"... swilling around in storage tanks or barrels. The cost of its key ingredient has collapsed, particularly for red grape varieties such as cabernet and shiraz.... Much of the wine languishing in giant tanks had been destined for [China], which had developed an insatiable thirst for its red wine. This market virtually disappeared in March 2021, when Beijing, furious at calls from Scott Morrison, then the prime minister, for a UN inquiry into the origins of Covid, imposed 200 per cent tariffs on Australian wine.... The market in China had already been contracting. As in many other countries, there has been a general drop in alcohol consumption.... Oenophiles hoping winemakers will be flooded with cheap Australian shiraz are likely to be disappointed. While the price of grapes has plummeted, other overheads, such as energy, labour and shipping costs, have surged. Vintners are also worried that cutting the price of their posher wines will damage the credibility of their brand...."
From "Australia is drowning in 3bn bottles of wine. Any takers?" (London Times).
५२ टिप्पण्या:
Hell, my wife and her friends can guzzle that up in one weekend!
The way you clear a glut of supply is through price cuts. I guess one might find a situation where a price cut to clear an over-supply, in the long run, doesn't pay off, but such situations are rare or non-existent.
Australia and its weirdo neighbor, Nee Zealand, can eat a bag of dicks. Wash it down with all that wine.
Bad political and policy choices have consequences. Save the Penfolds and dump the rest. Tell the growers how sorry you are for failing them then commit seppuku…
Not sure what they're referring to when they say "the cost of its key ingredient has collapsed."
What key ingredient? The grape? The cost of the barrels (for those wines aged in barrels)? It's not like other miscellaneous ingredients are used in winemaking, particularly the better wines. Methinks the reporter got some info wrong.
Either way, Aussie wines have long been an underrated wine, and a very good buy here in the US. Even if their price stays put, in many cases they are still better values- quality vs price- than so many of the California, French, or Italian wines that cover our marketplace shelves. Might be worth looking at...if you like good wines.
"Vintners are also worried that cutting the price of their posher wines will damage the credibility of their brand...."
If it's not "Two Buck Chuck" - which is the same fucking wine - you're wasting your money: wine has no credibility. I learned that living in France. I was taken to visit a lot of vineyards, met a lot of winemakers, drank in a lot of restaurants (specializing in both family style AND fine dining settings) heard a lot of big talk, and saw a lot of drama around the charade of "tasting," but I never saw anyone send a bottle back - ever.
It's just another scam now, in France's long list of them.
Three Billion bottles of wine on the wall, three billion bottles of wine
Take one down, pass it around....
Temujin said..
"The cost of the barrels (for those wines aged in barrels)? It's not like other miscellaneous ingredients are used in winemaking, particularly the better wines."
There are no "better" wines. Better labels, but no better wines. It's all the same crap. That's the scam: getting you to believe there's a difference. "Two Buck Chuck" is the same wine, bought in bulk, but with a new label, because the old label didn't appeal enough to sell.
France has a surplus as well. Unfortunately global wine demand is relatively inelastic. The best solution is to distill the surplus into alcohol, which has multiple uses.
The whole industry has ended up with an oversupply. Last I heard, France is turning vast quantities of excess wine into other products to try and prevent prices from collapsing. Cut prices to expand your export market. Not all Australian wine is as good as Grange.
Why do reporters think the number of Olympic-sized pools means anything to anyone? The 3B bottles is about 9 bottes per American. The latter number is easier to calculate and is a value with a sensible context.
FWIW, we used to regularly buy Australian wines; they were a good value, but over time, either our palates changed or the wines declined in quality. I realize this may be phycological; the Australians were early adopters to twist-off openings and that just connotes cheapness to me.
I smell Fauci.
What’s wrong with cheap wine? If it’s quality - which the implication is, because they don’t want to sell it cheap - then you’ll likely drag in new consumers.
Everything else is expensive, might as well drink at the kitchen table.
