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Wine prices in Australia are rising. Successful export of wine has created a shortage of grapes in Australia. "Bag-in-box" or 4-litre "cask" wines could soon move up past the A$10 barrier. At present, these are around A$8 - A$9 and bottles range from about A$6 upwards.
Wine drinkers are moving strongly to bottles. They are also moving to bottles selling for more than A$8. Lets examine what you get when you buy better quality wine. When you spend more on a bottle of wine, you usually are getting better quality. How do you recognise this greater quality? A distinguished Californian wine teacher, Maynard Amerine, has published several widely read books on wine. His famous comment is "Wine quality is easy to recognise but difficult to define". If you are confronted by two glasses of wine side by side and one is better than the other, can you tell readily? We must assume that the wines are of the same basic style. It is misleading to compare, say, a great French Beaujolais (at A$28 per bottle) with a good Barossa (South Australian) Shiraz (at A$14) for example. Whilst the Beaujolais is double the price, an average competitive tasting will in all likelihood prefer the Barossa Shiraz because it is rich soft and sweet. However, the Beaujolais is made for accompanying hearty Burgundian cooking such as stews and casseroles of hare and turnips with selections of roasted root vegetables. The sharp acid and tannin in a Beaujolais cuts through. Hence, the first rule when assessing quality, is to observe the "horses for courses" principal. If you are looking for rich satisfying reds, do not unfairly dismiss a light red. Do not proclaim that chardonnay is the "best" white wine. Australian chardonnay certainly is the biggest richest most complex and alcoholic of Australia's white wine. However, there is demand for more delicate whites as accompaniment to lunch, lighter meals, fresh seafood, salads and so on. In these cases, Riesling, Semillon and other light whites are appropriate whereas Chardonnay is not. If you are comparing wines of similar style, them remember the pointers shown below for judging wine quality.
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The question of a presence of flavour is the most important attribute of quality. If you are trying a wine and you cannot detect any flavour, then recognise it as a lesser wine. Be careful of wines which impress you with richness at the first taste - they may become boring quickly to an extent that you cannot even finish off a glassful. Sweet wines, unless very well made, tend to have this weakness. As you move up the price scales, generally you will taste the quality attributes more and more. As a rule of thumb, bottled wine usually has flavour whereas non-bottled wine is neutral. In order to obtain reasonable quality ie. with a depth of flavour, you must purchase bottles at about A$8 or more. When you move from the A$8 - A$10 range to the A$10 - A$15 range, the quality jumps up substantially. It is generally recognised that Australian wines in the A$10 - A$15 range are very strong in quality and are of world class standard. Judging Wine Quality
1.Does the wine have flavour?
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