Wine & Viticulture Journal - September/October 2014

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 · Volume 29 Number 5

WINERY INNOVATIONS & TECHNOLOGY • Getting the most out of winery trials in an SME •Staying a step ahead of 'Brett' • Mechanical pruning and trunk disease infections • Consumer perceptions of wine brand names • Tasting: Fumé Blanc

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Publisher: Hartley Higgins General Manager: Elizabeth Bouzoudis Editor Sonya Logan Ph (08) 8369 9502 Email

Fax (08) 8369 9501 s.logan@winetitles.com.au

Editorial Advisory Panel Gary Baldwin Peter Dry Mark Krstic Armando Corsi Markus Herderich Editorial Assistance Lauren Jones, Write Lane CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Pedro Balda Tony Battaglene Anthony Borneman

Jonathan Cahill

Lilian Carter

Paul Chambers

Greg Clack

Justin Cohen

Toni Cordente

Armando Corsi

Renee Creer

Chris Curtin

David Dean

Fernando Martínez de Toda

Peter Dry

Richard Fennessy

Sharon Forbes

Mark Gishen

James Gosper

Markus Herderich

Tony Hoare

Cathy Howard

Dan Johnson

Tony Keys

Robyn Kievit

Larry Lockshin

Cath Oates

Paul Petrie

Mark Rowley

Richard Smart

Charlie Svenson

Loretta Svenson

Ryan Zeppel Advertising Sales: Dan Bannan Ph (08) 8369 9515 Fax (08) 8369 9529 Email d.brannan@winetitles.com.au Production and Design: Maria Baker Subscriptions One-year subscription (6 issues) Australia $77.00 (AUD) Two-year subscription (12 issues) Australia $144.00 (AUD) To subscribe and for overseas prices, visit: www.winebiz.com.au The Wine & Viticulture Journal is published bi-monthly.

Correspondence and enquiries should be directed to Sonya Logan.The views expressed in the Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Journal or its staff.

Sonya Logan, Editor

A

s readers know, we always welcome feedback here at the Journal about anything we’ve published, although such feedback is infrequent. But, we received not one but two letters to the editor in relation to the content of our last issue, which we’ve published on page 9 of this issue, and we encourage more of you to follow suit. An exchange of views among our readers and contributors is a sign of a healthy relationship between this magazine and its stakeholders and is something we wish to foster.

The focus of this issue of the Journal is ‘Winery Innovations & Technology’ and has a particular emphasis on small to medium (SME) enterprise wineries. To this end, Cathy Howard has written about how SMEs can get the most out of winery trials as they endeavour to evolve their winemaking practices (page 15). And I talk with Domaine Chandon’s operational winemaker Adam Keath about the simple yet effective technology advances that have been implemented in the winery recently to produce significant savings in energy (page 20). Then we have our Product Showcase for SME Wineries where we invited wine industry suppliers to present to our readers products of particular interest to operations of this size (page 22).

We also present the results of research by Richard Fennessy, from the Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia, into the influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness

of cold maceration prior to fermentation (page 24), while the AWRI summarises research under way to enable winemakers to stay a step ahead of Brett (page 34).

In viticulture, Richard Smart voices his concern about the role that mechanical pruning may be playing in contributing to trunk disease infections (page 38), while Tony Hoare, inspired by a passionate discussion at the recent ASVO seminar in Mildura regarding the value of older vineyards versus young vineyards, draws on his own experiences to compare whether vine age or vine balance is best for quality (page 45).

Over in Business & Marketing, New Zealand researchers report on their efforts to link types of brand names with consumer attitudes and purchase intensions (page 55), while UK-based advertising and marketing expert Jonathan Cahill talks about how the wine industry, like no other, has a rich heartland of stories that can stir up people’s emotions to encourage them to buy their products, yet few wineries exploit them (page 60). And Renee Creer, from Liquid Ideas, talks about how to avoid and manage social media when it goes bad – advice that McLaren Vale winery Middlebrook Estate may have benefitted from during a recent social media blow-up (page 62).

And be sure to check out the results of our recent Fumé Blanc tasting over on page 77.

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Cover: Photo by Ben Heide, taken at Patritti Wines in Adelaide, South Australia.

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Regular features

News AGWA ASVO WFA Tony Keys

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AWRI Report Alternative Varieties Varietal Report Tasting

Win e & V iticultur e Jo ur na l

34 53 74 77

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I n t h is iss u e

R E GULA R F E AT U R E S

co n te n ts

V I T I C UL T U R E

10 AGWA (James Gosper): There’s nothing like Australian wine, so tell your story to the world

38 RICHARD SMART: Mechanical pruning: it seemed a good idea at the time

11 ASVO (Paul Petrie): Excitement fermenting over Adelaide seminar and awards for excellence 12 WFA (Tony Battaglene): Improving market access through APEC 11 KEY FILES (TONY KEYS): Dreaming of treasure

W I N E M A K I NG

15 CATHY HOWARD: Winemaking trials in smaller wineries can be valuable if done properly

45 TONY HOARE : Vine age versus vine balance – which is more important?

48 Canberra sees the silver lining in damaging frosts 50 Canopy management strategies to decrease wine pH – a Spanish trial 53 ALTERNATIVE VARIETIES: Saperavi

20 Technology needn’t be high-tech when it comes to saving money in the winery 22 Product showcase for SME wineries 24 Influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of pre-fermentative cold maceration 34 (AWRI REPORT) Staying a step ahead of ‘Brett’

business & marketing

55 Consumer perceptions of wine brand names 60 The untapped potential of wines’ stories 62 When social media goes bad: how to prepare for and manage issues online

W I N E T A S T I NG

74 Fumé Blanc

66 Words are powerful: How are they used to describe wine in China?

70 Decline in Australian wine exports to China shows signs of easing 72 Improving energy efficiency with the Winery Energy Saver Toolkit V2 9N 5

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5

N E W S

Independent investigation announced

by WFA into ‘incomplete’ letter

T

he Winemaker’s Federation of Australia (WFA) has announced an independent investigation into how and why the McLaren Vale Grape Wine & Tourism Association (MVGWT) was provided a redacted version of a cover letter to an independent assessment of its sustainability program and WFA’s Entwine program.

The incomplete covering letter (with one paragraph and a letterhead edited out) was provided to the VGWT on Friday 5 September. Neither the WFA board, nor chief executive Paul Evans authorised the edits. The assessment by AusQual was to determine whether the McLaren Vale program, Sustainable Australia Winegrowing, met the required standard for recognition under the Entwine program. MVGWT has been seeking to have its program qualify for Entwine accreditation for some time.

On 10 September, WFA’s board accepted the recommendation put forward by the Wine Industry National Environment Committee (WINEC) - an advisory committee to the WFA board on national environmental policies and activities which is responsible for assessing Entwine accreditation and overseas its membership and administration – that Level 2 of McLaren Vale’s program be approved and given Entwine membership.

At the same meeting, the WFA board was also advised by Evans about the incomplete cover letter provided to the MVGWT, who said he had subsequently sent the complete document to the organisation and apologised. WINEC chair Gioia Small also sent an explanation and apology to MVGWT, advising the paragraph in question had been removed because it was deemed inappropriate and a subjective opinion that did not reflect what both organisations were looking for in the assessment, that is, an independent and rigorous review of both programs based on solid evidence.

WFA president Tony D’Aloisio informed his members on Friday 19 September that an independent review into the events would be carried out, with David Bleby QC, a recently retired judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia, appointed to examine the matter and provide a report.

The terms of reference for Bleby’s investigation in relation to the covering letter to the Aus-Qual report are: • examine the events relating to the provision of the covering letter and differences between the original and copy provided • speak to those involved and as he deems necessary to others • make all such other enquiries as he sees fit • provide his findings on what occurred and recommendations on what actions WFA should or may need to take including any improvements in processes.

“Mr Bleby will complete his report as quickly as possible and the WFA board will meet to consider it and advise members of the outcome. In the meantime, while this review is under way, it is not appropriate for us to be providing public commentary,” D’Aloisio said.

Marc Allgrove, chief executive of MVGWT, said his organisation and the local wine community wanted to focus on the positives of having Sustainable Australia Winegrowing approved by Entwine Australia and available to grapegrowers across the country.

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Tony D'Aloisio (left) and Paul Evans (right).

“The association and region is very much focussed on developing programs that encourage sustainable practices throughout the wine community. We are delighted to have accreditation of the program to Entwine because of the benefits this represents for the whole of the wine community in allowing it to demonstrate these practices to the rest of the world,” Allgrove said.

“This accreditation is good for Australian wine as it gives options to grapegrowers across the country to develop practices that are sustainable and enable continuous improvement.

“It’s important that programs are assessed with rigour. We might have felt that the amount of rigour applied in this case was very significant and that the lack of a well-articulated assessment process unnecessarily delayed the accreditation of Sustainable Australia Winegrowing to Entwine, but that view is subjective.”

Speculation about links between the two matters (the redacted document and Entwine approval) has been raised and criticism of the Entwine program has emerged online. The WFA’s representation of the entire Australian wine industry has also been questioned, but Evans has dismissed the speculation and criticism.

Allgrove said MVGWT acknowledged and recognised the importance of industry bodies that represent, advocate, reflect and lead the Australian wine community and its development.

“It’s important for an industry representative body to be exactly that, truly reflective of the industry’s needs and views.

The important thing is that there’s an understanding of the uniqueness of the Australian wine community’s collaborative strength and that this is recognised and reinforced as a point of differentiation in local and international markets.”

Allgrove said he had been approached to contribute to the investigation into the Aus-Qual letter and he intended to do so.

Entwine Australia is a voluntary national environmental assurance program available to Australian wine companies and grapegrowers. Launched in December 2009, it was developed

by WFA and currently has about 700 members spread across all wine producing regions.

Sustainable Australia Winegrowing was launched in 2012 and has has about 120 participants representing 180 vineyards in McLaren Vale, or more than 35% of growers and 53% of the WVJ grapes produced.

W i n e & V i t i c ult u r e Jo ur n a l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

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N E W S

Turning winery waste into biofuels Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology have developed a technique for converting grape skins, pulp, stalks and seeds into compounds that could have potential value as biofuels or medicines.

As part of his PhD research, Swinburne student Avinash Karpe has been investigating how to break down this material which comprises cellulose, pectins and lignins into simpler compounds that can be used to create other things such as ethanol or other biofuels.

Karpe performed a series of experiments to develop the best procedure for degrading winery biomass waste.

“Various fungi are known to degrade this waste by generating an array of enzymes,” Karpe said. “These enzymes convert the waste to soluble sugars which can then be converted into other products.”

He discovered that a 30-minute heat activated pre-treatment aided in the breakdown of these biomolecules.

Using a ‘cocktail’ of four fungi – Trichoderma harzianum, Aspergillus niger, Penicillium chrysogenum and Penicillium citrinum - in a one litre bioreactor, Karpe succeeded in breaking down the biomass, with noticeable increases in enzyme activity and lignin degradation.

This fermentation process takes one to three weeks and produces alcohols, acids and simple sugars of industrial and medicinal interest.

“We have demonstrated this

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technique in the laboratory, but this process can be scaled up to an industrial scale,” chair of Swinburne’s Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Professor Enzo Palombo, said.

The Swinburne researchers worked with CSIRO on this research with the grape material obtained from Australian Wine Research Institute.

Karpe’s research has been published in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology.

How does your wine make you feel?

University of Adelaide researchers are investigating the links between wine, where it’s consumed and emotion to help the Australian wine industry gain deeper consumer insights into their products.

A trial is under way involving 360 wine consumers who have been sampling specific wines in different environments, and rating their emotional response on a specially devised ‘wine emotion scale’.

“There has been a lot of work done on sensory analysis of wine so we now have a very good idea of what consumers like about wine,” said project leader Dr Sue Bastian, senior lecturer in oenology and sensory studies for the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

“But just knowing what flavours consumers like and don’t like is not enough. We need to learn from the food and perFumé industries and understand how wines affect our emotions – and the role emotions play in influencing what we choose to drink at certain occasions and how emotions affect our purchasing decisions.”

W i n e & V i t i cultur e Jo ur n a l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

S N I P S

In preparation for the consumer trial, experts helped to identify four distinct quality levels of 100 Australian Shiraz wines; consumer focus groups were used to validate a wine emotion scale; a trained tasting panel compiled detailed sensory profiles of 40 of the 100 wines, chosen as distinct examples of their quality groups; and 12 wines selected to make three flights of four wines (one from each quality group) for random allocation to the trial participants.

The participants then blind tasted four wines in three different settings – a restaurant, at home and in the sensory laboratory. They rated 19 different emotions the wines may have prompted ranging from warm-hearted or nostalgic through to tense or irritated.

“There are characters in wines which may generate negative emotion; but we also want to understand what it is about wine which drives positive emotion,” Bastian said.

“We are also looking at how the wine setting, for example drinking in a restaurant as opposed to home, impacts the emotions that are stimulated as well as how the consumers like the wines and their perceptions of wine quality and the price they are prepared to pay.

“And we’re investigating how consumer research lab results compare with those from more natural settings of home and restaurant to see if lab data can successfully predict consumer decisions compared with using more representative places and measures of consumer behaviour,” she said.

The project is funded by the Australian Grape and Wine Authority and the results will be published in future issues of the Wine & Viticulture Journal.

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7

CODE OF CONDUCT

Code of Conduct under review

T

he Australian Wine Industry Code of Conduct is to undergo improvements over the coming months in an effort to correct one of its greatest deficiencies - a failure to reach the agreed target of wine company signatories.

The code was launched by the nation’s representative grapegrower and winemaker organisations in Wine Grape Growers Australia (WGGA) and the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) in December 2008. It is overseen and administered by the Wine Industry Code Management Committee (CMC) - consisting of eight members appointed by the boards of WFA and WGGA – whose job includes considering and enacting improvements.

Lawrie Stanford, executive director of WGGA, said the CMC had been “very active” since the beginning of 2014 in attempting to improve the code, saying a number of key issues had been identified to improve its operation and address the current grower and wine company dissatisfaction with it.

To improve compliance between the code and grower-winery contracts, Stanford said a template contract was being developed that incorporated the code’s principles, while checklists were being established to enable signatory consistency with the code to be easily measured through a simple audit process. FAQs were also being finalised to inform the industry of the code’s requirements.

“Indicative pricing has been identified as a major disincentive by wineries to sign the code,” Stanford said. “It was also identified by the winegrape grower representatives as a major problem this vintage as it encouraged lower across-the-board prices.

“The CMC has agreed that the need for indicative pricing should be assessed across the regions and if appropriate, remove or change the requirement for indicative pricing.

It was also noted that a mechanism to better inform growers of supply and demand early in the season was desirable,” Stanford said.

He said the CMC had questioned whether the code gave winegrape growers sufficient confidence to dispute alleged contract breaches, with the establishment of compliance officers being considered to stop potential discriminatory activity. Stanford said it was agreed that better tools be developed to inform growers of how to

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institute dispute settlement processes.

Tony Battaglene, general manager of strategy and international affairs at the WFA, said the CMC had acknowledged that poor uptake of the code by wineries was a fundamental problem with the code’s effectiveness, noting this may improve if indicative pricing was removed. Alternatives to the code, or alternative forms of codes, to address the low winery uptake are also being investigated by the committee.

Battaglene said the CMC had also agreed to meet more frequently to enable the code to be updated if necessary to adapt to changing circumstances. He said the WFA

would also undertake an education campaign given that many growers and operations personnel in companies were unaware of the code and how it relates to contracts.

Battaglene said an immediate maintenance item was the current list of independent experts who adjudicate disputes arising from alleged breaches of the code. This was being updated and he encouraged any parties interested in registering for the pool to contact him via email: Tony@wfa.org.au Further information about the responsibilities of independant experts can be found on the Code website at WVJ www.wineindustrycode.org

Background to the Australian Wine Industry Code of Conduct • •

• • •

• • • •

•

Signed by representatives of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) and Wine Grape Growers Australia (WGGA) on 19 December 2008 Purpose of the Code is two-fold: • establish a common framework for Australian winegrape supply contracts • provide a dispute resolution system to manage price or quality assessment disputes The Code is voluntary - there are no joining fees or ongoing annual costs The minimum requirements set out in the code have been agreed by WFA and WGGA Winegrape purchasers who are signatories to the code agree to be bound by the principles of the code in their commercial dealings with winegrape growers; they also undertake to provide a grower with a copy of the code whenever that grower signs a new agreement WFA and WGGA agreed to publicise and promote the code and its dispute resolution procedures, and to work to maximise its adoption within the industry A register of signatories – currently 40 in total - is maintained on the Australian Wine Industry Code of Conduct website (www.wineindustrycode. org) The code is overseen and administered by the Wine Industry Code Management Committee (CMC) jointly appointed by the boards of the WFA and WGGA; it consists of eight members supported by a secretariat of three The CMC is the custodian of the code which monitors and assesses its performance, considers and enacts improvements, facilitates the resolution of disputes over winegrape prices and vineyard downgrades and rejections, and determines alleged breaches of the code by signatories. It is also required to produce an annual report to be published by 30 September each year containing: • a description of the nature and number of disputes received • any comments it wishes to make about conduct or trends in the industry • a report on the operations of the code, including the names of any parties removed from the Code • a list all current signatories to the code and new signatories since the previous annual report.

The CMC appoints a secretariat to the code (jointly funded by WGGA and WFA) to provide secretariat services, and to which the CMC may delegate any of its powers or duties under the code. The secretariat at this time is The Accord Group, an international dispute resolution firm, which is charged with facilitating disputes so that this function is at ‘arms-length’ from the industry members of the CMC

W i n e & V i t i c ult u r e Jo ur n a l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Keep the political c**p out of the Journal

L

ove my Wine & Viticulture Journal but not with the massively political comment (editorial, July-August 2014 issue).

The AWRI’s program ‘Building resilience and sustainability in the grape and wine sector’ is all about anthropological global warming. Really?

No other threats we face? Australian debt, interest rates, taxation? Maybe international affairs, exchange rates, world recession, or the decline of Western culture? Nope! Just global warming! Wow! You refer to “facts about what lies

in store for the planet in the coming decades”. Gee, I would call those ‘predictions’. Maybe we should ask the Climate Council about the facts for next Saturday’s Tattslotto numbers.

So, how accurate has the Climate Council and Will Steffen been with previous ‘predictions’?

You throw in a line about how the ABS couldn’t find any costs associated with the previous government’s carbon tax. Maybe you never paid a winery’s power bill, but as someone who did, I could find some costs. As would anybody who gasses

refrigeration units.

Frankly, quoting New Matilda and the Climate Council is hardly what I regard as unbiased expert opinion. But maybe that’s just me.

When my copy of ‘Redneck Weekly’ or ‘Bastard Boss Monthly’ tell me that anthropological global warming is real and the world actually has warmed for the last 17 years due to our actions (it hasn’t) I might be a little more understanding.

Until then, let’s keep the political c**p out of what is a great technical journal.

‘Smithy’ (name withheld)

Much smarter thinking on terroir

R

ob Bramley published ‘Smarter thinking on terroir’ in the JulyAugust 2014 issue (pp53-58). The title was a pun on my name as I had written earlier columns on the subject.

Here is a response – ‘Much smarter thinking on terroir’ (I tried to make a pun of Rob’s surname, but failed).

I prefer the English word ‘provenance’ to the French ‘terroir’. Both can effectively mean the same thing, the effect of place (and time) on wine; the French word, because of its construction, infers more of a land/soil effect.

I found much to agree with in Rob’s article. He proposes and presents data to confirm that various soil properties can vary over quite short distances in vineyards, measured over metres or tens of metres. He shows that such “micro” variation can impact many vineyard and wine attributes, such as vineyard gross margin, yield, vine vigour, wine aroma, and rotundone concentration, responsible

for the peppery character in Shiraz.

Rob concludes his article by questioning the logic of wine marketers and wine writers discussing terroir at the regional scale, when substantial differences in wine attributes can be found at the micro scale due to soil variation in one block.

I sympathise with this opinion, although in my view regional terroir effects are readily understood by regional differences in climate, which is a ‘terroir’ (and ‘provenance’) component. I am comfortable with the notion that there are regional wine styles, call them terroir if you want. They are to do with place.

And can vary with year, so there is a time component.

Where I have a problem is with marketers or writers waxing lyrical about terroir effects for estate wines. Do they want us to believe that the soils within an estate are homogeneous, and that the soil perimeter neatly coincides with the

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property boundary? The figures in the Bramley paper show this notion to be nonsensical, that soil variation is marked within an estate/vineyard/block.

I am not denying here that adjacent properties might produce different wine styles/quality, but the explanation typically lies in vineyard management and maybe winemaking differences. There can be major soil differences between properties, but more commonly there are differences in soil properties on either side of the boundary.

In my opinion, most if not all terroir effects at the micro level can be explained by the canopy microclimate/vine vigour model, with due allowance for soil/ plant moisture effects, which can be substantial, but which are also related to vigour. It has been shown many times that so-called terroir effects can be modified by canopy management.

Richard Smart Smart Viticulture

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9

AG W A

There’s nothing like Australian wine, so tell your story to the world

By James Gosper, General Manager – Market Development, Australian Grape and Wine Authority

A

ustralia is home to some of the best food and wine experiences in the world. We in the industry know it; locals know it; and travellers who visit Australia soon discover it. The thing is, people who have never been here before often don’t think of Australia as a country with a sophisticated food and wine culture.

Tourism Australia recently conducted consumer research and found that the ‘food and wine’ experience of a destination is one of the key factors in deciding where people would holiday, even ahead of ‘worldclass beauty’ and ‘interesting attractions’.

The research also found that when it comes to Australian food and wine experiences, there’s a bit of work to be done.

Of all people surveyed, only 26 percent of

Only 26 percent of people who had not visited Australia before associated the country with good food and wine experiences... this figure rose dramatically to 60% for people who had made the trip to Australia and enjoyed the opportunity to experience its unique food and wine culture for themselves. people who had not visited Australia before associated the country with good food and wine experiences, a disappointingly low number. In much more encouraging news, this figure rose dramatically to 60% for people who had made the trip to Australia and enjoyed the opportunity to experience its unique food and wine culture

for themselves. In fact, it placed Australia second highest on the list behind France.

So, to better tell the story of Australian wine to a global audience, Wine Australia (the marketing brand for AGWA) is supporting the Restaurant Australia campaign launched earlier this year by Tourism Australia.

Restaurant Australia is all about curating Australian stories of people, place and produce in the food and wine world, then sharing them both here and overseas.

It’s about changing the perception of Australian food and wine culture and showcasing what it is about Australia’s people, its produce and its landscape that makes it such a special place.

As part of the campaign, Restaurant Australia events are being held in key global markets like the UK, US, Europe, South East Asia and China. For example, pop-up restaurants in London this month will see guests served some of the wonderful wines Australia has to offer, matched with the best Australian produce, prepared by some of Australia’s most celebrated chefs.

Later this year the campaign will culminate in 80 of the most influential food and wine personalities spending four days travelling across Australia and enjoying some of the best food and wine experiences the country has to offer.

This will be followed by a major event in Tasmania in November, ‘Invite the World to Dinner’, where esteemed Australian chefs Peter Gilmore, from Quay; Neil Perry, from Rockpool; and Ben Shewry, from Attica, will prepare the menu. The gala dinner will be held at MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art), in Hobart.

This is one of the biggest campaigns Tourism Australia has ever undertaken and, while it has a strong global focus, it’s a campaign that relies on local grassroots involvement from everyone in the industry.

A way for local wineries to get directly involved is by uploading their story and images to the Restaurant Australia website.

To date, more than 200 Australian wine brands have contributed their unique wine story to the site and more than half of these have been showcased as feature stories.

These stories have demonstrated how the ethos of Australian food and wine reflects the welcoming and multicultural nature of its people, the diversity and freshness of its produce and the incredible natural beauty of its vast land.

Visitors to the Restaurant Australia website can search exclusively for wine experiences under the category ‘Wine Story’. They can read information on local wineries and cellar doors, wine festivals, restaurants known for their wine lists, or even wine facts about a particular Australian wine region. There’s no cost for brands to get involved, and those wineries featured have been promoted to a global audience of potential visitors to their cellar door.

You can also become part of the global online conversation by including #RestaurantAustralia in your social media communications. With thousands of Tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts already online, I encourage you to get your brand involved in the conversation too.

Don’t stop there though; share the Restaurant Australia campaign with others in the industry, like your on-premise customers, your regional wine association or the restaurants in your region. They’re all part of the Restaurant Australia wine story and all can help showcase our food and wine culture to the rest of the world.

To find out more about the Restaurant Australia campaign, visit restaurant.australia.com or check out the conversation online by searching #RestaurantAustralia.

WVJ

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Excitement fermenting over Adelaide seminar and awards for excellence

By Paul Petrie, President, Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology

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he Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology has once again put together an excellent line up of speakers for its Adelaide seminar, to be held at the Italian Centre, 262 Carrington Street, Adelaide, on 18-19 November.

Titled ‘Inputs to Outputs – is less more?’, the seminar will investigate the efficient use of inputs throughout the production chain and will feature two overseas speakers. The first is Associate Professor Jim Harbertson, an extension oenologist from Washington State University. He will speak on tannin additions and how best to use them. Our second overseas speaker is Professor Dominik Durner from the Department of Oenology and Food Technology, Weincampus Neustadt, Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum (DLR), Rheinpfalz. He will discuss optimising the use of micro-oxidation for different red wine varieties and styles.

Starting with the vineyard, local speakers will include: Simon Norgestgaard (AWRI), who will present a review of digital grape sorting technology; Sue Bastian, from the University of Adelaide, who will discuss the effect of green berries and petioles on red wine;

and Peta Faulkner (DEPI Victoria), who will look at the effect of grape maturity on phenolics.

Covering fermentation and stabilisation, the speakers will include: Leigh Schmidtke (Charles Sturt University), who will speak on alcohol management; and Anna Carew (University of Tasmania), who will speak about rapid methods for phenolic extraction in red wine. Post fermentation speakers include: Kerry Wilkinson (University of Adelaide), who will review oak alternatives; Don Bruce from Treasury Wine Estates, will speak on lightweight bottles; and Larry Lockshin (UniSA), who will cover the efficient use of marketing spend.

As part of our seminar we will also be holding the annual ASVO Awards for Excellence gala dinner. Nominations for the awards have now closed and our team of well-qualified, industrybased panellists are busy deciding on the winners. Even if you can’t make the seminar, come along to the gala dinner on the night of 18 November and see who will receive these coveted awards. This year, we welcome Amorim as the new sponsor of the ‘Winemaker of the Year’ award. This award aims to recognise a winemaker

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who has demonstrated technical mastery over any aspect of winemaking. The ‘Viticulturist of the Year’ award is again sponsored by Bayer CropSciences, and will honour an outstanding viticulturist involved in the development of a novel and significant viticultural innovation or introduction of a novel viticultural practice. The ‘Paper of the Year’ awards are open to all research papers published in the Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research in the last 12 months.

These awards are sponsored by the Australian Grape and Wine Authority.

Voting is currently under way for the ASVO board elections. This year we have regional elections in South Australia, and the combined Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland region. ASVO members based in these regions will receive their voting papers by email.

Please take the time to vote and influence the future direction of your society.

The annual general meeting will be held at the Italian Centre following the seminar at 1.30pm on Wednesday 19 November. ASVO members unable to make it to the seminar are encouraged to attend the AGM. If you can’t attend please submit a proxy via the ASVO website. WVJ

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Improving market access through APEC

By Tony Battaglene General Manager - Strategy & International Affairs, Winemakers’ Federation of Australia

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mprovements in market access are vital to Australia’s export success for wine. It doesn’t matter how many resources are spent on marketing and promotion, unless a winery can sell wine into a market on a level playing field with its competitors, business owners will struggle to make profit.

Key to Australia’s export success is to liberalise these markets, harmonise standards and reduce barriers to trade such as certification, testing requirements, and the like. However, to achieve success in these areas requires a long-term strategic vision and understanding of the international regulatory environment. One of the key areas where the Australian wine sector is working is through APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation).

APEC was an Australian initiative, established in 1989, when 12 Asia-Pacific economies met in Canberra. Today, its membership comprises Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US, China, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Peru, Russia and Vietnam. APEC seeks to establish free and open trade and investment, promote and accelerate regional economic integration, encourage economic and technical cooperation, and facilitate a favourable and sustainable business environment in the region Importantly for the wine sector it contains both a network of key New World wine producers, with a history of working together on market access issues, and countries that are key markets and potential markets.

WFA identified this forum as a key potential opportunity to reduce certification barriers and harmonise standards in 2003. It then took five years before the APEC Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) endorsed the establishment of a Wine Regulatory Forum (WRF) in Lima, Peru, in 2008.

The WRF then hosted a seminar of wine regulators and industry from both wine-producing and consuming economies in California in 2011. Of the 21 member economies, 18 participated and 12 served as speakers. This was

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followed by a meeting in Auckland in 2012 with a third meeting of the APEC Wine Regulatory Forum (WRF) held in Washington, DC, in November 2013. The Washington meeting was the first of five meetings to be held under a multi-year project which responds to the call by APEC leaders for improved regulation.

