd been in hong kong. So maybe they, you know, thought it probably wasn't worthwhile. But they've also got provine shanghai, which is another very similar um thing. So you know, they're probably one and done for the year because these things are really expensive to go to but I mean like, did people like the australian wine?
Speaker 1:how was the reception was?
Speaker 2:great. Yeah, feedback was great. So I did a um an interview with daily shout magazine and they you know everyone. I was reading the article the other day and everyone was saying that, um, that people were responding well to wines. We can see a distinct change of style. There is a real change to lighter-bodied reds and more whites and sparkling, which all bodes well for, obviously, the region that I'm most concerned about, but also Australia, because Australia has we've got everything, yeah, so it's good.
Speaker 2:It was definitely worth going to. There were quite a few masterclasses. The Chinese masterclasses were incredibly well attended. I tasted a $900 Chardonnay from the Chinese Himalayas. Oh my God, it was delicious wine, but $900, mate, that's an airfare to Singapore, like I'm not spending $900 on. And I did say to them why are you pitching so high? Because your market is so tiny, because I want to get into the Australian market. And I said, look, I've read about these Caldwell sellers who seem to be importing some Chinese wines and they're like, oh no, but this is how much it costs to make the wine. And I said, no, it doesn't. Like I know, okay, the Himalayas, fair enough, is going to be a pretty marginal climate, but 900 bucks a bottle, but we all know it's nothing to do with.
Speaker 1:it doesn't cost $3,000 to make a Gucci handbag either.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Anyway, it was good.
Speaker 3:It was worth going to.
Speaker 2:There was good buzz around Australia. Europe looked a little bit flat. The French had a huge sort of area. Yeah, and yeah, it was definitely worth why he was going to.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we are starting off with a couple of bleak stories, but luckily there are some stories of investment in the industry and stuff. So let's just get the ugly stuff out of the way. The first one is Oak Ridge shutting down their restaurant.
Speaker 2:Yes, oak Ridge cutting and saw the share price for Endeavor dropped and we have heard anecdotally that there are redundancies coming out of Endeavor and I'm assuming that that's right across the whole drinks business of Endeavor which would be the retailers Pinnacle Drinks At least with Oak Ridge.
Speaker 1:it's just the restaurant chatting down and it's not, you know, the cellar door. Oakridge isn't going anywhere. I actually did message our friend Cara Monsen this morning because I wanted to get a perspective. Is this what's going on in restaurants all over Australia? Like, is this in line with what's going on? And she had this to say hey, megan Mal.
Speaker 3:So if we're talking profits in restaurant land, they've always been way for thin. But if we're talking about profits in this cost of living crisis, well, they're virtually non-existent or very, very small. There was once upon a time the 30-30-30 rule, when you're running a restaurant whereby 30% of your profit will go to the running of the restaurant, 30% goes to produce and goods, so food and wine, and then 30% goes to wages, with the 10% left over going to profit. But when you add in the cost of living crisis where everything has gone up, the cost of produce, the cost of wages, essentially people should and must be paying their staff the award rate, so that's expensive.
Speaker 3:When you add in weekends and you add in Sunday rate and public holidays, I've been told by a number of chefs that the current profit margin would be sitting around 6%, 7%, 8%. In restaurants it's no longer 10% profit margin, unless, of course, you come from a big group, that may be the exception. I know that it is very, very hard out there and restaurants are doing all they can to make a buck, but at the end of the day they're trying all the tricks in the book, they're putting up prices of produce, they're putting up prices of particular dishes, but even that isn't making ends meet. So it is really tough out there if you are running a restaurant in 2025.
