With Naked Wines, you sign up for a regular delivery. Naked Wines

Many readers ask whether Naked Wines are good value. There is no doubt many casual wine drinkers have little time or inclination to research wine and go on buying expeditions, and they find the idea of wine clubs appealing.

You sign up for a regular delivery, the box appears on the doorstep and the money is deducted from your credit card.

Very convenient. Someone else makes the decisions for you.

Naked Wines does things differently. It invites close involvement. You’re made to feel as though you’re doing something good for the struggling winemakers. You can even call yourself an Angel! You’re invited to build relationships with the people that squash the actual grapes.

Out of curiosity as much as anything, I signed up for the introductory dozen. I wanted to see what they would supply me as a common-or-garden subscriber.

A box arrived. My card was debited AUD $79.99. At an average of $6.66 per bottle, it surely had to be a good deal.

I tasted the 12 wines ‘blind’ over the next few weeks, each variety in company with similar wines for context. At that price, I wasn’t expecting too much.

Then my card was debited AUD $40, and when I inquired why, was told it was towards my Angel Membership. My card would be charged $40 a month going forward.

They said:

“As part of this (Angel) membership, $40 is deposited each month to build a wine credit for future orders. This allows you to enjoy 30–50% off retail prices, receive a free premium bottle every month (when ordering a full case), and gain exclusive access to limited wines and offers.”

When I said I wasn’t interested in becoming an Angel, they very reasonably offered to refund the $40 and discontinue whatever relationship we had.

It does seem that most, if not all, of Naked Wines’ bottles are their own exclusives, so it’s hard to see how they could claim 30-50% off retail prices—when those wines are not available in the retail trade.

Back to the intro dozen I bought. My notes are all published in The Real Review.

My impressions?

Mostly, the wines were simple, perfectly drinkable, and good value for money—after all what can you get for AUD $6.66 these days? The whites were light, some a little green, and some reds a bit rough—one or two of them a bit coarse and astringent. No-one should quibble about the price, though, and if this is typical of Naked Wines’ offerings, go for it.

I’d like to see what they offer at slightly higher prices.

And, I suppose, it’s not just about the wine, it’s also about the experience, the side-benefits, of being a member of the club.

These were the wines, in order of preference:

Brian Fletcher Signature Wines Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2025

Very attractive floral, lemon pith and fresh herb aromatics. The wine is delicate and fresh, bright and intense in the mouth, with lively and balanced acidity. The finish is crisp, properly dry and refreshing. Very drinkable and avoids the greener nuances of Margaret River semillon. (89 points)

Jen Pfeiffer The Rebel Shiraz 2023

Deep, saturated purple colour; sweet plum and blackberry aromas, a whiff of blackcurrant pastille. Medium-full bodied and finishes with a firm grip that imparts a little bitterness. A heartier shiraz that would be best paired with solid protein. (87 points)

Wiley Rooster Hunter Valley Rosé 2024

Light salmon-pink with a faint tinge of purple; there are dried strawberry, dusty rose-petal aromas and a hint of cardboard lending a touch of savouriness, while the palate is light-bodied, very dry and lip-smacking thanks to well judged phenolics and balanced acidity. A good food-style rosé. (87 points)

Engine Room by Hamish Maguire The Mechanic Cabernet Sauvignon 2023

Pungent ripe squishy mulberry and green bean aromas with a dark-chocolate background, and the palate flavours track this precisely, with medium body and moderate persistence. The tannins are supple and rounded. Straightforward but generous. (87 points)

Byron & Harold Companions Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2025

Grass, pea shoots and salad leaves to sniff. The wine is soft, open-knit, tending broad and short on the palate with low-key acidity but no obvious sweetness. A pleasant everyday drinking dry white. (87 points)

Rod Easthope Level 185 Hawkes Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2024

Very lifted, intense, bright aromas of cut capsicum, feijoa and green beans. Crisp and lively in the mouth, with bright and balanced acidity counterpointing barely perceptible sweetness. Clean finish that lingers on well. (87 points)

R. Paulazzo Shiraz 2023

Straightforward plummy, earthy aromas, fresh and simple. Light bodied with mild tannins. Oak is near enough to invisible, which suits the style. A light, easy-drinking shiraz which has acceptable length but most importantly, good balance and drinkability. Exactly what a lot of people would like a drink-now shiraz to be. (86 points)

Feet On The Ground Shiraz 2024

Aromas of raspberry, dried herbs including bayleaf, terracotta/dried earth, and the palate has plummy flavour and a dab of sweetness in the centre, then just enough tannin to dry and cleanse the finish. Straightforward and pleasant drinking. (86 points)

Boy Meets Girl Cabernet Merlot 2023

Bramble, leaf-litter, cedary aromas with a hint of eucalypt forest-floor. Bayleaf and green peppercorn. The wine is medium bodied at most and the tannins are mild and a trifle grippy. Increasingly gumleafy the longer it was in the glass. (85 points)

Wine x Sam The Butterfly Effect Chardonnay 2024

Shows some development as well as chopped parsley, dill and a trace of kerosene. There is some sweetness and the palate is broad and slightly chewy from its tannins. A basic chardonnay made to a price. (84 points)

