Wine Rack

Labour
The making of wine is a labour-intensive process, the price of a bottle will partly reflect the varying costs of labour. For example, the minimum wage in Australia in HKD110 an hour whereas in Chile it’s HKD18. The process of wine growing is now manufactured like making a car. Machines take away intense process of vine to wine, resulting lesser quality but good value wine. Almost all fine wines from around the world use very labour intense methods to create the wine.

Methods
The cost of new oak barrel will instantly add HKD14 to a single bottle.  Considerably more expensive than the widespread use of wood chips to enhance the flavour. Other traditional methods such as méthode champenoise are incredibly expensive for a relatively minor result.

A la mode
Chardonnay became so big in the US in the 1990s that people started to name their children after it. This popularity of grapes can lead to the overplanting, which will result in a cheapening of a grape. Fashions change and as a result the backlash is some of the best grapes are available for the production of cheap wine. Australia has overproduction of both Cabernet and Chardonnay which saw the quality level of sub HKD100 wines hit qualiy level of twice their price.

Marketing
While the money spent in marketing is often offset by the lower production costs of a mass producer, the French wine industry invests billions of Euros each year in the marketing of champagne. I.e. a bottle of Moet (pronounced Mo-wett not Mo-ay which it’s commonly known) will set you back twice that of a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte, France’s #1 Champagne. The quality is comparible. The price of Ch. Lafite has unjustifiable increased massively within the last few years due to the marketing of the brand (and rumours) on the Chinese market.

McGuigan's answer to originality

In the new world, regions have come under growing scrutiny for their unoriginality while choosing grapes to grow.

Are the mass producers to blame? Or, the consumer?

Lets look at boutique wineries, or better still – Australian cult wineries. Cult wineries own something fundamental about experimenting – a cult, who will generally buy their experiment. Mass producers simply mix bad experiments in with normal wine 1% at a time.

So, hands up if you’ve heard of Dr. Harold Olmo. Dr. Olmo spend his youth at Davis California creating new varieties, often based around Carignan. Today, his small legacy lies mainly in Western Australia.

Dr. Olmo did not necessarily succeed as such, more to the point, he tried. Where would the British wine industry be without experimentation? Without experimentation, we’d be without Gewurztraminer. And without chance we’d be without Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Pinot Grigio. All the above developed by wind cross pollinating vines.

Even France’s heritage has matured quite rapidly in the past 150 years. A Bordeaux for instance was typically Cabernet SyrahSyrah was outlawed at the beginning of the 20th Century, not to mention Cabernet Sauvignon did not even exist 200 years ago. (Shiraz) until

Shiraz (syrah) truly has it’s home in Australia. We can all cheers to that. As for whites, one can see the Aussies veering off French varietals and steering onto the popular Italian varieties – Pinot Grigio and my current favourite Moscato (both are both originally French but far more common these days in Italy).

With 2000 grapes to choose from, can it be a coincidence that Australia is fit for exactly the same grapes as France & Italy?

Verdejo, Verdelho, Insolia, Malvasia, Macabeo, Vuira, Viognier all produce great wines in southern Europe’s warmer climate. With strict EU laws on the making of wine, the southern European growers are unable to counterbalance their hot climate with the addition of added acid or sugar. This happens to be necessity when making many wines even in renowned regions such as Eden Valley in Australia.

The best New World wines we’ve come across to date have been such experiments. Winerack is yet to embrace them. Though we’re currently looking at Mendoza, Argentina; South Africa; Margaret River, Australia and Austria.

Please post replies and we will see what we can all come up with.