Speaker 2:out there if you are running a restaurant in 2025? Well, I think I told you when we were dealing with the administrators. She said that pre-COVID, their company would get maybe one restaurant every month and they were getting two a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, even in I was reading an article in China. So all of the really high-end restaurants in China are now offering I'm going to use the term bogan menus. But they're offering cheap menus because they can't afford for only the rich to eat there. They have to sort of attract another market, and that's part of the problem with regional restaurants is the locals. They're not going to go there every week, no, and so you're relying on tourists. Yeah, tourists don't come midweek, so it's shut midweek, so maybe it's open Friday, saturday, sunday, maybe Monday. You can't sustain it. You're paying a full chef's wage. You're paying, you know, maybe a restaurant manager's wage for five days a week. It just doesn't make any sense. And then how do you retain your staff when they're only getting four shifts a week? You know of maybe three hours.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't add up.
Speaker 1:It's pointing to the problem that there's a problem with the wine industry. We can't make ends meet at the moment in the wine industry, but then there's also the hospitality side and the restaurant side. That is also in hot water and we incorporate both of those things in the industry. Are you worried about the effect it's going to have on the Yarra Valley? Because Oak Ridge really is a flagship for us. It promotes tourism and I know a lot of people in the Yarra Valley do kind of roll their eyes because Oak Ridge win all the awards and it's like oh what Oak Ridge won? Haha, it does happen a lot, but at the end of the day, oak Ridge do so much oh no for the Yarra Valley. So should we be?
Speaker 2:worried. They wave our flag very high and they, you know, put us on that premium stage, which is where we belong. No, I'm not. Um, I don't think it's. The drawcard is the cellar door and the wines. I'm not too worried about the restaurant, I don't think. I don't think it's. The drawcard is the cellar door and the wines. I'm not too worried about the restaurant. I don't think. I don't go to winery restaurants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I go to the cellar doors, I may eat at the restaurant if I. You know, I'm hungry at the time, which is kind of all the time, but I don't go to the.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm not sure you are representative of a general consumer.
Speaker 2:Although a few years ago they did have an amazing chef, I think Matt Stone, I think, was his name. Okay, so for me it was a bit of a go-to destination Oak Ridge Restaurant but I don't know that I could name the chef now.
Speaker 1:Well, I think let's tie up that. Let's move to another depressing story before it gets light. De Borderly was in the Australian this week talking about how things are tough and they're ripping up vines. Meg, is this anything new? Or is this just a continuation of what we've been talking about for a while now?
Speaker 2:It's nothing new. We've been reading about this for ages. In the Riverland, the Riverina, you know, rutherg glenn, no one's people aren't drinking those ten dollar big warm inland wines, and we know that. And that's why I keep saying the whole industry needs a bloody restructure, yeah, and we just have to bite the bullet. And it'd be really good if there was some government bloody money, some subsidy for vine pulling to actually work out what is what we can repurpose that land for so the farmers can make a coin, and it can't be almonds because they take too much water. So, no, it's not really any news, but the number of phone calls I got about this was like oh my God, because they associate deborts with the Yarra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was just like no, it's not the Yarra?
Speaker 1:No, it's all the same. Read the article um it's.
Speaker 1:It's the warming land regions what always fascinate like the thing that people need to realize about wine is that if there's a trend in, say, beer, and people start drinking pale ale instead of IPA, the beer makers just start making pale ale. Like they can respond to consumers like that. Our issue is that, meg, if a viticulturalist has a cab sav planted and no one's drinking cab sav, how long would it take to take out the cab sav replant and how long before it's viable enough that he can be selling quality Pinot Noir grapes or she that he can?
Speaker 2:be selling quality Pinot Noir grapes, so it will cost you. Someone in the era actually estimated that it was going to cost him $30,000 a hectare to pull out some Cabernet and replant with, I think, Pinot Gris, whatever it was.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And part of that is that's not the actual cost, but it's the opportunity cost. So you can't sell that fruit and then you're waiting for three years. So that's three years. You can't be selling that fruit and then you've got to wait for it and the Pinot Gris.
Speaker 1:So once you plant these new vines, it takes three to five years before they grow fruit or before they grow quality fruit.