R. Paulazzo La Bolle Cuvée Brut NV

Straw, cream and lightly muscaty aromas, youthful, simple and fresh. Some sweetness early, then dries toward the finish. Light and crisp, and quite appealing. A straightforward sparkler which has good vitality and refreshment. (84 points)

Santolin Boy Meets Girl Shiraz Cabernet 2022

The dominant aroma is of crushed gumleaf and there’s a little vanilla and chocolate, possibly from oak. The overall impression is of a eucalypt forest on a hot day. (84 points)

Since 2019, global wine consumption has dropped by 3.5 billion litres, to its lowest level since 1961. Unsplash

The global wine industry, like society, is increasingly a tale of two speeds. On one side, a steady decline in consumption, particularly among a generation less enthused than any in recent memory. On the other, skyrocketing prices for Burgundy, Barolo, and Bordeaux at the top end, while an ocean of unsold Australian wine sits stagnant in tank at the bottom.

We lived through globalisation; now we’re seeing early signs of deglobalisation, largely driven by geopolitics. Ask any seasoned industry figure about the current state of play and they’ll tell you, it’s never been tougher.

I attended the Wine Australia Global Market Update at the National Wine Centre in mid-July, hoping for clarity. The mood was collective, and grim. Endeavour Group (formerly Woolworths’ liquor arm) was there, joined by consultants and the Wine Australia team. The message was loud: correction is here, and it won’t be gentle.

To balance that, I sat down with David LeMire MW, co-CEO of Shaw + Smith. Shaw + Smith has become a benchmark for Australian wine, grounded, progressive, and resilient. Along with Wine Australia and the Endeavour Group they offer contrasting views on how to survive, and perhaps thrive, in what’s coming.

Since 2019, global wine consumption has dropped by 3.5 billion litres, to its lowest level since 1961. The IWSR (International Wine and Spirits Record) forecasts a further 1.5 billion litre decline by 2029, a projected 20% contraction of the global market. That’s not a blip, it’s a restructuring.

Closer to home, we’re still reeling from the China tariffs. But let’s be honest, that wasn’t just bad luck. It was years of inaction and overconfidence. The glut had already begun before the doors shut. A wall of unsold wine was already forming.

Meanwhile, fine wine has powered on, widening the gap. LeMire spoke of “reconnecting with the vineyard,” and how Shaw + Smith benefited from the psychological shift in what people are willing to pay for quality, thanks to the global pricing surge of prestige regions. With ‘Villages’ level white Burgundy now starting at AUD $220–$250, Tolpuddle Chardonnay suddenly feels like a ‘Start the car!’ moment. You can’t benefit from that price ceiling unless quality and vineyard sit firmly at the top of your priorities

Then came Trump and the threat of deglobalisation, disrupting the wine trade with erratic tariffs in early 2025. Producers worldwide were suddenly unsure if they should pivot or hold their ground. But the cracks had already appeared in less wealthy but highly educated markets.

Take Australia: affluent, globally literate in wine, and far more rational when it comes to luxury purchases than our global counterparts. Fine wine never actually transacted here like it did in the U.S. or Asia during the Covid surge. We admired it, but we didn’t open our wallets as loosely as our international friends. If anything, it left a bitter taste, the canary in the coal mine, if you will.

Geopolitical tensions and market fatigue are forcing producers to reconsider their focus and question whether the latest tariffs will undermine their success in less mature markets. Is this the early onset of deglobalisation with lasting effects, or merely a challenge navigable through a few strategic moves?

Wine Opinions has released a research paper focused on 21-39-year-old consumers of alcoholic beverages.

“While certainly not the only factor, price matters to younger consumers of alcoholic beverages,” explains John Gillespie, Founder and CEO of Wine Opinions.

“In fact, among wine drinkers who are drinking wine less frequently than they did a year or two ago, nearly half — 47% — cite the rising prices of the wines they like as a reason for drinking wine less often.”

It isn’t just price, there are other factors, including a new wave belief that consuming alcohol is unhealthy. In July 2024, a Gallup Survey revealed 45% of U.S. adults said that even 1-2 drinks per day are unhealthy, an increase of 6 percentage points from the previous year and a 17‑point rise since 2018. Among those aged 18-34, a full 65% consider moderate drinking unhealthy, compared to 39% of adults 55+.

This mindset has created a ‘sober-curious’ sensation. When I put the topic to Lemire, his response was clear and concise:

“We need to lead the conversation on wine’s place in a healthy lifestyle, open, science-based, responsible.”

With the rise, and then Covid-accelerated shift, to online socialisation, I can’t help but feel Gen Z and Millennials are forgetting the social benefits of a shared drink among friends. A moment to stop, think, talk, and clear the fog, free from the constant dopamine drip of our screens.

James Phillips, Client Solutions Director at CGA by NielsenIQ, who specialises in on-premise measurement and insights solutions to the alcohol industry in Australia and New Zealand spoke at the Wine Australia event. He highlighted the shift away from wine:

“We’ve seen other categories take market share from wine by being easier to engage with. RTDs, seltzers, cocktails on tap, they’re fast, fresh, fun. Wine needs to find a way to be part of that.”