Well darn, I googled wine grape prices and initially was presented a useful graph that indicated that those prices - unadjusted for inflation - were down but not super low, but now that graph is being denied me. Here's the link in case anyone wants to see if they can see it: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1413748/australia-average-purchase-price-of-leading-wine-grape-varieties-timeline/
Anyway. My thought was only that the excerpt seemed to downplay the contribution of inflation of the cost of everything else besides the grapes.
Also, I've gotta say that I haven't noticed a bug downturn in consumption... at least in my household.
And the Galloping Gourmet remains sober!
God Bless Graham Kerr!
I wonder if declining demand is tied to aging populations. In my 30s and 40s, no dinner was complete without a glass or two of wine. And a day came when I just stopped wanting it.
Jake: "Australia and its weirdo neighbor, Nee Zealand, can eat a bag of dicks. Wash it down with all that wine."
Speaking of weirdos.
Australian Shiraz, top to bottom, is good stuff. I hope more comes to the US at reduced prices for the best of it.
Turn it into brandy. Put it in charred barrels, and wait a couple of decades. It cuts down the storage costs a bit.
Trader Joe's could buy it and market as Deuce Buck Bruce.
One word: Gasohol!
Distill it down to pure alcohol and then pour it into cars as fuel. Call it a "renewable, organic" fuel that's literally safe enough to drink. Don't mention the amount of energy that went into its production. Get a medal from the UN for being green and carbon neutral.
All wine tastes the same to me.
"This market virtually disappeared in March 2021, when Beijing, furious at calls from Scott Morrison, then the prime minister, for a UN inquiry into the origins of Covid, …"
'Furious' doesn't feel right in that sentence. Can China be 'furious' when China knows the charge is true? I mean, you can fake being furious, but that's not the same thing as true outrage.
I live in South Africa’s wine country and the Chinese are buying up wine estates like caffeinated squirrels on roller skates.
Where once the tourist busses were full of serene Japanese and sunburnt Europeans, now they’re overwhelmingly Chinese. (Our regime is besties with the CCP.) Many restaurants have started printing Mandarin language instructions on their urinals as too often they’re mistaken for flush toilets.
Narr said...
"All wine tastes the same to me."
Ladies & Gentlemen, we have a winner.
Note to Ann: check your spam filter.
Best said in a thick Cuban accent: "Okay, Lucy, you can stop stomping on those grapes now."
You want to cultivate demand for your wines (or Google or Facebook) in China? Fine, but part of the exchange is your polis gives up your right to question whether their labs are developing deadly viruses. The beauty of P/L accounting is, that doesn't affect the individual corporate seller's profit. Call it China's version of the invisible hand.
That's not a Shiraz.
This... is a Shiraz.
So, other than pouring wine down the drain and bitching, what did the Aussies do about a 200% tariff being dumped on them?
Blogger Narr said...
All wine tastes the same to me.
I think the two ends of the spectrum are a White Gewurztraminer and a Red Cabernet Sauvignon.
They could try weaning their citizens off beer and let them get drunk on wine instead.
Australia better watch out. I think a lot of their best wine varietals, Shiraz, Malbecs, etc. have a lot of overlap with those made in Patagonia. And Argentina's new Libertarian, not disproven to be on cocaine, president is liable to do crazy things like execute non-reciprocal free-trade agreements to get dollar cash flow into his country.
I won't argue with statistics but here at Chez Knew, wine consumption is up. I buy almost all my wine at Aldi which I don't think carries any wine from the antipodes. They do, however, have excellent Malbec from Argentina.
Well, Jamie, if there's no downturn in bug consumption at your place, you are ahead of the curve!
Come to think of it, a lot of shiraz might help make bugs taste like food.
China shutting down purchases, reminds me of Wal-Mart.
Lots of sundry products are needed to stock the shelves. Wal Mart would buy something...like dish towels. Maybe several different vendors, then they might go to a small company and negotiate a deal for ALL the dish towels they needed from a single small to mediums sized manufacturer.