Speaker 2:Oh, before they grow fruit Three years before they grow fruit, or before they grow quality fruit, oh, before they grow fruit Three years before they grow fruit.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. You might get first crop off three years if you can get it up to the wire fast enough, yeah. And then that relies on water and in these inland regions you're not going to do that. So if you don't get it up to the wire, it could be up to five years before you get it there, and your first crop's always serviceable, but it needs to be blended away and it's usually really small, yeah. So five years, you may start making some money, that's so this is to the point of it, right.
Speaker 1:We and and these articles always say hopefully people start appreciating bigger, rich reds again and no, yeah, I'm cynical about that but that's not the point.
Speaker 2:We're drinking less. It's not, it's not their preference, so we're drinking less. So we have to say to ourselves the industry has to be smaller globally yeah poor, those pulled out.
Speaker 2:What was it? Eight, 14,000 hectares or something. Yeah it. Just we just have to shrink how much we're producing. We're not going to find a bigger market. No, you know, the population of the world is not getting bigger. Yeah, china is never going to be as big as it is now. In fact, india's bigger than China, yeah. So yeah, we just have to. Everyone in the industry says we just have to produce less.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, onto something a bit less upsetting. Here's our good news. We have a couple of investment stories in the industry. Now we do talk about the big ones because they're the ones that you know hit the newspapers and stuff, but also they are an indication of what's happening in the wider industry. But so the Vinarki who we spoke about they sound like a like a old school rock band have invested. They've said that they're investing a hundred million in South Australia winemaking overhaul. That's a huge amount. So there must be some kind of promise in the wine industry if they're doing this I wonder how much of that is redundancies no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Um overhaul, no, no, including a 100 million. No, they're saying they're investing it. They're not saving it. They're investing 100 million in two winemaking hubs. Oh, and the closer of coo selling salad doors yeah, yeah, what they're investing in. Two, okay, one 30 30 million dollar roll and flat redevelopment will focus on advanced viticulture and high-end wine techniques, while berry estates, already the largest winery in southern hemisphere, has received more than 70 million to further scale up packaging, warehhousing and winemaking capabilities.
Speaker 2:Which means all the other little wineries that they were working with and that they own will be shut and everything will be shipped to. Very much the treasury model back from the 1990s, the Mildara Blast model.
Speaker 1:So, yes, I was trying to make it lighthearted in here, wow.
Speaker 2:That's what I suspect, because that's what happened. That's rough. You know, when mildara blast started buying out wineries, um, what they did is they consolidated bottling. So they said, okay, what you do is, you don't. Um, we have one bottling line. It might be in south australia. We're not going to send it to your little local winery down the road. You're now going to put it in a tanker and you're going to send it out to us. So it's all going to be consolidated into one. And Roland Flat, that's a massive, massive, massive site. Oh, I did a vintage there, did they not? They couldn't sell. They tried to sell the vineyard, but they couldn't, didn't sell the winery or they didn't sell the brand, or well, anyway, there was some. They tried to get rid of it. Yeah, roland Flood's enormous yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it looks like they're moving winemaking from, like, st Hallett. They'll leave the St Hallett cellar door, but they're going to do all the winemaking in the one place. So redundancy, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yeah, I mean you're looking at Treasury in Nuriupda. I mean, the number of brands that come out of that winery is just phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, cheery news.
Speaker 1:Moving on. Let's see if we can turn this one negative too. Okay, treasury has just announced 15. So Treasury who own Penfolds, most notably, but also a bunch of well-known Australian wine brands has just announced $15 million investment into specifically low and no alcohol wines. And they are so sure about this new technique. They are in the newspapers. The headlines are saying they've cracked the code. They've cracked it. Low alcohol used to taste bad, not anymore. Like no alcohol used to taste bad, not anymore. They say they've cracked it. They've got a new technique, they've invested $15 million in it and they've patented it. Is this at least a sign that the wine industry is evolving and investing still?
Speaker 2:Evolving? Yes, I don't think it's a new technology. Remember we watched that video on the guy. He said that his dad had this amazing technique of being able to ferment all the sugar out to dryness in a wine. I suspect it's some sort of form of reverse osmosis, plus growing the grapes like the geese and wines that we have from new zealand.