“Younger consumers want drinks that are simple, clear, and fun. They want to know what it tastes like before they sip it. Wine doesn’t always do a good job of that.”

“There’s real opportunity in format: cans, smaller serves, pre-mixed styles. Even in categories you wouldn’t expect. Wine needs to follow suit or risk being left behind.”

It’s a tempting route. But it feels like a band-aid fix. By jumping into the flavour wars, mixing, simplifying, we enter a race to the bottom. Perhaps it keeps Riverland growers ‘busy’ but I doubt thriving. Is it a gateway to proper wine, or a dilution of the very idea of it?

My view on the low- or no-alcohol category is outstandingly positive, if, and it’s a big if, we can maintain the true character of wine. I’m not asking for terroir expression (though that would be a milestone in the evolution of the category), but at the very least, it must behave like wine.

IWSR’s Strategic Study 2024 forecasts an overall 4% growth in low- and no-alcohol beverages year-on-year through to 2028, with no-alcohol options growing at 7%, and low-alcohol essentially static. Wine Australia reports that between 2018 and 2023, no-alcohol wine consumption rose by approximately 13% annually, reaching around 4.5 million cases, while low-alcohol wine saw even sharper growth at roughly 21% per year, hitting 3.3 million cases. In contrast, traditional still wine consumption declined by about 3% annually over the same period.

LeMire’s stance wasn’t about chasing trends. It was about choosing how we position ourselves. Quality wine has never been so widespread and available, yet it still requires communication. Wine hasn’t found its next generational ambassador.

We have deeply knowledgeable sommeliers, brilliant writers, and social media-savvy influencers; however, no one has the next generation in a hypnotic state like we saw with Len Evans starting in the 1960s and Robert Parker in the 1980s. In fact, we are at pre-Len Evans consumption levels.

We have all the pillars in the industry to support such a person. Leading wineries like Shaw + Smith, alongside cult names like Giaconda, are stepping confidently onto the global stage. We have sommeliers of the highest order, a plethora of neighbourhood wine bars growing in popularity, and the general knowledge of wine industry professionals is at its highest ever.

But the audience? They can’t afford interesting wine. They can’t afford to cellar. They certainly can’t afford on-premise. I’m not saying all wine should be AUD $20. I’m saying we need wines of interest that can be cellared, all without blowing budgets.

As for the road ahead? We are experiencing what could be a momentary correction, with the very real danger of it becoming a permanent structural shift for the worse if action isn’t taken.

There are opportunities and remedies. Call me good at spending other people’s money, but Wine Australia need to focus its funding and resources on the following concerns:

1. An inevitable vine pull needs to be expedited, first and foremost, targeting regions based on quality, or lack thereof.
2. Export, with a focus on quality and rebuilding Australia’s brand.
3. Arguably the most controversial? Phenolic ripeness at lower alcohol levels. I can guarantee a winemaker just swore at me, but it is possible.
4. Avoid chasing the RTD and spirit market, concentrate on producing quality low or no alcohol wines which taste good, very good.
5. Wine Australia’s legal team must stand ready to quash any faux health claims against our blessed beverage, while their marketing arm works with health professionals to champion its benefits.

The result? A slightly higher average price per bottle, a smaller but more profitable industry, and a base to build back to where we once were.

Most vintages of Grange either tread water or go backwards. Penfolds Wines

That old chestnut has been rolled out again—that you can make a big profit if you cellar Penfolds Grange for long enough, and basing this statement on the rarest Grange vintage, 1951.

These words appeared in a daily newspaper on July 24:

“If you don’t mind holding on to it for a couple of decades and then selling it, the return on investment could prove fruitful. The first Penfolds Grange vintage was 1951 and has been known to fetch more than $150,000 at auction. A full set of Penfolds Grange from the 1951 to 2018 vintages fetched a record $430,000 at the Penfolds Rewards of Patience Auction hosted by Langton’s in 2022.”

The first rule of investing is that there must be supply, and supply of the 1951 Grange is pretty close to zero. Hardly an investment prospect.

Sets of Grange are also exceedingly scarce.

What of more available Grange vintages of recent time?

A check of auction price history shows that it’s really only the most highly regarded vintages that are worth speculating on. Or the rarest. Most vintages either tread water or go backwards. This is especially true since Penfolds hiked the price of Grange over the first decade of this century. For most of us, AUD $1,000 for the latest vintage is an awful lot of money, and it’s hard to imagine spending more than that for an older recent vintage.

Greg Fitzsimmons, head of wine at Grays auctions, says he doesn’t see much point trading young Grange: it needs at least 10 to 15 years before you’d trade it. And he says a AUD $1,000 bottle of recent vintage Grange would be worth AUD $2,396.56 in 15 years at 6% compounded. How many people would pay that?

“Grange isn’t a guaranteed investment. It’s a collector’s wine, a drinker’s wine—but only sometimes a profitable one.”

