Humble Pie

Finding patriotism in unexpected places

Disclaimer: Fair warning, this one was written in a rage, delicate sensibilities not included.

I am sitting unsteadily on an IKEA spring mattress, negroni enthusiastically splashed into an op-shop foraged wine glass, listening to the sound of children playing on the playground outside. It is summer in London, and the air is weighty with a humidity that never seems to leave the city and our emergency plumber has just left after spending four hours attempting to unblock our shower drain (to little avail). Life over the past month could not be more different than the luxurious and decadent six weeks we spent in Europe, or indeed the comfortable professional lives we lived in Melbourne.

So in order to keep the words flowing - the combination of an unexpected deadline and the notoriously horrific London rental market has taken me away from substack over the past few weeks - I interrupt our regular programming with something a little less wine and a little more personal.

I hear authenticity is quite trendy now.

I have always lived in Australia. I was born and raised in Melbourne by a loving family and received a lot of the privileges that a stable upbringing and reasonable economic status can afford someone like me. My parents were incredibly hard working and instilled the value of a concrete work ethic and making the most of opportunities. I was always told I could be whatever I wanted to be - an idea now recognised as highly problematic for an entire generation, when indeed they found out that they could not in fact, make a living as an adult mermaid or that the number of jobs available to them after university was more than heavily limited. But… I was fortunate enough to have a good head for most school subjects and am a sucker for positive reinforcement, so excellent school grades and performance in tertiary studies gave me more freedom to choose than most people.

When I chose hospitality as my career - admittedly, not the original plan - it struck a number of people I knew as odd. From the outside, there’s very little to like. Unsociable hours, long days *insert whatever industry magazine comments you would like here regarding awful working conditions* and perhaps primarily, low earning potential - which when you have the opportunity to choose amongst some of the highest paid career paths, seems like a really poor option for your long term financial health. After a few rocky years, wine came along, a surprisingly intellectual pursuit encompassing history, geography, science, creativity and people - people who were passionate, dedicated, who risked it all every year to work within the natural world to create something beautiful. Consumer and the broader industry put wine on a pedestal; those who worked within it were respected, those who could taste and describe it were revered. Sommeliers? They were figures of such magic it was almost witchcraft. Wine was a way of pursuing hospitality with knowledge and respect at the forefront. It’s been 7 years since I made the decision that pursuing a career in wine was what I wanted, whatever the role, form or position, and I have not regretted it for a single moment.

A few months ago, I left a respected position in a revered industry group, having worked with wineries and winemakers I have the utmost admiration for, surrounded by people who are some of the best I have ever known in an industry that is constantly working to better conditions, equality, diversity and sustainability for its workers and for its future. I am so incredibly proud to be a part of the Australian wine industry, and the hospitality world as a whole, so bloody proud, that leaving it felt like leaving a significant part of myself behind.

So why did we move?

For both Doug and I at the time, Europe had this historic appeal that was reinforced by our colleagues at our previous venue. People talking about their time in London, their exposure to high end producers, the bottles they saw, the famous old vintages they decanted…the hours they didn’t sleep, the number of packet noodles they ate, how exhausted and overworked and naive they were. How the restaurants are better, more hard core, more influential, more important. People talking war stories and trauma venues in London seemed like part of the deal - because the implication in Australia is that if you’ve only worked here, you don’t know what working in restaurants is “really like”. More importantly, by extension of that chip-on-the-shoulder putting Europe on a goddamn pedestal attitude, I find myself unexpectedly confronted with a superiority complex I was too naive to believe still existed.

If you mostly drink Australian wine, then you don’t know what wine is really like.

*cue dramatic pause*

Yes, ladies and gentleman. The rant portion of this post is about to begin. Cover your ears.

I do not consider myself a proud person, but at almost 30, having moved half way across the world to discover that a fully qualified person with 15 years industry experience can expect no better than minimum wage for a sommelier position…it took me a moment.*

It was then a bit of a shock when in pursuing Australian wines at my current venue, or indeed any venue or bottle shop for that matter - in what is considered to be a leading fine wine destination in the world - that my search turned up almost nothing. I was a qualified sommelier, who’d just landed a solid position at a respected venue…and most of my anecdotal wine knowledge about local producers was not even remotely useful. Who’d have thought?

It turns out, almost nobody exports to the UK, or at least not enough people to represent the diversity that Australia has developed in the last 20 years.