Speaker 2:They, they do a combination and that they're actually they're low alcohol, but then why would they patent it if it's just reverse osmosis? No, it will be something similar technology, but there's obviously some significant change.
Speaker 1:I don't know if we've ever spoken about reverse. Can you quickly? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Does everyone know osmosis? Probably not. So say, I've got a really salty solution on the left-hand side and a less salty solution on the right-hand side and I've got a membrane in between. The salt will migrate because it wants to equalize. So reverse osmosis is sort of the same. We're basically taking the alcohol out of the wine and the wine keeps passing through and then we put. We take the alcohol back and we can put back the amount of alcohol that we need to put into it. It's basically just, it's an alcohol removal system. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's basically just passing through. It's too scientific to try and explain. And if you don't understand osmosis, it's reverse. It's the reverse of wow, it's the reverse of osmosis. Wow, it is the reverse of osmosis.
Speaker 1:Wow, meg Treasury has announced one of the first things that they're making with this. Have you seen the new product that's going to be launched?
Speaker 2:Moscato.
Speaker 1:It's called Sorbet. Now these sorbet wines, Meg, are going to come in like mango and, and very flavor and stuff it's not wine.
Speaker 2:This is a flavored wine based product. So, yeah, it might taste better, but it's not de-alcoholized wine.
Speaker 1:So I'm sorry, you're just putting a little bit of makeup on what could be fairly ordinary wine maybe we need to get a a statement from Treasury to suss out a bit about this process, but it is interesting to see this lower alcohol trend. But yeah, Austin, jump in.
Speaker 4:Sorry. Yeah is it true or at least I read something that now the second highest selling type of beer is non-alcoholic in the world.
Speaker 1:Don't know, okay, yeah, I don't know about that. I know that mid-strength sells. I think mid-strength sells better than full strength. Now, there you go. But yeah, yeah, no. So beer, it's so ingrained in beer and and we are just not doing good enough in wine because we can't make it taste good.
Speaker 2:No, because if we take the alcohol, it it's fucking juice, like seriously, all right, we need to chat, I would, I will. I will dig deeper on this treasury thing because, seriously, I'm sorry, that is not wine. I can make a low alcohol wine based product. I can make a seltzer just by adding some water, and if I had flavor, I mask all the dilution, so it doesn't really matter. So $15 million is not a lot. I want to see what their wine tastes like with no flavouring added to it. All right, because we're not allowed to add flavour to wine. This is the problem. The law states that we can't add flavour to wine. So that would be in terms of and call it wine. So, say, the passion fruit flavour that you get in Sauvignon. We can't add that. And so if we could do that, if it was actually extracted from the grape and from the original wine, you know, we might be able to do it. But yeah, let's wait and see.
Speaker 4:Why is that different, though, from, I guess, like non-alcoholic beer? Do you consider it the same thing where you don't consider that a beer because it lacks the alcohol, or is the process similar enough that….
Speaker 2:A lot of beer flavours aren't based on the fruit. That's the thing. It's actually based on the malting process and the hops that you put in. It's not based on the fruit and you've only got the grape to work on to give the flavour and some of the fermentation esters. And there is some fermentation by-products in beer, like dimethyl sulfide, which we hate in wine but is actually a good thing in beer. So they're adding their flavour with hops and also with yeast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:So look, the last thing I want to talk about is this Wine Australia campaign that's just been released. I think, before we go into what it is, let's give a framework for how Wine Australia works. So, meg, where does Wine Australia get their funding and what are the things they use it for?
Speaker 2:So we all pay a producer's levy for the number of grapes that we produce. It's just something that we do and that goes to the federal government, and then they apportion that to Wine Australia, basically, and other promotional bodies Well, not promotional bodies, but a bit to Austrade. It's to help us do business. So Austrade's been around for years. It's Wine Australia, sorry, has been around for years. It was probably most famous in the 1980s when they sent an incredible woman called Hazel Murphy to the UK and she took with her this concept of sunshine in a bottle, which is what they were selling to the UK, and we just saw Australian wine absolutely boom in the UK it worked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of I used to the repercussions of it.