At Langton’s annual Penfolds Rewards of Patience auction in June 2025, a large number of lots failed to sell.

There were sales of favoured vintages, such as 1971 (at AUD $1100), 1976 (at AUD $1350) and 1990 (AUD $623-$676), but large numbers of bottles were passed in. If the latest vintages of Grange are AUD $1,000, the 1971—one of the greatest ever Granges, still drinking in its prime—seems absurdly cheap at AUD $1,100.

Many top Australian reds have seen big—some would say unrealistic—price increases in the last decade or so, which often means older vintages can be purchased significantly cheaper at auction than the latest vintage. An auctioneer might find this a useful way to promote auctions. It makes the older wines doubly attractive to auction-goers: they’re both more mature (readier to drink) and more affordable.

Fitzsimmons says the market for Grange has softened: supply is up but demand is down.

“The great vintages of the 1970s and early ‘80s still have investment potential, but there’s been a flattening out of Grange prices, partly due to the Chinese not coming here and buying wine to take home.”

Caveat emptor!

Dr Jack Heinemann. Rova NZ

New Zealand’s Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference returned in June 2025 and although several intense topics were presented across the three days with several calls to action, one of the most urgent warnings was from Dr Jack Heinemann, PhD, FHEA, Professor of Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, University of Canterbury, School of Biological Sciences.

American-born, Dr Heinemann has a long career as a genetic engineer and expert in biosafety. He delivered his presentation via remote video, in which he discussed the worrying misinformation being pushed regarding the controversial Gene Technology Bill which is currently before the Health Select Committee (public submissions closed in February of this year).

According to Dr Heinemann, support for the bill is really only coming from one small part of the scientific community which is at odds with the generally accepted science. Disentangling the rhetoric and fictions which provide the need for such the bill introduced by Judith Collins, Dr Heinemann makes it clear that despite claims to the contrary, there is currently no ban on gene technology. The only legal requirement is simply that it is regulated and therefore must be conducted in a registered containment facility.

The new bill allows genetic research to occur without regulation, outside of contained facilities without the need for risk verification. The use is currently restricted to trained personnel, whereas the new bill allows anyone to do this without formal training. It also removes liability, thereby protecting those who practise it from being pursued by the law, so riskier activities can be encouraged. In short, the Gene Technology Bill is deregulation with no traceability, no recall, and no liability.

In an interview earlier this year with Radio New Zealand, Dr Heinemann told Amanda Gillies:

“This legislation would take chemical components, that happen to be biological molecules, that are also very potent mutagens, and allow people to use them anywhere without any kind of oversight. When we have done those kinds of operations historically, we have at least required that they be done inside a registered containment facility, so we can control who is using them, who is exposed to them and what happens to the things that we didn’t want exposed or to the things that were changed in ways that we didn’t want them to be changed in, and make sure that those don’t escape the laboratory and get into the environment. This is the departure point for the bill as proposed… for some of the most important, easily obtained and powerful of the techniques we have available right now.”

In an earlier opinion piece on The Spinoff last year, Dr Heinemann addressed the attempt by certain companies who stand to benefit from this change in the law to redefine genetic modification by arguing that genetic editing is not the same thing and should not be considered genetic modification. According to definitions, including those used by the US FDA, this is simply not true. Dr Heinemann stated in his piece that:

“Suggesting that GMOs are only organisms with added DNA lures the Government into thinking there is a class of ‘low-risk gene-editing activities’ when they’re not used to add DNA, and these ‘can be exempted from regulations’.”

“Even if that were true, it may be impossible to avoid adding DNA when using gene editing. Gene-editing techniques have been used to make GMOs since the 1970s. What has changed is developments in gene editing that increase the efficiency of making desired DNA changes. The new tools make GMOs faster. Gene-editing techniques accelerate the rate of genetic change, but not safety. There is no limit to the variation that can be introduced through gene editing.”

The other fiction which Dr Heinemann called out was the claim that the rest of the world has moved on and New Zealand is falling behind. Of all our main trading partners, only Canada and Australia have amended their exclusions. More tellingly, Canada only allows it in plants while Australia clearly distinguishes between technologies, namely SDN-1, SDN-2 and SDN-3 which roughly correspond to increasing risk.

He continued to explain that SDN-3 is the only technique which is noted as potentially high risk in theory but the risks in practice apply to all the techniques. Of the three, only SDN-1 is deregulated in Australia, while in China it is only allowed in plants. The USA does not allow even SDN-1. Therefore, despite assertions from the supporters of the bill, there is actually no alignment with our main trading partners. In fact, New Zealand’s status as a GMO-free producer (which exists despite genetic engineering research currently being permitted in New Zealand) is of great value to our exporters.

As an example of real-life experience versus theoretical risk, even SDN-1 reactions using CRISPR in potatoes resulted in unintended inclusion of other DNA. These transgenic insertions happen because sources are impure and tools can be contaminated. The requirement to practise genetic editing in a contained facility and tighter regulation helps to screen these impure insertions out of the stream before they are released into the environment. This confirmation step is key to safe practice of gene technology.

