A Western Australian wine industry sales drive into the United States, targeting price points of $US15 ($A20,25) a bottle and just above, is the right strategy and seems to be working.
A Western Australian wine industry sales drive into the United States, targeting price points of $US15 ($A20,25) a bottle and just above, is the right strategy and seems to be working.
That is the view of visiting Los Angeles Times and Austin Texas American-Statesman wine writer Jordan Mackay, one of five top US wine scribes brought here by the WA Wine Industry Association as part of its current near million dollar US sales campaign over three years.
The US journalists’ Way out West (WOW) five-day tour, which will cost the association and 30 of its members about $90,000, was this week cruising the Ferguson Valley, Mt Barker, Denmark, Pemberton, Margaret River and the Geographe wine regions.
Mr Mackay has been to WA before and has witnessed the greater awareness of premium WA wines in the US.
“The important thing is to point out the difference between WA wines and the rest of Australia,” he said. “I’m really impressed by the varietal and regionally distinctive magic of the wines from this state.”
He told WA Business News an increasingly discerning US market was used to single variety wines, “but they are learning about the great blends of semillion sauvignon blanc and cabernet merlot made here”.
“Also the big, fruity, cool climate shiraz, which don’t have that jammy, cloying quality so many others in the US do. The fresh, aromatic sauvignon blancs will also do well,” he said.
However, the chardonnays Mr Mackay said he had tasted were not much different from many others.
“Another good thing is that these WA wines age so well. Over 10-12 years, they are not merely preserved, but improve dramatically. The quality is such that it is increasingly seen as very good value to pick up an aged bottle of WA wine for $US15-$US20 a bottle,” he said.
WIAWA chief executive Sue Vidovich said the three-year, $300,000-a-year sales strategy was working well and had been designed as a package that would later be recycled for other countries.
The US journalists invited on the WOW tour are five of the top 20 influential wine writers in the US from such widely read newspapers as The New York Times, San Francisco Times and the Boston Globe.
WA currently exports about 10 per cent of the wine it makes, worth about $57 million a year, which is not a lot when compared to Australia’s $2.7 billion in wine exports.
Besides the UK and now the US, WA’s major export targets continue to be South-East Asia, mostly via Singapore and Malaysia.
While touring, the US journalists probably won’t see the 2006 vintage in progress, delayed several weeks by a cold, wet ripening season, that is expected to see volumes well down on last year’s 82,000 tonnes. However, the jury on quality is still out, with the weather still a major player.
