NEWS

1 December 2009
1,047 Vineyard blurbs added to website following major revision by Map Data Sciences

Feedback from users led to our search entry portal and results tables being re-engineered by mapping engine provider Map Data Sciences. The major changes (seen by licking on map above) are:
a. TEXT DESCRIPTIONS (or “blurbs”) for each business can now be displayed in the Results table for each location – in fact 1,047 such descriptions have been written and are now displayed on the site along with the address and contact details, grape varieties, facilities and opening hours etc. A lot more research and writing is to be done, for we now display 5,232 vineyards, cellar doors, wineries, breweries, distilleries and negociants. Nearly 200 more "blurbs" have been written for locations we are yet to add to the web display, because we've been unable to locate & validate them accurately!
b. SCREEN REAL ESTATE has been maximised, requiring less scrolling.
c. RESULTS TABLES for searched locations are more obvious - many web visitors thought we only provided maps, not even realising there was a table of information on each location below the map.
d. ROUTE PLANNING is more intuitive, with Find Directions/Show Route triggering a message displayed in red "Your turn-by-turn directions appear below the map"
e. BROWSER FUNCTIONALITY has been broadened so that, for example, Mac users using Safari can also click on the R symbol (R = regions) to trigger display of all businesses within the region and the message "Search results appear under the map".
Future enhancements will be undertaken based on your user experiences and feedback!

30 November 2009
WINE RATINGS – BOLLOCKS?

What can you possibly make of these recent revelations?

Wine X suits me, but does it suit anyone else?
The rhetorical question asked by Tony Keys (The Key Review of Wines, 30 November 2009) doesn’t stop the recommendations flowing, despite his assertion that “Recommending wines for the Christmas season… in fact recommending any wine for any occasion doesn’t really hold much value… at the end of the day we like different foods and drink; for me to say X goes with Y suits me but I can’t see any reason it should suit anyone else.”

Read my lips: Matt Skinner more naked than Britney Spears?
Matt Skinner had to be the rising star for wine reviews in Australia, having recently gained key review columns in “Sunday Age” & “Sun Herald” (NSW), and featured guest contributor in Vintage Cellars “Cellar Press Nov-Dec” & in “Gourmet Traveller Wine Dec/Jan 2010”. But that’s the cause for his over-exposure. Just as Britney Spears has lost credibility for lip-synching her way through expensive concerts in her recent Australian tour, so Matt Skinner has ghost-written reviews of wines he’s never tasted, basing them purely on expectations based on previous vintages. His book “The Juice 2010” was published before some of the “reviewed” wines were even published. Read my lips, Matt: #z%@#*!

Wine ratings as good as the toss of a coin?
The Journal of Wine Economics recently published two papers by retired statistics professor and vigneron Robert Hodgson who, after tracking ratings of wine judges in “blind’ tastings, concluded “ratings and medals on which wines base their reputations are merely a powerful illusion” (reported in the Wall Street Journal, 14 November 2009). This has followed figures showing vast variance between reviews of the same wines by respected Australian writers.

What are we to conclude? It is a powerful argument to back your own horse. It is good, after all, that we don’t all like the same wine – for then it would be nigh on impossible to procure!

VineFinders has not given wine and/or winery ratings, as vintage variation, ownership & winemaking continually changes – let alone the variation over time of individual bottles. What makes for a wine education, and what is such fun, is the continual exploration of the 5,200+ vineyards growing some 160+ distinct varieties in 85 wine regions mapped on the VineFinders database!

November 2009
THE CHANGING FACE OF WINE IN AUSTRALIA – the rise of BOBs

There’s good and bad news for consumers, very grim outlook for producers, and for VineFinders….? Consider these recent revelations.

10 November - Surplus of 100 million cases will double in two years
A Wine Restructuring Action Agenda (WRAA) was released by the four key industry groups – Winemakers' Federation of Australia (WFA), Wine Grape Growers Australia (WGGA), Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (AWBC) & Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC) – warn the industry must "confront the reality of oversupply: at least 20% of vines were surplus to requirements and at least 17% of vineyard capacity was uneconomic. The comprehensive analysis released stated “surplus already exceeds 100 million cases and at current rates of production and demand this will more than double in two years”.

Australia’s Vintage Unlimited gives us CONSTERNATION WINES!
This year Australian Vintage Limited (AVL - formerly McGuigan Simeon Wines) has so struggled with over-supply and difficult markets that it is entering into an agreement with Constellation Wines (ex-Hardy’s, ex-Hardy’s BRL, ex-Berri Renmano Ltd etc) to become… Consternation Wines, perhaps?

So as surplus wine floods the marketplace, prices tumble (unfortunately for producers, great for consumers) – but there are some hidden consequences. Producers don’t generally want to lower the price of good brands but, if it’s not selling, they have to..
destroy the brand equity by slashing prices
stockpile and hope the market recovers before they go under in a mountain of debt
sell their premium brands as cleanskins and/or create new brands.