To be clear, things are changing in the field and regulations need to be updated to keep pace with these changes. The argument Dr Heinemann is making is that change does not necessarily have to mean deregulation. The burden of proof to maintain New Zealand’s GMO-free status as an exporter is going to be onerous if it is even possible, once gene-edited organisms are freely spreading through the environment. The slightest contamination would affect our produce when it is screened or tested at destination markets. This of course, is of great concern to our wine industry, especially our organic producers. As always with these highly political things, one has to ask “Who is behind these changes and who stands to benefit”?

You can listen to Dr Heinemann explain more about the bill on this podcast. His presentation will also be available on the Organic Winegrowers New Zealand website.

The barrel hall at Seppeltsfield that houses the 100-year-old Para Ports. Seppeltsfield Wines

Seppeltsfield offered an extremely rare bottle of its Seppeltsfield Para Vintage Tawny 1878 to celebrate this year’s Tasting Australia event in Adelaide*. This is the original 100 year-old Para—the first vintage ever produced. It immediately brought forth my own memories of that unique wine.

The year was either 1978 or 1979 and I was a sub-editor on the Albury Border Morning Mail. I was a budding wine lover and within a year I would quit working in newspapers and go to Roseworthy Agricultural College to study wine and hopefully begin a new career.

I heard of a charity wine auction to be held across the river in Wodonga, to raise money for the Wodonga Base Hospital. I found myself in the audience clutching a booklet of the lots to be auctioned. I’d optimistically circled a few of the cheaper wines.

At that time few knew of the existence of the puncheons of port Benno Seppelt had laid down at Seppeltsfield in 1878, not to be released till they reached the age of 100 years. Certainly none had ever been sold. The younger vintage-dated Paras were quite well-known to wine collectors at the time, however.

The auctioneer announced that Lot Number such-and-such was a rare and extraordinary wine, and proceeded to tell the story. The bidding began and the winner was a solidly built, well-dressed, middle-aged man with a much younger woman on his arm, and I seem to remember a gold chain around his neck and a general appearance suggesting wealth. He walked out with the bottle, for which he paid a large sum, and I imagined there was a late-model Porsche waiting in the street outside. The catalogue is long lost but my memory is that he paid around AUD $2,000, which was then an extraordinary sum for a bottle of wine.

I believe it was the first time a bottle of 100-year-old Para had even been sold or even sighted in public. The significance of this event only fully came home to me long afterwards.

It later emerged that Seppelt (as it was then, family owned) was donating the first few bottles of 1878 to various charity events as a way of publicising its debut, its emergence into the sunlight after a century of slumber in the dark Barossa Valley cellars of Seppeltsfield.

And me? I went home with a bottle of Stonyfell Metala 1971, which cost me what felt like an arm and a leg – about AUD $4.

*All you needed to do was enter your name and contact details to go into the draw. Needless to say, I did—unsuccessfully.

Some producers have already announced that they will reduce their export prices to absorb the tariffs. Pxhere

New Zealand wine has a habit of putting its eggs in one basket (please forgive the analogy, this was written shortly after Easter so eggs and baskets were on my mind). The most obvious example is Marlborough sauvignon blanc.

As mentioned several times on these pages before, it is the overwhelming majority of our production and even more so in export figures, comprising approximately 85% of our export volume, according to New Zealand Winegrowers. But we also have heavy reliance on specific export markets, most notably the US, UK and Australia, though their relative positions have changed in the past two decades.

In the years leading up to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), New Zealand wine producers were heavily invested in the UK market, which had the lion’s share of wine export volume (35-36% in 2006 and 2007) with both Australia and the US sitting at about 22-23% each in the same years.

This all changed during the GFC as Australian companies and supermarkets took advantage of the large availability of extremely cheap sauvignon blanc in the New Zealand bulk market by creating their own brands, virtual brands and capitalising on the Wine Equalisation Tax rebate arrangement between the two countries. This resulted in a massive explosion of volume into Australia, which nearly tripled between 2007 and 2010. In fact, Australia was the leading export market in 2009, 2013 and 2014 with the UK slightly ahead in the other years during this period.

This will come as no surprise to those who recall the ‘savalanche’. All the while, the US market grew steadily from third place in 2008 until it was the largest market in 2016. It briefly lost its lead when the UK grew rapidly again in 2017 until the streak was broken in 2021 when it contracted by 16%. Australia has kept steady but never regained its top position post-savalanche, but the US is firmly in the lead, now representing between 35% (2023) and 37% (2025) of total export volume, an even larger share than the UK had pre-GFC.

This was a deliberate strategic move to try and regain ground lost to price and brand value erosion in the previous strongholds of the UK and Australia. In fact, when export volumes fell sharply in 2022 for those two markets, US exports rallied by a commensurate amount. It is therefore not hard to imagine the deep concern among wine producers who export to the US when the tariffs were announced. At the time of writing, they have been postponed, but producers are rightly worried about their impact on what is now NZ’s largest market.

