VITICULTURE
STARTING AGAIN
after China slams shut F
red O’Keefe wants to make wine for everyone.
When wine diehards discover his 11-hectare vineyard in Kialla they tell him he’s selling the bottles too cheap, but that doesn’t bother Fred. “I remember when we first opened the cellar door you’d get embarrassed people asking ‘do you have any sweet wines?’ and I’d go ‘yeah!’,” he said. “They’d been to other wineries and felt ashamed they wanted sweet wine, but we all start on the sweet stuff. “I made my first few wines sweet for that reason . . . we have made both sweet wines and traditional style Shiraz from our very first vintage in 2001. Absolutely anyone can come in here and I’ll have something they like.” It sounds too good to be true, and right now it is, because Fred’s cellar door at his Broken River Vineyards is currently closed (but he says “watch this space!”). The reason why is obvious when you notice the souvenirs from Fred’s trips to China scattered around his counter, cabinets and around the piano.
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“We’d been over in China for 12 years and built up a pretty good business but we were cut off like that,” Fred said. “I made a lot of friends over there and we still talk on WeChat but they are very — well, if the government says no then you can’t have it.” Fred said even if the 218 per cent wine tariff was to be lifted, he couldn’t see the business returning. “They love their alcohol in China and they loved their wines . . . but unfortunately we can’t do anything about it and I don’t think they are going to let Australian wine back in for at least five years,” he said. “Chile has taken over and picked up whatever Australia lost.” Fred is now concentrating on finding new customers to unload the thousands upon thousands of bottles he has in storage. This week alone he sold 144 bottles over Qoin — an Australian digital currency website popular among financial types and tradies. “I’m doing an experiment to see if I
Fred’s been fighting for signs on the Goulburn Valley Hwy for decades, but all VicRoads gave him were two on the bypass. “People on the bypass don’t want to stop, the tourists come up the highway but they miss all the signs.”
can get into other parts of Australia and it is working . . . how else do you get wine from here to there?” Fred said. “Everything is an option as far as domestic goes.” It is a far cry from the days when he crisscrossed China, racing from wine show to wine show. “We don’t sell through our website,”
Fred admitted. “My son wants me to set it up but I’m not up with all that stuff. He’s at me all the time about it but I never did any of these things because I was in export. “When you are moving in container lots you aren’t worried about selling a small amount through your website — but times have changed.” Fred knows the cellar door needs
