Tim's Ravings

Buying fine wine today is nothing like it was 40 years ago. Back then, when Huntington Estate was established, there were merchants galore, mostly operating independent wine shops.

These merchants travelled extensively through wine regions in Australia and overseas, finding the best wines. They discovered and nurtured winemaking talent and celebrated diversity, and in response the wine industry flourished and millions of Australians found a lifelong passion for wine. They lived or died on their ability to supply interesting and different wines to customers who they knew by name and by palate.

Then about 20 years ago wine shops started to be bought out by multi-nationals, in particular the Coles and Woolworths grocery chains who now control three quarters of the liquor retail market.

Today there are very few independent merchants and the wine market is driven by price not knowledge and passion; and mass production rather than craft.

The other day I walked into a Dan Murphys store, part of the large Woolworths chain. I asked one of their staff where the Coonawarra wines were. He grunted and referred me to his store manager who pointed at the New Zealand section.

I was also speaking to a leading wine critic who had just enjoyed one of our wines – in his words it was “regional, complex and great drinking”. When, I asked, would he be writing about it. “I’m not,” he replied. “There’s no point in writing about a wine if you can’t get it anywhere.”

It is now pretty tough for small wineries to get their product into the marketplace. The scale of production necessary to reduce margins is simply not compatible with producing wines that are regional, individual and complex. For customers, that means less diversity and ultimately the loss of choice.

At Huntington Estate we have long had the philosophy of bypassing the middlemen and only selling direct to our customers. We keep our margin low and put it back into producing the highest quality wine at the lowest price we can. We can continue to produce the wine we know our loyal customers want to buy – and we know what they want because we have discussions with our customers every single day whether at the Cellar Door, by phone or by mail.