WFA is a member of the steering group for this project through general manager of strategy and international affairs Tony Battaglene. The WRF also held a joint meeting with the World Wine Trade Group (WWTG) in November 2013 and APEC members were encouraged to consider closer engagement with the WWTG. Outcomes and next steps Key actions in 2014 to be delivered at the next meeting of the APEC Wine Regulatory Forum in Beijing, in November 2014, include: 1.Creation of public-private electronic working groups: Members identified the need for public-private working groups to advance the goals and activities of the WRF. Electronic working groups were established to manage the following specific APEC WRF activities: export certificates, enhanced risk controls, and pesticide maximum residue levels (MRLs).

2.Reduction in export certificates: The objective for certificates to only be required where necessary to manage identified risk was established along with the goal to reduce the overall burden of export certificates required for wine shipments among APEC members. Members noted the need to gather additional information to identify whether certificates can be eliminated, consolidated within economies, consolidated across APEC by a model certificate, and accepted electronically.

3.APEC WRF compendia: Members agreed that the compendia on certification requirements, pesticide MRLs, labelling requirements and compositional requirements, will improve the understanding of each other’s requirements. Members instructed the working sub-group on compendia to complete the compendia and develop a proposal for improving the compendia for the use of all members.

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4.Enhanced risk controls: Members noted the importance of establishing risk assessment as the justification for regulatory intervention, and noted there may be a need for enhanced laboratory capabilities and technical exchanges to ensure that regulatory authorities have the capacity to assess risk and to use sound science in regulating wine. The working group on enhanced risk controls is preparing a paper collecting current capacity building needs of members and specifying how any technical needs can be addressed. The target for enhanced risk controls is for members to utilise and recognise ISO 17025 accredited laboratories. AGWA general manager of regulatory services Steve Guy co-chairs this working group.

5. Maximum residue limits: Members agreed to continue a dialogue on MRLs for agrochemicals with a view to facilitating trade and encouraging cooperation with relevant international bodies, such as Codex and the WWTG. Led by the working group on pesticide MRLs, it is developing proposals with WWTG and the APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum’s pilot project on MRLs for winegrapes to inform future work in this area. WFA general manager of strategy and international affairs Tony Battaglene co-chairs this working group.

Conclusion The road to better market access for Australian wine exports is long and complex. It depends on a myriad of international organisations and developing relationships with sometime competitors.

However, the rewards are tangible, and if the current APEC initiatives pay off, we have the capacity to have a harmonised system of agrichemicals within the region; simplified certification; and common testing requirements. Less tangible, but just as important is the building of relationships between regulators and the transfer of knowledge and understanding of the wine sector to non-producing countries, who often lack resources and the knowledge of how wine is produced and what the appropriate level of regulation is required. We are already seeing this bear fruit, as our regulators now have better contacts within importing countries and acknowledgement that wine is a low risk product from a health and safety perspective.

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Dreaming of treasure

By Tony Keys

If you could have just one part of Treasury Wine Estates, what would you pick and why?

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t the time of writing in August, Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) had advised the ASX that its AGM planned for 30 October may be rescheduled to enable the company and its shareholders to consider any scheme of arrangement that may arise from its discussions with two private equity investor groups in relation to acquisition proposals. The company had also announced a $100 million loss for the 2014 financial year.

By the time you read this article, TWE may be in the hands of a private equity company and no longer listed on the ASX. The story of the proposed acquisitions of TWE has been well documented up to 1 September, so repeating in detail what is already well known is not necessary.

Having said that I will provide a short summary, but the more interesting parts of this article are the responses I received from various members of the Australian wine industry to the following question: “Aside from Penfolds or the American and New Zealand brands, if you could have just one part of TWE what would you pick and why?

Perhaps it’s Wynns, Wolf Blass, Seppelt, maybe Lindeman’s - perhaps the Lindeman’s Coonawarra brands but not the cheaper bin range - all of Rosemount or just the McLaren Vale part. Or, perhaps Yellowglen is the brand you think holds promise.

There’s also Heemskerk, Devil’s Lair, Coldstream Hills, Pepperjack, Leo Buring, Mildara, Rothbury, T’Gallant to choose from.

Or maybe it’s a brand in the portfolio that has been retired, such as Cuppa Cup Vineyards, Seaview, Tolley Scott & Tolley or Woodley Wines.

Finance doesn’t come into this; it’s about the brand you think could do well outside of TWE and a couple of reasons why. I’m not looking for long detailed business plans; more gut reaction with some dreaming thrown in.”

It is difficult to understand how TWE has continued to struggle since being birthed out of Fosters in 2011. Maybe the easiest explanation is that wine companies are really not suited to being listed companies.

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On the first day of trading in the calendar year 2014 the share price for TWE closed at $4.77. A month later, just into February, it was $3.43. It rose above $4.00 during the month but was down again in March, ending the month at $3.51.

From then on it’s been ever upwards, entering May at more than $4.00 and, by the 20 May, reaching more than $5.00. On 1 September the 52-week high was $5.35 and the low $3.41. The turning point was 16 April when Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR), a private equity company, made a $4.70 a share offer for 100 percent of the company.

This announcement was made public on 20 May but prior to this the names of possible interested parties grew ever longer. One interesting point is that private equinity companies were not in the frame.

Pernod Ricard, Constellation Brands and LVMH were all said to be interested, as was the Chinese giant Bright Foods. All denied showing interest but when the lads in the market get the rumour mill churning there is money to be made, the truth being somewhat surplus to requirement at that moment.

The TWE board rejected the KKR bid but it wasn’t to be quiet for long.

At the beginning of August, KKR, now partnered with New York-based private equity company Rhône Capital (a division of Rhone Group) made a renewed bid of $5.20 a share (total $3.4 billion). The board considered this was worth greater consideration and the books would be opened for due diligence.

If this excitement wasn’t enough, on 11 August TWE announced the KKR/Rhône Capital bid had been matched by another (unnamed) private equity company. The media here and in other parts of the world said it was Texas Pacific Group (TPG). TPG is now said to be conducting due diligence.

That is the story up to 1 September. Now to the dreaming: Bob Berton, managing director, Berton Vineyards, New South Wales:

Good question…tough to answer.

Strategically, I think the one brand focus is exactly what the textbook would say; it’s theoretically the only way to W i n e & V i t i cultur e Jo ur n a l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

achieve a true brand. Problem is, I’m not sure that this is possible anymore as the route to market is so diverse. As always, distribution is still the key, so if I was to pick one, which would it be?

Wynns would be a reasonable fit with us, since our winery was formerly Wynns.

Downside is that it was founded by the Wynn family so it would really work best if family were involved.

Wolf Blass is very personal; only Wolf can take that back as it’s his persona that is important.

Lindeman’s is a strong name with good distribution. Unfortunately, it has been the whipping boy for a while so rebuilding the brand would be difficult (Seppelt – ditto).

Rosemount is a reasonable fit with us; excellent distribution, fairly commercial.

Would need some good things to happen to regain its former glory, but still a good option.

“The others are all micro brands so only valid within a portfolio. Leo Buring would be a good fit for us since the vineyards are next to ours in the Eden Valley, but the name has been out of circulation for so long that it wouldn’t have any significance.

Conclusion: it would probably be Rosemount for us.

Jeff Burch, chief executive, Burch Family Wines, Western Australia:

It’s interesting questions you propose and my initial enthusiasm was for: Devils Lair. I know the area, great quality potential and Margaret River is sexy. Cabernet and Chardonnay so lots to work with, however, I think the brand has been a touch damaged by the go-forgrowth Fifth Leg brand.

Leo Buring has a great history with Riesling but do they still control the vineyard? Riesling can be a hard sell, especially overseas.

Coldstream Hills. I love the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and it’s close to Melbourne, so has lots of potential and it would be great to stick it to the Kiwis.

Enough dreaming, but let’s get serious.

We want to show the world how great Australian wine can dance on the world stage, mesmerise the French, taunt the Italians and confuse the Spanish. www.winebiz. com . au

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It has to be Wynns. Do you remember the John Riddoch 1982 made by John Wade? Still a beautifully developed wine that is up there with the best of them.

What went wrong? Let’s refocus on quality, relaunch this great brand, work hard in the vineyard and make those wines again.

Look again at the Chinese market, dig out the old history and challenge Penfolds.

Wynns must be sick of being forced to play second fiddle, starved of resources and the feel of the corporate straight jacket, also the revolving management doors with their short-term plans. Can we fly again? Given some clean air to soar like we dreamed surely we can we deserve better.

Greg Howell, Managing Director, Vintessential Laboratories, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland:

Yellowglen sparkling wines were fantastic when they hit the shelves in the 1980s. I recall a memorable visit I made to the winery in 1986 that got me hooked on the wine industry.

The Yellowglen winery was the brainchild of Ian Home, of Ballarat. Ian was the owner of the local SSW supermarkets and liquor outlets and saw the potential for the production of high quality wines from the very cool climate of Ballarat, Victoria.

Ian moved on from selling Yellowglen to Mildara Blass and then established the well-known premium Massoni Home wines on the Mornington Peninsula with famous Melbourne restaurateur Leon Massoni (Ian built another winery in Dromana; that building is now the home of Vintessential Laboratories).

Yellowglen wines in the 1980s were made with an eye on Champagne. Ian even had such well-known winemakers as Gary Farr pitch in to get the ball rolling. The wines were well made and targeted at the top of the range; they were a real hit when they first came out.

What a pity that the corporate owners since Ian haven’t kept the dream alive by focusing on top quality sparkling wine. With the resurgence of cool climate sparkling wine in Victoria and Tasmania, Yellowglen could have been the leader in this country.

Imagine if Mildara Blass/Fosters/TWE had championed the Yellowglen brand and done what Hardy’s has achieved – produce an amazing range of sparkling wines from Arras down the line.

The Yellowglen story started so impressively and it could still be a leading range of great sparkling wines.

It does dumbfound me how the French in Champagne have managed to build the great houses they have from similar climes and we haven’t. I’m sure Tony Keys agrees; he was elected to the Academie du Champagne in 1989.

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I had the pleasure of spending time with the great Jean Hugel in Alsace just after I had spent a vintage at Veuve Cliquot in 1996. After telling Jean how I had just had an amazing time in Champagne he gave me an almighty backhander to the chest and spat out “Champagne. That’s not wine!

Good wine doesn’t need bubbles!” I can still remember the onslaught.

I’m not sure many people around the world agree with the late M. Hugel. I do wonder though why we haven’t managed to get a brand with a great heritage such as Yellowglen up to those same heights.

Garry Crittenden, Crittenden Estate Pty Ltd, Victoria:

This is a no brainer for me. For many years in the 1980s the Yarra Valley was my second home as I drove backwards and forwards at least once and often twice a week.

As well as establishing the first plantings at Domaine Chandon I did most of the work on the design and installation of vineyard expansions (1986 onwards I seem to recall) at Coldstream Hills where hitherto only the so-called amphitheatre block existed.

When Coldstream Hills floated in late 1987, the first company to float on the Melbourne Stock Exchange after the disastrous 1987 stock market crash by the way, the board consisted of James and Suzanne Halliday, Tony Jordan and myself.

What heady days they were; full of hope and optimism for the future of the reemerging Yarra Valley and the cool climate (what’s that?) sector of the industry.

And I have to say if I wasn’t happily and profitably ensconced on the Mornington Peninsula surrounded by a marvellous and supportive family who now (more or less) run our show that’s where I’d be, heading up Coldstream Hills and living in James and Suzanne’s marvellous house (I wish).

Oh, and I have to say, it was always fun at the end of a hard day’s consulting and board discussions to see James knock the top off a bottle of Krug and pour it liberally into our flutes.

Peter Fraser, winemaker and manager, Yangarra Estate Vineyard, South Australia:

The obvious one for me is Wynns.

They have invested a huge amount into it already. It has quality and history, and really only a small blip where the premiums were discounted. Sue Hodder is doing an amazing job, and the brand just keeps gaining more and more status.

It appears there are many parts of TWE that Australians would like to take control of and develop the potential. The W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

question that is hard to answer is would all brands that now comprise TWE have done better and become stronger if they remained independent?

Many cling to the belief that familyowned wine companies are the future of the Australian wine industry. Mitchell Taylor, in his role as chairman of Australia’s First Families of Wine (AFFW), put out a media release on 5 August saying, “The uncertainty in the Australian wine industry at the moment has caused many of us to reflect on the future and how the local wine landscape may look if iconic brands like Penfolds, Lindeman’s, Seppelt, Wolf Blass, Rosemount, Wynns et al. fall into foreign ownership.”

The AFFW attempts to balance this jingoistic statement with another that is a prime contender for sit-on-thefence statement of the year: “… it is encouraging that the Australian industry is seen as vibrant and healthy enough to attract interest from further afield.”

It is understandable that a great many Australians feel that if Penfolds goes into foreign hands the fabric of Australian society has been ripped. However there is no reason to think that the brand will suffer; it is strong and capable of standing on its own two feet whoever the owner.

It is because the industry is currently weak and struggling that it is attracting interest. What Taylor and the AFFW are attempting to do is convince others that the way forward is in the hands of the family-owned companies.

It may be, but first it would need to be a much smaller industry. Also, it would be interesting to see the accounts for the past five years of these family companies.

The story might then change and the superior stance that they take would be put in better perspective.

It is understandable that a great many Australians feel that if Penfolds goes into foreign hands the fabric of Australian society has been ripped. However, there is no reason to think that the brand will suffer; it is strong and capable of standing on its own two feet, whoever the owner.

I understand Accolade Wines is going well in the hands of private equity. There is no reason to think TWE will suffer if WVJ the same fate befalls it.

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Winemaking trials in smaller wineries can be valuable if done properly

By Cathy Howard

How does a small to medium winery go about undertaking winemaking trials to give the most useful and accurate results?

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ver the years, I have been actively involved in trials in wineries of varying sizes, and with varying levels of resources on hand. Certainly, in the medium and larger wineries, I have had the luxury of being part of a team with many more resources on hand than I have now in our own very small enterprise.

However, conducting an in-house winemaking trial for a small winery is not impossible; it just means spending the time to plan out your trial beforehand, with careful consideration of exactly what you want to achieve from your trial, and how best to go about it with your fairly limited resources.

Another option to consider, which I will cover later in this article, is utilising an outside facility or service to conduct the trial for you if you do not have the resources on hand to carry it out yourself. The return on your investment may well be better if you pay someone else to conduct a small-scale trial for you, and you then have accurate, reliable results to utilise in-house.

Prior to making wine, I worked as a technical officer first for the Department of Agriculture in Hobart and later for CSIRO Marine Laboratories, so I am very familiar with experimental design, monitoring regimes, data collection and recording, and reporting requirements for research trials. I do know from this work that you must adopt a fairly disciplined, methodical and organised approach to your trial project, no matter what scale it is, to ensure that your end results are meaningful, and that the work that you have undertaken has been worthwhile, yielding you not only reliable and useful results, but also a good return on your investment.

Where to start?

This is a case of rediscovering what scientific methodology is and how to utilise this to design a winemaking trial that will yield you reliable, meaningful, and ultimately, useful results.

There are a series of steps to follow when developing and

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implementing your winemaking trial. These include:

Determine the Resources Required

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Ask yourself the question, What do I need to have in order to see if my hypothesis is true?’ This part of the scientific method is a list of everything you need to conduct the trial:

outlining the purpose or goal of the trial undertaking background research developing a hypothesis determining the materials and resources required developing a trial procedure collecting and monitoring data during the trial conclusions communicating the results.

As an example for this article, my small-scale winemaking project for the 2015 and 2016 vintages is to improve the depth and intensity of colour in our Frankland River Shiraz and Geographe Cabernet Sauvignon post-pressing.

The Purpose Establishing the goal of a trial starts with a question and it might be based on an observation you have made, or a particular technique or additive that interests you. Your question needs to be about something you can measure and will typically start with words such as what, when, where, how or why.

My trial goal is based on my observations of the colours of various parcels of our reds over the past few vintages. I haven’t been entirely happy with the depth and intensity of the colour of our reds post-ferment. Consequently, over the past few vintages I have trialled different colour extraction enzymes and addition rates, along with different brands of ferment tannins and rates, as well as used various percentages of pre-ferment run-offs. I have ‘a gut feeling’ now about what seems to work best and what doesn’t work, but I really need to undertake a scientific trial to determine exactly what combination of enzymes and tannins works best for our grapes, and at what rates. My purpose would be, ‘How can I improve the depth and intensity of the colour of my reds post-pressing?’

Background Research Gather reference material on your trial goal from scientific studies and research findings. Broadly searching the internet is always a useful starting point, with more refined searches through the resources at the Australian Wine Research Institute, the Grape & Wine Research & Development Corporation (now the Australian Grape and Wine Authority), state-based departments of agriculture, international and national universities, and technical conference proceedings. For practical information, contact your winemaking associates and find out what they have trialled, what has and hasn’t worked for them. For my trial, I will also be contacting various suppliers of ferment additives to gain information about their enzymes and ferment tannins that may be suitable for me to trial.

Develop your Hypothesis Using your background research and current knowledge, make an educated guess that best answers your purpose question. Your hypothesis should be a simple statement that expresses what you think will happen.

The hypothesis step is always written in the form ‘If ___________, then ___________’. For example, one of my hypotheses for my trial will be, ‘If I add a colour extraction enzyme at XXppm at crushing, there will be an increase in the depth of the red wine colour post-pressing’. Following on from the purpose of my trial, it immediately becomes obvious that I will need to trial a second hypothesis, ‘If I add a ferment tannin at YYYppm at 9 Baume, there will be an increase in the depth and intensity of the red wine colour post-pressing’.

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•

• • •

Labour is obviously one of the most important, and costly.

Consider the time it will take to set up as well as conduct the trials; the time required for monitoring and recording data; the time for laboratory analysis; the time required for sensory assessment; the time to collate and analyse the results, and to write the report.

Winery and laboratory equipment required.

Extra additives and consumables required.

Requirement for contract analytical services.

Cost each of these items out and then ask yourself another question, ‘Do we have the resources to conduct this trial?, If not, reconsider your trial options, such as modifying or simplifying your goal; assessing the cost of acquiring or hiring the extra equipment required; spreading the trial work out over a longer timeframe; the feasibility of utilising another company to carry out the trials for you (refer to AWRI and Enartis Pacific sections below).

Develop a Trial Procedure The more detailed the procedure the better, and it should be written in a straightforward, step-by-step format from start to finish of your trial including what equipment and materials you will be using, and how you are going to set up, conduct, measure and monitor your trial.

Before starting your procedure, you need to decide on your trial variables. There are three types of variables to consider: Independent variable: The independent variable is the one that you chose to help you answer your hypothesis. A well-designed trial has only one independent variable. This type of variable is something that you do differently in each trial, for example the type of colour extraction enzyme added at crushing to each trial batch; or the rate of colour extraction enzyme added at crushing to each trial batch. Nothing else should change but this one variable, because if there’s more than one independent variable, the trial results become flawed because you can’t be certain as to what has caused the changes you observed.

Controlled variables: Every trial has many controlled variables.

These are all the materials, measurements and methods that you want to stay exactly the same for every trial batch so that the only thing responsible for change is the independent variable.

For my trial, they would include the grapes used (same variety, off the same section of a block, harvested at the same time); the ferment batch sizes; fermenter type, volume and shape; rates and timing of all other crushing and ferment additives; timing of ferment measurements; ferment cap management techniques; temperature control; timing of draining and pressing.

Dependent variable: The dependent variable is the one thing that changes as a result of your independent variable. In my trial, the dependent variable is the depth and intensity of the colour post -pressing because of what I changed with the independent variable - the type or rate of colour extraction enzyme added at crushing.

Next, consider when writing your procedure having a control or control group in your trial. Most experiments need to have an appropriate control, which is a standard to test your experimental results against. A control is when the independent variable is missing, is held constant, or is at a normal level. For example, in my trial, the control ferment would be a ferment that does not have the colour extraction enzyme added at crushing, but all the other controlled variables (as well as the dependent variable) of that ferment remain the same.

Allow for replicates in your trial to ensure your original results

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weren’t an accident and to cover yourself if something goes wrong with one of your trial batches. Your trial will be much better designed if you have several replicates in each trial batch, including your control group.

Lastly, consider when you will be monitoring and recording measurements on both your independent and the dependent variables. Detail what type of measurements will be taken, both analytical and sensory evaluation, and how you will be measuring them.

Data collection and Recording Observations During the Trial

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influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of prefermentative cold maceration (cold soak)'. An article on his trial is in this issue of the Journal (beginning on page 24).

When asked about his trial, Fennessy replied: “Yes, I feel the trial was worthwhile. Because the trial was limited to one vintage, I would like to repeat it for another vintage (reduce a variable) and then compare or confirm the results on a commercial scale.

Within the limitations of the small-scale trial, I was aiming to bring awareness to winemakers that cold soaking might not be suitable in all circumstances, and that region and variety have an influence over the effectiveness of this technique.

Record your analytical and sensory results with detailed measurements, descriptions and observations in the form of notes, journal entries, photos, charts and graphs. Also record any observations that you made during your trial. Include information that could have affected your results, such as errors, environmental factors and unexpected surprises.

Conclusion Analyse the data you collected and summarise your results in written form, and use this to answer your original question. Do the results of your trial support or oppose your hypothesis?

Richard Fennessy, Wine & Grape Research Officer, Department of Agriculture & Food, Western Australia (DAFWA) Richard Fennessy was one of the recipients of the 2013 Science and Innovation Awards for Young People in Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry. Along with his award, he was also presented with a $19,000 grant from the GWRDC to carry out a trial on 'the

Part of the trial conducted by Richard Fennessy to find out the influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of pre-fermentative cold maceration.

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W I N E R Y

T R I AL S

“Setting up the cold soak trial wasn’t easy in parts, in particular, managing the logistics of picking three varieties from two regions that were 200-300km in distance from the DAFWA Bunbury laboratory, and being able to ensure that the fruit was picked at optimum and consistent ripeness. Diligence was certainly required to ensure uniformity of ripeness within replicates of each treatment. Grapes being harvested before I could get to the vineyard caused significant stress on one occasion, as turning up to pick at a vineyard to find that the fruit had been harvested the night before isn’t a great way to start a day! Other challenges in conducting the trial were ripe fruit leading to high alcohols and subsequent difficulties with completion of MLF. I would have liked to have tracked maturities more closely, and inspected the fruit once or twice leading up to harvest, but logistically this was not possible.”

Another issue was oxidation, “the ever present shadow for small lot winemaking, which can be a significant risk for small batch sizes. There were a couple of vessels that oxidised due to lagging MLF which were discarded but, fortunately, there were multiple vessels of the one treatment so the only consequence was a reduced final volume in bottle.”

Fennessy’s tips for a successful small-scale winemaking trial are: •

• • •

•

Planning is the key, as well as having a written protocol.

This document provides everyone involved in the trial with something to work to, and provides a reference for future and past trial work.

Set clear and achievable goals.

Need to commit and allocate the necessary resources to the trial. Resources are very important, particularly when managing small batch sizes.

Trial replicates are essential and would suggest a minimum of two replicates to simply avoid fermentation variation, but statistically, the more replicates the better (DAFWA tends to make two or three replicates depending on how the statistics will be managed).

Trial variables, ideally there should only be one or two variables represented by a treatment. Too many variables can cause complications and confuse the findings.

OutSourcing Options to Consider for Your Small-Scale Winemaking Trial Enartis Pacific (Darko Obradovic, Market Development Manager-Winemaker) For a number of years, Obradovic has been working with wineries of varying sizes, developing and implementing tailormade bench trials for fining agents, enzymes, tannins and flotation trials which can be organised on the bench. Trials have also been carried out on many fault fixing and sensory trials with the Enartis finishing products, as well as cold stabilising with CMC and gums.

Enartis has been offering this service since 2008. Obradovic states that the main reasons wineries approach Enartis to carry out trials for them is that they “trust, our knowledge, and our ability to conduct scientifically-based trials”.

Obradovic adds that Enartis can include competitors’ products, such as tannins, gels and enzymes in the protocol if required, along with the company’s own products.

As with any trial process, the detail in the initial planning step is the key to the success of any trial. Obradovic says: “A preliminary meeting (or two) is always conducted to understand the potentials, interest and dynamic involved. This is then followed by an Enartis representative writing the trial protocol. Once we all agree that the trial is worth running, the timing is decided.”

Enartis does not charge for the trial, and all that the winery needs to provide are the raw materials, the juice or wine, as well

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as its current additive that it would like included in the trial.

With his winemaking background, Obradovic can also suggest in-house winemaking trial protocols for his customers. In response to my quest for improving colour depth and stabilisation in our reds he suggested two potential protocols for our red wines, which we then discussed further before I trialled one of them inhouse: a) Colour stabilisation: I suggest colour enzyme (Zym ColourPlus) and two tannins (Tan Rouge, Tan Colour). b) Making colour stable and enhancing fruit aromas: Colour stabilisation done through a new enzyme (Zym ColourPlus), two tannins (Tan Rouge and Tan Colour), yeast ES 488, and glutathione rich yeast derivative, Proli Blanco.

When asked if he has repeat customers for this type of trial work, Obradovic says, “Our clients love us, they get value from winemaking trials and the relationship is long term; we have never stopped at one trial only”.

WIC Winemaking Services (Michael Coode, Winemaker, AWRI, Hickinbotham-Roseworthy Wine Science Laboratory, Waite Campus, Urrbrae, South Australia) WIC Winemaking Services (WICWS) is a specialist contract winemaking service with a focus on small batch wines. It was established as a joint venture in 2010 between the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) and the University of Adelaide after Provisor ceased operations. WICWS’s purpose is to support the Australian wine industry by providing high quality small, pilot-scale wines for both research and commercial projects.

The service is managed by Michael Coode, a qualified winemaker. The specialised small-scale facility, along with access to specialised expertise on site such as the University of Adelaide, CSIRO, Department of Primary Industries & Regions SA (PIRSA) and South Australian Research & Development Institute (SARDI), gives Coode the ability to “get the latest scientific knowledge into every project”.

WICWS uses the Hickinbotham-Roseworthy Wine Science Laboratory facilities which are set up specifically for small batch winemaking. Fermenter sizes range from 5kg up to 800kg, and tanks range from 100L to 2000L. Processing equipment is sized accordingly with small crushers/de-stemmers and a range of presses available from 130L to two-tonne membrane presses.

There are temperature-controlled fermentation rooms and a small-scale bottling line, complete with both screw-capper and corker.

Currently, most winemaking clients are small wineries crushing less than 100 tonnes, and are from the Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra. Some of these are also repeat clients, having returned to WICWS to re-trial a procedure, to finetune a technique, or to further tweak a new product.

Recent trials have been many and varied: yeast strains, varying pre and post red ferment techniques such as maceration, and vine clonal investigations. WICWS is also is involved in a range of research projects such as the AWRI’s ongoing projects run by Martin Day into the influence on wine style through the management of oxygen during winemaking; genomic work on grapevine clones; salt tolerance; and the effects of hormone sprays. WICWS has also carried out small batch winemaking trials for regional associations, for instance, assessing sub-regional differences in Shiraz wines within the Barossa GI. Currently, there are some logistical constraints when it comes to conducting trials at WICWS using grapes or juice from interstate, mainly due to the safe transport of grapes or juice.

Coode has, however, undertaken trial work with Fennessy at DAFWA on a project assessing alternative grape varieties. The grapes were fermented in WA and the finished wines were then

W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

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shipped to Adelaide for further trial work. Coode has also carried out trials on Chardonnay juice components from Orange, Tasmania and the Yarra Valley, so the tyranny of distance can be overcome.

When determining the cost of a trial, Coode assesses the number of labour hours, the scale of the trial, the type of results being asked for, and the analytical costs (WICWS uses the NATA accredited AWRI laboratory). Alternatively, a client may have a set budget to work with and Coode can tailor a trial to fit that budget.

The key to a good trial and a good trial outcome is in, first, establishing exactly what clients want to achieve, and Coode invests a fair amount of time initially with clients to find this out.

T R I AL S

W I N E M A K I NG

unusual arises during a trial, he also does have those invaluable scientific specialist resources onsite and close at hand, as mentioned previously, to assist him with advice promptly if needed.

Coode does carry out trial work on frozen grapes and juice.

There are usually no problems with the tartaric acid, for instance, redissolving, but petioles in samples are hard and lignified following freezing, while using juices that have been stored for long periods at low temperatures with high sulfur levels are two examples that are not an ideal for a trial in most scenarios. The success of working with frozen material depends on what results are required out of a trial.

Coode says the resources available to the wine industry for small-scale winemaking trials at WICWS are “not well known within the industry”. The unique combination of a well set up pilotscale winery, on a campus surrounded by a hub of well-resourced research institutions such as the AWRI, University of Adelaide, CSIRO, SARDI and PIRSA would be difficult to better anywhere else in Australia.

Conclusions

Kegs used for small-scale winemaking trials at WIC Winemaking Services, a little-known specialist contract winemaking service with a focus on small batch wines established as a joint venture in 2010 between the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) and the University of Adelaide. It provides small and pilot-scale wines for both research and commercial projects and can individually tailor micro, small and pilot-scale trials.

