Australia could get broader GI zone
Discussion is under way about the creation of a broad Greater Australia Geographical Indication. The Committee that sets the country’s wine regions is looking at the possibility of having a super zone that would include Western Australia in the South Eastern Australia (SEA) GI of New South Wales, along with Victoria and South Australia.
The discussion has stemmed from the likelihood of the 2008 harvest being significantly reduced and SEA having to draw on grapes from Western Australia to fulfil supply, according to Wine Australia in the UK. Western Australia is one place not to have suffered a grape shortage as a result of the country’s droughts and frosts over the past year.
Winemakers, however, have mixed feelings about the prospect of such a GI. Michael Hope of Hope Estate in the Hunter Valley told ThirtyFifty, ‘I feel that the launch of a Greater Australia GI will only add to the dumbing down of the Australian wine category. The last thing we need is to be conveying the message to UK consumers that we are one big bland, generic wine-producing region.
‘We need to be pushing regionality and the diversity of Australian wines and not the opposite,’ he said.
Nicole Esdaile, chief winemaker at Rutherglen Estates in Victoria, also believes that the decision places greater urgency on the implementation of the new regionality strategy outlined in the new plan of Wine Australia, to distinguish between wines of this nature and those of premium, regional origin. She said, ‘The South Eastern Australia designation has already diminished Australia's reputation as a premium wine-producing country, and it is possible that this new name for the same idea could make the situation worse.’
However, she also said, ‘I think that having Western Australia fruit in a generic Australian blend is probably a positive thing for consumers, in that WA fruit could be seen as adding a “freshness” and providing a quality input that the large warm (irrigated) areas, from which most of the big blends come, often lack.’