Knowing your Chardonnay from your white Burgundy…?!

Just returned from a friend’s wedding (Congratulations Tim and Kim!) where we consumed plenty of Australian red and white wine. This got me thinking about the merits of Aussie wine and how all us Brits should be thankful to their wine producers for providing us with high quality but affordable wine over the last 25+ years.

The Aussies were pioneers in simplifying the wine market. In the 1970’s the French dominated the market with each of their wine regions and vineyards having its own old fashioned labelling system. This required the consumer to be a bit of a connoisseur in order to know what they were buying. No wonder our parents used to buy Blue Nun and Black Tower!

The Australians were responsible for introducing ‘variatel labelling’. In other words the grape variety is displayed prominently on the bottle e.g. Merlot, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon etc… Therefore by knowing just a very little about the grape varieties you can have a reasonable idea of what the wine is going to taste like. This is what we are all now used to and take for granted but in its day it was revolutionary.

So I raise my glass in toasting the Aussie wine industry for helping me and thousands of other wine novices choose a quality bottle of wine by the name of the grape our palates take a liking to.