He also has a bank of previous trial protocols to draw upon to tailor a trial that suits each client. During the course of the trial, the clients are kept in the loop, as Coode liaises with them regularly.

For advice on trial protocols and on troubleshooting if something

Being a small wine producer does not mean that you can’t or shouldn’t conduct your own small-scale winemaking trials.

The keys to a successful trial are in first selecting an achievable and measurable goal, then planning your trial following sound scientific methodology in the set-up, implementation, and data collection of your trial. Lastly, you need to ensure that your trial is adequately resourced, and the end result will yield you useful, reliable results.

There are alternatives out there in our industry for you to utilise as well. Suppliers such as Enartis Pacific, as well as many barrel cooperages can either conduct trials in-house for you or they can provide you with their trial results and resulting wines for you to taste.

Then there is WICWS. After talking with Coode, I can appreciate it is an incredibly valuable and specialised industry resource that we should be finding more ways of utilising for winemaking and vineyard trials. How I wish that it was mobile and that we could utilise it over here in the West!

Cathy Howard is winemaker and, together with husband Neil, proprietor of Whicher Ridge Wines, near Busselton, in Western Australia, and has been making wine for more than 20 years. She also consults part time to some wineries in the Geographe region.

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TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

Technology needn’t be hightech when it comes to saving money in the winery

By Sonya Logan

N

which has been quite nice, and makes the decision to continue implementing more energy-saving solutions somewhat easier,” Keath says.

The changes in technology that have brought about the biggest energy savings at Domaine Chandon have been the replacement of its air compressors with new variable speed drive units from Broadbent, which alone has resulted in a 35-40% saving in energy used to produce compressed air; switching from using a centrifuge to flotation for clarifying wines; and recovering heat from its refrigeration unit to sterilise grape bins and heat

o-one leaps in the air with joy upon opening their latest energy bill to discover their costs have gone up yet again. However, if a silver lining can be found in such hikes, it’s that they usually force companies to take a long, hard look at where they might be able to reduce their energy use.

That’s certainly been the knock-on effect at Domaine Chandon, in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, according to operational winemaker Adam Keath.

The 5000-tonne capacity winery – which almost exclusively makes sparkling wine, all produced using méthode traditionnelle – is situated approximately halfway between the townships of Coldstream and Healesville and is equipped to crush grapes and warehouse finished wine and everything in between along the production chain. And thanks to the recent introduction of some reasonably simple yet effective technology

advances, every bottle it produces is now done so using 23% less energy.

“About three years ago, we decided to subject the winery to an audit to find out where we might be able to reduce our energy consumption,” Keath recalls. “We employed a local engineering company ISECO to do it, and they highlighted a few areas where we could save some energy. So, we’ve been slowly working our way through implementing those ever since.

“Frankly, our initial drive for reducing our energy was to benefit the environment. But, the economic benefits have started to emerge now,

Domaine Chandon’s operational winemaker Adam Keath.

Domaine Chandon’s Juclas flotation unit was used for the first time in vintage 2014, resulting in quite a significant cost saving in energy use for the winery.

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water for use throughout the site.

Domaine Chandon’s 20,000L/hour Juclas flotation unit was used for the first time in vintage 2014 and already the winery is seeing the benefits, and not just in reductions in energy bills.

“The cost saving in switching to flotation has been quite significant,” Keath says. “It’s not only more energy efficient, but it saves having to chill juice down to 5°C, let it settle for 24-48 hours, rack it off then warm it up back up again to ferment; we can go straight to ferment from clarification without chilling or warming. Not only is this achieving a quicker throughput, but we’re also seeing better retention of fruit characters.”

Although it wasn’t put forward in its energy audit, Domain Chandon also opted to take advantage of a heat recovery option on a new refrigeration plant it had installed around the same time the audit was completed.

“The idea came up when talking to a few of our suppliers,” Keath said. “It’s perhaps something we should have looked at a few years ago because it’s not new technology.

“We had a brainstorming session to figure out where we could utilise the heat recovery. One of our refrigeration

consultants, Serchill, helped us look at a few options and the idea of using the heat to sterilise our grape bins stacked up quite well.”

Domaine Chandon is located in the Maroondah Phylloxera Infested Zone and, as such, the winery follows best practice guidelines for phylloxera management which has included immersing grape bins in 80°C water for at least two minutes.

“This practice uses a lot of gas.

But, we stopped doing that last year because we’ve now built ourselves some heat rooms which use dry heat to sterilise bins at 45 for two hours by drawing on the heat recovered from our refrigeration plant during fermentation.

Our gas consumption is consequently down by 30%. Conveniently, the time when we need to sterilise bins is when we’re generating our greatest heat load.”

Keath said the reclaimed heat was also being used to preheat the water that is used around the winery, warming it to 45 - 55°C, then a boiler is used to take it up to the desired temperature of 60°. “This has taken a lot of load off our boiler,” he said.

Although their effect on Domain Chandon’s energy consumption

W I N E M A K I NG

hasn’t been quite as significant as the variable drive air compressors, heat recovery and flotation units, further simple measures have nonethe-less played their role, such as running its refrigeration unit at higher temperatures during the off-season.

“When we don’t need to run it a -6°C, we save a lot by turning it up by a few degrees,” Keath notes.

Another energy-saving measure has been replacing high bay lighting with LEDs and lower energy consuming fluros.

“Depending on where they are, the LEDs have halved our power usage for lighting. We’ve also put in an energy monitoring system. Prior to doing so, we didn’t know exactly where we were using a lot of power – we just knew that we were using a lot of it.

The monitoring system helps track our usage which in turn helps us to better target where can make future improvements to our energy use.

“It can be a bit of an eye opener when you find out where you do use power. Refrigeration is obviously a big chunk of it which is why we’ve put in solutions to reduce the amount of refrigeration we use on juice or wine,” Keath notes.

WVJ

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Grape bins in the process of being sterilised with dry heat recovered from Domaine Chandon’s refrigeration plant during fermentation.

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SME PRODUCT SHOWCASE

Product showcase for SME wineries To complement the emphasis on small to medium enterprise wineries in this issue of the Journal, we invited wine industry suppliers to highlight a product particularly suited to operations of this size.

Warner Fork Trucks – for all the wine industry’s fork truck needs Family-owned and operated Warner Fork Trucks was established in Adelaide in 1976. Ready to assist the wine industry with its fork truck needs, the company offers long and short term hire and operates a fully maintained workshop and fully-equipped service vans.

Warner Fork Trucks also sells new and second-hand parts, as well as second-hand fork trucks and is the South Australian dealer for Hyundai forklifts.

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Warner Fork Trucks Pty Ltd 5 Newcastle Cres, Cavan, South Australia 5094 Phone: (08) 8260 3199 Fax: (08) 8260 6560 Email: warnerforktrucks@bigpond.com

Sterility check your wine onsite For wines with a long maturing life, or wines that have been sterile filtered, the absence of live yeast or bacteria can be confirmed before the wine is allowed to spoil.

The early detection of microorganisms can reduce logistic costs and provides information to monitor the process of bottling and storage. This saves money and protects the quality and reputation of the brand.

The Promicol Wine Kit, distributed in Australia by AMSL, can provide results in as little as 24 hours, with minimal hands-on time, and comes with various instrument options to semi or fully automate the test procedure.

For further information visit www.asml.com.au

AMSL Scientific Telephone: +61 2 9882 3666 E-mail: amsl@amsl.com.au

3M - Fine Filtration to the last drop Unique to the Australian wine market, the Zetplus MH Series and the Sanitary High Flow Housing are attracting international attention from as far as Bordeaux.

The key feature of the Zeta Plus MH Series Filter is that the cartridge now contains a dual layer filtration media, allowing for a wider range of separation to be achieved in a single step. The wine industry currently uses two separate steps to perform this filtration.

The Sanitary High Flow Housing is a locally developed filter housing that allows 3M Purification to expand its High Flow cartridge technology into the Food and Beverage industry.

For further information visit www.3mpurification.com.au

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W I N E M A K I NG

Vintessential’s new spectrophotometers – spectacularly reducing the cost of wine testing The new Vintessential spectrophotometers are revolutionising the way wineries do their testing. Priced at just $1600 (+GST) for the V120 (which uses manual wavelength setting) and $1900 (+GST) for the V140 (with automatic wavelength setting), wineries can perform in-house testing save time, money and frustration.

The spectrophotometers use the following Vintessential Test Kits: acetic acid, ammonia, primary acid nitrogen (YAN), citric acid, D-gluconic acid, D-glucose/D-fructose, L-lactic acid, L-malic acid, glucose/fructose and sucrose/glucose/fructose.

Vintessential uses and supports these spectrophotometers - the only ones dedicated entirely to the wine industry.

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JMA Engineering’s sweeping arm discharge fermenter gets an upgrade While JMA’s sweeping arm discharge fermenter has been available in the marketplace for many years, a recent upgrade in design has been driven by the safety and efficiency requirements of Treasury Wine Estates.

The combination of revised drives resulting in lower power consumption, large remote operated doors for fast and convenient discharge, and remote operation of the entire discharge process makes this fermenter the most efficient and safest in Australia.

The discharge system suits most sweep arm style fermenters and is adaptable to many installations currently in use or on the drawing boards.

With an automated, in-place cleaning system there is no requirement to enter the tank and so ensures the best possible safety environment for the operating staff.

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Detecting allergens onsite Winemakers routinely use a range of ingredients and processing aids during production that can be potentially allergenic including casein, milk, egg, fish and shellfish.

These ingredients, where present in detectable amounts, must be declared on product labelling. In particular, wine that is exported to places such as the EU must declare the presence of egg and milk if over the detectable level.

Allergen test kits, distributed in Australia by AMSL, are now available so you can perform your own testing onsite to test for the presence of allergens in finished product as well as on contact surfaces, that could result in cross contamination.

For further information visit www.asml.com.au

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AMSL Scientific Telephone: +61 2 9882 3666 E-mail: amsl@amsl.com.au

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C O L D M A C E R AT I O N

Influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of pre-fermentative cold maceration

By Richard Fennessy, Wine and Grape Research Officer, Irrigated Agriculture Innovation, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia. Email: richard.fennessy@agric.wa.gov.au

A study of the influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of pre-fermentation cold maceration (cold soak) has found that one size does not fit all with respect to the technique.

Introduction Pre-fermentative cold maceration or ‘cold soak’ is a commonly practised winemaking technique used for the production of quality red wine. The technique involves inhibiting the onset of fermentation by holding the must at temperatures typically less than 15°C for a period of days.

During this period, an aqueous extraction, as opposed to an alcoholic extraction, of compounds from the skins occurs.

The purpose of the cold soak is to improve the extraction of polyphenols, aromas and pigments from the grape skins. This technique is perceived as producing more fruit-forward and

complex wines with increased colour intensity.

Cold soaking typically requires refrigeration and heating inputs, while occupying fermentation vessels for extended periods. This provides wineries with logistical considerations in processing efficiencies during the vintage period.

This study aims to investigate the influence of a cold soak on Australia’s three most important red cultivars; Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, in two contrasting climatic zones (hot and cool). These varieties have been sourced from Western Australian (WA) vineyards in the geographical indications of Swan District (SD) representing a hot climate, and Great Southern (GS) representing a cool climate.

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The objective of this study is to provide winemakers with an improved understanding of how this technique can influence wine style and quality, consequently enabling improved decision making when planning maceration regimes.

Material and methods

Table 1. Swan District climatic summary, 2012-13.

Oct Temperature mean minimum (°C)

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr Total

9.8 11.0 15.0 16.9 16.9 14.2 14.3

Temperature mean maximum (°C) 25.3 26.7 31.6 33.4 35.5 29.1 29.5

Fruit Grapes were sourced from commercial vineyards in two WA GIs, Swan District and Great Southern (Mount Barker subregion). Tables 1 and 2 show climatic data recorded during the 2012-13 growing season.

From each region 100kg parcels of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were hand harvested. Fruit from GS was harvested from one vineyard, while the varieties from the SD were harvested from three separate vineyards. Maturities of the parcels were aligned with the commercial harvest specifications of the vineyards.

Winemaking Each parcel of fruit was split into half and allocated to a ‘control’ (no cold soak) or ‘cold soak’ treatment. Each treatment was then divided into three equal lots, creating three replicates (n = 3).

All replicates were crushed and destemmed into 15L stainless steel buckets with a 40ppm addition of potassium metabisulphite (KMS). Replicates for cold soak treatments followed this process, but received a 60ppm addition of KMS to suppress any microbial growth. Tartaric acid additions were made to adjust must pH to within a range of 3.5–3.6.

Control replicates received 200ppm of diammonium phosphate (DAP) and were then warmed to 17°C following crushing and destemming. Following this, the controls were inoculated with 250ppm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae bayanus EC1118 yeast (Lallemand Inc., Montreal, Canada) and fermented at 20°C. The musts of the cold soak treatments were placed in a 4°C coolroom for five days. During this period the must was lightly hand plunged once a day. After this period the must was warmed to 17°C, 200ppm DAP added, inoculated with 250ppm Lalvin EC-1118 yeast and fermented at 20°C. Both control and cold soak replicates received two daily hand plunges that thoroughly mixed the fermenting must.

When fermentations reached 0.0-1.0°Be, treatments were pressed.

Following pressing, wines were inoculated for malolactic fermentation (MLF) with Oenococcus oeni (Viniflora Oenos, Chr. Hansen, Hørsholm, Denmark) and stored at 20°C until completion of malolactic fermentation (<0.1g/L malic acid).

Post-MLF, wines were acid adjusted with tartaric acid to ensure pH and titratable acidity between replicates and within treatments was consistent, and KMS added to ensure free sulfur dioxide was maintained above 30ppm. Wines were stored at 4°C for a minimum of two months to cold stabilise then racked, filtered (5µm) and bottled under screwcap.

Bottled wines were stored at 16°C for 78 days prior to sensory analysis.

Chemical analysis The following suite of analyses were conducted on each replicate wine; pH, titratable acidity (TA), free SO2, total SO2, glucose/fructose, alcohol, malic acid, acetic acid, colour density (A420 + A520), colour hue (A420/A520), total phenolics and total anthocyanins.

Qualitative analysis of volatile compounds by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was undertaken on all replicates. This non-targeted profiling technique V2 9N 5

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Temperature mean (°C)

17.5 18.6 23.1 24.9 25.6 21.1 20.8

Degree Days^

233

259

405

461

437

343

325 2462

^Degrees days as sum of daily mean temperature over 10°C during the growing season.

Table 2. Mount Barker climatic summary, 2012-13.

Temperature mean minimum (°C)

Oct

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr Total

9.2

9.9 12.8 13.6 14.4 12.5 13.6

Temperature mean maximum (°C) 20.6 21.9 24.8 27.7 28.4 21.7 22.7 Temperature mean (°C)

14.3 15.0 17.9 19.7 20.0 16.2 17.2

Degree Days^

133

150

245

299

280

192

216 1516

^Degrees days as sum of daily mean temperature over 10°C during the growing season.

Table 3. Volatile fermentation derived compounds and aromas descriptors.

Class of compounds Ethyl esters

Acetates

Alcohols

Compound

Aroma descriptors

Ethyl acetate

VA, nail polish

Ethyl propanoate

Fruity

Ethyl 2-methylpropanoate

Fruity

Ethyl butanoate

Acid fruit

Ethyl 2-methylbutanoate

Sweet fruit

Ethyl 3-methylbutanoate

Berry

Ethyl hexanoate

Green apple

Ethyl octanoate

Sweet, soap

Ethyl decanoate

Sweet, soap

2-methylpropyl acetate

Banana, fruity

2-methylbutyl acetate

Banana, fruity

3-methylbutyl acetate

Banana

Hexyl acetate

Sweet, perFumé

2-methylpropanol

Fusel, spiritous

Butanol

Fusel, spiritous

2-methylbutanol

Nail polish

3-methylbutanol

Harsh, nail polish

Hexanol

Green, grass

Source: Australian Wine Research Institute.

discriminates samples based on their metabolic profile specific to a range of 18 volatile fermentation derived compounds (see Table 3). Results from this analysis are expressed as response ratios by compound. Interpretation of the GC-MS data was performed by dividing replicate mean values of opposing treatments for each of the measured compounds. The t-distribution of these ratios was calculated providing the lower boundary of 95% confidence interval (CI), the upper boundary of the 95% CI, and the p-value. The CI provides an indication of the likely range of the true population response ratio.

In addition to the non-targeted profiling, Great Southern

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Shiraz treatments were quantitatively analysed for rotundone (peppery character). Concentrations were determined by SIDA SPE-SPME-MDGC-MS (stable isotope dilution analysis, solid phase extraction, solid phase micro-extraction, multidimensional gas chromatograph â&#x20AC;&#x201C; mass spectrometer).

Sensory analysis Descriptive analysis was employed to assess the wines, and a panel of nine experienced winemakers participated in the sensory evaluation. Two replicates were included for each treatment, presented in unique randomised order grouped into variety and regional brackets.

Each wine was assessed on a separate tasting sheet comprising three colour, nine aroma and seven palate descriptors that were scored on a zero to nine intensity scale.

An overall quality score out of 20 points was also included, based on the Australian wine show scoring system.

Table 4. Shiraz mean wine analysis values by treatment at time of bottling.

Shiraz Swan District

Great Southern

Control

Cold Soak

Control

Cold Soak

FSO2 (ppm)

35

36

41

37

TSO2 (ppm)

65

61

63

64

pH

3.43

3.43

3.48

3.54

TA (g/L)

7.08

7.35

7.00

7.13

Alc (%v/v)

16.20

15.80

13.70

13.60

RS (g/L)

0.30

0.20

0.27

0.27

Table 5. Cabernet Sauvignon mean wine analysis values by treatment at time of bottling.

Cabernet Sauvignon Swan District

A sensory panel assesses the trial wines.

Great Southern

Control

Cold Soak

Control

Cold Soak

FSO2 (ppm)

36

33

35

37

TSO2 (ppm)

62

62

58

58

pH

3.56

3.49

3.46

3.45

TA (g/L)

6.63

7.13

7.15

6.57

Alc (%v/v)

14.70

15.10

13.20

13.30

RS (g/L)

0.20

0.20

0.20

0.20

Malic (g/L)

0.03

0.03

0.03

0.03

VA (g/L)

0.36

0.44

0.35

0.31

Table 6. Merlot mean wine analysis values by treatment at time of bottling.

Merlot Swan District

Results and discussion Chemical analysis Wine chemical analysis data shown in Tables 4 to 6 comprise the mean from the three replicates. Wine analysis on all treatments was performed post-bottling and the results showed consistencies within treatments and between replicates.

Colour analysis shown in Tables 7 to 9 provides the means of the three replicates. Only SD Shiraz, SD Cabernet Sauvignon and GS Merlot show statistical differences in colour analysis between treatments. Results for GS Shiraz, GS Cabernet Sauvignon and SD Merlot are not shown.

The results show control SD Shiraz (Table 7) had a brighter hue compared with the cold soak treatment, cold soak SD Cabernet Sauvignon (Table 8) had greater colour density and hue than the control treatment, and the GS Merlot (Table 9) control treatment had a brighter hue and higher amounts of total phenolics and total anthocyanins than the cold soak treatment.

Sensory analysis Data collected from the descriptive analysis of the wines was compiled into mean values for each attribute.

A series of linear regressions were run for each attribute with treatment (control vs cold soak) as the independent variable. To illustrate the results, radar graphs (Figures 1 to 3)

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Great Southern

Control

Cold Soak

Control

Cold Soak

FSO2 (ppm)

33

33

34

35

TSO2 (ppm)

69

71

67

70

pH

3.57

3.51

3.33

3.42

TA (g/L)

6.29

6.05

6.65

6.04

Alc (%v/v)

15.20

15.60

13.70

13.90

RS (g/L)

0.33

0.30

0.27

0.30

Malic (g/L)

0.08

0.06

0.03

0.03

Table 7. Shiraz mean wine colour analysis by treatment at time of bottling.

Shiraz Swan District Control

Cold Soak

Colour density

7.75a

6.76a

Colour hue

0.72a

0.77b

Total phenolics (a.u.)

42.43a

37.48b

Total anthocyanins (mg/L)

265.32a

210.92b

Means followed by the same letter within rows are not significantly different P â&#x2030;¤0.05

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Table 8. Cabernet Sauvignon mean wine colour analysis by treatment at time of bottling.

Cabernet Sauvignon Swan District Control

Cold Soak

Colour density

4.41a

5.68b

Colour hue

0.82a

0.73b

Total phenolics (a.u.)

32.06a

31.01a

Total anthocyanins (mg/L)

255.99a

246.73a

Means followed by the same letter within rows are not significantly different P â&#x2030;¤0.05

Table 9. Merlot mean wine colour analysis by treatment at time of bottling.

Merlot Great Southern Control

Cold Soak

Colour density

7.91a

7.36a

Colour hue

0.58a

0.60b

Total phenolics (a.u.)

33.54a

33.24b

Total anthocyanins (mg/L)

418.74a

416.70b

Means followed by the same letter within rows are not significantly different P â&#x2030;¤0.05

Control Cold Soak

Control Cold Soak

For further information, please contact Kauri Figure 1. Mean intensity ratings of wine attributes for Shiraz from Swan District (top) and Great Southern (bottom) wine regions.

V2 9N 5

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Control Cold Soak

Control Cold Soak

Control Cold Soak

Control Cold Soak

Figure 2. Mean intensity ratings of wine attributes for Cabernet Sauvignon from Swan District (top) and Great Southern (bottom) wine regions.

Figure 3. Mean intensity ratings of wine attributes for Merlot from Swan District (top) and Great Southern (bottom) wine regions.

are used to plot the mean values and distinguish results by statistical significance based on P value <0.05 and <0.1.

Each wine was also given an overall quality score by each assessor. Scores between treatments of SD Cabernet Sauvignon were the most significantly different with a P value of 0.002, cold soak being higher than the control. SD Shiraz was the only other treatment with notable quality scores with a P value of 0.065, control being higher than the cold soak.

Results derived from GC-MS qualitative analysis shown in Figures 4 to 6 illustrate the sample response ratios with the lower and upper boundary of the 95% CI for each measured volatile compound. As the response ratio is a ratio of cold soak mean to control mean, the default value is one. If the confidence interval between the lower and upper confidence intersects one, we concluded there is no difference between treatments and expect a non-significant P-value.

Where both intervals are below one, the mean of the control is greater than the mean of the cold soak treatment for the measured compound. Intervals above one indicate the mean of the cold soak is greater than the mean of the control. The smaller the P-value the further the confidence interval sits from the dotted line at 1.0 response ratio. The width of the confidence interval relates to how certain we are about the response ratio and reflects variabilies such as underlying measurements and sample size.

Principal component analysis (PCA) analysis of the data

showed no noticeable separations or groupings (beyond replicates) with regard to maceration.

Rotundone analysis of GS Shiraz showed all wines contained rotundone above the sensory threshold (16ng/L).

However, the results showed no significant differences between the treatments.

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Hot climate Shiraz Control was higher (P ≤ 0.05) than the cold soak treatment for palate length, dark berry aroma and tannin.

Hue, chocolate aroma, palate weight, flavour and wine score were also higher (P ≤ 0.1) in the control wine. The higher hue noted by the sensory panel can be attributed to the higher values for total phenolics, total anthocyanins and colour hue from the chemical analysis. The cold soak scored higher for herbaceous aromas than the control (P ≤ 0.1).

There were no aromatic compounds from the volatile profiling that showed significant differences between treatments.

Cool climate Shiraz There were no statistically significant differences between treatments observed in the sensory assessment, chemical analysis, volatile profiling or rotundone quantitative analysis. This indicates cold soak had no effect on wine colour, aroma (particularly pepper aromas), palate structure and overall quality when compared with the control. ▶

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Hot climate Cabernet Sauvignon Cold soak treatment showed significantly higher scores (P ≤ 0.05) for colour depth, hue, chocolate aroma, palate weight, palate texture, palate sweetness, palate length and wine score than the control. The sensory panel’s higher scores for colour attributes in the cold soaked wines correspond with the chemical analysis results for colour density and hue.

Overall quality between the two treatments, as represented by wine score, was significantly different with cold soak scoring higher than the control.

Both ethyl 2-methylbutanoate (sweet fruit) and ethyl 3-methylbutanoate (berry) were shown to be significantly different between the treatments, with cold soaked wines higher. In contrast, cold soak showed less 2- and 3-methylbutyl acetate (banana/fruity) than the control.

Sensory panel results, however, did not align with this analysis as they did not rate attributes for red berry, dark berry or confectionary aromas as significantly different.

Cool climate Cabernet Sauvignon The only attribute with a P value ≤ 0.1 from the sensory assessment was for dark berry aroma where the cold soak treated wine outscored the control. Neither the sensory or chemical analysis show significant differences in colour parameters.

From volatile profiling the cold soak was significantly higher in butanol (fusel, spiritous) than the control.

However, the opposite can be said for 2-methylpropyl acetate (banana, fruity) and hexyl acetate (sweet, perFumé).

As such a correlation is not observed between the sensory and volatile profiling results.

Hot climate Merlot The only attribute considered significantly different from the sensory assessment was colour hue which was significantly higher (P ≤ 0.05) in the control. Colour analysis did not show any difference when considering a 95% confidence.

Volatile compounds that were shown to be significantly higher in the control wines included; 2–methylpropyl (banana, fruity), 2- and 3-methylbutyl acetate (banana, fruity), hexyl acetate (sweet, perFumé) and ethyl decanoate (sweet, soap).

Comparably, cold soak treated wines were higher in ethyl 2-methylbutanoate (sweet fruit), ethyl 3-methyl butanoate (berry) and butanol (fusel, spiritous). However, these differences were not shown in the sensory analysis and, as such, the volatile compound profile cannot be correlated with the sensory results.

Cool climate Merlot In the sensory assessment, the cold soak treatment was significantly higher for palate texture, flavour and leather aroma than the control. The control was, however, higher in red berry and confectionary aromas. Chemical analysis of colour showed the control wines to be significantly brighter in colour hue and had higher amounts of total phenolics and total anthocyanins.

There were no compounds in the volatile profiling that showed significant difference between treatments.

Conclusion Through investigating the influence of climate and variety on the effectiveness of pre-fermentation cold maceration (cold soak) this study has found the technique is not ‘one size fits all’.

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Figure 4. Response ratios with 95% confidence intervals of Swan District (top) and Greater Southern (bottom) Shiraz.

Cabernet Sauvignon is the most responsive variety to a cold soak treatment. Cold soak greatly benefited the quality of Cabernet Sauvignon grown in a hot climate showing improved colour and palate structure. Dark berry aromas were shown to be accentuated by cold soaking cool climate Cabernet Sauvignon. Cold soak treatment, regardless of the climate, tended to reduce acetate compounds.

Shiraz did not respond well to cold soaking, regardless of the climatic region in which the fruit was grown. Cold soak reduced the quality of hot climate Shiraz.

In terms of wine style, a cold soak on cool climate Merlot provided complexity. Results from the sensory and chemical analysis of the warm climate Merlot have provided contrasting results. Chemical analysis showed this climate/ variety combination had the highest number of significantly

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Figure 5. Response ratios with 95% confidence intervals of Swan District (top) and Grester Southern (bottom) Cabernet Sauvignon. different aromatic compounds than any other combination in the study. However, the only descriptor that showed significant differences between treatments in the sensory assessment was colour.

There was no firm correlation between the sensory assessment results and the volatile profiling of the wines.

This may be attributed to the complexities of volatile aroma compounds and the relationships between them.

This study demonstrates that not all varieties react similarly to a cold soak and the climate in which the fruit has been grown influences the efficacy of this technique.

Winemakers should consider these variables before employing a cold soak to ensure that refrigeration costs and

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Figure 6. Response ratios with 95% confidence intervals of SD (top) and GS (bottom) Merlot. logistical pressures are not endured for little or no return on wine quality.

Acknowledgments This study was funded through the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 2013 Science and Innovation Awards (viticulture and oenology category) sponsored by the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (now known as the Australian Grape and Wine Authority). Thank you to Department of Agriculture and Food WA staff Andrew Taylor, Glynn Ward, Kristen Brodison and Karyn Reeves for their time and WVJ valuable assistance.

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A W R I

Staying a step ahead of 'Brett'

By Chris Curtin, Anthony Borneman, Ryan Zeppel, Toni Cordente, Robyn Kievit, Paul Chambers, Markus Herderich and Dan Johnson The Australian Wine Research Institute, PO Box 197, Glen Osmond, South Australia, Australia

Managing director Dan Johnson

Brettanomyces bruxellensis (known in the wine industry as ‘Brett’) is a species of yeast that produces unpleasant medicinal and phenolic characters in wine. While there are practical steps to be taken in the winery that are currently successful at controlling ‘Brett’, there is a risk that a strain could emerge that is resistant to control strategies. For that reason, research is under way to understand this yeast at the genetic level and make sure winemakers can stay ahead of any ‘Brett’ threat.

