Clare Valley reds have slipped off the radar, so I again alert you to the ‘⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Clare Winery Discovery’, a collection of reds offering premium drinking for a song, so back are the Limited Release Batch 32C Clare Valley Shiraz 2022 and Cellar Range Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2022.
I’ve talked for years about how we got here, so today let’s ask if imagining the future will assist your buying. Hence, what can you expect, what are the big jobs left, what changes should happen and what may come around the corner?
Alas I’m stumped since I’m not seeing anything in the crystal ball yet surely the next 50 years will not be a replay of what we now have.
Yet wine quality cannot be improved in ways that affect your drinking, and there are no districts worth planting that will alter anything. And the science tells me each vintage will roll out like the others. And all I can think of is surely premiumisation will run its course.
Perhaps today is like France in the 1970s when it was so predictable the French would wear the crown forever. The French were facing a global challenge, the U.S. was embracing wine and expanding vineyards, yet this was to mean nothing except make the owners of scraps of land in Burgundy and those with a Chateaux in Bordeaux filthy rich.
Being a Glug customer, you are a cautious buyer, enjoy drinking well at modest prices, so what can go wrong?
There are a few trends to consider. Those coming of drinking age are less interested in wine, exports are stuffed, while the industry body Wine Australia has lost bearings. Yet none of this is your concern indeed they are positives and as far as I can see more premium wine is being made than you can possibly drink. Is it good times forever?
The economist and financial advisor Don Stammer when predicting the year head would remind us of the X factor, that totally unexpected event that appears from no-where. The boomerang that comes around the corner yet what could it be?
Not much happens in wine except exaggerations leading to distortions in rational thinking and these build over many years even decades. Though keeping a list of these hints nearby will help in your buying.
Thus ignore all curated selections, luxury wines, celebrity wines, organic and bio-dynamic wines, the later being particularly absurd even when including Henschke and Cullens, natural wines, fresh wines, orange wines and the many others each being the product of overactive minds looking for an advantage.
Also take no notice of show judging results which now show bias in favouring elegance and finesse over flavour and thus promote overpriced, cool climate wines.
This letter suggests all is well so best I reaffirm for the next fifty years Glug will look for customer value and that is also your only worthwhile aim.
Our better wines do cost a little more and you will like Goat Square Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 and Fareham Estate Clare Valley Riesling 2022.
So, Drink Widely Drink Well
David Farmer