Speaker 2:I worked for a company and we were the were the testers for quick save supermarkets, quick saves now summerfeld, quick save with a k classy anyway. Every monday I would have like dozens and dozens and dozens of bottles of wine that I would have to go through and taste before they were released from the warehouse to say that they were okay. And we had one called barramundi chardonnay. And do you remember kendone from the 1980s? Okay, google it.
Speaker 1:I wasn't around in the 1980s, it's um, bright blue, pink.
Speaker 2:Sydney harbour bridge flowers. Olivia, newton john had big jumpers like that awesome. It was a kendone label, yeah, and it and it had the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I think there was a cockatoo on it. Yeah, it was called Barramundi, there was a cockatoo Shiraz and did really well. Wine Australia has been fairly well funded. Obviously, the more money the industry makes, the more money Wine Australia makes Now, because the industry is in a little bit of the doldrums and we're crushing less Wine Australia gets less. It's a user pay system, so we pay. They also run our exporting. So all the laws and our label integrity program.
Speaker 2:Yeah lobbying, advocacy, everything, but a big remit of them is to do marketing national and international events. Now, yes, there's been repercussions about the sunshine in a bottle and the most recent campaign was Made Our Way, which I really loved, and they really dug into the stories of winemakers. It was all very gritty and grainy and they didn't just focus on the big wineries, they focused on smaller wineries. But the people who had stories and they put great campaigns. They put great campaigns. They've instituted the A1, so it's an educational program, so you can actually do the course and then you become a nominated educator of Australian wine and people in China particularly love that because they loved a piece of paper and a certificate. And I can teach you about Australian wine because I've done my A1 course and it is brilliant, obviously.
Speaker 1:That is. That's very cool, that part of it.
Speaker 2:They were really big in Japan in the 1990s and then took because Japan was booming for us, took the money out of Japan and into China and closed the office in Japan and the Japanese were not happy. If any of you know history, japan and China haven't had a great political history. And I was in Japan pre-COVID and they were just saying why do we not have an Australian wine and wine Australia office here? Why is there no one here promoting the wines? It's absolutely ridiculous. You had such a great presence, you were doing such great things and then obviously, when China closed, they started to move back towards Japan and Japan was a little bit well, fuck you for there. But they're doing some good stuff in Japan and Korea. They're doing. They do road shows, so the China road show. They do one through Southeast Asia, so they're doing Thailand, vietnam.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot in there very mid. And then I have another framing question for you as president of Wine Yarra Valley. You run one of these associations like a small scale one. How easy is it to please every winery when you make a campaign? All of your members oh it's impossible, yeah, it's impossible.
Speaker 1:So I think let's get into it, just framing things. This new campaign is called We've Got a Wine for that, and what it is is. It's basically a series of scenarios a backyard barbecue, a night out with mates, date night, dinner party, I don't know, looking over the beach, all these things, all these pictures, and it says we've got a wine for that. Drink Australian wine.
Speaker 2:It is really important for us going into these less mature markets to show people how to drink wine. In Singapore we went to this bougie bloody wine bar. The good thing about Singapore is the wine prices are expensive on the retail shelf but they're the same price basically in a restaurant.
Speaker 2:So, you may be paying $150 for a Chablis, but you'd be paying that if you're sitting in your hotel room. Anyway, we were sitting there. We were sitting outside. It's 35 degrees Celsius. We had to ask for an ice bucket and these are Europeans running this place. They had like rillette and saucisson and all of the fat in the rillette was just running out because of the heat and it's just like, oh, this is not how I would be serving my wine, but showing people how to use wine is the key. It's a domestic campaign. Yeah, this is what I find so strange, because we know.
Speaker 2:Maybe we don't, maybe Gen Zs have no idea.