Drinking and talking about Australian wine in the UK is a bizarrely out of touch experience. Wine buyers’ opinions of Australian wines here are frozen in the early 2000s eras of critter wines and big South Australian and Hunter Valley producers (they’re still here by the way, flying a rather ragged looking Aussie flag over in the corner) because that is the era when Aussie producers were most active here. For some fairly rudimentary economic reasons, the majority of the Australian export market decided to pursue other markets rather than the UK market, so new world representation is dominated by areas such as Chile, Argentina and South Africa, rather than Australia and New Zealand. Nobody considers Australian wine because it’s not considered relevant, why? Because it isn’t, not here, not when there hasn’t been significant and passionate representation for the past 15 years.

15 years is a long time in the wine world to not have an update. In the past 15 years in Australia we have seen the rise and fall of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the discovery of Rosé and Pinot Grigio, a massive increase in alternative varietals (including significant Italian influences) to combat increasing global temperatures, the development of the natural wine scene and a distinctive shift towards cool climate styles - we champion Pinot Noir now. Also, did I mention the return of Chardonnay?

Suggesting an Australian producer as a potential listing meets blank faces, glazed expressions and a silence louder than cicadas on a dry summers day when you’re sitting on the porch with a VB in hand waiting for the BBQ to warm up.**

One day I approached the silence with a “What’s wrong with Australian wine?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

And that my dear friends, is why representation matters. You want to kill a country’s wine reputation, stop contributing to it. I did a quick google to see what was available in the bottle shops in my area. For the diversity that Australia has to offer, especially in Victoria, the results were grim. I send nothing but an enthusiastic kudos to the producers that have been quietly waving that flag - because it looks like it has been a long slog to be taken seriously in the ‘mother country’.

I came to the UK because the benchmarks that Australian wines are constantly being compared to are increasingly unavailable to industry and consumers in Australia. A series of short vintages, the chaos of purchasing habits during two years of lockdowns and an increasing number of restaurant openings has resulted in increasingly diminishing allocations and skyrocketing prices. I can’t afford to drink Burgundy in Melbourne, and even if I wanted to celebrate with a lesser-known grower champagne I’m unlikely to get a response from the importer. It’s not a complaint per se, its the lay of the land in a world that has increasing demand for the same types of wines. Economics in its purest form, but it did mean that for exposure, moving to London was also an economic choice.

What better way to expand your knowledge and become more qualified than to move to a country where availability and exposure is second to none?

There are so many reasons why Australia’s lack of representation makes sense, but also hits as so profoundly disappointing…because in turn, the leading reviewers, book writers, publications and buyers seem to settle here and determine the next trends, regions, styles to be popularised, favoured, revered for the world.

If we’re not represented in a way that reflects the modern production styles and opportunity that Australian wine presents, how do we get a seat at that table?

Why would the new wave of alternative varieties make sense if you didn’t understand the climatic conditions affecting Australian wine growers? How would you know about cool climate Syrah and Pinot Noir regions if the bottles never make it across the sea? If 2009 Hunter Valley Semillon was the only white wine from Australia you had tasted, what would you think of Australian wine?

The final - rather personal - consequence of all of this is that Australian palates are viewed differently - not in a way that reflects the true differences between learning to taste in a new world space compared to an old world one. (The trick is that new world tasters favour fruit first, old world tasters favour savoury…and therefore tend to lean into the opposite wines upon instinct before they learn to identify that prejudice). Australian palates are - silently - considered less informed, less sophisticated, less objective, due to their lack of exposure to old world wines and due to their lack of representation here as a premium region. *my pride gets hit again*

So, as I sit here, sipping on my negroni with a bitterness that rivals that of my chosen aperitif, I am proud and convinced of the fact that Australian wine is capable of getting a seat at a table that is so important in leading the global conversation in an industry I love.

Furiously and ferociously, I will continue to write about Australian wine, put bottles in front of buyers, bring up regions and winemaking styles and producer names and techniques to make it relevant again in whatever capacity I can muster. I encourage you all, if you’re reading this, to go down to your local, select a bottle of something delicious, artisanal and fair-dinkum Aussie grog and have a glass from me - hopefully my glass here won’t be too long in coming.

~~~

*There’s a whole separate rant on the under-valuing of skilled work here that I will not burden you with.

**You bet I’m going to make the most of every Australian cliche, colloquialism and phrase here. I’m going full bogan and proud of it, my Uggs are in the post.