There is also a bit more nuance to understanding the nature of the US market for NZ wine and how that impacts our producers. Firstly, almost all of the wine we have going into the US is white, with red wine (most likely pinot noir) making less than 1.5% of the total volume of that trade. Of the white wine, it is almost certainly almost all sauvignon blanc. In contrast, though by no means a large proportion, 4% of the NZ wine going to the UK is red and for Australia, that figure is 6%.

Secondly, another vital statistic is the proportion of that white wine which is shipped as bulk wine instead of bottled wine. For Australia, only 24% is shipped in bottle. For the UK, it’s 35%; meaning that the majority of wine going into both of these markets is shipped in bulk tanks and traded in litres. For the US, the situation is reversed, with 62% of the wine shipping in bottle (all of these figures are from the 2024 NZ Winegrowers Annual Report). What this means is that most of the wine going into the US is more expensive than the bulk wine going into Australia and the UK.

This is borne out by the value figures, which show US exports (NZD $787.5 million) amounting to nearly the same value as UK (NZD $440 million) and Australian exports (NZD $370.5 million) combined whereas volumes are 97 million, 69 million and 57 million litres respectively. The impact of tariffs on this relatively higher-value wine will be likely push the wines into different price tiers than currently. On the other hand, it could be argued that the premium end of the market is more able to absorb increases than the very price-sensitive value end of the market. However—to put everything in perspective—at an average of NZD $9.87 per litre for bottled white wine to the US, we’re not really talking about high-end brands.

Some producers have already announced that they will reduce their export prices to absorb the tariffs, which is what US President Trump had hoped would happen. As reported by Stuff, Invivo Wines—who sell their celebrity co-branded Sarah Jessica Parker and Graham Norton wines in grocery chains like Costco and Krogers in the US—will lower their prices ex-winery while also pressuring their distribution partners to trim their margins in an effort to spread the tariff costs across the chain.

There are also murmurings in the sector that New Zealand brands could strengthen their positions by taking a hit in the US to take advantage of other countries withdrawing from the market, although others clearly see this as the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ and recommend joining the global exodus. Ironically, around 2016 to 2019, NZ Wine made efforts to break into China with a string of high-profile events and investment in marketing but the complexity of that market and the pandemic ultimately led them to pursue easier wins in the US. Those wineries which persisted in mainland China and Hong Kong, along with other key Asian markets like Japan and Singapore, have seen a resurgence post-COVID.

Though significantly smaller than the ‘big three’ (all four combined amount to NZD $91 million), they are comparatively high in value, with the average price per litre of total exports—not just bottled white wine—ranging from NZD $18.33 (Singapore) to NZD $13.08 (Japan). Additionally, white wine makes up a comparatively smaller proportion of the total, which further reduces their reliance on sauvignon blanc. This reduces their exposure to the forces which impact sauvignon blanc, like with what happened in 2008.

Looking inwards, the industry is experiencing tough times with rising costs eating into margins at the same time as both domestic and international sales fall due to economic conditions. The one market which showed growth in 2024 was the US, which is now threatened by Trump’s tariffs. In an interview with Rural News Group, New Zealand Winegrowers Board chair, Fabian Yukich, was quoted describing this situation as “the threat of protectionism in key markets”. Acknowledging that this couldn’t really come at a worse time, with inventory levels remaining high (read: oversupply) despite a smaller vintage in 2024 as sales slow down, Yukich added: “Together these issues are contributing to an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable outlook”.

To counter these worries, New Zealand Winegrower’s chief executive Philip Gregan takes the opposite approach. While admitting that the industry is facing tough times, he insists that the general feeling among producers is confidence in the medium to long term prospects of New Zealand wine, adding that it is possible to answer with an unequivocal ‘yes’ to optimism about both the future and present-day challenges.

With the constantly changing landscape of the US trade war, it remains to be seen if optimism alone will see our wineries through these times. Is it trouble at sea, which we can ride out, or are the winds of change blowing, and if so, which direction will they take us?

Caroline Frey and Peter Gago with the new Grange La Chapelle blend. Penfolds

The AUD $3,500 Grange/La Chapelle blend launched by Penfolds and Paul Jaboulet Aîné at Wine Paris in mid-February has set off plenty of cynical comments.

“When is someone going to call this nonsense out?” asked a friend to his emailing list, citing the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

This is “… a term coined to express a situation where people allow themselves to be tricked, or to join with others, into becoming mutually deluded because they are afraid to admit their lack of knowledge or incapacity to understand a trendy idea …”

Several colleagues have expressed similar disgust.

“The ‘luxury good’ wankery is super-sized here…”

If you’ve been in Siberia bear hunting you might have missed the news flash. The wine is a 50/50 blend of Jaboulet’s famous La Chapelle Hermitage and Penfolds Grange from the 2021 vintage (outstanding in South Australia but difficult in the Northern Rhône).

The wine was debuted jointly by Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago—no stranger to luxury-priced ‘special’ wines—and Caroline Frey, winemaker at Jaboulet and a member of the family that owns the company nowadays.

From the press release I quote Caroline Frey, who said:

“No-one in the world has ever blended two such legendary terroirs. It’s like Picasso and Dalí painting on the same canvas – an idea so extraordinary it almost feels too incredible to be real.”