Once that was done, and Wal mart was responsible for 70% of the manufacturers production, A new round of negotiations would squeeze most of the margin out of the product. The manufacturer was stuck, because loosing Wal Mart would sink the manufacturer. You never want to be beholden to your largest customer/s
Well, Jamie, if there's no downturn in bug consumption at your place, you are ahead of the curve!
Dammit! I'm still contending with the change (decidedly for the worse) in the way this blog, and this one alone, displays on my phone screen since I had to factory-reset my phone a few days ago. Everything is incredibly tiny unless I pinch-to-zoom and then scroll back and forth, so I'm missing even more of my own typos than before.
Although, since we don't actually eat bugs in these parts, my statement is also literally true.
Vault Dweller, this summer we were in the Dolomites and, on the advice of our server, ordered a local (and therefore nominally Italian) Gewurztraminer. It's not a varietal we ever order because the only ones we've had have been off-dry at best. But this was seriously one of the best white wines I've ever had - dry, mineral, yet somehow also floral and tropical. I can't get it in my Houston suburb but I'm thinking maybe some specialty merchant actually in Houston might either carry it or be able to order it...
We are FAR from wine snobs, but this wine was extraordinary. And like 36 euros a bottle in the restaurant, to boot. Makes me wonder what their "good" local wines are like.
Blogger Jamie said..."Dammit! I'm still contending with the change (decidedly for the worse) in the way this blog, and this one alone, displays on my phone screen since I had to factory-reset my phone a few days ago. Everything is incredibly tiny unless I pinch-to-zoom and then scroll back and forth, so I'm missing even more of my own typos than before."
It MAY be this text above the comments box:
"Comments may need to pass through moderation. Comments should respond to material raised in the post. I encourage brevity and substance and discourage personal attacks and repetition. You must use a name or pseudonym. The non-name "unknown" is not accepted."
I think it needs a line break. In order to accommodate it as is, my iPad display also is rendered in very small text, forcing me to zoom it. For me, this began to happen a few weeks ago.
Enigma said...
“One word: Gasohol!
Distill it down to pure alcohol and then pour it into cars as fuel.”
Yes, but gasohol can negatively impact the mileage. Grandpa Simpson was only getting 40 rods per hogshead.
Wine, the preferred adult beverage of Cat Ladies world wide
Discretionary spending is the first to go in a recession. Just sayin'.
Also, my wine fridge is full as a goog.
stlcdr said...
"Everything else is expensive, might as well drink at the kitchen table."
Agreed. I like good wine, and paying $50 a bottle at a restaurant for grocery-store wine irks me.
Total wine has some very affordable Aussie reds with a pickup truck logo. Very good even considering the convenient screw top.
Not a good look for China—evading responsibility for COVID. Also not a good sign for California, whose UC system is utterly beholden to the PRC. Gavin Newsom is their man.
Wine is just one of my blind spots, despite my Euro- and Francophilia.
Northern Italian red wines are best over all. The Barolo, Barbaresco, and Veneto. I don’t even buy Chianti any more. Well, perhaps for spaghetti night.
Not a single comment I made here today has appeared.
They use screw caps, Stelvin Caps, not because they are cheap, but because they are better, never get a corked bottle, more consistent quality, I use to sneer at them but now I am reluctant to buy anything else
"So, other than pouring wine down the drain and bitching, what did the Aussies do about a 200% tariff being dumped on them?"
Hopefully something similar to when China put a ban on Australian coal. We sold it to India instead. And China had blackouts instead.
I've been drinking Argentine and Chilean wines for years, high quality at low prices, but now I'm gonna have to try some inexpensive Aussie plonk. Yum. Thanks, you rotten Chinese commies.
Wine-Making Sect Allegedly Enabled Guru’s Abuse ‘Lovefests’
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा