As a producer in our highly competitive industry it’s important and difficult to keep up with the market.

For over 20 years we tried to sell Rose. We made different styles, different grape varieties, fancy packaging. Our Rose wines won numerous show awards. We tried targeting various markets: women, young  people, the gay market. But we were pissing into the wind. So we gave up. Then Rose took off. Wrong place, wrong time.

Many producers have similar stories. The larger producers are better able to experiment with new styles and varieties, by just putting a toe into the water. Plantings of new varieties take three years or longer to produce. And they don’t always turn out as planned. A few years ago a number of growers planted what they thought was Albarino. As the vines came into production it became evident that they were not Albarino but Savignan. One wag labelled his first vintage as Albarinot.

New varieties to Australia gain interest through the travel of producers, or the publicity by wine writers. Cutting edge and trendy eateries and bars play their part. Word of mouth also helps. Some of these catch on, others fade away. Occasionally there is a big hit – remember Cab-Mac? It was a marketing sensation which resulted directly from some very innovative winemaking.

Most marketing innovations are contrived by people in advertising or marketing departments.

As a small stand alone producer I have had a few wins, usually by thinking outside the box and breaking new ground. Then others copied my innovations, and they lost their punch. Also, I have formed the belief that a person has a finite amount of creativity. At least this bloke had, and I’ve used it all up.

I found when in retail that I gradually lost my love of wine. I still loved drinking it and tasting it, but the fun went out of talking and reading about wine. We had some customers who were serious “wine knowalls”. They could bore the socks off you if you listened to them. They loved going to tastings, where fortunately they bored the socks off each other. These blokes never drank a lot, and didn’t buy much – they just banged on endlessly about wine.

I developed a theory about the wine knowall.

Wine is a form of art. Think of other forms of art.

Paintings: You can see these in galleries, or reproductions, but they’re always there.

Music: You can go to performances, listen to recordings.

Literature, poetry: These can be read, recited.

Opera, ballet, plays: These are performed regularly, or seen on media.

All of the above are accessible one way or another.

Now think about wine. You have in the cellar a bottle of a particular wine from a particular vintage. You agonise for years about the optimum time to open it – will it be too young, or past its best? Then the great day comes. As the dinner party comes to its crescendo, with a dramatic flourish you uncork it and decant it. You get out the best glassware and pour half an inch into each. You raise the glass to your nose, and … bugger!

The wine is corked. That’s the worst case. But the point remains: unless you have multiple bottles of the same wine, a particular wine can only be enjoyed once. That’s why I think wine is the most cruel of all the arts, and the wine knowall is a seriously deranged person.

Fortunately I cured myself of that particular affliction.

Getting back to retail – I cured myself of the “wine knowall” disease, then I got tired of retail. I found myself becoming like Basil Fawlty. We had 20 or so employees over the four shops. Most of them were good, a few excellent. But there were some who were real underachievers. And a couple who stole from us.

In the end we were approached by a consortium and we sold. By then we already owned one producing vineyard, and were planting another. So it was a seamless move from retailer to producer.

On the large vineyard we planted, we put in a number of varieties of reds and whites. We learned from experience over the next few years a number of lessons.

Of the three clones of Chardonnay we planted, one proved unreliable in both yield and quality, so it was replaced.

We were too far south to fully ripen Cabernet Sauvignon every year. We decided to replace it with another variety. The Cabernet we harvested before pulling the vines out was magnificent! But we didn’t know how good it was until the vines were out.

There was little market for all the Merlot we planted, so we replaced most of it. Merlot grew like a weed on our vineyard, making good wine (for Merlot that is – not a favourite of mine) with real intensity, and winning us our first trophy.

Shortly after we had finished establishing the vineyard, one of our distributors started to nag us about not having a Pinot Gris. So we replace some Semillon with Pinot Gris, yet another three years of reduced production. In the end we got the mix right for the market for our wines, and were ready for the next set of challenges.

Next time I sit at the computer (the modern version of “putting pen to paper”) I’ll ramble a little about life as a producer, and maybe share my thoughts on beer.