I have been puzzled about the status of the moscatos and other low alcohol wines (using the vernacular, not the technical) on the Australian market. To qualify as Australian wine under the relevant regulations, it must contain not less than 8% alc/vol, and not more than 22% alc/vol. This in turn led me to wonder how these ‘illegal wines’ are taxed. The answer is the WET (Wine Equalisation Tax) legislation does not in any way depend on the Food Standards Code (which regulates alcohol and other similar matters), and as long as the product is purely the result of fermentation of grapes, it is taxed at the rate of 29% of the wholesale price. Coming back to the question of legality, I am told that moves are afoot to lower the required alcohol level to 5.5% alc/vol or some other similar figure. In the meantime, the authorities are turning a blind eye to the problem.

It becomes even more complicated when you have grape wine products that must have at least 70% wine mixed with no more than 30% of other liquids such as fruit juice, water, etc. (but not other alcohol). Curiously, to be subject to WET, this type of beverage must also meet the alcohol content restrictions (unlike normal wine). If the alcohol is taken below 8% alc/vol it will be subject to excise, which, given the low alcohol, could be at a much lower rate than WET.

I have to quickly add that all of these niceties may become irrelevant.


My semi-serious proposition that, if the rainfall patterns of the last 10 years turn out to be semi-permanent, the function of the Riverland regions (Riverina and Murray Darling) might have to be relocated in the Northern Territory has resulted in quite a lot of commentary, and the discovery that a very experienced Australian winemaker is making wine in Bali. Don Buchanan is winemaker for Hatten Wines, and says he has three principal varieties grown on high pergola systems for airflow and disease control. They generally harvest three crops per year, forcing a period of dormancy by three prunings and leaf pluckings.

The vineyards are in northern Bali, which is in a rain shadow, and has a relatively benign year-round climate, with maximum temperatures of 32?C. Flood irrigation is used, and fungal attack is not a major problem. Insects and birds are. Following on a relatively normal 125-day growing cycle, 28 days of dormancy follows before budburst, flowering, fruit set, veraison and harvest starts all over again. There are other vineyards through northern Bali, some for table grapes, but some for wine grapes, and Don says ‘We harvest from a vineyard somewhere in northern Bali every week, we crush nearly every week, 52 vintages a year.’

The varieties are as far off the map as Bali is as a wine-growing region. There is belgia, a clone of muscat gordo blanco, which makes a pleasant, low-alcohol dry white, and a second slightly sweet style; alphonse lavalee, developed from a seed, and thus fitting no particular varietal group, which is used to make a rose, sparkling base, and a simple, light, dry red; and locally named probilinggo biru, which DNA analysis has shown to be chasselas rose loulou, its only other habitat Reunion Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The Bali variety is a white variant, very high in acid, and is the other component in making a sparkling wine.

The winery is filled with modern gadgetry, including cross-flow filtration, sterile membrane filtration, micro-oxygenation equipment and so on, and so forth.


Global warming has passed New Zealand by. Both Marlborough and Hawke’s Bay have had a very cool and wet February, although March saw the beginning of an Indian summer and ended looming disease threat. In Hawke’s Bay yields were down somewhat, but not in Marlborough. There, aggressive shoot- and bunch-thinning was necessary to ensure ripening and to protect fruit quality.


There has been much discussion in the last eight weeks over the identity over what was believed to be albarino, and the confirmation by the CSIRO (who supplied the planting material) that it appears to be savignin blanc, a clone of gewurztraminer grown in the Jura region of France. But the plot thickens: first, questions about the identity of the two varieties have been raised periodically over the last five years in Europe. Damien Tscharke quotes one researcher (P Goussard) saying that ‘DNA analyses have confirmed that alvanho is in fact savignin which in turn represents a clone of traminer, (but) is nevertheless called alvarinho in Portugal and albarinho in Spain.’

So is the Australian albarino a cuckoo in the nest, or is it in good company with at least some Spanish and Portuguese plantings?


Those who have read my columns in The Weekend Australian, and in Meininger’s Wine Business International magazine will know I am an agnostic when it comes to attributing warming to increasing levels of CO2, and sceptical about much of the so-called science presented by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Thus I was delighted to read the three pieces in The Weekend Australian of 18-19 April (‘Life or death on the sea ice’ by Brenan O’Neill; ‘Sceptic spells doom for alarmist religion’ by Christopher Pearson; and ‘Change is a cold certainty’ by Greg Roberts), and cannot wait to get my hands on Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth: The missing science on climate change. Unfortunately, it had not hit the bookstores before I left for overseas on April 23, but I shall have a copy waiting for me when I return. As I read the pieces in The Australian, Ian Plimer espouses near-identical arguments to those so elegantly put forward by Don Aitken in his speech to the Planning Institute.