A short history of ‘Brett’ and Australian wine

B

rettanomyces yeasts are found in many fermented beverages, but are particularly well-known for their role in wine, beer and cider.

They have been isolated from wines made around the world, including 31 winemaking regions of Australia (AWRI publication #989). When growing in wine, these yeast produce the compounds 4-ethylphenol and 4-ethylguaiacol, which are responsible for Bandaid®, phenolic, leather, sweaty, medicinal, and barnyard aromas. Commonly known as ‘Brett’ character, these aromas are often combined with a metallic aftertaste.

Brettanomyces yeasts are able to form these compounds via a metabolic pathway that is not present in other wine yeast.

Brett was a major problem for the Australian wine industry during the late 1990s and early 2000s – most red wines contained some Brett spoilage compounds, often at levels later shown to be perceived negatively by consumers (AWRI publication #1043).

Extensive communication of a practical Brett control strategy (AWRI publication #756) was successful in reducing Brett effects on Australian red wines, with typical 4-ethylphenol levels in major Cabernet Sauvignon producing regions falling from approximately 1000ppb in vintage 2000 to less than 100ppb by vintage 2005. To put this in perspective, the perception threshold for 4-ethylphenol is around 300-600ppb, depending on wine style.

One key component of the Brett control strategy was more effective use of the common wine preservative sulfite. Winemakers were encouraged to add sulfite in larger quantities but less often, providing a bigger

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At a glance •

•

• •

•

Brettanomyces bruxellensis (‘Brett’) yeast cause wine spoilage by producing 4-ethylphenol and 4-ethylguaicol. ‘Brett’ spoilage was a major issue in Australian red winemaking during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and still forms the topic of around 5% of total queries to the AWRI helpdesk each year.

‘Brett’ yeast can be controlled in the winery via a combination of good sanitation, minimisation of residual sugar, effective use of sulfite and pH management. However, there is a risk that new strains could emerge that are resistant to current control strategies.

The AWRI was first in the world to release a full genome sequence for a Brettanomyces yeast in 2012.

Further studies of the ‘Brett’ genome have followed and revealed interesting links between yeast strain genetic composition and tolerance to the common preservative sulfite.

AWRI researchers are working to stay ahead of ‘Brett’ evolution to ensure it doesn’t re-emerge as a significant wine spoilage issue in Australia.

effect for the same overall amount of preservative used. The adoption of this strategy could be seen in the ratio of free to total sulfite in finished wine, which is an indicator of how sulfite has been used throughout a wine’s life.

Low ratios (i.e. with high amounts of bound sulfite relative to free) typically mean that sulfite has been added to the wine repeatedly in small amounts, and that microbial growth or oxidation has occurred, producing sulfite-binding compounds. During the period when the Brett control strategy was being widely communicated, the average ratio of free to total sulfite for wines analysed by the AWRI’s Commercial Services group increased from approximately 0.3 to 0.45 (AWRI publication #870), indicating improved sulfite management practices and cleaner wines.

At the same time, B. bruxellensis strains were being collected from winemaking regions across Australia to try to get a picture of their overall diversity. The 31 strains that were W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

eventually isolated were tested for their sulfite tolerance (AWRI publication #1447) and also analysed using a DNA fingerprinting method (AWRI publication #989) to investigate how genetically similar or different they were to each other. Interestingly, most isolates were found to belong to a sulfite-tolerant genetic group, and the relative proportion of sulfite-tolerant strains was higher in samples obtained in 2004-2005 compared with those sourced in earlier years. The concept of antibiotic resistance is well-known in the medical world – if bacteria are exposed repeatedly to a non-lethal dose of antibiotic they can evolve a survival mechanism. Could this be happening for B. bruxellensis in response to sulfite? How could the risk of new strains emerging and potentially leaving current control strategies ineffective be estimated? The best answer appears to lie in an examination of B. bruxellensis at its most basic level – a deeper understanding of its genome. ▶ V29N5

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Triploid  =  Three  copies  of  each  chromosome Â

Diploid  =  Two  copies  of  each  chromosome Â

Figure 1. Each of the sequenced B. bruxellensis strains contains a similar diploid genome, meaning each cell contains two copies of each chromosome. In addition, AWRI1499 and AWRI1608 both contain a third full set of chromosomes that have been inherited from more distantly related strains.

Figure  1:  Each  of  the  sequenced  B.  bruxellensis  strains  contains  a  similar  diploid  genome,  meaning  each  cell  contains  two  copies  of  each  chromosome.  In  addi<on,  AWRI1499  and  AWRI1608  both  contain  a  third  full  set  of  chromosomes  whereas most species evolutionary histories. Given the Strategic genomic sequencing: that  have  been  inherited  from  more  distantly  related  strains.   that reproduce sexually have two sets of chromosomes divergent sets of chromosomes in both decoding the B. bruxellensis genome

S. cerevisiae, the yeast used in wine, beer and bread production, amongst other industries, was one of the first organisms to have its genome fully sequenced. In the mid-2000s the same DNA sequencing technology (known as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sangerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sequencing) was applied to the B. bruxellenis genome (Woolfit et al.

2007). However, due to cost constraints, this study only yielded a partial genome sequence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; useful for understanding where B. bruxellensis fits into the tree of life, but insufficient to shed light on how it had evolved. The AWRI extended this work, sequencing the DNA of an Australian B. bruxellensis strain (AWRI 1499) with relatively high sulfite tolerance, using a platform known as 454 pyrosequencing. The end result â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a world first â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was a 12.7 million base pair assembly comprising approximately 6000 genes.

What was discovered in this assembly? B. bruxellensis had more genes that encode membrane transport proteins and oxidation/reduction enzymes than other yeast species.

These may provide an enhanced ability to take up nutrients in nutritionally barren environments, giving a greater capacity to survive for extended periods in wine. The B. bruxellensis genome was similar in size and gene content to that of S. cerevisiae. Unexpectedly, the assembly showed a triploid genome, meaning it contained three copies of its chromosomes (AWRI publication #1385),

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(one from each parent). Furthermore, the DNA sequence of the third set of chromosomes was quite different from the other two.

To delve further into the genome composition of B. bruxellensis, two additional Australian strains were sequenced, representing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;intermediateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sensitiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sulfite tolerance groups, while genomic data for a French wine isolate was also available for comparison (PiĹĄkur et al. 2012). The sulfite â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sensitiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; strain (AWRI 1613) and the French wine isolate were similar in genome sequence, and both contained two rather than three copies of their chromosomes (Figure 1). They also both exhibited large regions of their genomes where both chromosomal copies had the same sequences; this usually reveals genes important for survival and reproduction. The intermediate Australian isolate (AWRI 1608) was found to be triploid, again with two sets of chromosomes that were similar to one another, and a third set that was different (Figure 1). Examination of seven genes for all four strains revealed that the divergent sequences in AWRI 1608 were not the same as those found in AWRI 1499. What does this mean?

Given that AWRI 1499 and 1608 together represent approximately 92% of all isolates recovered from Australian wineries, the results imply that triploid B. bruxellensis strains may be â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;more fitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for survival. It would also seem that the generation of these triploids happened independently; they have different

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strains are not the same, it is unclear whether the presence of this â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;third genomeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is important simply because it adds to the number of gene copies, or whether additional copies of specific genes offer particular advantage.

B. bruxellensis and sulfite tolerance Initial work looking at functional genomics for B. bruxellensis has focussed on sulfite tolerance, a trait well understood for S. cerevisiae, both in terms of which genes are involved and what determines the relative tolerance of different strains (Park and Bakalinsky 2000; Aa et al. 2006; Goto-Yamamoto 1998). Central to this trait in S. cerevisiae is a sulfite pump encoded by the gene SSU1, which can be found across many fungal species and is present in single copy in the B. bruxellensis genome. If this gene is deleted from the S. cerevisiae genome the modified strain becomes sulfite sensitive. While there are no molecular biology tools enabling such analysis to be performed in B. bruxellensis, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to test whether the same gene from B. bruxellensis (BbSSU1) complements deletion of SSU1 in Saccharomyces. Preliminary results showed that expression of BbSSU1 in a S. cerevisiae strain without the SSU1 gene brought back sulfite tolerance.

Unexpectedly, the degree to which this pump is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;switched onâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in B. bruxellensis was shown not to be different between

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sulfite tolerant and sulfite sensitive strains. This was determined by studying the transcriptome (the set of all RNA molecules produced in one or a population of cells) after exposing cells to sulfite. Current work involves comparing the different sequences of BbSSU1 found in these strains, to determine whether one version of the pump confers more sulfite tolerance than another. This will provide insight into the potential for emergence of new B. bruxellensis strains with enhanced sulfite tolerance.

Conclusion To ensure the continued success of Brett control strategies, it is important to understand how B. bruxellensis has evolved to survive in wine, and how it might adapt to changing winemaking practices. Next-generation sequencing technology has been applied to decode the genomes of three Australian B. bruxellensis isolates, revealing that formation of triploid genomes through hybridisation may be important in determining their relative ‘fitness’ to survive under Australian winemaking conditions. Next-generation sequencing platforms were also used to catalogue the B. bruxellensis transcriptome which, combined with gene function analysis, will provide a better understanding of what makes B. bruxellensis tolerant to sulfite. This new knowledge will allow informed evaluation of the risk of new strains emerging that are immune to existing control strategies.

Henschke, Matt Holdstock, and Emma Kennedy, for their involvement in obtaining and characterising several hundred B. bruxellensis isolates, and the many anonymous industry collaborators who provided samples.

Ella Robinson is thanked for her editorial assistance. This work was financially supported by Australia's grapegrowers and winemakers through their investment body the Australian Grape and Wine Authority, with matching funds from the Australian Government. The AWRI is a member of the Wine Innovation Cluster.

References Aa, E.; Townsend, J.P.; Adams, R.I.; Nielsen, K.M. and Taylor, J.W. (2006) Population structure and gene evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. FEMS Yeast Res. 6(5):702–715.

AWRI publication #756 Coulter, A.; Robinson, E.; Cowey, G.; Francis, L.; Lattey, K.; Capone, D.; Gishen, M. and Godden, P. (2003) Dekkera/Brettanomyces yeast: An overview of recent AWRI investigations and some recommendations for its control. Bell, S.M.; deGaris, K.A.; Dundon, C.G.; Hamilton, R.P.; Partridge, S.J. and Wall, G.S. (eds). Proceedings of a seminar organised by the Australian Society for Viticulture and Oenology – Grapegrowing at the edge, managing the wine business, impacts on wine flavour. Tanunda, SA: Australian Society for Viticulture and Oenology, Adelaide, Australia. 41–50.

2007, Adelaide, SA. 207–211.

AWRI publication #1385 Curtin, C.D.; Borneman, A.R.; Chambers, P.J. and Pretorius, I.S. (2012) DeNovo assembly and analysis of the heterozygous triploid genome of the wine spoilage yeast Dekkera bruxellensis AWRI1499. PLoS ONE 7(3):1-10.

AWRI publication #1447 Curtin C.; Kennedy E. and Henschke, P.A. (2012) Genotype-dependent sulphite tolerance of Australian Dekkera (Brettanomyces) bruxellensis wine isolates. Lett. Appl. Microbiol.

55(1):56-61 Chatonnet P.; Dubourdieu D.; Boidron, J.N. and Pons, M. (1992) The origin of ethylphenols in wines. J. Sci. Food Agric. 60(2):165–178.

Goto-Yamamoto, N. (1998) SSU1-R, a sulfite resistance gene of wine yeast, is an allele of SSU1 with a different upstream sequence. J. Ferment.

Bioeng. 86(5):427–433.

Park, H. and Bakalinsky, A.T. (2000) SSU1 mediates sulphite efflux in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast 16: 881–888.

Piškur, J.; Ling, Z.; Marcet-Houben, M.; Ishchuk, O.P.; Aerts, A.; LaButti, K,; Copeland, A.; Linquist, E.; Barry, K.; Campagno, C.; Bisson, L.; Grigoriev, I.V.; Gabaldón, T. and Phister, T. (2012) The genome of wine yeast Dekkera bruxellensis provides a tool to explore its food-related properties. Int. J. Food Microbiol. 157(2):202–209.

Woolfit, M.; Rozpedowska, E.; Piškur, J. and Wolfe, K.H. (2007) Genome survey sequencing of the wine spoilage yeast Dekkera (Brettanomyces) bruxellensis. Eukaryotic Cell 6(4):721–733.

Sections of this article are reproduced from Curtin, C.D.; Borneman, A.R.; Zeppel, R.; Cordente, AWRI publication #870 Godden, P. and Gishen, M. (2005) Trends in the composition of Australian wine.

A.G.; Kievet, R. and Chambers, P.J. Aust. N. Z. Wine Ind. J. 20(5):21–46.

Harnessing genomics to ensure a AWRI publication #989 Curtin, C.D.; Bellon, J.R.; ‘Brett’-free future for Australian wine.

Henschke, P.A.; Godden, P.W. and de Barros Lopes, Beames, K.S.; Robinson, E.M.C.; M.A. (2007a) Genetic diversity of Dekkera bruxellensis Godden P.W. and Johnson, D.L. (eds.) yeasts isolated from Australian wineries. FEMS Yeast Proceedings of the 15th Australian Res. 7(2):471–481.

Wine Industry Technical Conference: AWRI publication #1043 Curtin, C.; Bramley, B.; Sydney, New South Wales 13-18 July Cowey, G.; Holdstock, M.; Kennedy, E.; Lattey, K.; Acknowledgements Coulter, A.; Henschke, P.; Francis, L. and Godden, P. 2013. Urrbrae, South Australia; The 3 7 5 6 F l u t e 8 8 x 1 8 5 _ G G W - (2008) 1 Sensory 2 0 1 3perceptions - 0 3 - of 2 'Brett' 0 T 1and 5 :relationship 5 8 : 2 5 + 1 1 : 0 0 Australian Wine Industry Technical to consumer preference. Blair, R.J.; Williams, P.J. The authors thank Jenny Bellon, Conference Inc.: 158–160; 2014, with and Pretorius, I.S (eds), Proceedings of the Australian Adrian Coulter, Geoff Cowey, Miguel WVJ permission from the publisher.

Wine Industry Technical Conference 29 July–2 August de Barros Lopes, Peter Godden, Paul

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Mechanical pruning: it seemed a good idea at the time

By Richard Smart. Email: richard@smartvit.com.au

Richard Smart raises concern that the practice of mechanically hedging vines is contributing to trunk disease infections.

Introduction

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his title will cause many colleagues to scratch their heads and wonder if Richard Smart has finally lost the plot. Who could possibly question if this technological advance, now widely used in Australia, and for more than 30 years, is appropriate?

Why might mechanical pruning not be appropriate for Australian vineyards in 2014?

I can think of two reasons for this proposition. First, and perhaps most significantly, vineyard production might not be sustainable under mechanical pruning, due to impacts on vine health. I discuss this subsequently.

Secondly, mechanising pruning is a further step down the slippery slope of having cost-cutting as the primary goal of viticultural practice. ‘Quality be damned, we must produce grapes more cheaply’ was and still is the catch cry. I wrote an article entitled ‘Has the mantra of cost-cutting contributed to the present problems of the wine sector’, published in the Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal, predecessor to this journal, in the January/February 2010 issue. Cost-cutting can be justified for a bulk wine industry, but not for fine wines. Is this where Australia is headed? Sadly, present statistics suggest an affirmative answer.

Historical background The late 1960s and the early 1970s were periods of change in the Australian wine sector. This was a period of growth, especially for corporate investment, and notably in the southeast of South Australia, around Padthaway and Coonawarra.

The development of these large vineyards put strain on local resources, especially labour. By this time the mechanisation of harvest was quite well progressed.

Also the entrance of corporate accounting to the wine sector caused scrutiny of vineyard costs, and the high labour costs of pruning were conspicuous. It is no surprise to learn that the possibility of mechanising pruning was considered.

experimenting with mechanical pruning since 1956. They had already demonstrated that dense canopies trained to a single curtain promoted shade, and that yield and fruit composition could be improved by canopy division to eliminate shade, i.e., the Geneva Double Curtain.

Experiments conducted in 1971 and 1972 questioned which was the best way to achieve good yields by mechanical pruning with cutter bars. The answer was clear, using a high cordon and pruning to medium length (seven to 10 nodes) and downward pointing canes. Intrieri, in Italy, was to find the same result many years later. A rotating, stiff wire brush was used in New York for shoot removal along the cordon, which helped avoid shade. Interestingly, as well as developing the world’s first mechanical pruner, mechanical shoot positioners and harvesters were also developed by this enterprising team.

Australian experience Mildura grower Bob Hollick was an early pioneer of mechanical pruning in Australia, using cutter bars. All of the early effort was about mechanising spur pruning and one of the first casualties was the loss of control of bud number at pruning. Initially some used a ‘hand follow-up’, but this was found generally unnecessary.

Trunk disease spread is worse with spur pruning, due to many more pruning wounds…Recent research is demonstrating the possibility of fungicide spraying to protect pruning wounds. Perhaps this should have always been part of mechanical pruner design.

Experiments in eastern United States The idea of mechanical pruning of grapevines was not new.

Professors Nelson Shaulis (viticulture) and Stan Shepherd (engineer) of Cornell/Geneva and associates had been

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During the late 1970s, I worked at Roseworthy Agricultural College with Associate Professor Peter Dry. The college was granted research funds to study mechanical pruning by the Australian Wine Board. Workshops were held at the

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college in 1977 and 1979. The workshop in 1979 reviewed commercial experience to date throughout Australia, and also experimental data from Roseworthy, Nuriootpa, Loxton, Griffith and CSIRO Merbein.

By this time, circular saws mounted on a variety of platforms were being used, as well as cutter bars. The circular saws were able to cut into old wood and, of course, created larger pruning wounds. Interestingly, and in retrospect, the New York experience was ignored, and mechanical pruning to this day essentially consists of cutting the vines through wood of various ages and typically with shoots trained upwards, or sprawling. High cordons were not used, and the vines are typically trained to waist-height cordons.

Early yield responses were encouraging, due to retaining more buds, but as time went on the bud number and yield reduced. Labour requirements were reduced, and there were some concerns about rural unemployment as a consequence.

Around this time, CSIRO began its experiments with minimal pruning, which was soon to join mechanical pruning in being widely used in many Australian vineyard regions.

Early warnings of caution At the time of writing, the 1979 Roseworthy workshop was conducted more than 35 years ago. That is a long time, and one can question how the technology has progressed over this period, and were there any warnings given in 1979 which have come to pass?

The late Dr Bryan Coombe made both introductory and concluding presentations. He noted how the “haphazard” approach of cutter bars or saws might differ from hand pruning in the following ways: vine form and physical size

Figure 1. Mechanically pruned vines, flat hedge cut across the top.

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has not been compromised, but bud number per vine and the selection of more fruitful buds has been. Bud distribution has also been compromised, but the vines do have larger frameworks, although it has been haphazardly created. Older mechanically-pruned vines typically have more old wood around the cordon than do hand pruned vines.

Dr Coombe also stated that “wood diseases may also, in the future, call for changes in pruning and training”.

The late Dr Peter May, of CSIRO, presented results from various mechanical pruning trials. He urged some caution about the long-term performance of ‘hedging’ vines, as in a situation where shoot numbers continue to increase, then over-cropping may occur, or difficulties with mechanical harvesting. He stated that if difficulties arise in the longer term, remedies may be technically difficult and expensive.

Associate Professor Dry spoke about aspects of mechanical pruning on diseases, especially because of creating infection sites through large pruning wounds. At that time, there was confusion about the responsible organism - Eutypa or Phomopsis - and the name of the disease, be it ‘dying arm’ or ‘dead arm’, terminology apparently varying across Australia. He also said that new diseases may occur which are weakly pathogenic under normal circumstances, for example, wood rotting fungi. Of all the diseases Dry considered, fungal invasion of large pruning wounds was a major consideration. Spray application of fungicide to pruning wounds at the time of pruning was suggested.

Mechanical pruning in 2014 Here I present (Figures 1-6) some photographs taken in the Barossa Valley in May 2014. I do not know the vineyard

Figure 2. Side view, same vine, showing cuts through oneyear-old wood, and older. Some cut canes fall on the vine.

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Figure 3. Showing the impact of hedging. Spurs are cut to variable length, and there are large cuts into older wood.

Note the larger number of dead spurs. Not a pruning job similar to what was done by hand.

Figure 4. The outcome of trunk disease infection. Note most arms are dead and there are only a few pieces of live, oneyear-old wood in the vine crown. See similar dead vines in background.

Figure 5. Another almost dead vine with just a few live one-year-old cane bases. Note dead arms and spurs in the foreground.

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age (I would guess 20 years plus), how long it has been mechanically pruned (I would guess most of its life), nor the variety. However, the impact of mechanical pruning is as I have seen elsewhere.

Is this practice something that Australia can be proud of?

Should scientists like myself apologise for promoting the practice all those years ago? I must say I feel like it.

I have never seen published surveys of trunk disease damage in such vineyards, nor estimates of lost productivity.

For old mechanically pruned vines the losses must be substantial. I dare say there are growers who have removed

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such vineyards because of lost productivity, I would be interested to hear about them.

There are several features of these vineyards which relate to warnings given at the 1979 Roseworthy workshop. Dr Peter May warned that it may be difficult to undo the effects of vine structure after several years of hedging. How right he was!

It seems that the only way to get rid of such vineyards is with a bulldozer, although I wonder if anyone has tried cutting off the cordon and arms and retraining them. One would need to be able to cut below any cankers/staining in the trunk, see Figure 6. ▶

What does the research tell us about the link between mechanical pruning and trunk diseases?

South Australian Research and Development Institute researcher Mark Sosnowski will be convening the upcoming International Workshop on Grapevine Trunk Diseases in Adelaide this November.

He says based on the knowledge of trunk diseases, the greater amount of wounds made using mechanical pruning is likely to increase the chances of infection.

“We observe greater incidence of infection in vineyards that have been mechanically pruned for a long period compared with hand pruned vines,” Sosnowski noted, adding that researchers were developing efficient strategies to protect all pruning wounds with fungicides using commercial sprayers.

“Once we have fungicides registered for this purpose we will be recommending this following any type of pruning activity,” he said.

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Both Coombe and Dry warned about a pathogen effect with large pruning wounds, and this seems the big issue, making these vineyards eventually uneconomic. Fungi species involved can include Botryosphaeria, Eutypa and Phomopsis.

The latter has been shown recently to be a trunk disease pathogen in its own right.

Conclusion Trunk disease spread is worse with spur pruning, due to many more pruning wounds. Infection of wounds on one-yearold wood can occur. How many growers might contemplate a return to cane pruning to reduce trunk disease impact? Recent research is demonstrating the possibility of fungicide spraying to protect pruning wounds. Perhaps this should have always been part of mechanical pruner design.

There is a need now for some serious research. How does region/pruning method (cane/spur/mechanical and variety/ vine age) affect the occurrence of symptomatic vines? What about vineyard yield? A recent survey in New Zealand showed disturbing trends with vine age, and variety. Will it be the same in Australia?

One point worth making is that the adoption of mechanical pruning by hedging is largely confined to Australia. Could it be that the widespread adoption of this technology might further erode Australia’s competitive ability?

WVJ

Figure 6. Typical staining in the trunk from wood disease.

This old vine had many cankers on the trunk.

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The Coonawarra experience Dr Richard Smart recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Coonawarra region was an early adopter of mechanical pruning. “This was a region with many large company vineyards, labour shortages and cost scrutiny by accountants,” he says. “Mechanical hedging with no hand clean up became the standard.”

Almost 40 years on, Richard Smart contacted former Roseworthy colleague Allen Jenkins, now a viticulturist with Wynns, who confirmed that grapevine trunk diseases (GTD) were a major influence in vineyard degeneration in the region. This was studied by Sosnowski et al. (2012) in a SARDI survey of vineyards of the region. They found a high incidence of GTD, and that vine dieback was much more common than was foliar symptoms, suggesting that Botryosphaeria and Phomopsis are important, as well as Eutypa. Incidence was worst for older vineyards aged over 15 years, increasing at up to 2% per year, but depending on variety and management. Cabernet Sauvignon was most susceptible, with one vineyard showing 100% infection in 14 years. Mechanically pruned vines with hand follow-up had a lower GTD incidence, and large pruning wounds made by saws were to be avoided as they aided GTD invasion.

Allen says that classical minimal pruning is not practised in the region now; those vines have either been cordon reconstructed or replanted. A large proportion of the vineyards are now hand pruned, and where mechanical pruning is still employed, in most cases it is followed by detailed hand work reducing bud numbers overall, and cutting to two buds per spur. Smart said that, in a way, this was “paradoxical” as ‘hand clean-up’ was the first modification to mechanical hedging to be discarded. “We have now come the full circle!” he said.

Allen Jenkins in the cordon reconstructed Davis Cabernet Vineyard in Coonawarra planted in 1957.

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Photo courtesy Dragan Radocaj and Barossa Grape & Wine Association

Vine age versus vine balance – which is more important?

By Tony Hoare

Hoare Consulting, PO Box 1106, McLaren Flat 5171 South Australia. Email: tony@hoareconsulting.com.au

Is it vine age or vine balance that holds the key to achieving high quality fruit?

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here was a passionate discussion at the recent ASVO seminar in Mildura regarding the value of older vineyards compared with young vineyards. The discussion caused me to reflect on my own experiences in comparing vine age and vine balance.

Hunter Semillon – a lesson from Bruce Tyrrell I have been fortunate to walk the rows of many of Australia’s iconic vineyards. The common feature of them all was that they were of a great age. The average age of most was 50 years with the oldest being more than 100 years young. Look at the Langtons V2 9N 5

classification of iconic wines and nearly all have a long history of being tied to individual vineyards that have lasted for generations. I once asked Bruce Tyrrell if he was interested in a planting of Semillon I had just completed at Ablington Vineyard Estate, at Pokolbin, in the Lower Hunter. I had researched the best Hunter clones and the site I selected was over the creek from the famous Stevens Block, which I guessed would have the same soil as George Stevens’ magnificent vines. Expecting Bruce to jump at the chance to expand his Semillon production with my new vineyard, I was told by Bruce that he might have a look at it in 20 years and see then how the fruit measured up. It W i n e & V i t i cultur e Jo ur n a l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

was then that I appreciated even more the value of Vat 1 Semillon and how it could not be simply mass produced by following a viticultural formula. This was a valuable lesson as a wide-eyed viticultural graduate who believed site and clonal selection alone would deliver results.

Wirra Wirra - the Trott legacy When I joined Wirra Wirra in 2002, they had some great old vines. Greg Trott and his cousin Roger had rebuilt the old Robert Strangways Wrigley ironstone winery in the 1960s and then acquired surrounding vineyards and planted some new blocks. Whilst the old blocks were www.wine biz. com . au

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a valuable asset, they presented me with many challenges. The 30-year-old Riesling in the Nocowie vineyard was a very consistent-yielding block - between seven to 10 tonnes per hectare. The vines were spur pruned with supplementary canes for yield. The spur positions were succumbing to the effects of Eutypa lata (Dead Arm) and the canes allowed for the extra yield needed to make the block economically viable. The fruit from this block went into the ‘Hand Picked’ Riesling which retailed for around $19 per bottle. It had a good following and sold out each vintage. The problem I had with managing the block was that it had to be hand-picked to comply with the label. The value of McLaren Vale Riesling at the time was such that the costs of hand picking were around 50% of the total running costs. Adding the extra costs of cane pruning the block was not viable for the fruit alone. The value adding in the winery, 30 years of history and a dedicated following for the style did allow the block to survive during my time at the company. Sadly, I was called in to

I was quick to learn that this was not the case. The problem with Eutypaaffected vines is that they have everdecreasing spur positions. Coupled with an old established root system, the difficulty of achieving the appropriate balance of bud numbers and vine vigour can lead to variable fruit quality. There were some vintage conditions when the spring symptoms of Eutypa stunted shoots and poorly set bunches, providing another potential quality issue requiring selective bunch thinning at veraison.

The old vines were difficult to regulate growth with irrigation. Their large root systems would create high vigour in wet springs and then hot weather close to veraison would lead to berry shrivel despite applications of water to maintain a full profile. Implementing measures to counteract the effects of Eutpya did not always guarantee high quality fruit and the expectations of the winemaker and chief financial officer were not met in some years. Regulating vine balance in old vines, especially with established Eutypa infections, was a great challenge

Fruit quality does not simply increase as a result of vine age. Good vineyard management to maintain a vine balance and react to seasonal conditions is critical with old or young vines when aiming to maximise fruit quality. graft the vines to Shiraz in 2008 when the vines had reached their use by date.

There were some other great old vines at Wirra Wirra. The old Cabernet in the Scrubby Rise vineyard was first planted by the late Alex Baxendale. Alex and his faithful dog, Jip, would drop in for a chat on their daily walks when we were in the block. They lived next door with Alex’s wife Ruth. Alex used to laugh at how the vineyard had come full circle with its management over the decades.

As with the Riesling, we used canes to supplement yield and build a canopy on the severely Eutypa-affected vines.

The effects of minimal pruning had taken their toll and viable spur positions were few and far between. Arched cane and spur pruning worked really well and achieved the quality and yield required of the block in most years. The biggest problem I faced was winemaker expectations. As the block was more than 40 years old, it was expected to produce high quality fruit for the then Angelus Cabernet Sauvignon, know known as the Dead Ringer. Based on my experiences with Hunter Semillon, how could I go wrong? Old vines equal high quality fruit – right?

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and was a valuable lesson learnt. In the years that we got it right, the fruit seemed to have an extra layer or two of flavour and interest that the young vineyards lacked. The irony of returning to cane pruning the old Cabernet was not lost on Alex who would chuckle that we should never have changed pruning in the first place. The benefit of such hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The other old blocks at Wirra Wirra were Shiraz. The 73 Shiraz block was named after the year it was planted.

The winery’s expectations were less for this block compared with the House and Chook blocks which had a few years age on the 73 and had more of a reputation and pedigree. The Chook block had become iconic in 1998 when it made the Vineyard Series, a wine only released in exceptional vintages from individual blocks. A few rows had been reworked in the 73 to produce new cordons. These rows were far more fruitful, however bunch architecture was different to the old cordons and as a result they were kept separate at harvest. The reworked vines had larger bunches and berries and the fruit hung differently on these

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spur-pruned vines compared with the arched canes of the older vines. The effect of canopy on bunch exposure was also noticeably different between the reworked and established vines despite both canopies being a traditional Aussie sprawl. The comparison between these two vine treatments in the 73 reinforced the importance of vine balance to achieve fruit quality. The Chook block is a great example of vine balance being more influential on fruit quality than vine age.

The Vineyard Series wine has only been made a handful of times in the block’s long history. Do the great vintages reflect the perfect balance and fully harness the benefits of old vines? Fruit quality does not simply increase as a result of vine age. Good vineyard management to maintain a vine balance and react to seasonal conditions is critical with old or young vines when aiming to maximise fruit quality.

The beauty of youth In recent years I have been fortunate to be associated with high quality wines produced from young vineyards. The George block Shiraz in McLaren Vale was only in its teens when it achieved its first A grading. It appeared to have the perfect balance in the vineyard which transpired in the winery. A similar grading was also achieved in 2009 for some young Adelaide Hills Shiraz I was involved with which also looked like it had the potential in the vineyard but was only planted in the 1990s. Dandelion Vineyards’ international trophy winning 2011 Pride of the Fleurieu Cabernet Sauvignon was only planted in 2003. The first crop of Nero d’Avola from Caj Amadio’s vineyard in 2010 made a stunning red wine. This is not uncommon for a first crop to produce an intense red wine, however this was something special. Fiano harvested in 2009 - a second crop - won Beach Road Wines the trophy for best white wine at the 2009 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show. The beauty of youth.

From my experience, old vines are a great advantage for potential high quality fruit production. However, vine balance holds the key to achieving that quality potential.

Before setting up his own vineyard and winery consultancy business with wife Briony, Tony Hoare established and managed the Ablington Vineyard Estate block in the Lower Hunter for five years before joining Wirra Wirra in McLaren Vale in 2002 where he managed the winery’s estate and contract vineyards.

He and Briony also have their own wine label and cellar door, Beach Road Wines.

WVJ

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vitic u l t u re

FROST

Canberra sees the silver lining in damaging frosts

By Sonya Logan

O

ne of the predicted effects of climate change over coming years is that vineyard sites will experience fewer frost days. However, the unstable nature of climate change may also result in an increase in extreme frost events or frosts occurring outside of conventional frost risk seasons. There’s also the possibility that in some regions climate change may increase the amount of clear skies in spring which when coupled with drier soils could give rise to the occurrence and severity of frosts. Furthermore, even if the frequency and timing of frosts stays the same, the warmer conditions may bring forward budburst, so the risk of frost may not reduce after all.

An early budburst coupled with the coldest October morning since records were kept saw the Canberra region experience its worst frost in six years in 2013.

Ken Helm, who’s been growing grapes in the region for more than 45 years, lost 80% of the fruit in his vineyards to the advection frost that occurred in late October, describing the event as a “pretty interesting one”.

“We experienced two bad frosts in October – one on 15 October and the other in the third week of October when the ACT recorded its lowest October temperature on record since records have been kept of -4.5°C. It was the latter one that did the most damage.

Plus, the latter one coincided with a full moon. John Brown senior used to say the last week in October is ‘worry week’

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for frost, particularly if there’s a full moon as for some reason it leads to a higher incidence of frost.

“The other thing about last year’s big frost is that it followed a warmer than usual September. It wasn’t the warmest on record, but it meant the vines were out a bit earlier. Normally, buds are only just out in October. But at the time the frost hit some shoots were 5-10cm in length so they were more susceptible to frost damage.”

But, Helm says a bad frost is par for the course in Canberra about every decade and to date there are no signs of that frequency changing.

“We expect a frost that does quite a lot of damage about every 10 years.

2007 was the last one. Prior to that it was 1999. But, it’s always followed by a bumper year.

“The change with the latest frost is that the temperature was much lower than we’ve ever seen before. Whether or not that’s a phenomenon of the weather pattern now or climate change I don’t know.”

Helm said vignerons in Canberra were now very careful about site selection when planting or replating vines. And, not just for frost mitigation.

“We also do it with consideration for orientation to the sun. Canberra gets more sunshine than any other capital city in Australia other than Perth which means sunburn can be an issue. We used to plant our vineyards with a northsouth orientation but now we tend to go east-west. We also tend to get westerly

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Long-time Canberra vigneron Ken Helm, who lost 80% of his vineyard to last year’s late-October frost. Photo credit: Id Photographics, Irene Dowdy winds so by orientating the vines eastwest that wind will blow down the rows and maintain good airflow between them to hopefully blow away the cold air that can cause frost damage.”

Helm said he was a believer in never wasting a crisis. The losses he suffered to frost in 2013 forced him, like many wine producers like him in the region, to buy fruit from outside the Canberra region, including Tumbarumba and Orange.

“We’ve made wine from this fruit and bottled it and it’s got our distributors and customers very excited. The good

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FROST

Four Winds proprietor and winemaker Bill Crowe.

Frost-affected Sangiovese in the Four Winds vineyard.

thing about finding these additional vineyards is that when we have a bumper year we’ll be able to meet demand and can start seriously looking at export markets,” Helm said.

While agreeing with Helm that there is currently no evidence that severe frosts are becoming more frequent in the Canberra district, Clonakilla’s operational winemaker Bryan Martin, who also runs his own vineyard in the district and makes his own wine under the Ravensworth label, admits he’s worried about frost under climate change conditions “A one-in-10-year frost like last year’s you can almost deal with. But, one every five years would be concerning.

And although there is no evidence that frosts in the district are getting worse or more frequent, I have a feeling that the way the weather is going we’re not going to get as much rain during winter which means the soil may not have such good capacity to radiate the heat it has absorbed from the sun during the day to warm the air around the vines during the night,” Martin said.

In the bad frost of 2007, Martin lost his entire vineyard, located near Murrumbateman. In last year’s, he lost a third of his fruit, with total losses in the lower parts of the vineyard.

“I believe with climate change frost will be the biggest thorn in our side.

Wetter autumns could be another.

“Cool climate viticulture is a growth area but our biggest challenge is frost as in a changing climate they may become more frequent. If we go into a drought situation, what happens then?

Will that change weather patterns and frosts become more frequent?”

Martin said the coldest part of his near three-hectare vineyard was set up

with a sprinkler system, but he barely had enough water to run it.

“We can’t have dams here so at best I could run it for two to three hours with water from a bore. We don’t have a huge water supply and I’d need a lot of water to keep it going for 6-7 hours,” he said.

Although sprinklers are installed in a section of Four Winds Vineyard, 4km east of Murrumbateman, they failed to activate on the night of October’s big frost due to a technical glitch, but proprietor and winemaker Bill Crowe suspects they would not have made any difference anyway due to its severity.

Four Winds would normally harvest 30 tonnes of Riesling - Canberra’s flagship variety – but only harvested 6t this year due to the frost, while its Cabernet took a 60% hit and the Merlot was a write-off.

“The biggest hit was the Riesling – it was a massive blow,” Crowe admits.

Crowe said that although he had considered pruning vines later to delay budburst, he was worried about whether such a delay would have impacts at the other end of the season.

“Because we’re in a cool climate, if we prune later and therefore budburst is later, we might not end up with enough time to get the fruit ripe. It’s a tricky call. You know that the season’s going to end at some point,” he said.

Crowe agreed with Helm that a benefit from last year’s frost was that it had forced wine producers to buy fruit from outside the region.

“We bought some Sangiovese from a vineyard in Gundagai. The owner of the vineyard was about to pull out the Sangiovese or graft it over to something else. There’s such a demand for Sangiovese in Canberra at the moment so it’s been a great find,” Crowe said. WVJ

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Quiet , Reliable, Ef f icient

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CAN O P Y M ANAGE M E N T

Canopy management strategies to decrease wine pH â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a Spanish trial

By Fernando MartĂ­nez de Toda and Pedro Balda, Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y del Vino (Universidad de La Rioja, CSIC, Gobierno de La Rioja), 26006 LogroĂąo, Spain. E-mail: fernando.martinezdetoda@unirioja.es

Climate change and the global trend to delay harvesting to produce full-bodied wines with better phenol ripeness can lead to grapes with higher pH, which can negatively affect wine quality, such as its sensory properties or ageing potential. Spanish researchers explored the effectiveness of canopy management as a tool for modifying the pH of wine.

C

limate change has increased berry ripeness naturally, and the globalised tendency of producing full-bodied wines has frequently delayed harvesting date in order to obtain better phenol ripeness. These synergies lead to produce grapes with high phenol maturity and higher sugar levels, but they often present low acid concentrations and higher pH. Consequently, the resulting wines have the drawback of high pH and alcohol content. Increasing pH values in wines negatively affects colour, sulfur dioxide effectiveness and other parameters.

It is important to consider the role of different acids in wine on pH levels. Of the two most abundant acids in grape juice, tartaric acid is significantly stronger than malic acid.

For similar values of total acidity, a lower tartaric:malic acid ratio may result in a higher pH. Therefore, an optimum concentration of tartaric acid in juice is highly desirable.

Some research studies suggest that a shaded microclimate increases the pH and potassium content of the must (Smart et al. 1985), but these assertions have not been consistently confirmed and they can also be influenced by

Grapes subjected to the treatment combining VSP with leaf thinning.

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CAN O P Y M ANAGE M E NT

elevated temperatures (Bergqvist et al. 2001). While some results are confusing, there is a pattern emerging which generally links excessive shading with unbalanced must, resulting in poor wine quality. As a result, research is now under way to evaluate specific training methods for effects on the light regime with the idea of encouraging improvements in canopy design (Smart 1985). Practices to increase bunch exposure, for example by leaf removal, should be considered according to specific environmental conditions of each vineyard. Vines where the foliage and berries already receive adequate exposure may not benefit and may even suffer from increased exposure.

The aim of this work is to obtain different bunch sunlight exposures through leaf thinning treatments combined with trellis systems, in order to decrease the pH of wine. It would serve to counteract the effects of climate warming, resulting in better balanced wines.

MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was conducted during 2010 and 2011 in a commercial vineyard located in Badarรกn, inside the Rioja appellation, north of Spain. The vines were 12-year-old Vitis Vinifera Maturana Tinta de Nauarrete grafted on 110-R rootstock. Plantation distance was 1.2m between vines and 2.7m between rows. The rows were north-south oriented along a 1.5% sloping terrain. The rain-irrigated vines were pruned with six spurs of two buds each on a simple horizontal cordon.

The experimental design was a randomised complete block with three replications. Each experimental unit consisted of six contiguous vines. Four different treatments were applied, with a combination of vertical shoot positioning (VSP) and free cordon (FC) training systems with a leaf thinning treatment or without (control): VSP control (VSP), VSP with leaf thinning (VSP-LT), FC control (FC) and FC with leaf thinning treatment (FC-LT). The leaf thinning treatment consisted of removing the basal leaves of each shoot until the node located above the upper bunch, as well as the lateral shoots. The treatment was performed at pepper-size berries (4mm).

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Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) was measured on both sides of the cordon (east and west) at cluster area during berry development. Cluster sunlight exposure was expressed as a percentage with respect to the maximum PAR and 10 measurements per replicate were taken on clear days: four hours before solar noon (8:00h), at solar noon (12:00h) and four hours after solar noon (16:00h). PAR was measured using a handheld Li-Cor LI-189 quantum 1m length sensor.

Three micro-fermentations by treatment of 3kg each were performed according to Sampaio et al. (2007) methodology.

Wines were analysed after alcoholic fermentation according to OIV standard methods.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The same distribution of the sunlight radiation during the day was obtained in 2010 and 2011, because the canopy morphology was similar. As shown in Figure 1, the percentage of PAR observed during the morning (8:00h) in the two control treatments (without thinning) ranged from 7.2-10.5%, while in the leaf thinning treatments it was three times higher.

Free cordon treatments showed lower radiation than VSP (19.2% and 27%, respectively) because the free shoots of this system slightly shaded the bunch area. Similar PAR distribution was determined in the afternoon (16:00h) and the trellis system did not influence significantly; only leaf thinning practices involved significant differences. The most remarkable differences on bunch sun exposure were obtained at solar noon (12:00h). The VSP trellis system shaded the bunch area (2.2-10.8% PAR), while the FC provided at least three times more sunlight exposure (29.759.9% PAR). Furthermore, leaf thinning treatments (-LT) increased radiation in the bunch area for both FC and VSP treatments: between two and five times, respectively.

Wine composition showed significant differences between treatments (Table 1) in malic acid content, total acidity and pH (โ ค 0.001) during both studied years. PAR incident to bunch area was shown to be inversely related to pH. The highest level of pH in 2010 and 2011 corresponded to the

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Figure 1. Grape sunlight radiation percentage with respect to the maximum in the four treatments during the day (n = 180).

Values are mean ± SE. Means indicated by different letters are significantly different at ≤ 0.05, according to SNK test.

Table 1. Wine composition for the different treatments in the years 2010 and 2011. Vertical shoot positioning (VSP), VSP with leaf thinning (VSP-LT), free cordon (FC) and FC with leaf thinning (FC-LT).

2010

2011

VSP

VSP-LY

FC

FC-LT

SIG1

Alcohol

13.70 a

13.29 b

13.36 b

13.55 ab

**

pH

3.95 a

3.79 b

3.92 a

3.77 b

***

Tartaric acid (g∙L-1)

2.77

2.76

2.82

2.89

NS

Malic acid (g∙L-1)

3.20 a

2.53 b

2.11 c

2.08 c

***

T A (g∙L-1 H2SO4)

3.46 a

3.32 a

3.07 b

3.28 a

***

Alcohol

13.92 b

14.52 a

13.41 c

14.00 b

***

pH

4.02 a

3.80 c

3.86 b

3.70 c

***

Tartaric acid (g∙L-1

2.50 b

2.60 a

2.30 c

2.60 a

***

Malic acid (g∙L-1)

2.54 ab

2.05 c

2.61 a

2.48 b

***

T A (g∙L-1 H2SO4)

4.80 c

4.96 bc

5.08 b

5.43 a

***

1 ns, *, **, *** represent significant differences between treatments at < 0.05, 0.01 or 0.001, respectively. Different letters within a row show significant differences between values, according to SNK test (P = 0.05).

VSP treatment (3.95 and 4.02, respectively) followed by the FC (3.92 and 3.86, respectively) and VSP-LT treatment (3.79 and 3.80, respectively). The lowest level of pH corresponded to FC-LT (3.77 and 3.70, respectively), which had decreased 0.18 and 0.32 compared with the VSP treatment in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Larger decreases of pH during the second year could be due to different weather conditions (Table 3). Although the harvest date and the total radiation did not change significantly, average alcohol content, mean temperatures and maximum daily temperatures during the growing season were higher in 2011 than in 2010. Warmer environmental conditions (Winkler Index increased 8% and average maximum daily temperature increased 6%) could have played an important role in the largest decrease of pH in the second year of the study.

According to Table 2, pH was negatively correlated with morning, midday and afternoon grape sunlight exposure in the two years. The pH was also negatively and closely correlated to total acidity in the year 2010 but not in 2011. In addition, the correlation of pH was positive with malic acid and negative with tartaric acid in the two years although not significant, while any linkage was proved between pH and alcohol content.

CONCLUSIONS Leaf thinning treatments influenced sunlight radiation during morning, at solar noon and during the afternoon for both trellis systems, while VSP or FC canopies affect only PAR in the bunch area at midday. Significant differences was found in both years in wine pH. The pH was highly and negatively correlated to bunch sunlight exposition for each treatment: the maximum was found in VSP and the minimum corresponded to FC-LT. Between these treatments, pH decreased 0.18 and 0.32 in 2010 and 2011, respectively, while the PAR was increased 80%. Better balanced wines with lower pH can be produced by increasing bunch sunlight exposure, but it is important to consider the environmental conditions.

REFERENCES Bergqvist, J.; Dokoozlian, N. and Ebisuda, N. (2001) Sunlight exposure and temperature effects on berry growth and composition of Cabernet Sauvignon

Table 2. Pearson’s correlation between pH and wine parameters or sunlight radiation in the two years of study. % Alcohol

Total acidity

Malic Acid

Tartaric Radiation Radiation Radiation Acid 8:00 h.

12:00 h. 16:00 h.

2010

0,341

-0,842**

0,503

-0,227

-0,823**

-0,533

-0,950**

2011

-0,279

-0,046

0,312

-0,399

-0,585*

-0,789**

-0,845**

and Grenache in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California. Am. J. Enol. Vitic.

52:1-7.

Martínez de Toda, F. and Balda, P. (2014) Reducing the pH of wine by increasing grape sunlight exposure: a method to mitigate the effects of climate warming. Vitis 53:17-20.

Sampaio T.L.; Kennedy J. A. and Vasconcelos M.C. (2007) Use of microscale

*, ** represent significant level at < 0.05 or 0.01, respectively

fermentations in grape and wine research. Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 58:534-539.

Smart, R.E. (1985) Principles of grapevine canopy management microclimate manipulation with implications for yield and quality: A review.

Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 36:230-239.

Table 3. Basic harvesting data and weather conditions during growing season in the two years of study.

Harvesting date

Average % alcohol

Winkler index (°C)

2010

5th Oct.

13.5

1.253

21.2

3.891

2011

7th Oct.

14.0

1.362

22.6

3.943

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Average Tª Total radiation max daily (°C) (GJ/m2)

Smart, R.E.; Robinson, J.B.; Due, G.R. and Brien, C.J. (1985) Canopy microclimate modification for the cultivar Shiraz. II. Effects on must and wine composition. Vitis 24:119-128.

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ALTERNATIVE VARIETIES

vitic u l t u re

Saperavi - a fascinating standalone wine and a great blender

By Lilian Carter, Winemaker, Symphonia Wines, King Valley, Victoria Background

S

ymphonia Wines’ founder Peter Read became interested in Saperavi around 1994 when the variety showed up very favourably in wine trials conducted over a few years by Brown Brothers.

In the early 1990s, most growers and winemakers were focusing only on the so-called classic varieties. These varieties came from areas in France and Portugal where the British had a strong trading relationship. There was practically no interest in what we now know as alternative varieties from other European regions.

At the time, Read felt there would be varieties from these countries that would suit the King Valley. He subsequently set about exploring those regions that appeared to have climates similar to that of the King Valley. He visited most of the climatically similar areas of Western Europe, but unfortunately was unable to visit the equivalent Eastern European regions. However, his desk work suggested that the Kakheti region of Georgia was climatically similar to the growing season in the King Valley.

As the best Saperavi wine came from this part of Georgia, Read added it to his wish list. It is also worth noting Saperavi is the most widely planted red variety in the former USSR countries where it has a number of uses.

Peter Read sourced the Saperavi planting material for his Symphonia vineyard at Myrree from Mark Walpole’s Whorouly vineyard in north-east Victoria,

The majority of the Saperavi vines in the Symphonia vineyard, at Myrree in Victoria’s King Valley, were top grafted from Cabernet Sauvignon on Schwarzmann rootstock nearly 20 years ago. from where Brown Brothers had largely sourced the grapes for its trials. Saperavi was one of some 60 varieties Walpole had established during 1989 and 1990 as part of his ‘variety collection’. He recalls using Jancis Robinson’s book ‘Vines, Grapes and Wines’ as his guide on what to plant, noting the varieties she said were high quality or had quality potential and may work in his area. He subsequently sourced his cutting material from the CSIRO. “On my place where the Saperavi vines are on own roots, it is a pathetic vine with extremely low vigour and short shoots if not pruned heavily. The act of grafting seems to invigorate it in every circumstance,” Walpole notes.

The viticulture The Symphonia vineyard, now owned

by Peter and Suzanne Evans, has a warm temperate climate of 1500 to 1600 degreedays with the hillside vineyard performing best. The majority of the Saperavi vines were top grafted from Cabernet Sauvignon on Schwarzmann rootstock nearly 20 years ago in 1995.

The vines are on well-drained red duplex soil which can lead to vigorous canopies in wetter seasons, and large bunches, particularly on spur-pruned vines. This has necessitated both bunch thinning and bunch reduction in those wetter seasons. Although individual bunches can be large, they are always

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ALTERNATIVE VARIETIES

SAPERAVI

By Peter Dry Viticultural Consultant -The Australian Wine Research Institute Background Saperavi (sah-per-AR-vee) is a very old variety from south-west Georgia, near the Turkish border. It was widespread in western Georgia by the 17th century as well as in the Kakheti region in the south-east of the country. Saperavi means ‘dye’ in Georgian, a reference to its black skin and pink juice. Synonyms include Kleinberiger, Nerki Khagog and Saparavi. There are currently 4751 hectares planted in Georgia where it is the third most important winegrape variety and makes up 10% of the national vineyard area. It is the main red wine variety and is said to be used for 80% of red wine production. It is the only variety used in many of the highly regarded appellation wines in Georgia. There are also 1514ha in Ukraine, 428ha in Kazakhstan, 716ha each in Moldova and Russia and small areas in Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Outside of the aforementioned countries, Australia may have the only commercial plantings: in 2013, there were 26 wine producers in 15 regions ranging from cool to hot, with most in the King Valley, Alpine Valleys and McLaren Vale. Saperavi has been in Australia since the mid1970s but there was little commercial use until the late 1990s to early 2000s.

Viticulture Budburst is early to mid-season and maturity is mid to late. Vigour is low and yield is moderate. Bunches are medium and loose with small to medium berries. Disease tolerance is high and it is very winter-hardy. Pruning is generally to canes but moderate yield is possible with spur pruning in Australia. Fruit hangs well on the vine but berries are prone to shrivel. Saperavi is a very polymorphic variety with a large degree of variation between clones—but at the present time there may be only a single clone (I11V10) in Australia.

very loose, and reducing the size of the larger bunches is relatively easy.

We have found that arched cane canopies with eight-bud canes yield the best results. The canopies are then quite open, well exposed, easy to work on, and minimise disease. With their red flesh and thick skins, berries will yield the best wine from the light exposed grapes. We understand this is also best practice in Georgia.

The leaves of the Saperavi vines have a very furry back, and this can be an ideal home for mites, particularly rust mites.

Consequently, running a spray program to minimise rust mite populations in the vineyard is essential.

The vines have shown evidence of virus infections in some seasons. We would strongly recommend any grower contemplating growing Saperavi ensure that both bud material and rootstock are virus free.

The winemaking The variety can tend towards an unattractive green flavour if not fully ripe.

It is typical of the Symphonia vineyard that phenological ripeness does not develop until at least 14 Baume. The resulting

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Wine Wines have good colour and acid, and are full bodied with supple tannins. Good flavour development is possible at moderate alcohol. It is a useful variety for adding both colour and acidity to blends. Ageing potential is good. Descriptors include floral (violets), dark fruits (blackberry, cherry), citrus and savoury. If the climate is too cool, wines may be excessively acidic and sappy. Australian consumer reaction has been very favourable.

For further information on this and other emerging varieties, contact Marcel Essling (marcel.essling@awri.com.au or 08 8313 6600) at The Australian Wine Research Institute to arrange the presentation of the Alternative Varieties Research to Practice program in your region. alcohol of +14.5% gives a round texture which helps to soften the perceived tannin profile.

Dense colour is a given so one doesn’t need to work the cap hard, in fact, gentle cap management is preferred.

Fermentation is undertaken in small open fermenters with gentle plunging throughout and aerative pump-overs during the peak of the fermentation.

Temperature are maintained between 24-27°C. Pressing occurs at dryness or soon after as there is no need for extended maceration - although it could be interesting to trial.

Saperavi responds well to aerative rackings after pressing and before barrel. Because it is such a deeplyflavoured wine, barrels with an equally strong personality and a relatively high W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

toast level are used; roughly 30-40% new oak barriques and the rest in seasoned oak seems to give the right balance. Saperavi develops well with time and can profitably remain in oak in good storage conditions, with an occasional racking, for at least 18 months. The goal is to add suppleness and finish off some of the raw tannins that can occur with this variety.

Properly made, Saperavi has an almost unlimited ageing potential. It is a fascinating standalone wine and an important blending component of our top tier Quintus wine.

Acknowledgements Thank you to Symphonia Wines’ founder Peter Read, its former winemaker Robert Paul and Mark Walpole for their WVJ contributions to this article.

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W i n e br a n ds

business & marketing

Consumer perceptions of wine brand names

By Sharon L. Forbes and David Dean, Lincoln University, New Zealand. Email: sharon.forbes@lincoln.ac.nz

New Zealand researchers attempted to link types of brand names with consumer attitudes and purchase intensions. While their findings provide some support for the notion that brand names matter to wine consumers, the researchers were surprised to learn how well and how poorly some of the brand name categories performed.

Introduction

S

ome time ago, we were approached by a Maori-owned wine company and asked, ‘What does a Maori brand name mean to wine consumers?’ We had to admit that we didn’t know the answer to this question, and we couldn’t find one in the academic literature either.

This lead to the formation of a project team to (a) categorise the wine brand names in New Zealand; and (b) examine consumer perceptions of these brand name categories in terms of quality and price, as well as their purchase intentions and their ability to pronounce and ask for the brand by name.

Literature

Consumers attach important meanings and imagery to brands when they are making a purchase decision.

A brand name influences consumer perceptions of a brand, and these brand perceptions, in turn, influence buying behaviour. There is evidence that brand names are associated with consumer perceptions of quality and their purchase intensions (e.g. Dawar and Parker 1994, Wilson and Huang 2003).

So, what makes a good brand name?

Successful brand names should be unique or distinct in terms of sound, pronunciation, spelling and meaning, as well as simple, distinctive and meaningful. Successful brand names should: • • • •

be easy to understand and use reflect the benefits provided by the product elicit a mental image arouse pleasant emotions and strong symbolism.

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Consumers form perceptions because good brand names convey meaning to them.

As with other products, the brand name of a wine can either help to bring it success or cause it to struggle. A boring name may be easy to forget, whilst a distinctive one can connect with the story or place behind the wine. In fact, the brand name has been identified as one of the most important attributes evaluated by consumers when making a wine purchase decision (e.g. Johnson and Bruwer 2007, Lockshin et al. 2006, Thomas and Pickering 2003). A recent study of German consumers reported that brand evaluation was one of the strongest drivers for informed liking of wine (Mueller and Szolnoki 2010).

These results suggest that the brand name is a particularly important quality indicator and a significant influence on wine purchasing decisions.

Sherman and Tuten (2011) described the naming convention in the wine industry as following either traditional, contemporary or novelty variations and suggested that traditional brand names may be based on the winemaker (e.g.

Robert Mondavi or Rodney Strong), whilst a recent trend with contemporary names is to name a wine after a ‘critter’ (e.g. The Little Penguin, Black Swan or Three Blind Moose). Franson (2006) also noted the prevalence of animal brand names in the wine industry (e.g.

Frog’s Leap, Bored Doe, Toad Hollow), as well as the use of cartoon-like character names and brands based on dead celebrities. Novelty brand names are based on humour and tend to surprise the consumer (e.g. Frog’s Piss, Fat Bastard or Cardinal Zin). Wilson and Huang (2003) suggest that wine

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brand names are generally derived from six major sources: those based on a personal name (e.g. Torres or Gallo), a place name (e.g. Mateus Rose), a descriptive (e.g. St Michael English Wine), an associative name (e.g. French Connection) or an invented name (e.g.

Blue Nun).

The wine market is a particularly crowded one and this adds to the complexity of wine purchase decisions for many consumers. This suggests that building a brand is very important in the wine market and that successful wine brand names stand out from competing brands. In this research, we have tried to link the type of brand name with consumer attitudes and purchase intensions.

First phase – classifying New Zealand wine brands The brand names utilised by New Zealand wine companies were identified through searching the wine aisles of physical stores and the inventories of online wine distributors. The subsequent list of 600 brand names were then classified into seven categories: 1. Regional – the brand name contains reference to an official wine-growing region 2. Geographic – the brand name refers to a land feature, or a real or fictional place 3. Indigenous – the brand name is based on a Maori word or name 4. Animal – the brand name contains reference to an animal 5. Humorous – the brand name is quirky, novel or comical 6. Personal – the brand name is based on a person’s given or surname ▶ www.wine biz. com . au

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7. International – the brand name is based on a foreign sounding language.

It should be noted that most, if not all, wine labels include a mention of the wines’ region of origin. In this study, the regional category included wines where the region of origin had been incorporated into the wines’ brand name.

maximum of 990 distinct cases (roughly 141 respondents by seven brand name category examples with variations due to pairwise deletion).

Results and discussion The sample of 141 respondents consisted of 56% male and 44% female.

The largest age frequency was 2534 (27%) followed by 45-54 (26%),

55-64 (20%), 35-44 (18%), 65+ (7%) and 18-24 (2%). Almost half of the sample consumed wine ‘most days’; (49%) followed by ‘weekly’ (31%), and ‘Daily’ (10%). Many of the respondents purchased wine ‘most days’ (41.8%) followed by ‘weekly’ (28%) and ‘fortnightly’ (20%).

A series of one-way ANOVAs were performed across the brand name

Second phase – brand perceptions and evaluation questionnaire An online questionnaire was developed and distributed to consumers through the websites of established specialty wine stores in New Zealand.

Respondents were only provided with the brand name of a wine and were asked a series of questions about their perceptions based solely on the brand name (i.e., they were not provided with other information such as price or label design). The questionnaire provided examples of wine brand names from each of the seven categories and the example brand names clearly fitted into just one of the categories and not into multiple categories. Three different example wine brand names were used in various versions of the questionnaires (e.g. the three indigenous brand names were Te Whare Ra, Te Mata and Tohu). Respondents were asked to indicate how likely they were to purchase the wine brand (from 1 ‘very unlikely’ to 5 ‘very likely) and to rate their perceptions of quality of the wine brand (from 1 ‘very low’ to 5 ‘very high’). Respondents were also asked to indicate the price they would be willing to pay for the wine brand (from 1 ‘less than $9.99’, 2 ‘$101499;, 3 ‘$15-19.99’, 4 ‘$20-29.99’ to 5 ‘$30+’). Other scales were developed to measure the respondents ability to pronounce the brand name (from 1 ‘not confident’ to 3 ‘confident’) and to measure how comfortable they would be asking for the brand name in a store or restaurant (from 1 ‘not comfortable’ to 3 ‘comfortable’).

Although 218 respondents completed the online questionnaire, only the 141 respondents who had no previous purchasing or consumption experience of the example wine brand provided were included in the analysis. This meant that their perceptions of the various brand name categories were not influenced by prior brand experience or loyalty. Each respondent was asked the same questions about the seven brand name categories resulting in a

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Figure 1.

Figure 2.

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categories examining variation across respondentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; likeliness to purchase, perceptions of quality, the price they would be prepared to pay, their ability to pronounce the brand name, and their comfort in asking for the wine by name in a store or restaurant. All the ANOVAs were significant, indicating that the brand names had an important influence over consumer perceptions and likely behaviours.

Post-hoc tests were then performed to examine specific differences across the dependent variables. Figure 1 illustrates that examples of indigenous brand names had the highest likely to purchase score, which was significantly higher than all other brand categories.

Personal and international brand name categories were second, followed by geographic, regional, and animal.

Examples from the humorous brand name category were significantly lower than all others.

Figure 2 shows that for quality expectations, the indigenous brand name category was again rated significantly higher than the others, followed by personal brand names in second, then a grouping of international, geographic and regional brand name categories in third place.

Significantly lower was animal, followed by a lower still humorous category.

Personal brand names claimed the highest price prepared to pay rating, significantly different from all but the indigenous brand name category (Figure 3). This result suggests that consumers have positive price and quality perceptions toward wines that are named after a particular person. It may be that an implied level of trust is involved when a personal brand name is used; in other words, consumers are likely to think that only someone who is proud of their product would put their name on it. Indigenous and international brand name categories formed the second group, with a grouping of geographic and regional categories in third. Animal was distinct from all but regional was in fourth place, with the humorous category alone as the lowest ranked.

Respondents rated their ability to pronounce equal highest across regional, geographic, animal, humorous, and personal brand name categories (Figure 4). Indigenous brand names were second and international brand names had the lowest score.

Although the Maori language is recognised as an official language in New Zealand, only four percent of the total population has an understanding

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of it; this is likely to have affected consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to pronounce wine brand names that are based on Maori names or words. Similarly, it could be expected that New Zealanders would not necessarily be confident in their ability to pronounce wine brand names which have originated from a foreign language.

When at a store or restaurant,

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respondents were most comfortable asking for regional, geographic, indigenous, personal or international brand name categories (Figure 5).

Respondents indicated they would be less comfortable asking for animal brands and least comfortable asking for humorous wine brand names. This result is interesting in that it does not appear to relate to the respondentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

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This research has attempted to use multiple examples for the brand categories, multiple waves of data collection, and multiple wine retailers to achieve a realistic coverage of the market, but the data collection was limited to New Zealand consumers, using an online sample was limited to customers from specialty wine stores and, therefore, it was likely that these respondents would have higher than average product involvement.

Conservatively, the results may only be generalisable to online and high involvement wine shoppers in New Zealand.

References Dawar, N. and Parker, P. (1994) Marketing universals: Consumers’ use of brand name, price, physical appearance and retailer reputation as signals of product quality, Journal of Marketing (58): 81-95.

Franson, P. (2006) Labels gone wild, available at www.winemag.com/Wine-Enthusiast-Magazine/

Figure 5. ability to pronounce the brand names.

Whilst indigenous and international brand name categories were those which the respondents’ were least able to pronounce, they were nonetheless comfortable to ask for these brands in a store or restaurant.

Conclusions This research provides some support for the notion that brand names matter to wine consumers.

This is not surprising, as throughout the wine industry, building brands and brand equity is often key to a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage.

What is very surprising is how well and how poorly some of the brand name categories performed.

For example, if these results represent widespread consumer sentiments, it would be a brave winery that introduced a premium wine with a humorous brand name. We would expect that consumers would not be likely to purchase it, think it was low quality, wouldn’t want to pay much for it, and couldn’t bring themselves to ask for it by name at a store or restaurant.

Although animal brand names seem to be on the increase on wine bottles these days, the results suggest that they fare better than humorous names, but not by much. This study suggests that wines with animal brand names are perceived to be typically low priced,

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March-2006/Labels-Gone-Wild/ (accessed

low quality products. Conversely, an indigenous, personal or international brand name could help to present a new wine as being high in quality, one that consumers would be willing to buy, pay a premium, and be happy to ask for. The regional and geographic names performed respectably and were easy to pronounce so they could also be helpful for a new wine brand.

It would be overstating the results to say that indigenous brand names will universally outperform humorous brand names. However, it may suggest that wines with animal and humorous brand names may have to work harder to get consumers to buy them. Once consumers experience a wine, the brand name won’t have the same impact on subsequent purchase decisions. The results of this study support the view that a brand name provides information to consumers. To put it simply, this research provides evidence that a brand name, in the absence of other product information, influences consumer perceptions of quality and price, and their purchase intentions. Whilst it is clear that consumers do not use brand name in isolation when purchasing a wine, this exploratory study highlights the effect of the attribute and suggests that future research using conjoint analysis would be useful in examining all the major influencers on the wine purchase decision.

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November 2012).

Johnson, R. and Bruwer, J. (2007) Regional brand image and perceived wine quality: The consumer perspective, International Journal of Wine Business Research 19(4):4,

Lockshin, L.; Jarvis, W.; d’Hauteville, F. and Perrouty, J-P. (2006) Using simulations from discrete choice experiments to measure consumer sensitivity to brand, region, price, and awards in wine choice, Food Quality and Preference 17(34):166-178.

Mueller, S. and Szolnoki, G. (2010) The relative influence of packaging, labelling, branding and sensory attributes on liking and purchase intent: Consumers differ in their responsiveness, Food Quality and Preference 21:774-783.

Sherman, S. and Tuten, T. (2011) Message on a bottle: The wine label’s influence, International Journal of Wine Business Research 23(3):221-234.

Thomas, A. and Pickering, G. (2003) The importance of wine label information, International Journal of Wine Marketing 15(2):58-74.

Wilson, I. and Huang, Y. (2003) Wine brand naming in China, International Journal of Wine Marketing 15(3):52-63.

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WINE STORIES

The untapped potential of wines’ stories

By Jonathan Cahill

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n the world of marketing, the wine industry is an enigma.

Much of marketing is concerned with emotions. One of the most useful definitions of a brand is that it is something consumers buy for its emotional benefits, whereas a product they buy for its functional ones. Wine has a deep well of emotions on which to draw. Of all the products the land provides, wine is almost unique in that those who cultivate it are also intimately connected with its production. Only olive oil comes close. Most other produce is sent off to a third party with no direct connection to the land or the crop. Wine is one of the few major industries that can still be perceived as artisan – whatever the realities might be. As well as the importance of place inherent in terroir, there is the added element of the history, community and individuals that go to make the wine what it is – the emotional terroir. Today, brands search for heritage and provenance, and would give their eye teeth for the rich fund of both possessed by wine.

This fund of emotions has power, as many of our choices appear to be based on emotion rather than reason. This has been confirmed by work in neurology. Emotion has even been identified as a base for rational thought. When marketing a

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product, one of the essential elements is to give it a personality to which the consumer can relate. The philosopher Martin Buber focussed on relationships and divided them into two sorts: I-It with objects and I-Thou with people. These, he felt, were related to empathy, which was switched on by a move from the former to the latter. To elicit empathy, Gavin Fairburn, of Leeds University, suggested that: “Storytelling is central to most of human life. It is also the most startlingly simple and direct way l know of encouraging the development of empathy”.

This may appear academic, but it has considerable potency in the real world where stories can make a significant difference.

In an experiment in the US, 100 items were bought for $128 at a garage sale. A story was written for each one and they were then sold on eBay. The total take was $3612. This was also highlighted by a witty posting on YouTube by George Patterson Y&R, in Australia (keywords ‘wicked sick bmx’). Although the post was put forward as a demonstration of creativity, the core was the building of a story around the bike. Most wines have a rich heartland of stories, yet few exploit them. The best example of one that did was Ernest and Julio Gallo wine when it launched in the UK in 1989.

This was an emotional campaign achieved by individual stories. The overall impression was of two brothers dedicated to perfecting every detail in making wine that met their exacting standards – a clear articulation of the wine’s emotional terroir.

The stories that illustrated this centred on particular aspects such as the wood used for the casks, an obsession with a particular grape, or getting up early in the morning. Although there was heavy spending on advertising, the impression created was artisan, focussing on Ernest and Julio who were cast as being intimately rooted in the wine and its production – far removed from their position as heads of the biggest wine company in the world. This emotional framework was richly

Most wines have a rich heartland of stories, yet few exploit them. The best example of one that did was Ernest and Julio Gallo wine when it launched in the UK in 1989. An example of the print campaign is pictured above.

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clothed in advertisements that mirrored the care and quality that had been attributed to the Gallos. They consisted of two consecutive double-page spreads – anathema in terms of media numbers – which created space for the message. This was a similar approach to the recent award-winning 90 second advertising for Hovis bread. Rough calculations of the return for this campaign gave a figure of £75.5 million – five times the marketing investment of £15 million.

A strong idea that pulls firmly on the emotional chords can add value to the brand and even efficiency to the budget... wine provides the tools for this in abundance, yet few pick them up.

Despite Gallo’s example, the wine industry never seems to have reached this level of insight since. Much of the concern of the advertising appears to be with awareness. But if this goal is achieved and the wine is noticed, then there is little personality with which the consumer can relate or feel empathy.

In the drinks industry it is not wine that has exploited its rich emotional heartland but, rather, a whiskey. Advertising for Jack Daniels has helped make it the second biggest whiskey in the world. The campaign’s flavour seems to mirror the approach of Gallo. It focusses on the emotional heartland provided by the people who work in the distillery at Lynchburgh, and whose dedication and individual quirks make up the personality of Jack Daniels. As opposed to the Italian peasants of Gallo, the theme

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is folksy Tennessee. It is not rooted in the land, as in terroir with wine but, rather, in the place and its people. The image is the polar opposite to Jack Daniels’s actual position in the market.

The way Gallo and Jack Daniels advertised can be described as the pixel approach – each story contributing a pixel to an overall picture of the brand. This has been successfully adopted by other advertisers such as Tesco and BMW. The latter used many stories demonstrating great attention to engineering detail in order to form the overall image of ‘the ultimate driving machine’. Not only was this highly successful in advancing their share, the power of the idea paid in financial effectiveness. In 2008, BMW was best for rate of return on adspend per car in the UK. The expenditure between January and August 2008, worked out at £22 for each new car registered – less than 10% the national average of £233 per vehicle. That other paragon of German success – Volkswagen – spent £155 per car.

As Gallo and the other examples demonstrate, a strong idea that pulls firmly on the emotional chords can add value to the brand and even efficiency to the budget. There are issues – such as price promotions – that influence commercial decisions and are labelled pragmatic. But it is surely more constructive to spend money to add value rather than remove it? The enigma is that wine provides the tools for this in abundance, yet few pick them up.

Jonathan Cahill has worked in advertising and marketing research, both in the UK and internationally. He has developed and marketed his own brands and a name for a wine variation that was bought by Gallo. He has published two books, ‘Igniting the Brandy’ and his latest ‘Marketing rethink: researching the roots, practice and diversions of marketing’.

This article was first published by 'The Drinks Business', 15 WVJ March 2012.

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We take design risks that give our clients the competitive edge, confident in our founding philosophy that the biggest risk is no risk at all.

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When social media goes bad: how to prepare for and manage issues online

By Renee Creer, Social Media Strategist, Liquid Ideas.

Email: ReneeCreer@liquidideas.com.au, Twitter: @liquidideas

Most wineries are experts at making wine, not at creating superstar social media profiles, let alone navigating social media disasters. But it’s not difficult with a bit of forethought to be prepared if and when an issue crops up.

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ocial media. Everyone has an opinion on it. For business, it can be viewed as a number of things; on the negative side it’s an enigma, a thing to be feared, a distraction from real business activities, a necessary evil or a big bloody waste of time.

On the positive side it’s a b-line to customers, a place to make friends, fame and fortune, a fast and cheap communication tool, or a valuable feedback and information channel.

Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay, so you can embrace it, try to master it and roll with its punches, or make like the dinosaurs and die. I think we all agree that the former is preferred. So, it’s time to get moving, because the majority of the wine industry is already way late to this party. It’s such a shame because in many ways, the industry has the most going for it when it comes to social media.

By that I mean stories, content, and eager consumers.

For example, there are new vintages and products every year, winemakers and beautiful wineries, food, family, tradition and heritage, countryside, travel and agriculture. Then there are awards, events and a range of lifestyle occasions and educational opportunities to share with consumers who are passionate, curious and ready to explore and discover a world of wine. That’s some rich social media territory in which to set up camp.

But it can be scary. We get it. While customer experience happens everywhere – offline or online – the stakes are potentially much higher on social media because of the speed and scope of which issues can develop. Once brand reputation has been dented or destroyed online, it can have real world, bottom line impact, which can be hard to recover from and you can’t just hit the delete button.

Most of you are experts at making wine, not at creating superstar social media profiles. What’s more, you’re especially not expert at navigating social media disasters – not many are. It’s not difficult with a bit of forethought to get yourself ready if an issue crops up.

Let’s start with the good times In the good times smart businesses plan for the bad times.

It’s not sexy or fun and you won’t get medals or applause, but it’s necessary. When it hits the fan, you’ll be happy you did. How do you plan? You do some thinking and create a simple document that goes along the lines of: When ‘this’ happens, we tell this person and this person will do this and say this via this channel by this time.

Easy.

Here are some steps and questions to work through in the planning phase:

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Scenario planning What are the main issues your business could face and what’s your plan for handling them? It’s important to identify hot spots specifically related to your type of work or industry.

Gather your team and brainstorm issues that include operations, human resources, marketing, finance and customer service, and reference both physical world and digital world situations and effects. Workshop this over a couple of hours and write up the notes with basic actions you’ll take. Prioritise the scenarios or issues in terms of their importance and relevance. Also think about the levels of escalation. What happens when an issue goes from just one or two comments or tweets to 10 or 100 – or a couple of thousand? What benchmarks or levels will you set to determine whether an issue moves from low priority to high priority?

Process implementation What processes can you create to address different scenarios?

What procedures will you follow to act quickly and efficiently?

What timeframes will you agree on for responses and actions? In addition, how will you monitor for the potential scenarios online?

Setting up Google alerts for your brand name is a simple start.

This automated tool will email you an alert when your brand name is mentioned online. Checking your Facebook page and Twitter account twice daily is important, as is creating some basic community guidelines (or house rules), particularly if you’re using Facebook. Many leading brands on Facebook have examples on their pages (often called house rules). Use them as a basis for creating your own.

Response and resolution team What team members are responsible if these different scenarios occur? List their direct and/or after hours contact numbers. What senior business member will make decisions and speak on behalf of the company? Who will monitor and respond to people online and offline? Who can you call for back up? If you don’t have human resources, public relations or legal in-house, find consultants or agencies you know and can call on if a tricky situation crops up. Remember, there’s a difference between responding and actually resolving an issue. You need to do both.

Approved communications What prepared responses can you draft to address these scenarios that will act as a guide for your communication? In conflict situations when emotions are running high, pre-approved statements or answers to questions are excellent resources to draw from. And on a day-to-day level, they work well for providing

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consistent customer service online. Also, consider how you respond to both detractors and supporters and the media if they come calling.

So, what do you do? Every situation is different and there are various levels – a simple product complaint will vary greatly to the response needed for a serious incident. Here are some tips:

Education and training Are your employees familiar with social media? Do you have a policy that helps to guide their use of social media at work? Is there a book or a local or online course you can send them on to upskill them? Are they clear on the part they play in building and protecting the business? Because whether it’s during or after hours, they do represent your business. Just ask yourself what could be the impact on your brand if one of your employees posts racist comments on a Facebook page? It happens. They might not identify themselves as ‘employee of winery X’, but it takes just one person or click to find out. In addition, is your team clear on who is responsible for social media in the business and, if an issue occurs, who will take control?

This last point is critical. Customer service and hospitality have never been more important. Your team needs to know that an offhand comment at the cellar door could end up in an online review or a complaint on your Facebook page.

So often we see that what’s happened in the physical world is taken to the digital world where it grows legs, travels crosscountry and builds an army of supporters or detractors who crash through the front gate and start bashing at your digital door demanding retribution. Then, of course, it ends up in a major newspaper with a classic headline that includes a business name followed by the words ‘social media’ and ‘#fail’.

Surely common sense will prevail at these times and people will understand it was a simple one-off, a throwaway line? Not quite. The problem, to some degree with common sense on social media, is that the sensible folks are often outnumbered tenfold by the loud-mouthed. Not in actual numbers, but certainly in engagement and activity. If you then add to the mix a colourful bunch of trolls, bullies and bandwagoners...well, you could be in for a bumpy ride.

Acknowledge the situation quickly and set expectations. In other words: say something, anything, as soon as you can Quickly means right away or within a couple of hours. If you don’t have any answers, say that, and then set expectations by giving people an estimated time for when you will respond with answers or progress. Then stick to that time. Simply acknowledging a situation can defuse it in many cases because often people just want to be heard.

Now for the bad times There are two types of bad times. There’s the unavoidable bad times e.g. freak natural disasters and the like. Then there’s the avoidable bad times e.g. what happens because of you – the results of your business decisions and actions, your dealings with other, your staff behaviour or your lack of experience. You need to prepare for both, but let’s focus on the latter in this instance.

We’re all human and we all make mistakes. Customers don’t expect you to be perfect, they just expect you to be responsible - to own and fix your mistakes, when they happen, in an honest, sensitive and decent way.

Let’s say something has happened and lots of people are upset with you and are expressing their upset on your Facebook page or via a tsunami of tweets. You not only have a problem, but here’s the kicker - in a time of crisis you will be equally judged on both the issue and also your handling of the issue - and it’s the handling that can do more damage. Common mistakes at this point include: silence or responding too late, trying to hide or erase the issue, or underestimating the scope or sensitivity of the issue.

When there is silence the void is filled with suspicion, accusations and conversations in which you are not involved and probably not aware. You will be unable to contribute or influence and your silence might as well be a guilty plea. The internet is also unforgiving on those who try to hide or control negative people or situations. If you ever want to inflame an online issue, delete a negative comment!

What’s important to remember though is that quick and careful handling of a negative situation can have a positive outcome on a business and can add value, build trust, respect and support.

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Brief your team and staff immediately and activate your plan Yes, that means activate that plan you did in the good times – pull it out of the metaphorical bottom drawer. Assess the situation, who is in charge, and what time frames you are working to and who will speak and manage the social media questions and conversations. You need a person who is calm, considered, positive and responsible. At this stage, it’s important that your broader team, family or friends don’t engage in any conversations online about the issue. They might want to come to your defence but their good intentions can complicate the situation.

Be transparent and human in communication and handling Keep people updated and be honest. If you don’t have an answer, say you’re working on it. This is not a time for formal marketing messages or corporate talk. Follow your pre-approved Q&A responses but adapt these into a conversational style that suits your brand voice because overly-scripted and repetitive responses can irritate people. Ask yourself, “Would this sound normal and natural if I said it out loud to someone standing in front of me?” Listen, empathise and respond with sensitivity. A sprinkling of humour can also turn a situation around, but tread carefully. Before you post, ask yourself, “What possible reactions could we get from this?”

Say sorry and mean it This isn’t the time or place for nit-picking facts or skilful buck passing. Facts are important but emotions will often trump them. If you did something wrong, fess up, say sorry immediately and then say how you’ll make it right. However, be mindful of the legal consequences if the situation is serious. And again, acknowledgement and empathy goes a long way in situations where people are frustrated or angry.

Communicate in the right place People tend to stay on the platform they’re engaged with, so if a problem blows up on Facebook, make that the platform for all communication and provide a central place for feedback and responses e.g. the page wall. If people are going crazy on Twitter, answer on Twitter and if a major public issue occurs, create a specific hash tag for people to use. Also, have a way for an issue to be resolved offline. Providing an email address or customer service number that people can call will help to manage some situations in a more effective way.

Provide access to the business owner or a senior team member If it’s a serious issue, put someone with gravitas on it, i.e., the business owner or a senior manager because you want to ensure people know you’re taking things seriously and it’s being personally handled at the most senior level. It also gives your business a human face and voice. Provide direct access to this person via email or phone number. Not just the generic info@winecompany.com.au - a proper personal email. Being transparent is also being accessible.

Be discerning and thoughtful with interactions Keep a cool head. Stop and think before acting and, most of all,

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McLaren Vale winery Middlebrook Estate found itself on the receiving end of an avalanche of negative social media attention in June this year when a mother who visited the winery during the Sea & Vines Festival subsequently took to Facebook to complain that staff had forced her to express milk in public after denying her request for a private room. The winery temporarily took down its Facebook page then reinstated it a couple of days later to issue an apology. The incident resulted in the McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association introducing a new program to reinforce the message that breastfeeding mothers are welcome in the region. Source: news.com.au and Facebook pick your battles. You need to discern between who has a genuine complaint and who is trolling to stir up trouble. On Facebook, you can often tell the difference by looking at the person’s profile (provided it’s public). Also, there could be legal, regulatory, moral and ethical consideration to keep in mind. On Facebook for example, you are legally responsible for all comments (yours or others) so if there’s anything posted that’s offensive, illegal, incorrect or considered puffery – your business is responsible, so you will need to monitor and moderate comments. Don’t delete negative comments just because you don’t like them or you think they’ll damage your reputation. Do delete comments that are offensive or breach your community guidelines and always give the reason why e.g. ‘We deleted the comment because it used offensive language which is against our house rules listed here…’

group of friends across social media and in every community. Be authentic and honest in your communication and always plan for that rainy day. Because the truest thing ever spoken in a crisis of any sort is simply, ‘You soon find out who your real friends are’.

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Monitor the situation closely If an issue has flared up you will be monitoring online platforms and conversation continuously. However, even if it looks to be resolved, continue to monitor your platforms closely for days afterwards to account for a ripple effect. As new people become aware or visit your profiles, the issue might gain additional interest and traction. Social media in these times is a 24/7 job.

Tuesday July 14 - Thurs July 16, 2015

Review and learn from the situation Afterwards, review what’s happened – what worked, what didn’t, how you could improve things and what updates need to be made to your plan? Aside from this, regular check-ins on reoccurring comments or complaints on social media platforms can be discussed within the business to identify areas of improvement.

Rest assured if you have had your particular moment in the social media sun for the wrong reasons, there will be someone else hot on your heels. That is a certainty. If you handle yourself with honesty and transparency, the fact is your brand equity could actually be enhanced rather than diminished, and if you are a brand that people are inclined to love, they will defend you and forgive you. On the other hand, if your business or brand never made the effort to ‘get social’ or really had many true friends, you will find that out as quick as you can type 140 characters or check your feed. So, invest every day in building a large, loyal and loving

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Words are powerful: How are they used to describe wine in China?

By Armando Corsi, Justin Cohen and Larry Lockshin, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia. Email: armando.corsi@marketingscience.info

The latest on the University of South Australia’s Chinese Lexicon Project which is aimed at helping wineries decide on the words they should use to describe their products in the Chinese wine market.

Introduction

I

n the November/December 2013 issue of Wine & Viticulture Journal, we wrote about Stage 1 of the Chinese Lexicon Project which has been generously supported by the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC), now the Australian Grape and Wine Authority (AGWA). This project is not simply translating the English (Western) terms Chinese consumers use to describe a wine into Mandarin. A translator could fulfil this task.

The main objectives of this research are to: • quantify the usage of general and specific wine taste descriptors among everyday Chinese wine drinkers • understand the preferences wine drinkers in China have for using standard Western terms versus hypothesised, but never scientifically validated Chinese equivalent fruits, vegetables, plants, spices and foods common in China and more relatable to the Chinese culture and diet • validate what lexical equivalences exist in order to provide Australian wineries with a competitive advantage in sensory communications with Chinese wine drinkers by providing the necessary insights to develop Chinese-centric collateral.

Method The project comprised three stages. Stage 1 of the research included 12 focus groups across three Chinese cities: Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. The research identified 18 generic descriptors (e.g. astringent, mellow, etc), 14 Chinese-specific descriptors for red wines and fortified (e.g. yangmei, wolfberry, etc), and 20 Chinese-specific descriptors for white wines, sparkling and dessert (e.g. guava, gingko nut, etc).

Stage 2 involved a sensory characterisation of 25 wines by our colleagues at the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), Ian Leigh Francis and Patricia Williamson. This permitted the selection of 14 wines (five red wines, four white wines, three sparkling wines, and two dessert wines) most representative of the main styles of wines Australia exports to China.

Stage 3 enacted a central location hedonic liking test that was carried out in the same three cities as Stage 1, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. A total of 263 respondents completed the study. The majority of respondents were male (58%), 30-39 years old (49%), with a degree from a university (55%), had a personal income of less than RMB7000 per month (47%), and were equally distributed across the three cities.

Among other tasks participants were given, each respondent evaluated all of the 14 wines by ticking all the generic and specific wine descriptors they could perceive when tasting the wine. This technique is generally referred to as ‘checkall-that-apply’ (CATA). The terms were listed on the survey instrument according to the Chinese Pynin system, which is the

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official phonetic system for translating the sounds of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet. The generic descriptors were identical for all wines, with the exception of the word ‘spicy’, which was only present for the description of red wines and the South Australia tawny (NV). The specific descriptors varied according to the wine style evaluated.

The respondents were randomly allocated into two groups.

The groups varied with respect to the specific descriptors applied – Western or Chinese. It is important to note that the generic terms were identical across all wines and groups which permitted testing for the equivalences between Chinese and Western terms. If the generic descriptors cluster around the same wines across sub-samples, it can be concluded that the data is suitable for further testing to determine if there are lexical equivalence between Chinese and Western specific taste descriptors.

For brevity, in this article we simply report the results relative to the frequency count of the generic and specific terms used by the respondents to describe a wine. In addition, a summary of the equivalences between Western and Chinese descriptors tested via a qualitative evaluation of the correspondence analyses run on the frequency counts recorded for different wine types across the two sub-samples is provided.

However, the project was broader than this. Interested readers can access a full explanation of the project, research protocol and the results via the AGWA website http://research.agwa.net.au.

Results The results in Table 1 demonstrate that the generic terms are used on average three times more often than specific terms.

The difference in usage of generic and specific terms between groups is not significant nor the use of specific terms between wine styles. This indicates that at this stage the China wine market is perhaps better suited to be communicated through general rather than specific wine descriptors.

Table 1. Frequency count (%) - Generic and specific terms.

Overall Sample

Chinese

Western

Generic terms

22

21

23

Specific terms Red wines, and South Australia tawny (NV)

7

7

8

Specific terms White wines, sparkling wines and 2012 King Valley Moscato

6

5

7

Table 2 shows that the terms astringent (34%), sour (34%), mellow (31%), and lingering (30%) are the most selected terms

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Table 2. Frequency count (%) – Generic descriptors.