And Peter Gago said:

“Truly, a blend waiting to happen. Emotionally, a wine beguilingly alluring. Ultimately, harmony and classicism redefined.”

Even by Gago’s standards, that is prose as purple as the wine.

Some have rightly pointed out that the wine has nothing to do with terroir. Grange is a blend of vineyards and regions in South Australia—the 2021 being Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Clare. Caroline Frey’s mention of the ‘t’ word could be referring to the terroir of South Australia, if such a thing exists, but Grange has never been a terroir wine. To put Grange and La Chapelle together would appear to obliterate any idea of terroir from either side. (And I imagine the Grange component would dominate the blend.)

It’s nothing to do with terroir, but that is alright. Not every wine has to pretend to have this elusive quality.

Penfolds comes up with eye-opening new wines every year, some of them unashamedly aimed fair and square at the high-rolling wine wanker market. Remember the Ampoule?

The Ampoule was a limited edition (12 were made) crystal vessel filled with Penfolds Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, which came in a jarrah box and was priced at AUD $168,000. Wine-searcher is now showing a price of AUD $258,000!

Last year the big noise was the 2021 Bin 180 Cabernet Shiraz (AUD $1,180) which celebrated the company’s 180^th anniversary. The year before there was a bevy of Dourthe collaborations from Bordeaux, Californian wines and US/Australia blends and more Thiénot Champagnes. In 2022, the Yattarna V Chardonnay and the first French-Australian blends. In 2021, the 2018 Superblends 802-A and 802-B, both AUD $900. In 2020, the 2016 Bin 111A Cabernet Shiraz, and the first of the Champagne Thiénot collaboration wines. Some time before that, the Penfolds G3 (1,200 bottles at AUD $3,000 each), G4 (2,500 bottles at AUD $3,500 each) and G5 (2,200 bottles at AUD $3,500 each), all blends of several Grange vintages, and all great wines, irrespective of your attitude to the concept.

Now the world is Gago’s oyster.

Penfolds has made no secret of its intention to be a player in the global luxury goods business. The release of eye-catching new wines every year is doubtless part of the plan to seize the initiative, hog the spotlight, own the narrative.

I’m quite excited and would be keen to taste the ‘La Grange’ blend. I expect it will be a very smart drop. A billionaires’ plaything, designed in part to make pots of money for Penfolds, to be sure, but it’s also about quality wine and looking for ways to expand the horizon.

I’d never buy it, like I’ll never buy a Rolls Royce, but I’m not offended by its existence either.

Just Juice uses imported ingredients for its apple juice and orange juice. Huon Hooke

There are 400 million litres of red wine in tanks around Australia, we are told. Hundreds of hectares of red grapevines have been left unharvested in the last couple of vintages. So why are Bickford’s importing red grapejuice from Chile?

For the same reason Just Juice uses imported ingredients for its apple juice and orange juice, I suppose. Economics. It’s apparently cheaper to bring juice concentrate in from afar than to buy the local produce.

Last time I looked, we were growing plenty of apples and oranges in Australia. Certainly, grapes, apples and oranges are seasonal, but there are ways to store juice so that it can be packaged and sold when those fruits are out of season locally.

It’s a special kind of logic, to import red grape juice when we have grapegrowers going out of business because there’s no market for their grapes. According to Peter Bailey of Wine Australia, reported in Good Weekend magazine (9/11/24), the surplus of red wine in Australia leading into the 2024 vintage was about 400 million litres.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the country that exports its natural gas by the shipload to other countries while we are told the rising price of gas at home is because there’s a shortage of it.

I asked Bickford’s a series of questions, which the following didn’t answer satisfactorily, but I quote it here in the interests of fairness.

The Bickford’s back label. Huon Hooke

“With the significant volume of juice products we produce each year, our supply chain team takes into account a number of factors when sourcing our raw ingredients. These include quality, consistency, locality, availability, pricing, attributes, favour profile, storage considerations, freshness of product and others depending on the ingredient type. We have a large number of local suppliers, many of whom we have long-term relationships with, and a number where we are a significant customer to their business. We also own and operate a pomegranate farm in Wanbi, South Australia for use in our Bickford’s Pomegranate Juice.

“In the instance of our Bickford’s Red Grape Juice, our team has for the present, elected to obtain the grape concentrate from Chile having weighed up the factors I have mentioned above. As part of our ongoing supply chain best practice processes, we will continue to review available options to ensure we provide our valued consumers with quality products at the right price.”

(Signed by Beverley Reeves, marketing manager, non-liquor)

The Phillip Adams article in question. Huon Hooke

I’ve been a great fan of writer and broadcaster Phillip Adams for many years, enjoying his eloquence and erudition, his dulcet tones and interviewing style on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live especially. But his bizarre rant against wine in a recent Weekend Australian Magazine (October 5-6) begs for a hearty riposte.

Headlined “Put a cork in it” with the write-off “There’s nothing worse than a wine snob”, this “whine about wine” got my dander up.

Adams is a confessed ‘virtual teetotaller’, who doesn’t understand why anyone would be interested in wine, much less the super-expensive stuff. “Wine snobbery is the snootiest and most expensive of snobberies,” he sneers.

Like just about every wine lover I know, I also abhor wine snobs. Mercifully, there aren’t that many of them about.

Why do the words ‘wine’ and ‘snob’ appear together so often—as though one word can’t help but be followed by the other? Together they form a cliché that is way over-used.

But dear Phillip… what on earth got into a man like you, who comes across as the arch-champion of tolerance, to voice such intolerant views?

You are a lover of artifacts, collector of ancient objets d’art, and a student of ancient history. Would I pooh-pooh your interests, even if I thought them tedious? (Which I don’t, incidentally.)

Phillip, you have always shown yourself to be an appreciator of beauty, in art and in nature, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that some people see beauty in flavour and aroma, in what they eat and drink. Wine and food … wine IS a food. There is beauty and fascination in smells and tastes, and people throughout the course of history have appreciated this.

You mention alcoholism and how you can’t work out how people become alcoholics when you find alcohol so uninteresting. It’s not the alcohol that appeals to wine lovers: for a wine lover, alcohol is incidental.

You are a country dweller, farmer and nature lover: you seem to have ignored the fact that wine is a link with nature, with the soil and the elements. How sap in the trunk of a vine becomes a bewitching nectar, and how the multitude of viticultural and winemaking decisions can result in such an amazing range of wine styles, is part of what true wine-lovers find so intriguing.

I guess it’s too late to make peace over a glass of champagne?

It doesn’t take a genius to see how hard this hits when the dining public has less to spend. Pxhere

It seems every year I’m penning an article about the difficulties of hospitality. Unfortunately, here I go again. This time though it is more a discussion about the broader industry—not so much my own and Fix’s travails.

At time of writing I can quickly count about 20 higher profile restaurants and cafés that have closed this year, and there will be many more that have shut their doors in the past six months that are not on the radar, but the reasons are all likely to be the same. I’d like to say that will be all, but I’d be very surprised if we don’t see a similar number of closures between now and the end of the year.

At no point in the two decades that I have owned a hospitality business would I ever describe the business as easy. Margins are always very tight and it only takes a sneeze from the economy for any discretionary service business to catch a cold.

The GFC in 2008 was the first serious downturn I had experienced as an owner. Fortunately we had a small buffer built up and that kept us holding on by our fingernails until things turned around. This time around there are so many businesses that used whatever buffer they had built up to survive the COVID lockdowns, and that has been a fatal blow for many when we hit the choppy waters of rising inflation and interest rates.

Inflation and higher interest rates hit discretionary spending very hard. I cannot blame anyone for that because I know myself that my pay doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it did 18 months ago. But in the restaurant game, inflation has a double whammy: our raw produce costs have skyrocketed—across the board we have seen about 25% increase in our food costs.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how hard this hits when the dining public has less to spend, and putting prices up by 25% is a very rapid way to exit the market. Add to that, the 30% hike in utilities and those tight margins go into red very quickly. As a restaurateur I understand the tightening of purse-strings … maybe three courses and a couple of bottles of wine isn’t in the budget, but I’d always rather see you for a few shared dishes and a BYO bottle than not at all.

But there’s another factor in play here as well, and that is fatigue and burn-out. Most commercial leases for restaurant spaces are based on five-year blocks, so there are a lot of leases that would be coming into the renewal window either last year or this year, probably more than one might expect because of extensions or deferrals accrued during COVID lockdowns. For anyone in the current market, looking down the barrel at another five years after the last five we all just survived is tough. How to keep finding the will to continue? And what more can you do to stay afloat? These questions often end in the decision to walk away and become an employee again.

Sydney has a couple of very large restaurant groups that seem to be very successful in the market. They offer something to experienced operators that can’t happen when going it alone: job security and the ability to go to sleep not worrying about how to pay the bills. In NSW at least those big players have a huge advantage over independent restaurants. It’s not economies of scale, though that helps, but an incredibly large number of poker machines on their books. Latest figures show a single poker machine’s net profit in a hotel is AUD $167,518 per annum, so the maths is obvious for groups that own them in the hundreds. I can’t blame them for making the most of the opportunity: it isn’t up to them to legislate.

But there’s a rub to that large group dynamic, and that is the reduction of the small independent restaurants. They cannot compete on price and quality, it’s hard to compete on service except over time with the building of relationships, and the back end management takes more and more hours every year. It is likely that the stand-alone restaurant will be relegated to ethnic cuisine and suburban eateries within the next decade.

I’m not even going to touch on the crazy number of new openings that are about to be revealed. With major building developments in Sydney around the Metro coming close to completion, I know that each building will have another set of eateries to take another slice of an ever-shrinking pie.

Having said that, it is not all doom and gloom. Australia historically has a resilient economy. We seem to have at least plateaued these past few months. Hopefully beyond winter we can see some light shining through. For now, if you are heading out for a meal or just a coffee or a wine, take a moment if you can to ponder visiting your favourite family-owned venue. They’ll appreciate it far more than you know.