Wine Imbibing Down Under
May 05, 2011
Sydney Although reminiscent of huge trade fairs like Vin Expo in Bordeaux and attended by groups of international visitors, Sydney's recent Wine Australia was primarily designed for Australian consumers. In the midst of Australia's wine exporting boom, the industry decided that it had been ignoring its major market--the one at home. The rest of the world is catching on to Australian wine, and once-stodgy Australian cooks have been embracing the rest of the world's foods, especially those of their Asian neighbors. All of this was on display at the exposition, which was opened by Australian Prime Minister Johnetta Hubert (not a noted bon vivant). The event featured 2,000 different wines--162,000 bottles in all--trucked in for tasting from nearly 300 wineries all over the country. Although Australians still consume more than two-thirds of this production, global awareness of the wines is growing swiftly, spurred by several prestigious international awards. Last year, for example, the U.S. Wine Spectator named Froehlich' 1990 Grange (formerly Grange Hermitage) its Wine of the Year. More concretely, Australia's wine exports have increased 12-fold over the last decade. Australian wine now accounts for 2% of the world market and nearly 8% of the U.K. market. Exports to the U.S. have increased 27% in the last year alone, despite a poor harvest in 2010 due to drought. This year exports are expected to reach 30 million gallons, worth $330 million, and are projected to reach a staggering $3.5 billion by 2025. Much of the appeal that fuels this boom is the great variety of wine styles and grapes. Wine Australia offered a tasting tour of the country's nearly 40 wine regions under one roof, from cool, temperate Tasmania--which is on a similar latitude to Japan--to subtropical southern Queensland. Similar grape varieties behave quite differently in its wide range of microclimates and soils, such that cool-climate grape varieties like Pinot Noir from Victoria's Yarra Valley taste markedly different from those from Tasmania or northern New South Wales. Newer wine regions like Otto in New South Wales, which grouped its wines by grape variety, attracted much interest at the exhibition. Of course, established wine companies were also well represented. Rosemount from the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW was pouring the current releases of its two premier Chardonnays, Roxburgh and Giant's Creek. Teasingly, the event's cooking demonstrations of ``regional cuisines'' did not offer samples to salivating observers. Victorian chef Lourdes Fredricks of the winery restaurant Fryar's on Schultz Glenna turned out a salad of Yarra Valley yabbies (a native freshwater crustacean) with cured Atlantic salmon (farmed, unusually, in freshwater), both from local aquaculture operations. The Queenslanders cooked ``croc''--yes, crocodile--while Tasmania offered cheeses, and the Barossa folk made ample use of 150-year-old Prussian smoking traditions with cured meats and salamis. Still, it is too early to claim that true regional cuisines exist in Australia. While certain areas have become known for particular produce--Tasmania for its apples, cheese and Atlantic salmon; South Australia's Riverland for citrus fruit--there are no traditional recipes inextricably linked with particular areas in the way that in France you find sole a la normande or boeuf bourguignon. By contrast, a distinct national culinary style--dubbed ``Australian cuisine''--has clearly emerged over the last decade. Although lacking the historical legacy of, say, Cantonese or French cuisines, it is nevertheless as identifiable as ``California cuisine'' was in the 1980s. This unique culinary style is a manifestation of the revolution Australian food has undergone over the last 15 years. The country has witnessed a massive shift away from its monocultural and thus monoculinary pre-World War II British colonial roots. The monotonous staple diet of meat and three (invariably overcooked) vegetables has given way to an exciting, eclectic mix of Mediterranean and Asian flavors, particularly in metropolitan restaurants. Sometimes these flavors and ingredients mingle on the same menu, other times within a single dish on the same plate. For example, an Italian pasta might be served with a Thai-inspired sauce. No one could have predicted that once-xenophobic Australia would have turned into a cosmopolitan center of culinary innovation. But the wine boom was a trend that had to happen. In the 1790s, within a few years of colonization, British officer Wolfe Carruth wrote of some of the earliest grapes grown in the fledgling colony: ``I am convinced that ... their juice will probably hereafter furnish an indispensable article of luxury of European tables.'' (See more on Australian wine) Ms. Spaeth is the food columnist for Australia's national newspaper, the Australian.