Speaker 1:My reaction when I first looked at it was this is general, like this feels so general, like it's not giving me a selling proposition for the wine itself. But then you look further into the campaign and what they're actually trying to do is retain current wine drinkers. So they're saying that wine drinkers are leaving and they are trying to remind people how good all these occasions are with the wine, or set an occasion like a festival, and they're like you could have a wine and that would be awesome. The next thing, and and but. So when I thought this is too generic in my head there's not a specific proposition I brought myself back to Wine. Australia has so many wineries they're trying to please.
Speaker 1:The other thing is this is a campaign that is sector led, which is kind of interesting in itself.
Speaker 1:So we're not going to see any paid campaigns on TV like we might've in the past. We're not going to see any paid media behind this. This is just something that Wine Australia is putting forward and in a time where staff is tough, people might not be able to have a marketing person, they might not be able to hire a marketing team, they might struggle to create their own assets. Wine Australia is giving all these assets and they're saying just pop your own logo in and just pop your own bottle in, and here's some stuff you can use. That's one thing is it's it's potentially helping wineries that can't afford their own marketing. And the second thing is maybe a campaign like this, if we are united as an industry and a bunch of wineries are going to use it, it will have that effect like a bigger effect, because we're going to have more touch points. I do wish that there was a flagship media program supporting it, because I just am not sure individual wineries can get a momentum.
Speaker 2:And again are we promoting wine Australia.
Speaker 1:No, we're promoting Australian wine Right.
Speaker 2:But you need to plant that in a region. Why? Because it's all just, it is generic, it could all be the same. Yeah, if it doesn't, you know and I'm not saying that only the premium regions are the only regions the Riverland could have its own. You know, we've got a wine for that. We've got Aglianico, for example, or Sagratino, or whatever. Yeah, but again it's got to go back to the region and I know that Wine Australia's job is not to promote the regions. They work closely with all of the regional associations to do cross promotions, yeah, but their job is not to promote each of those individual regions. That's a job's a job of the association of the region. But I just, I don't, I don't know they.
Speaker 1:yeah, look, give it a go okay, I, I've asked the people, so I put it out there on the podcast, instagram today and went the people, the people. We are so deep in the industry we know so much about, why we want to know about wine. I'm like, are we thinking differently to everything else, to everyone else? Um, one of the first responses I got back was you know, brendan Rubnick, the wine animal. He had, um, some fighting words. He says it doesn't make me want to buy Australian wine in the slightest. He wants to see the people behind wine farmers, winemakers and stuff.
Speaker 1:I, um, I understand that and I think there's definitely a portion of people and honestly, that is a classic technique for one showing the people behind it, and we see it a lot in anything agricultural. We see it in like cheese and stuff. Yeah, yeah, peas. Um, I like, I do actually like that it's occasion-based. We're tapping into the consumer rather than just talking about ourselves. We're talking about them. Um, interestingly, um, someone said it makes me think about australian wines as an option for occasions I might not normally drink wine at, for example, at festivals. I would never me think about Australian wines as an option for occasions I might not normally drink wine at, for example, at festivals, I would never even think about drinking wine, but now it's going through my mind well, you can't get glass into festivals.
Speaker 2:That's one of the often one of the problems as well.
Speaker 1:Meg, it's they. They serve it in plastic. Does that upset you plastic cups? But they can't. So you can't take it in. Well, they sell it to you. You can't take it in, well, they sell it to you. You can't take in your own stuff. I don't know. You go to, you think, an old school festival.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, those were the days, but no, these days you're buying Okay, so it's all served in plastic. I don't care if it's served in plastic seriously.
Speaker 1:Okay. So someone else who is clearly into wine has the exact same point as you. She thinks that there should be terroir-specific messaging that positions Australian wines as a distinct category within the broader landscape. But interestingly, the people who message back and when I messaged a few friends who aren't in the wine world, they are way more likely to say yeah, like it. It's making me think you know what that? That wine camping looks nice. It makes me want to buy a wine camping. This is really interesting.