Now, as producers don’t have the marketing power and/or dollars to effectively gain a foothold for new brands in such a discounted market, we have seen the rise of BOBs!

12 November - Wine Communicators of Australia (WCA) taste BOBs
BOBs are Buyers Own Brands. BOBs are owned by major retailers such as Woolworths (Dan Murphy, Cheaper Liquor) and Coles (Vintage Cellars/Nick’s), but also by wine clubs such as the Wine Society and Cellarmasters. Such retailers have the market penetration and dollars to build their own brands (such as the Woolworth’s brand Bailey & Bailey) – in fact, these brands are growing at 25% per annum taking all the growth in the market, and delivering fantastic margins to the retailers.

The WCA blind tasting of 5 brackets (each a separate variety) was fascinating, if not frightening! While 3 of the 5 wines in each bracket were BOBs, in only one bracket did a private producers’ label score more highly than the BOBs (a personal assessment by VineFinders’ Dick Friend, but similar results among all present) – across similar price points!

They’re not cheaper, they’re just damn good! The major retailers can exploit the very cheap purchase price (eg $1 per litre for NZ Sauvignon Blanc) and unprecedented margins to build these brands (in the case of Woolworths & Coles, never identified as the owners).

So the unforeseen and unintended consequence is a proliferation of new brands of Coonawarra Cabernet, WA Sem/SB, Yarra Valley Pinot and so on – and a rapid transfer of power from producer to retailer. Producers are being or will be forced to be price takers, not price makers.

For consumers, the proliferation of brands is not adding to choice, and is merely confusing. It makes the understanding of terroir and the vignerons and winemakers contributions to their enjoyment harder or impossible to judge.

At VineFinders, we think it’s a disaster. But then we’re biased – BOBs make our commitment to regionality, and our intention to provide information on wine brands and their vineyard origins, a much more difficult task.

There are, in Adelaide for example, three Negociants for every two citizens. These Negociants (producers of brands from purchased fruit, or purchased wine, or purchased bottled wine) will find it harder, as high-margin BOBs displace them from wine store shelves and (as is happening) BOBs begin to appear on restaurant wine lists!

The private labels, the honest toilers in the vineyards, and those committed to their terroir all facing a difficult battle to overcome the glut and maintain or recover their shelf space and position in ther marketplace. Of course, the best will remain – with our support.

December 1 was a “new dawn” for the Australian Liberal Party, but how much “hot air” can we all endure?

The two-year-long Hunter Valley Wine Industry Climate Change Case Study reported in October that the Hunter Valley should explore planting alternative grape varieties to combat rising temperatures, spring frosts and a higher risk of disease, due to climate change. As well, grape growers may have to explore new locations for vineyards and change their layouts to counter the risk of more extreme weather events, said the report.

In Decanter magazine’s 21 October report, the first two responses on their website provoked VineFinders to contribute this piece published at www.decanter.com/news/290780.html:
“The contrasting responses of a Hunter Valley grapegrower and a US Consultant are fascinating as much as they are extreme. One hopes that vignerons worldwide (not just the 300 in the Hunter Valley) accept the reality of climate change and, where possible, use it to improve the wines, styles and varieties offered to consumers. For a foreign consultant to use the issue to denigrate the wines of all 5,000 vignerons in the Hunter and 83 other Australian wine regions is amusing as it is ignorant. The diversity of terroir used for grapegrowing and, interestingly, the move to cooler climates has been evident over recent decades - as evidenced by the over 5,000 vineyard locations mapped on www.VineFinders.com.au

Meanwhile, on 28 November it was reported that France’s Champagne district average temps over the growing season were:
1951-1990: 14.3 deg C
1991-2000: 15.0 deg C
2001- 2010: 16.0 deg C (predicted)

But then climate change believers are all just "Bollinger bolsheviks" and "champagne socialists". And the true believers in our Liberal Party and their love of the mother country will be rewarded when Britain overtakes the frogs in sparkling production and Britannia Bubbles rule the world.

LISTINGS

NOT LISTED and want to be? We verify listings by ground-truthing (verifying locations by taking geo-cordinates at the road entrances) on regular visits to the wine regions. We can provide an interim listing – the information we need can be completed online using this form

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VineFinders Copyright/Disclaimer
VineFinders has traversed countless goat tracks in every wine region... use examples for private enjoyment... but don't abuse it... speak to us... copyright

What’s Next:

VineFinders has assisted vignerons to:
* BUY and SELL fruit
* SELL vineyards, and
* OBTAIN assistance with vineyard labour and contract vineyard maintenance.

VineFinders crafts communications to vineyards with specific information and has provided contact and geographic information for:
* annual crush SURVEYS
* disease & risk factors
* wine tourism route planning & signage.

We've researched and developed this site on our private initiative. We hope you enjoy it, and provide feedback on any inaccuracies, as well as additions and suggestions for future development. SO What's Next depends on your response.

Cheers
Dick Friend
dick@vinefinders.com.au
m 0419 503 198