Term Astringent

Table 3. Frequency count (%) – Specific descriptors for the red wines and the South Australia tawny (NV).

Overall Sample

Chinese

Western

SIG

34

31

38

Y

Yangmei Dried Chinese hawthorn Dried wolfberry

Sour

34

33

35

N

Mellow

31

31

31

N

Lingering

30

28

31

N

Fruity

29

23

36

Y

Smooth

28

25

30

Y

Intense

25

23

26

Y

Refreshing

23

21

25

Y

Sweet

22

22

21

N

Pure

20

20

19

N

Full bodied

19

18

19

N

Bitter

18

18

18

N

High alcohol

17

17

17

N

Light

15

15

16

N

Balanced

15

14

16

N

Oaky

14

12

17

Y

Pungent

12

11

13

N

Spicy

9

11

10

N

to describe the taste of wine. Also, with the exception of the terms sweet and pure, the Western sub-sample tended to select more items than the Chinese sub-group. For most of the terms, the difference is not statistically significant, for the terms astringent, fruity, smooth, intense, refreshing, and oaky it is.

These findings could be explained by the concomitant presence of Western descriptors with generic terms, but this requires further investigation.

In relation to specific terms (see Table 3), the results for the red wines and the South Australia tawny (NV) show that terms such as yangmei, dried Chinese hawthorn, dried wolfberry, and fresh wolfberry are used significantly more often than their Western equivalents (see elements hightlighted in blue).

Conversely, other terms such as dark cherries, red plum, cooked game, vanilla, bacon, and green bell peppers are significanlty more used than their Chinese equivalents.

The results for the white wines, sparking wines, and the 2012 King Valley Moscato, show that only the terms Asian pear and pandan leaf are used significantly more often in the

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Chinese

%

Western

%

15

Strawberry

4

13

Blackberry preserves

8

12

Strawberry preserves

4

Dried Chinese red dates

10

Plum

10

Fresh Chinese red dates

10

Blackcurrant

9

Fresh wolfberry

7

Raspberry

4

Clove

6

Clove

6

Star anise

5

Star anise

5

Chinese black tea leaves

4

Dark cherries

14

Persimmons

4

Red plum

15

Chinese sausage

2

Cooked game

12

Pine nut

2

Vanilla

7

Chinese salted pork

1

Bacon

3

Chinese green peppers

1

Green bell peppers

4

Chinese version (see elements hightlighted in blue). Other terms, such as lemon, grapefruit, citrus fruit, peach, lychee, gooseberry, grass, flowers, apple, and figs are significanlty used more than their Chinese equivalents (see Table 4, page 68).

Let’s now focus on the equivalences between Chinese and Western descriptors. The results for the red wines and the South Australia tawny (NV) show that both groups of respondents evaluated the wines in a similar way, associating most of the generic (16 out of 18) and specific (eight out of 14) descriptors around the same wines. In particular, for the specific descriptors the validated equivalences are provided in Table 5 (see page 68).

The results relative to the descriptors used for the white wines, the sparkling wines, and the 2012 King Valley Moscato are in line with the results relative to the red wines and the South Australian tawny (NV). All the generic descriptors match perfectly. Eleven out of 20 specific descriptors are proven to be equivalent and presented in Table 6.

Discussion and conclusion The results of the Chinese Lexicon Project can help build an approach to wine description that is geared towards the level of consumer experience of the market wines are exported to.

Knowing what terms are used more often when consumers

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Table 4. Frequency count (%) – Specific descriptors for the white wines, the sparkling wines, and the 2012 King Valley Moscato.

Chinese

%

Western

%

Kaffir lime

13

Lemon

17

Jackfruit

9

Pineapple

11

Guava

6

Passion fruit

6

Pomelo

8

Grapefruit

15

Asian pear

8

Apricots

4

Star fruit

6

Citrus fruit

10

Gingko nut

5

Toast

2

Cantaloupe

3

Melon

4

Jasmine

2

Flowers

9

Mango

2

Mango

3

Young Asian coconut

5

Vanilla

7

Saturn peach

5

Peach

8

Pandan Leaf

4

Asparagus

2

Dried chrysanthemum

4

Dried apricots

5

Rambutan

4

Butter

1

Mangosteen

3

Lychee

10

Longan

3

Gooseberry

6

Lemongrass

2

Grass

11

Dragon fruit

2

Apple

10

Yellow lotus seed paste

1

Figs

3

taste wines helps wineries deciding on the words they should use to describe their products across all the marketing collateral for the Chinese market.

However, familiarity with an object, in this case wine descriptors, leads to consumers selecting that object more often than when confronted with unfamiliar items. This research shows that, despite the inexperience the participants of this study had with wine, the fact that Western descriptors have been predominantly used thus far in China to describe wines might have led to consumers having more associations with Western descriptors rather than Chinese descriptors.

The predominance of Chinese descriptors over Western ones in relation to fruits suggests that Chinese consumers might find it easier to utilise terms associated with food items they regularly consume. Further studies should investigate how the preferences for Chinese or Western terms change, as wine becomes more popular in China and the usage of Chinese terms becomes more prevalent. There is scope for Australia to lead in this.

These results support the intuition of some industry practitioners who have created a dictionary to ‘translate’ the terms commonly used to describe a wine into, not just Chinese, but in a Chinese context. However, this research has proven that neither this strategy nor specific wine descriptors prevalent in the Chinese wine vocabulary are well accepted as this stage. Understanding how to describe wines to the consumers of a big, yet relatively inexperienced wine consuming country like China is a task to be scientifically approached. The results of this study show that only some of the hypothesised equivalences hold true; others are not perceived as equivalent. This suggests a need to continue this research to identify what Chinese specific descriptors do actually match these yet to be scientifically matched Western descriptors.

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Table 5. Summary of equivalences between Chinese and Western specific wine descriptors for the red wines and the South Australia tawny (NV).

Red Wines + South Australia Tawny (NV) Equivalence Verified

Chinese

Western

Yangmei

Strawberry

Dried Chinese hawthorn

Blackberry preserves

Dried wolfberry

Strawberry preserves

Dried Chinese red dates

Plum

x

Fresh Chinese red dates

Blackcurrant

x

Fresh wolfberry

Raspberry

x

Clove

Clove

x

Star anise

Star anise

Chinese black tea leaves

Dark cherries

x

Persimmons

Red plum

Chinese sausage

Cooked game

Pine nut

Vanilla

Chinese salted pork

Bacon

Chinese green peppers

Green bell peppers

x

Table 6. Summary of equivalences between Chinese and Western specific wine descriptors for the white wines, the sparkling wines and the 2012 King Valley Moscato.

White Wines + Sparkling Wines + 2012 King Valley Moscato Equivalence Verified

Chinese

Western

Kaffir lime

Lemon

x

Jackfruit

Pineapple

Guava

Passion fruit

Pomelo

Grapefruit

Asian pear

Apricots

x

Star fruit

Citrus fruit

Gingko nut

Toast

Cantaloupe

Melon

x

Jasmine

Flowers

Mango

Mango

Young Asian coconut

Vanilla

x

Saturn peach

Peach

x

Pandan Leaf

Asparagus

x

Dried chrysanthemum

Dried apricots

x

Rambutan

Butter

Mangosteen

Lychee

x

Longan

Gooseberry

Lemongrass

Grass

Dragon fruit

Apple

x

Yellow lotus seed paste

Figs

Please look to the next issue of Wine & Viticulture Journal for a more applied article that discusses how the insight presented here can be used by Australian wineries in China.

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Decline in Australian wine exports to China shows signs of easing

By Mark Rowley, Industry Analyst, Wine Australia

Although too early to declare a complete recovery, there are signs the brakes may have been applied to the recent fall in the volume of wine exported to China from Australia.

300

weaker performance for exports in December in an already depressed austerity-driven market. This interplay between the New Year and austerity measures meant there was a large base in 2012 from which to compare wine exports to in 2013. With exports now starting to increase month-onmonth, annual growth should return to the market shortly.

The 2015 Chinese New Year falls on 19 February, which is later than usual. If history is an accurate indicator then 6

5 Volume (million litres)

Early Chinese New Year

Late Chinese New Year

Early Chinese New Year

4 Late Chinese New Year

3

2

1

0

January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August

A

usterity measures introduced by the Chinese Government in late 2012 have contributed to a decline in the volume of wine imported by China. The austerity was initiated to clamp down on ostentatious shows of wealth by public officials, including banquets serving imported wine and gift giving which is often wine. Until this time, China was the world’s fastest growing imported wine market.

The impact has been felt mainly at the premium end of the market and all of Australia’s competitors have been affected.

The exception is Chile, which can supply at the entry level due to a trade advantage combined with arguably lower production costs. This article provides a brief update on the performance of Australian wine exports over the past few years and, more importantly, a focus on the past few months to offer some insights into where the market is heading short term.

In 2014, the total volume of Australian bottled wine exports stabilised and has been heading in a new upward trend (Figure 1). However, the initial stabilisation was due to a greater volume of lower-priced Australian wine entering China. This can be demonstrated by the fact that volume increased while the average value declined in the first three months of 2014.

However, over the past five months the average value has stabilised while volume has continued to climb.

Figure 2 provides further evidence as to why the decline in wine exports was so sharp. There was an inter-play between the austerity measures and the timing of Chinese New Year which ‘inflated’ 2012 figures and ‘deflated’ 2013 figures. Exports during December 2012 were particularly strong, partly due to a late New Year. Austerity had just been announced but it is unlikely practical measures were put in place. In 2013, the earlier New Year resulted in a

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Figure 2. Monthly exports of bottled wine to China.

$5.00 to $7.49 22% $7.50 to $9.99 6%

40

Value AUD Litres

35

250

$10.00 and over 12%

200

25

150

20 15

100

Volume (million AUD)

Value (million AUD)

30

10 50

2011

2012

2013

0

2014

Figure 1. Total volume and average price of Australian bottled exports to China (moving annual total) Source: AGWA

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$2.50 to $4.99 55%

5

January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August

0

$2.49 and under 5%

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Figure 3. Bottled price point share – August 2014.

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2.2 $2.49 and under $2.50 to $4.99

2

$5.00 to $7.49 $7.50 to $9.99

1.8

$10.00 and over 1.6 1.4 1.2

1 0.8

January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August

0.6

2011

2012

2013

2014

Figure 4. Bottled exports by price point index. this should result in stronger December shipments at the expense of November.

Figure 4 illustrates the dynamics of Australian bottle exports to China over the past three and a half years. The chart shows the indices of the rolling annual total of the volume of the five key price segments so the movements in each can be examined on the same scale. The share of each segment is illustrated in Figure 3. Figure 4 shows that the exports at higher price points were hit hardest by the austerity measures. Growth in Australian exports up until mid-2013 was driven by the higher price segments (above $5 per litre), however after the austerity measures were introduced, these price segments were the cause of the

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overall decline.

Encouragingly, the A$10 per litre and above segment has tracked higher for the last two months to August – the first time this has occurred since April 2013. Furthermore, the A$7.50 to $9.99 per litre segment has been stable throughout the year and the steep declines in the A$5.00 to $7.49 per litre segment appear to have come to an end.

Conversely, there has been growth recorded in Australian exports in the lower price segments in the last six to 12 months. Although coming off a low base, exports in the under A$2.49 per litre segment have grown sharply since July 2013.

Exports in the largest segment, at A$2.50 to $4.99 per litre, have also displayed an upward trend since the start of 2014, however, volumes still remain below the peak recorded in December 2012.

These run of events are logical. If the government segment of the wine market declines, but the private segment of the market continues to grow, eventually growth in the private segment will offset the weakness in the government segment. As the growing segment takes market share off the declining segment, the total market will recommence growth eventually – albeit off a lower base. Hypothetically, if the two segments were roughly the same size, it may only take one year for the market to resume growth.

Although it is too early to confirm a complete recovery, it is a positive that the declines in Australian exports to China have been curtailed. Longer-term, the Chinese are still becoming wealthier and consuming more wine and Australia remains well-placed to take advantage of this growth.

However, the past year is a reminder that markets often WVJ change direction and without warning.

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Improving energy efficiency with the Winery Energy Saver Toolkit

By Mark Gishen, South Australian Wine Industry Association

The 7th Australian Wine Industry Environment Conference was held in Adelaide on 25 September. The following is a summary of a presentation on the Winery Energy Saver Toolkit - a range of resources to help wineries identify energy efficiency opportunities and assess the business case for investing in energy efficient equipment and process upgrades.

Background

T

he South Australian wine industry is a major driver of the national industry, producing about 45% of Australian wine and exporting some 65% of Australia’s total. The SA wine industry is critical to the state’s economic growth, currently contributing approximately 16% of the state’s total export revenue.

However, it is currently under a lot of pressure, with increasing energy prices and rising costs of labour, combined with the strong Australian dollar affecting export revenues, squeezing the profit margins of local businesses. Given that energy costs can be as high as 15% of total operational costs of a wine business, energy efficiency improvements are critical to future competitiveness.

The South Australian Wine Industry Association (SAWIA) has maintained a national and global leadership position in environmental initiatives to support wine business sustainability, and as the first Australian wine industry body to focus on the environment, has led the way over many years. Initiatives that have helped to guide the industry include convening the Australian Wine Industry Environment Conference since its inception in 2000, and developing both the national industry’s environmental strategy ‘Sustaining Success’, and the Climate Change Sector Agreement with the SA Government.

Within South Australia, SAWIA has worked with state government agencies to: • develop guidelines for winery wastewater management (SA Environment Protection Authority) • establish the first sector agreement with the Department of Premier and Cabinet in support of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Act 2007 to educate growers and winemakers about carbon accounting and train them in the use of the wine industry’s carbon calculator

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•

develop guidelines for the management of treated timber waste (vineyard posts) in collaboration with Zero Waste SA and, more recently, to improve resource use efficiency in the wine industry.

In 2003, SAWIA developed ‘A guide to energy efficiency innovation in Australian wineries’ with funding from the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources. This guide was developed with the participation of mainly large wineries in South Australia, and outlined a range of opportunities for improvements in energy efficiency.

However, very few smaller wineries have taken up these practices and, indeed, many are not even aware of the guide at all. One of the main barriers to uptake identified through consultation with industry was the high cost associated with engaging contractors to assist one-to-one in tackling these issues. Furthermore, the issues and paths to implementing innovation were often seen as too complicated for many to understand. What was needed was more easily understandable information for wineries wanting to make stepchange efficiency improvements through upgrading of key types of equipment to more energy efficient alternatives.

Extensive engagement with small and medium wineries was undertaken throughout previous projects under the Wine Industry Sector Agreement, and it was determined that businesses needed locally relevant, practical and easy-toaccess information on both the ‘quick win’ opportunities to save money and reduce environmental impacts (e.g. through better maintenance practices), as well as the opportunities through implementation of new and advanced technology.

Overcoming these barriers was the main motivation behind SAWIA’s application to the Australian Government’s Energy Efficiency Information Grants program in 2012, which was successful W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

in obtaining funding to develop a new ‘Winery Energy Saver Toolkit’ (WEST).

The application was the result of ongoing collaboration between SAWIA and Zero Waste SA and the two organisations have worked closely together in delivering the project.

The Winery Energy Saver Toolkit (WEST) project The greatest energy efficiency improvements in the wine industry are often achieved through the upgrading of energy efficient alternatives to processbased equipment, such as refrigeration systems, which are often the greatest consumers of energy – typically between 40-60% of total energy costs. These upgrades usually come at a much higher upfront cost than basic maintenance practices and, as a result, wineries may need guidance on creating a strong business case to justify such a significant investment. Smaller wineries in particular often lack the resources and knowledge to undertake investigation of the technology and commercial assessment of alternatives that might improve energy efficiency.

The WEST project provided SA and Australian wineries with peer-to-peer learning opportunities through workshops, webinars and industry profile examples, the skills to develop the business cases to aid decision-making for investment in these improvements, and links to appropriate state and Federal Government support programs to aid the purchase and implementation of energy efficiency projects and equipment. Importantly, the project developed the resources that comprise the toolkit including a do-ityourself guide and checklists to help identify energy efficiency opportunities through equipment optimisation, as well as replacement and upgrades.

The toolkit resources are intended to provide wineries of all scales with an V29N5

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overview of energy efficiency and some simple, low-cost directions on ways to improve resource efficiency, procurement practices and product development.

What’s in the Winery Energy Saver Toolkit?

The Winery Energy Saver Toolkit contains a range of resources including step-by-step procedures, templates and supporting resources to help wineries identify energy efficiency opportunities, and assess the business case for investing in energy efficient equipment and process upgrades. The Winery Energy Saver Toolkit provides user-friendly resources to help wineries build a commercially sound business case for investment in energy efficiency, based on both technical and commercial assessment techniques to: • • •

identify practical opportunities to improve energy efficiency locate information about the most appropriate energy efficient technology prepare the business case.

The toolkit materials in electronic format are all freely available for download through the online portal within SAWIA’s website, and include: a series of short videos that quickly summarise the key aspects of the WEST the interactive WEST document (PDF format electronic book) that examines each of the six main areas of energy efficiency opportunity, and guides the user through a three-step process to explore practical options for improvements: • •

• •

a guide to planning energy efficiency improvements checklists for reviewing energy efficiency opportunities and collating information needed before approaching suppliers a template for developing a business case case study examples of energy efficiency improvement plans in wineries.

What did the WEST project do?

The project commenced in September 2012 with the engagement of Adelaidebased consultancy 2XE to develop the WEST resources. The first stage of the project involved direct mentoring and consultation with several wineries of varying sizes to understand key opportunities, and to enable the wineries to review the various concepts and drafts of the toolkit design and content.

Furthermore, a range of case study materials was developed to reflect the most commonly encountered and

implemented opportunities for energy efficiency improvements in wineries. This phase of the project was conducted in partnership with Zero Waste SA through close collaboration with design and delivery of the project.

Following the development of the WEST, the project team commenced a roll-out phase through a series of regional seminars, workshops and webinars. The sessions were open to all wineries in South Australia and demonstrated to winery staff how they could use the WEST resources for maximum benefit. Wineries attending the workshops were able to lodge an ‘expression of interest’ to participate in the subsequent implementation phase.

The implementation phase provided some 30 winery sites with direct oneon-one support to help wineries apply the WEST in their own businesses to identify key opportunities and put together the business case for energy efficiency improvements. This phase also provided additional feedback to the project team to allow for any refinements to the materials, and further information for use in the preparation of short videos to explain the key aspects of the WEST. What benefits did the WEST project provide to wineries?

A larger range of wineries of all scales of operation have now been introduced to the benefits of energy efficiency and a new range of easily understandable and accessible tools have been developed to help realise such improvements. The development phase of the WEST involved in-depth engagement with nine wineries in South Australia, and the workshop phases another 66 wineries, together representing nearly 30% of the wineries in South Australia that process onsite.

The wine industry now has easy access to a package of materials to help them identify their own energy efficiency opportunities and prepare a business case for implementation. The toolkit is available through SAWIA’s website, and in the first six months of 2014, these pages were viewed more than 320 times, resulting in nearly 290 downloads.

A significant number of wineries in South Australia have successfully used the WEST in their own businesses to assess energy opportunities and prepare the business case. Through one-onone advisory assistance provided by experts on the project team as part of the implementation phase, some 30 winery sites were assisted in using the WEST to investigate and prepare a business case for a broad range of opportunities that included: •

minimising wine transfers to reduce

• • • • • • • •

business & marketing

energy consumption optimising operation of air compressors improving and upgrading tank and pipe insulation optimising refrigeration load and brine temperatures improving electricity monitoring systems and demand management installing solar power generation to reduce electricity purchases heat recovery from refrigeration plant upgrading efficiency of lighting improving barrel washing processes.

Some examples of these are given in the case studies provided as part of the toolkit materials that are available from the online portal within SAWIA’s website.

An additional outcome of the project was that it enabled a significant number of wineries to submit an application for part funding of energy efficiency improvement upgrade projects to the now closed Clean Technology Food and Foundries Investment Program1 that was administered through AusIndustry as part of the former Federal Government’s Clean Energy Future package. Some 22 South Australian wineries were successful in obtaining funding from the same government program, bringing the total to $2.432 million, and many of these were aided in preparing their applications, at least in part, through the WEST project and materials.

These multiple benefits all demonstrate that the WEST meets its intended purpose and is well-suited to assist wineries to be able to prepare sound business cases for investment in energy efficiency improvements. The WEST will continue to provide resources to allow immediate and long-term benefits to wineries.

The WEST materials can be accessed through SAWIA’s website (http://www. winesa.asn.au/members/adviceinformation/environment/energyefficiency/winery-energy-saver-toolkit/) or contact Mark Gishen at the South Australian Wine Industry Association on (08) 8222 9278 or mark@winesa.asn.au

This Activity received funding from the Department of Industry as part of the Energy Efficiency Information Grants Program. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Commonwealth does not accept responsibility for any information or advice contained herein.

1 See: http://www.business.gov.au/grants-andassistance/closed-programs/CleanTechnology/ CleanTechnologyInvestment/Pages/CTIP-Grantee.aspx WVJ

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The wood on making good Fumé Blanc The general consensus of the panelists on our recent Fumé Blanc tasting was that most of the wines fell short of representing the style (see page 77). Although there are no official guidelines in Australia governing the making of Fumé Blanc – it is purely a marketing term invented by Amercican Robert Mondavi in the late 1960s to differentiate his dry-style Sauvignon Blanc from the sweet and mostly mediocre Sauvignon Blancs of the time - it is generally agreed that the style is characterised by complexity and likely to be influenced by oak, setting it apart from the more simpler styles of Sauvignon Blanc currently dominating the Australian market.

Our tasting panel members were unanimous in agreeing that the 2010 De Salis Wild Fumé Blanc met this expectation best of all the wines in the tasting, but struggled to agree on wines worthy of note after that, but eventually reached a consensus on the 2013 Plantagenet Juxtapose Oaked Sauvignon Blanc and 2012 Chain of Ponds First Lady. We asked the producers of these wines to give us a rundown on how they came into being.

Charlie Svenson, Vigneron, Winemaker, Proprietor Loretta Svenson, Vigneron, Proprietor Mitchell Svenson, Assistant Winemaker De Salis Wines Orange, New South Wales Wine: 2010 De Salis Wild Fumé Blanc (RRP$28/bottle) Viticulture The De Salis 2010 Wild Fumé Blanc is an estate-grown 100% Sauvignon Blanc, with the fruit coming from two distinctly different blocks from our Lofty Vineyard. Located 3km south of Nashdale Village and 14km west of Orange, between 1027m and 1050m elevation, Lofty Vineyard is one of the highest plantings on the northern slopes of the Orange GI’s defining feature Mount Canobolas.

The Orange region has 1872 sunshine hours from Oct-April and the accumulated growing degree days above 10oC at approximately 1050m are less than 1200. The vineyard is planted on a ridge in rocky brown Ferrosol soil that slopes gently north before falling away sharply in all directions but south. As a result we don’t have any frost issues during the growing season, however, snow as late as November can prove challenging depending on the accompanying wind.

The 2010 vintage was particularly cold at Lofty Vineyard, with a 12-month maximum of 28.5oC. Temperature inversion from the frosty valley floor several hundred metres below provided frost relief, resulting in an October to April minimum of just above 3oC. Spring winds and late summer hail provide the majority of risk to fruitset and disease, respectively. The vineyard has a spring filled dam and drip irrigation system, however, due to the 1250mm of rain in 2010, this was not required.

Both blocks are 23 years old, planted with a 1.5m vine x 2.7m row spacing on their own roots, trained to a VSP with 1.1m high cordons, and spur pruned by hand with 20 buds/vine on two-bud spurs. Block one is located at the northeast corner of the vineyard, with a slight north-northeast slope. There is no impediment to the sun and southerly wind protection, whereas block two is at the southwest end of the vineyard with a west-northwest slope and in 50% more rock. A large pine tree windbreak provides block two with a substantial sun block, reducing direct sunlight by 40% of

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De Salis Wines’ sources the fruit for its Wild Fumé Blanc from two separate blocks on its estate vineyard, Lofty Vineyard, which is one of the highest vine plantings on the northern slopes of the Orange GI’s defining feature Mount Canobolas.

De Salis Wines’ winemaker Charlie Svenson (right) and assistant winemaker Mitchell Svenson.

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that received by block one. An even ratio of clover and rye grass cover is side thrown under vine throughout the year, with a Black Suffolk flock wintered in the vineyard for fertilisation and weed management.

Both blocks are bunch thinned to a maximum of 8t/hectare post fruitset, shoot thinned pre-verasion and leaf plucked on the eastern side depending on rain forecasts. Being located in close proximity to apple orchards we pay particular attention to LBAM, monitoring caterpillars and moths for optimal BT spore application especially at bunch closure.

Typically, block one is harvested in the last week of March or early April - a week to 10 days before block two. In block one, we are looking for the flavours to be in the pavlova-passionfruit to blackcurrant spectrum and block two just past green peas with good minerality. The Baume in block one at picking is usually around 12.3°C, with a pH of 3.4 and 7.5-8.5g/L of tartaric equivalent, while in block two the equivalent figures are 12.1°ish, pH3.2-3.3 and 8.0-9.0g/L.

throughout New South Wales in both regional and city areas.

Typically, cellar door customers comment on the style being different, that it “isn’t like other Sauvignon Blanc, it’s more textural, …… no enamel etching acid”.

Year on year we double production and sell out. This is a very popular style, especially with Chardonnay drinkers.

Cath Oates, Chief Winemaker, Plantagenet Wines, Great Southern, Western Australia Wine: 2013 Plantagenet Juxtapose Sauvignon Blanc (RRP$24.00/ bottle)

Winemaking Hand harvested at dawn on flavour and acid as described above, the fruit is immediately whole bunch pressed through a 3000L bag press in 1.5t parcels. The reduced cake size allows for a soft press to 0.4 bar with an extraction rate below 600L/t . We are looking to keep the phenolics low and remove the need to fine the finished wine. The juice is splashed to tank and settled off heavy solids for 24 hours without enzyme or PMS. Must is pumped to one-third ullaged barrels and fermented on native microflora with daily battonage until early exponential growth commences.

In 2010, the barrel profile was 50% puncheons, half of which were second-use, and 50% barriques that were all former Chardonnay barrels for at least six years. Barrels are topped progressively as the ferment proceeds to lag phase, when bâtonnage recommences and continued weekly for 11 months.

From 2013 onwards we have been using 100% barriques for this wine, mainly because it is difficult to source very fine-grain timber in a puncheon format. We are currently making two styles of Fumé Blanc, one as described here in and another in 33% new, second and third use barriques with a bit more flint/struck match character.

Typically, natural MLF commences in spring and is complete

by December; the barrels are then sulfured with PMS to a total of 50ppm and left on lees. In using natural MLF we find it does not always go to completion in which case the sulfur is adjusted accordingly. In grading our barrels for the final blend we are looking for pavlova topping, passionfruit, blackcurrant and a faint edge of gooseberry. We are after good mouthfeel in the cream spectrum and minerality from the edgy second block, the key being persistence in the finish.

The day before the new vintage the barrels are racked by nitrogen spear with retention of some lees and left to cold stabilise over winter. The tanks are racked several times prior to gravityfed estate bottling through a rock catcher. We test for heat and cold stabilisation prior to bottling, however, to date have not had the need to fine or stabilise this style of wine. As a result the Wild Fumé Blanc is produced without fining or filtering and is naturally cold stable.

Marketing The focus at De Salis is traditional method sparkling wines, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. We decided to make a Sauvignon Blanc to add to our cellar door range as we grow 20+ tonnes at Lofty Vineyard. In doing so, we have tried to make a wine that is true to our minimalist winemaking philosophy, resulting in the creation of the Wild Fumé Blanc. While we do no direct marketing, word of mouth has taken the Fumé into many restaurants

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Plantagenet chief winemaker Cath Oates and assistant winemaker Chris Murtha.

VITICULTURE The fruit for our Fumé Blanc is contracted from Landsdale vineyard, 13km west of Mt Barker, 45km from the Great Southern Ocean and 225m above sea level. The vineyard did not record any frost events in the lead-up to vintage 2013, but did experience strong early season winds in October. The vineyard is in a cool climate that experiences an average of 1488 heat degree days, but it has a warm end in March and April, albeit with cool nights.

The soils in the vineyard are sandy loams over gravel. The Sauvignon Blanc from Block 20 has a gradually sloping, southerly aspect with east-west row orientation. The vines were planted in 2005 of clone H5B1 on own roots. They are trellised to a VSP with vine spacings of 1.8m and row widths of 3m. Shoot thinning to remove down and sideward shoots and clusters is carried out along with two wire lifts and one top trim.

No glyphosate has been used in the vineyard since planting.

Sheep graze through winter, while a custom-blended, microbecoated mineral fertiliser mix is used in late winter based on soil analysis. Fish emulsion as leaf tonic post bunch closure is used to encourage a healthy canopy through the final ripening phase.

A permanent sward is maintained in the mid-row along with an undervine crop of rye and clover.