Speaker 1:Hannah, my mate, said it makes her think that she doesn't think enough when she's in store, whether it's Australian or international when she looks at a wine. And she said, looking at all these images saying specifically promoting Australian wine made her go. Next time I'm in a store I'm going to just check that the wine's Australian, because I do want to support local. So there you go. There's some different perspectives I think we're going to hear a lot about. I just I do honestly feel for one australia whenever they let out anything. I know there's just so much opinion and everyone feels entitled to all their opinions because they're all like we pay our levies and blah, blah, blah yeah, and look, they're literally it's one guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's it is. They obviously use agencies and things. But yeah, look, if there is, if it's sector-led and there's good communication with the regional associations to get behind it and maybe do a campaign with them, then why not? But I don't think. I just don't think the Yarra Valley is going, a premium region is going to go. We're going to warn for them. Yeah, I think you know it took us years to come up with cool by nature in the yarra valley. Yeah, so I don't think we're going to change in your logo anytime soon, but yeah, will it work? I don't know. If you say that customers, consumers, are looking at it in a positive way, then I am wrong. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's. Yeah, I think it's. You're right, it's not the luxury consumers that we are used to talking to, it is your $15 wine consumers. One last thing that I want to say, which is just so funny because I was talking about this in my group chat this morning, jess. You know, jess, she's very funny and she had a couple of ideas for how we could actually run a campaign to promote Australians drinking Australian wine. Her first tagline was lua, yeah, nah.
Speaker 2:Eh, problem is most people wouldn't know how to pronounce the lua. Yes, cute, and think of it like on a picture of Kath and Kim or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, problem is most people wouldn't know how to pronounce the Loire yes, cute, and think of it like on a picture of Kath and Kim or something. The second one this one came from Chat Trip, which, I'm not going to lie, I just started exploring it because I thought that was hilarious. What about no, rhone?
Speaker 2:No worries, Vaudo hell, no, oh God, austin, austin, thank you, vaudo hell no Vodo, Hell no, austin, austin, vodo, hell, no Champagne, yes, please, sorry, no, I think, yes, no, I mean obviously not.
Speaker 1:We're not doing that. People don't even know what Loire is. I'm making a joke. You don't have to take it so seriously, meg Imports while they are heavy on wine lists, account for what?
Speaker 2:13% of the total wine? No, between 6% and 10% of total wine in Australia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So this campaign is not worried. I don't think they're super worried about people choosing international over Australian. They're worried more about declining. But why?
Speaker 2:is it declining Because they're dying? The boomers were the biggest consumers of wine.
Speaker 1:No, but people, even Gen Z, are drinking less wine. No, but we know that. Comparative to when previous generations were at the same stage of life.
Speaker 2:Yes, but we know that 37 is when is peak wine drinking and buying age. So that's what millennials started improving when they all hit 37. No, but Now they're in their 40s.
Speaker 1:But so, but there were more millennials drinking at that point, yes, yeah, so like it is a trend that is wearing Also, but also are there less Gen Zers we want. No, they're just all healthy, meg. They're so boofing, they're not. There's all this.
Speaker 2:I have two in my house.
Speaker 1:I know you have personal Gen Zers, but I have research and there is this huge phenomenon where, instead of going to the pub, they stay home and they do their game. That's why less people are in pubs now.
Speaker 2:Well, my kids go to the pub.
Speaker 1:Well, your kids are cool, they are.
Speaker 2:Although I did try and throw out the Trivial Pursuit from like 1995, and Lucas said no, you can't, because he's really into Russian history. It's got all these questions about the USSR, which doesn't exist anymore. I said no one cares about that and he goes it's going to be a great drinking game. So he's pulled it back out of the rubbish.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we should talk.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll wrap it up. Hopefully one of these days, in One News, we'll bring you some good news, but look for now, I'm actually really interested in what your take is. So if you haven't already sent me your take on this campaign, please send it to me. I'm interested to read all of them. Yeah, um, but we'll be back with you next week. We're going to look at some sparklings and then we're going to look at Barbera, and until then, enjoy your next glass of wine and drink well.
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