INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: BRIAN CROSER (AUSTRALIA)
Visionary winemaker, successful businessman and Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show judge Brian Croser makes a plea for more regionally differentiated wines. Christian Eedes reports.
Brian Croser is only too happy to talk about the intricacies of global wine over a beer, no matter that he has just completed three intensive days of judging at the 2004 Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show, no matter that an earlier interview has barely been concluded.
For a man who is a leading wine industry figure in Australia, he is remarkably approachable. He began his career as chief winemaker at South Australian wine company Hardy's, before establishing Petaluma winery in the same region in 1976. Today drinks giant, Lion Nathan owns the Petaluma group, although Croser remains executive chairman.
His stints as president of the Winemakers Federation of Australia between 1991-93 and 1997-99 saw him wield major influence and in recent times numerous accolades have come his way. In 2000, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia for services to the Australian wine industry and this year he was the recipient of UK wine journal Decanter's Man of the Year Award.
Croser describes himself as first and foremost a viticulturist and winemaker. "It's my background, my passion, what I like to be involved in." However, he relates that his career evolved away from his area of specialisation as he became increasingly engaged in the business of wine. "You need to sell the stuff before taking in the next harvest."
So how does Croser view today's global wine market? Currently, a condition of world over-supply is driving prices down, while the ongoing consolidation of retailers in developed countries makes listings difficult to obtain.
Croser sees a tension between branded commodity wine and regionally differentiated premium wine. Commodity wine producers are compelled to make their wine as efficiently and as cheaply as possible, whereas premium producers (typically small vineyard owners) do not experience the same "squeeze on profitability".
Because the New World has cheaper land and a climate that is less capricious than the Old World, it is ideally suited to the production of commodity wine. He is worried that Australia as well as South Africa are becoming "pigeon-holed" as commodity wine producers and nothing more.
In the end, it comes down to a trade-off between brands and authenticity. When selling commodity wine, Fast Moving Consumer Goods strategy applies. Where a wine comes from need be no more specific than its country of origin. All other differentiation is removed, so as to keep the selling proposition as simple as possible.
Premium wine, on the other hand, hinges on terroir or the notion that a grape variety should be matched to the most suitable site for best expression. Croser believes that the Old World in general and the French in particular have a crucial advantage over the New World in this respect. "The French have a stranglehold on the concept of terroir. Go south of the equator and terroir disappears for some reason."
Key to uplifting the image of wine from New World countries is therefore better regional differentiation, he argues. Caricatures of a country's attributes are not legitimate selling tools. "Portraying an Aussie wine farmer as a bloke with corks dangling from his hat simply isn't serious enough," he contends.
"To match the French we need to go to market with an authentic, scientifically based message about how the attri- butes of terroir improve the quality of our wine."
"I suspect that mostly we [in the New World] haven't succeeded in discovering the best viticultural spots, and where we have, we haven't yet applied the necessary commitment and expertise," he remarks. "We need to be courageous enough to do research and then compare what the combinations [of site and variety] mean in quality terms."
To illustrate his point, Croser discusses South African Shiraz. Judging the category at the 2004 Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show, he saw a few examples that had organoleptic elements reminiscent of wines from the Rhône, and a few with elements of wines from Australia. However, these elements were never combined in such a way as to offer stylistic coherence.
"I think you will have to grow Shiraz for years before a specific South African style emerges. I'm not sure you've found the right place for the grape, but I bet there is such a place," he muses.
Croser concludes by saying that the challenge for South Africa is to come up with truly "exquisite" wine, and not just to produce it, but promote it successfully too.
"Super premium wines are the bellwethers of the market," he advises. "They convince the consumer of the credibility of your industry."