We target 32-34 buds per vine on strong, clear, two-bud spurs with hand clean-up post barrel pruning. The vines do not experience any particularly pest or disease concerns.

We will be continuing to use mineral fertilisers and microbes in this vineyard while steering clear of herbicides wherever possible .

The fruit for our 2013 Fumé Blanc was picked in the early hours of the morning on the 6 March at 9°C. Our target yield for this fruit is 8-9t/ha, which we feel is ideal for vine balance.

WINEMAKING Fruit for this wine is machine harvested at night to retain maximum freshness. In 2013, pressing was carried out to about

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1.4Bar with no press cut. Following the standard cold settling routine for our unoaked Sauvignon Blanc for two days at 10°C with enzyme added, the very clear juice was racked and inoculated with VL3 yeast, then was run to a new French oak, tight grain, light toast puncheon and some older neutral French barrels that had previously been used for the Plantagenet Chardonnay.

Fermentation was carried out without cooling and then the wine was left on lees for seven months following ferment with regular lees stirring. Once racked it was blended with about 40% tank fermented wine from the same pick, lightly fined with isinglass and then stabilised and filtered.

We aim for protective, clean winemaking to retain primary fruit freshness with a gentle, supporting oak component.

The 2013 was the first Fumé Blanc we’ve made and was a small run. For 2014 we have pretty much followed the same principles as we were happy with the balance and style of the 2013.

Greg Clack, Winemaker Chain of Ponds Adelaide Hills, South Australia Wine: 2012 Chain of Ponds First Lady Sauvignon Blanc (RRP$30.00/bottle)

contact from machine harvesting is welcomed for aroma precurser extraction prior to processing. The fruit is destemmed but not crushed straight to a bag press with the free-run juice drained during the filling process.

Six hundred litres of the free run from the Kuitpo vineyard is transferred directly into new French oak and inoculated with a hybrid yeast strain for primary ferment and cooled using refrigerated storage. The free run cut is made prior to the pressing cycle being started with only the free run being used in the production of the First Lady. The free run juice is clarified by natural settling then racked and inoculated with a varietalenhancing yeast strain. It is then transferred straight to one, two and three-year-old French oak after inoculation.

Fermentation is completed in refrigerated storage with ferment temperatures held at around 14-16°C degrees. Post ferment, all parcels are racked to tank on full lees, SO2 adjusted then transferred back to barrel on full lees. Lees stirring is done for four months and then the wine is left on lees until November. It is transferred to tank, stabilised and sent to bottling. It is held back in bottle for six months at a minimum before release.

MARKETING The First Lady sits in our Tribute Range which is made up of our super premium offerings. The First Lady is a tribute to Mary Anne Newman, who was one of the first children born of European descent in Adelaide soon after colonisation in 1836. George Lionel Vincent Newman, one of Mary Anne’s 20 children, was the first Newman to move and settle at Chain of Ponds. The Newman descendants remained at Chain of Ponds until the family home was demolished in the early 1970s.

The product is available through direct sales, our exclusive mailing list and Off the Vine Distributers in South Australia. We are working with our distributors in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland to list it in their portfolios to make it easily available to WVJ our customers on the eastern seaboard.

VITICULTURE

Chain of Ponds winemaker Greg Clack.

Fruit for this wine was selected from three contracted vineyards, two from just near Gumeracha, in the northern Adelaide Hills, and the other from Kuitpo, in the southern Adelaide Hills. The first northern Hills vineyard has a north-south row orientation with a very gentle south-easterly facing slope. The second has an east-west row orientation with a moderate easterly facing slope.

The southern Hills vineyard has an east-west orientation with a moderate slope to the north-east giving the wine a touch more tropical fruit than the wine from the other vineyards. All vineyards are planted to the F4V6 clone.

All vineyards are trellised and trained as strict VSP and cane pruned with three to four canes per vine depending on vine strength. The mid-rows in all blocks are managed with a permanent sward which is kept in check to minimise frost risk.

Yields are based on vine balance with the target of achieving enough shoot growth to protect the fruit from sunburn, but not so excessive to promote excessive 4MMP concentrations.

Yields are usually around 8-9 t/ha.

WINEMAKING All vineyards are machine picked in the early hours of the morning once the fruit has lost the previous day’s heat load. Skin

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Fruit for the 2012 Chain of Ponds First Lady Sauvignon Blanc was selected from three contracted vineyards, two from just near Gumeracha, in the northern Adelaide Hills, and the other from Kuitpo, in the southern Adelaide Hills. The vineyard pictured is one of those in the northern Adelaide Hills, Warwick Estate, about 3km east of Gumeracha.

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Australian Fumé Blancs fail to inspire

F

umé Blanc was a term coined by the late American Robert Mondavi in the 1960s to differentiate his dry, barrel-aged Sauvignon Blanc from the typically sweet, simple Californian versions of the era.

The popularity of Sauvignon Blanc in Australia in recent years has seen a growing number of wines made in a Fumé style entering the market in recent years as a point of difference to their more simple relatives of the same variety. However, our recent blind tasting of 33 Australian Fumé Blancs suggests producers aren’t quite hitting the mark with expectations for the style.

Joining our tasting panel were Richard Gawel, research scientist at Australia Wine Research Institute; Peter Leske, senior winemaker, site manager and co-proprietor for Revenir Winemaking in the Adelaide Hills; and Tom Keelan, viticulturist and winemaker for The Pawn Wine Company based in South Australia’s Langhorne Creek region, and a maker of Fumé Blanc.

The panellists agreed that although there are no regulations governing what a Fumé Blanc should look, smell and taste like, their expectations were for fruit characters, oak and secondary influences.

“If you don’t have all of those in some proportion it’s probably not Fumé,” said Peter Leske, adding the best Fumé wines were those that had a “flinty, smoky edge”.

Leske said the price range of the wines in the tasting of $20-40 meant they were competing with other barrelfermented white wines of the same price, but most of the Fumé Blancs were not worthy opponents.

“Only a couple of the wines delivered what I was looking for in Fumé Blanc. I’m a bit surprised that there weren’t more wines with secondary influences – that sulphidic, yeasty influence. I was also surprised at how many were advanced for their age – maybe people aren’t handling it right in barrel. Old, slightly oxidised, two-year-old Sauvignon Blanc is not Fumé Blanc.

“I was expecting to find some exciting, interesting wines in this tasting and I didn’t with a couple of exceptions. This is supposed to be the cutting edge of Sauvignon Blanc making, and although these wines show people are trying really hard to make Fumé and priding themselves on what do as indicated by the many examples of fancy packaging,

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Panellists for our Fumé Blanc tasting (from left) Richard Gawel, research scientist, Australia Wine Research Institute; Peter Leske, senior winemaker, site manager and co-proprietor, Revenir Winemaking, Adelaide Hills; and Tom Keelan, viticulturist and winemaker, The Pawn Wine Company. they’re not quite delivering. Although I judged a couple of the wines to be worthy of a gold or silver medal, overall the wines don’t make me want to rush out and buy some to drink, and I’ve got a soft spot for Sauvignon Blanc,” Leske said.

Richard Gawel said that within the 33 wines, there were about eight different interpretations of the style.

“There were wines that reminded me of a $12 unoaked Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, some that were pretty funky and had been worked hard and others with different levels of oak. But I guess that’s the nature of Fumé Blanc being a marketing term as opposed to a varietal term,” Gawel said.

“I would love to see more Sauvignon Blancs being put in oak and aged and worked because they can be made into the most fabulous wines. But, you have to get the balance right between not having too much overt varietal characters, oak and secondary characters. That’s what makes it different from $12 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc - that combination of herbal greenness and subtle varietal characters with some complex oak characters behind them. Too many of these wines were overtly fruity and hammered with oak which was just not working,” Gawel noted.

He added that based on the wines in the tasting, he didn’t think overt malolactic fermentation characters worked with Fumé Blanc.

“It sucks. Every time I saw it I thought,

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‘this is wrong’. It takes away from the zingy herbal characters you get form Sauvignon Blanc,” he said.

Tom Keelan said that without knowing the background to the fruit used to make the wines in the tasting, it was possible that this and not the winemaking techniques was the cause of many of the wines falling short of expectations.

“Maybe some of these producers have made a Fumé style wine as an afterthought to producing a Sauvignon Blanc that was grown to be placed straight into stainless steel then put straight into bottle and that’s why so many of them are lean, green fighting machines. Maybe they need to look more at when they harvest the fruit. Maybe hold off picking until there’s a little more complexity in the fruit, or more sugar. Maybe what’s happening here with Fumé Blanc is a bit like what happened with rose; there was a time when everyone was just making rose by just bleeding off some juice and weren’t growing the fruit to make rose,” Keelan said.

Based on the entries in our tasting, Orange, Western Australia and the Adelaide Hills are becoming flag bearers for Fumé Blanc in Australia.

The tasting panel were unanimous that De Salis 2010 Wild Fumé Blanc was the best wine in the tasting, with some consensus over the runners-up in the Plantgenet 2013 Juxtapose Oaked Sauvignon Blanc and Chain of Ponds WVJ 2012 First Lady Sauvignon Blanc.

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T A S T I NG N O T E S

DE SALIS 2010 WILD Fumé BLANC

Plantagenet 2013 juxtapose oaked sauvignon blanc

CHAIN OF PONDS 2012 FIRST LADY Fumé BLANC

Mount Barker, Western Australia 13.0% v/v - screwcap RRP$24.00/bottle

Adelaide Hills, South Australia 13.0% v/v – screwcap RRP$30.00/bottle

Best of tasting: Pale straw in colour with good brightness. Very varietal on the nose, with characters of split peas, gooseberry, herbs, mint, some secondary yeast and oak, and very pleasant slightly smoky notes.

Good balance of acid, fruit and oak in the mouth with some citrus toast, nut and herbal notes. Fresh, fine acid.

“Maybe a bit too green,” noted one taster. “A pretty wine – a crowd pleaser – but lacks some complexity.”

Best of tasting: Pale to mid straw in colour with a hint of green. A good mix of fruit, oak and yeast indicating complexity. Aromas of herbs, straw, toast, cream and vegetal characters. Complex, full-flavoured palate of tropical passionfruit, oak, yeast, and flint; dry and zesty yet full-flavoured. “Age is this wine’s best attribute as it seems to have softened all the components into a cohesive wine. A good example of a wine that was up well early – ready for the main game,” said one taster.

De Salis 2011 WILD Fumé Blanc

De Salis 2012 Wild Fumé Blanc

Orange, New South Wales 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle

Orange, New South Wales 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle

Topper’s Mountain 2012 Barrel Fermented Sauvignon Blanc

Deep straw in colour. Nose is an interesting mix of leather, matchstick and green papaya with some flint, yeast complexity and toast from age. Lemon and lime on the palate along with toast and straw. Aged Semillon flavour with aged Riesling structure. Slightly hard acid on the finish. Drink now.

Deep straw gold in colour. Nose is reminiscent of an aged New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Aromas of canned asparagus and peas, and aged greens with some honey and toast. Aged characters predominant on the palate which has hard acid and green characters on the finish.

While two of the tasters felt the wine was not Fumé Blanc in style, “just an old Sauvignon Blanc”, the other described the wine as “a one-glass wonder, but what a glass it is!”.

Tamburlaine 2014 Reserve Organic Sauvignon Blanc

Jericho Family Wines 2014 Fumé Blanc

Orange, New South Wales 11.9.0% v/v RRP$33.00/bottle

South Australia 12.5% v/v – screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle

Pale straw in colour. Relatively simple, lifted nose with some fruit and oak but lacks the secondary influences that is reminiscent of a true Fumé style. Palate is flavoursome upfront and has a strong acid line. Moderate texture with some roundness and complexity on the finish. Lacks complexity overall.

Pale to mid straw in colour with a slight green hue.

Pleasant nose of tinned peaches, passionfruit, lemon sherbet, herbs, slight nuttiness and straw with some yeast. Obvious oak on the palate as well as peach, nectarine, and flowers; tight acid line. “Easy drinking style,” noted one taster. “A mouthful and true to style but not complex,” noted another.

Orange, New South Wales 12.8% v/v - screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle Best of tasting: Very attractive lime green colour. Quite developed nose featuring ester and banana characters along with smashed peas and wet dog thiols. Mouth is round and creamy with a nice mouthfeel and great acid balance. Mealy mid-palate texture and a fantastic, full and powerful finish. “I like where this wine has been and where it’s headed,” one taster said. “Interesting and drinkable,” said another.

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New England, New South Wales 11.8%v/v – screwcap RRP$30.00/bottle Almost water white in colour. Green nose with mint, herbs, grass, sileage, gooseberry and lemongrass; hint of oak.

Very fresh in the mouth; lean and green with some yeast and flint. Could possibly benefit from some more texture.

“What this wine lacks in complexity it makes up for in spunk,” said one taster.

Unico Zelo 2014 Fumé Blanc Adelaide Hills, South Australia 12.5% v/v - cork RRP$27.00/bottle Medium straw in colour. Oak upfront on the nose possibly overt – and oxidative. “Funk city,” noted one taster in describing the nose, “with a slight dank vegetal character.” Good texture in the mouth, which is round and creamy with some drying phenolic grip on the finish. One taster said the palate was “more Pinot Gris in style than Fumé Blanc” while another said, “interesting and very secondary but not complex and not Fumé Blanc”.

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Crittenden Wines 2013 Peninsula Fumé Blanc

Paul Nelson 2013 Fumé Blanc

Eldridge Estate 2013 Fumé Blanc

Denmark, Western Australia 12.8%v/v - screwcap RRP$32.00/bottle

Mornington Peninsula, Victoria 13.0% v/v - screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle

Mid-straw colour with green tints. Aged herb characters on the nose along with slight mint and cucumber notes and spicy oak. “Fruit to the fore,” said one taster. Lively palate which is fruit-forward and has round, mouthfilling flavours; good drying acidity with nice oak integration but a bit broad. One taster thought the wine lacked finesse and complexity while another described it as a “well structured wine with good varietal character”.

Mid-straw in colour with a vibrant hue. Charry character on the nose reveals some slight oak presence. Aromas of moderate varietal floral and herbal notes. Nice acid in the mouth with a clean, zippy finish. A somewhat soapy palate featuring fresh peach, vanillin-like oak and chalky tannins; a bit lean through the mid palate. “A straightforward, fruit-driven wine,” said one taster. “A good all-rounder,” said another.

TAmburlaine 2013 Reserve Organic Sauvignon Blanc (Fumé Style)

Sidewood 2012 RESERVE Mappinga Sauvignon Blanc

Orange, New South Wales 11.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$33.00/bottle

Adelaide Hills, South Australia 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$35.00/bottle

Pale straw in colour. Waxy, lemony nose with cucumber, green apple, toast and a little gooseberry-like characters.

Zesty, lean and slightly edgy acid on the palate with some oily depth on the finish. “Could handle a bit more mid-palate,” one taster said. “Has the elements of a Fumé Blanc but not as integrated as it could be,” said another taster.

Deep straw in colour with a slight amber tinge. Oak very apparent on the nose of this wine as well as waxy aged lanolin, marzipan, toast and some oxidative development.

Perhaps a hint of kerosene which gives some interest.

Palate features sweet, buttery MLF characters along with apple and butterscotch; acid a bit high and lacks freshness. The wine overall lacks Sauvignon Blanc varietal characters; secondary characters dominate.

Nepenthe 2013 Petraea Sauvignon Blanc

Casteli Estate 2013 Empirica by Castelli Fumé Blanc

Singlefile Wines 2013 Fumé Blanc

South Australia 12.5% v/v – screwcap RRP$32.00/bottle

Denmark, Western Australia 13.5% v/v - screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle

Pale straw in colour. Nose exhibits typical Fumé Blanc characters of overt flint, herbs and oak. Same characters continue onto the palate, which features fine acid and an oily texture and broadens the mouth. One taster thought the oily character detracted from the freshness.

Straw yellow in colour. Overt oak masks some canned asparagus and leafy notes; MLF influence evident in buttery characters. Palate lacks yeasty complexity but delivers toast, oak and MLF characters with fruit hidden in the background; alcohol a little high. “Lacks acid and palate weight to carry the oak level,” noted one taster. “Delivers fruit and oak in a slightly simple format,” said another.

Mornington Peninsula, Victoria" 13.3% v/v - screwcap RRP$30.00/bottle Mid-straw in colour. Nicely balanced nose with fresh varietal characters, such as cut grass, with an oak presence which seems somewhat restrained. Wellbalanced palate which is a little bit Riesling-esque in terms of its acidity and texture, but has more secondary flavours than Riesling. Good mouthfeel. One taster thought it was too sweet.

Sandhurst Ridge 2012 Fumé Blanc Bendigo, New South Wales 13.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$20.00/bottle Vibrant, almost silver in colour. “Amazing colour for a 2012,” noted one taster. Nose shows both funk and age – “it shouldn’t work, but it does,” said another taster.

Aromas of herbs, lemon, biscuits, toast, flint, nuts, golden syrup and cheese. Sweetish palate with relatively low acid; soft, rich and mealy. “Good Fumé Blanc attributes but a richer style,” described one taster.

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Pemberton, Western Australia 13.5% v/v - screwcap RRP$30.00/bottle Pale straw in colour. Moderate oak on the nose which seems to be well balanced with the ‘usual suspects’ of varietal characters. Palate delivers Fumé Blanc flintiness, a Sauvignon Blanc profile and a good acid line. Has some great rolling texture. “Odd but attractive wine,” one taster noted, adding “the palate did not match the nose – the nose is fresh, youthful and simple whereas the palate is riper than what the nose suggested, is slightly broad on the end with a touch of bitterness.” www.wine biz. com . au

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Bass River 2013 Single Vineyard Fumé Blanc Gippsland, Victoria 12.0% v/v - screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle

The Pawn 2011 Fumé Blanc Langhorne Creek, South Australia 12.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$26.00/bottle

Margaret River Winemakers 2014 Harmans Estate ‘Salvaggio’ Sauvignon Blanc Margaret River, Western Australia 12.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle

Mid-straw in colour. Funky nose which is almost a bit fishy. Lots of upfront citrus notes of lime and lemon on the palate which is a bit short. Acid structure a bit light on. One taster described this wine as having “too much funk and not enough spunk”.

Pale straw with green tints. Good herbs and flint on the nose with a touch of sileage/wet dog, lemongrass and coriander; sulphide evident. Fresh grass, herbs, and flint on the nose. Nervy acid with slight salty feel. Tannins are raw and seem to detract from the balance of the wine.

“More of a straight Sauvignon Blanc,” said one taster.

ScotcHmans Hill 2011 Cornelius Fumé Blanc

Arete Wines 2012 Ethos La Grande Fumé Blanc

Arete Wines 2012 The Road Less Travelled Fumé Blanc

Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria 12.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$45.00/bottle

Adelaide Hills, South Australia 12.2%v/v – screwcap RRP$40.00/bottle

Adelaide Hills, South Australia 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle

Golden in colour but still bright. A very tempting nose of pineapple, orange peel, blue cheese, flint, herbs and some yeast. Aged but fresh in the mouth; fine acid line, albeit a bit shrill, which helps hold this wine together well. “You can tell this wine is a Sauvignon Blanc, but the extra work has paid off,” said one taster. “Less acid might have made this wine a better drink,” said another.

Deep yellow in colour with slightly brassy hues. Low intensity honey and toast characters on the nose as well as a resinous note. Toast and marzipan on the palate with some honey balancing the overt acid; nice mouthfeel. One taster thought this wine showed evidence of Brett.

Mid-yellow in colour. Marzipan, ester and banana characters on the nose; nice swirl of Sauvignon Blanc and oak; sulphide evident. Dull palate showing its age; lacks a mid-palate but tight acid.

Taltarni 2012 Fumé Blanc

The Pawn 2012 Jue De Fin Fumé Blanc

Nepenthe 2012 Petraea Sauvignon Blanc

Langhorne Creek, South Australia 13.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$24.00/bottle

South Australia 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$32.00/bottle

Pale to mid-straw in colour. Nose is sweet and ripe with lemon/tropical characters, nutty oak, slightly smoky/ dusty and floral/estery notes; SO2 apparent. Palate is medium weight, has moderate texture and lightly herbal characters and a sweet finish. Some acid gives us freshness. “Simple but delivers fruit and oak,” said one taster.

Mid-straw in colour. Nose is a little restrained and features green fruit, tinned pea, herbs, artichoke, straw and toast characters. “Not really Fumé Blanc so much as aged Sauvignon Blanc,” said one taster about the nose. Palate is round and sweet upfront and quite linear and lean featuring cut grass, sweeter minty flavours, green fruit characters and straw from age. Acid not for the feinthearted. Lacks complexity and texture.

Victoria/Tasmania 13.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle Straw green in colour. Subtle varietal characters, particularly passionfruit, on the nose as well as flint and secondary yeasty notes; alcohol apparent. Good complexity in the mouth comprising age, yeast and fruit.

Grippy tannins, warm alcohol with a slightly bitter finish.

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Pinot Gris characters on the nose, including floral, talc, cut grass and banana and some liniment/minty notes.

Minty and floral characters in the mouth; no varietal characters evident except maybe on the finish. Slightly oxidative.

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Guthrie Handcrafted 2013 Fumé Blanc

Tynan Wines 2013 Fumé Blanc Orange, New South Wales 13.0%v/v – screwcap RRP$25.00/bottle

Adelaide Hills, South Australia 12.5%v/v – screwcap RRP$27.00/bottle Pale straw in colour. Nose has a slight aldehyde or nail polish remover character about it – “sort of attractive in a weird way,” described one taster – with some tropical and lifted oak/yeast notes. Nice oak and fruit weight on the palate which has great length, lemony fruit and some mealy depth. A flinty finish following a rich mid-palate.

Panel thought the wine would be a sommelier’s delight.

Mid-straw in colour. Nose is quite vegetative, but has a good varietal edge of herbs, tropical fruits and straw with some light oak rolling off. Nice balance of acid and tannin in the mouth; good softness and roundness in the midpalate. Alcohol a bit high on the finish. “More Sauvignon Blanc than Fumé Blanc,” said one taster. “A very food friendly wine,” said another.

Oakdene Wines 2013 Single Vineyard Jessica Fumé Blanc

Topper’s Mountain 2013 Fumé Blanc

Geelong, Victoria 12.1% v/v – screwcap RRP$28.00/bottle

New England, New South Wales 11.7% v/v – screwcap RRP$30.00/bottle

Deep straw-gold in colour. A sherry-like nose with some obvious working evident suggestive of a wild yeast or too much MLF influence. Palate has some roundness, spicy oak and more over-the-top MLF characters. “A zippy little number which unfortunately lacks palate weight, but I like where they’re headed,” said one taster.

Straw gold in colour with a lovely nose featuring warm caramel oak and flinty notes paired nicely with gooseberry, grassy, tropical fruit and pawpaw characters.

Lots of green banana flavour in the mouth along with ‘piney’ resinous oak and nice varietal characters. A bit hollow in the middle but sits well on the palate. Too much oak for one taster. “More of a New World interpretation of what Fumé Blanc might be,” said another taster.

Five O’Clock Somewhere 2013 5OS Project Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc South Australia 12.5% v/v – screwcap RRP$20.00/bottle Yellow, almost amber in colour. Medium intensity nose featuring herbs and toast but no overt varietal characters. “Nose has an overall togetherness about it,” noted one taster. Varietal characters of green beans and cooked vegetables on the palate melded with toasty oak and some butteryness. Good acidity with a drying finish.

Needs some more mid palate fullness and texture but “seems to have the recipe right,” said another taster.

Willow Creek 2013 Fumé Blanc Mornington Peninsula, Victoria 12.5% v/v – screwcap RRP$35.00/bottle Straw gold in colour. Smokey, almost bacon-like oak notes on the nose, which one taster particularly liked; yeast characters evident too. Palate is a little lightweight compared with the nose, but carries good acid lines, a nice mouthfeel and richness; drops a bit short. One taster suggested slightly riper fruit may have made this wine a “corker”. “Has palate interest, but is not a classic Fumé Blanc,” said another.

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PROducts & services

New software makes it easier than ever for wineries to manage wine clubs and customer databases

S

ubscribility is the latest membership management software designed specifically for wineries.

Built in Australia, the developers have involved many New South Wales wineries to provide feedback on the product. The result is a software well suited to sell directly to consumers. It tracks every member and their preferences, and handles the paypack-ship process for clubs of all sizes.

Sebastien Tremblay, chief executive of Subscribility, says: “So many winemakers struggle to keep up-to-date records of their customers, let alone sell to them every few months. The current process is error-prone and cumbersome, so there had to be a way to simplify the process.”

Tremblay said Subscribility is both simple and powerful. It helps manage stock, cellar door operations and above all, keep track of addresses, credit cards and every other membership details. The software integrates with emails, payment gateways and shipping carriers.

“Only a few clicks suffice to sell hundreds of cases,” he said.

The tasting module allows wineries to present their wines on a tablet, and for customers to rate each of them, and to sign up to wineries’ clubs or newsletters using their own device.

“Thanks to the cloud, the software runs on any device, making it a great starting point to sell your wine. As and

when required, you can also enable extra features, turning Subscribility into a more comprehensive winery management platform.”

EmpireOne Group is the Sydney-based development company behind Subscribility.

The company is run by avid wine drinkers and is supported by both NSW Trade & Investment and private investors.

Tremblay said most wineries get a complete wine club setup and data migration for $35 per month with no commitment.

“At that price, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give Subscribility a try,” he said.

For further information visit www.subscribility.com.au

FermoBent – new bentonite for time saving co fermentation

F

or winemakers harvest is the busiest time of the year, the work load is enormous and every effort is taken to reduce the number of steps in the winemaking process.

FermoBent, from Erbsloeh, is a low-in--iron bentonite with high protein absorption capacity for use in time-saving co-fermentations.

FermoBent joins a number of special beverage bentonite products developed by Erbsloeh. Since 1892 the family-owned German company has refined beverage bentonite production, seeking to create additional advantages and benefits.

Located in Geisenheim centered in the Rheingau wine region, Erbsloeh is one of Germany’s successful ‘Mittelstand’ companies, focussing on innovative products through R&D co-operation with institutes, universities and wineproduction schools.

Ownership of mine sites across Europe has allowed Erbsloeh to selectively

produce natural bentonites with a focus on premium Na-Ca bentonites that are low in iron (Fe) and other metal ions. Metal ions have been shown to affect the formation of unpleasant volatile sulfur compounds in wine.

To produce FermoBent for cofermentation, Erbsloeh further refined its production process to develop a product that is extremely low in soluble iron, has a good flocculating capacity and provides good sedimentation.

In the development of FermoBent, several German wineries and institutes co-operated with trials. Some key results from these trials indicated a tendency for lower bentonite demand when the FermoBent was added to fermenting wine.

In some instances a second bentonite fining could be avoided.

In Australia, a trial by the Australian Wine Research Institute came to the same conclusion demonstrating that less bentonite is used when added to

fermenting wine compared with the finished wines or juice in Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc.

Parallel studies in Germany using the NOPA assay also determined that co-fermentation of FermoBent did not have a negative impact on ammonium concentration, YAN levels or on the course of fermentation.

Other observations from winery trials include an improved settling and clarification of the co-fermented wines and the ease of which wine could be separated from the bentonite and gross lees.

Erbsloeh products are distributed in Australia by IMCD. For more information on FermoBent call 1300 655 328.

For more information on the Erbsloeh product range visit www.erbsloeh.com

Samantha Connew sets course for new venture

E

xperienced winemaker Samantha Connew has set up her own wine consulting company, Compass Wine Consulting, based in the Hunter Valley.

Connew has been consulting to a select group of Australian wineries since 2013 and until recently was engaged by the Australian Wine Research Institute as manager of its Hunter Valley node, working on a range of regional applied research, development and extension projects.

In late 2013 she launched her first solo project, Stargazer, with Pinot Noir, Riesling

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and Chardonnay sourced from premium Tasmanian vineyards.

Prior to this she was winemaker and manager of boutique Hunter Valley winery Tower Estate, after working in McLaren Vale for 10 years as senior winemaker at Wirra Wirra Vineyards.

In 2007, Connew was named ‘International Red Winemaker of the Year’ at the International Wine Challenge in London. She is a respected wine show judge and is a panel chair and senior judge at many regional and capital city W i n e & V i t i c ult ur e Jo ur na l SEPTEMBER/O C TO BER 2014

wine shows, having completed both the Advanced Wine Assessment Course and the Len Evans Tutorial. She is currently chair of judges at the Royal Sydney Wine Show.

Connew has also served on the boards of several regional associations and was a board member of the Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology from 2011 to 2013. From 2004 to 2009 she was an export panel inspector for the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation.

For further information visit www. compasswineconsulting.com.au V29N5

Wine analysis that’s more than just the numbers Wine is so much more than just a list of chemical analyses.

AWRI Commercial Services provides the knowledge and answers to understand the story behind the numbers.

Benefit from almost 60 years of experience of the world’s premier wine industry analysis and investigative service, with offerings that go way beyond the routine. For more info visit www.awri.com.au/commercial_services, email commercialservices@awri.com.au or phone 08 8313 6600

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