Chardy Sledge Passed Its Use-by Date, So Put A Cork In It

Sun Herald

Sunday August 19, 2007

David Dale

THE left of the Labor Party and the right of the Liberal Party are united in a strange delusion - they think this is a nation of beer swiggers and tea sippers. They use "chardonnay socialists" and "the latte set" as synonyms for minorities whose views are not worthy of consideration because they are not part of The Real Australia.

They want us to believe that anyone who consumes a white wine named after a particular grape, or a coffee with an Italian name, must be a wanker - downright unAustralian. But as Darryl Kerrigan would say, "Tell them they're dreamin". Or, as Skyhooks would sing, "They're livin' in the '70s".

Here in the late Noughties, our national drinks are cappuccino and chardonnay. Tea lost its battle for our hearts and tongues long ago - coffee consumption on the way up passed tea consumption on the way down in 1979. And on present trends, wine consumption on the way up will pass beer consumption on the way down in 2009. Back in the early 1980s, Australia was the third biggest consumer of beer per capita in the world (after Germany and Belgium). Now we're the ninth biggest beer consumer, with the Czech Republic on top. In the past 30 years we've nearly halved our beer consumption and nearly doubled our wine consumption.

The average adult Australian drinks five glasses of wine a week. Two of these are red and three are white. And two of the three whites are chardonnays.

These were the top-selling whites of the past 12 months: 1. Jacob's Creek chardonnay; 2. Brown Brothers crouchen/riesling; 3.Houghton smooth dry white; 4.Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc; 5.Queen Adelaide chardonnay; 6.Wolf Blass Eaglehawk chardonnay; 7. Lindemans Bin B65 chardonnay; 8.McWilliam's Inheritance Fruitwood sauterne; 9. Evans and Tate Margaret River classic; 10.Wolf Blass Red Label chardonnay.

I should explain at this point that I'm not devoting today's column to chardonnay because it's my favourite drop (pinot grigio is my preference). I'm telling its story to demonstrate the speed of social change in this country.

Thirty years ago there was no chardonnay planted in commercial quantities (our favourite white then was Ben Ean Moselle, made of muscat, gordo and sultana). Now it's our most-grown grape - 450,000 tonnes harvested a year compared with 440,000 tonnes of shiraz and 40,000 tonnes of sauvignon blanc.

In the mid-1970s, a Perth businessman named Denis Horgan hired the Californian winemaker Robert Mondavi to turn a Margaret River cattle property called Leeuwin Estate into a vineyard. Mondavi planted his favourite French grape, fermenting it with a special yeast he'd brought from the Napa Valley and ageing it in oak casks.

The first release of this rare drop in the early 1980s coincided with the rise of the "greed is good" decade, when businessmen were desperate to show off wealth they didn't actually have.

Horgan found he could charge whatever he liked for Mondavi's creation. Other winemakers frantically started planting chardonnay and copying the yeasty oaky style. By the late 1990s chardonnay had spread from the posh restaurants of the inner city to the bottle shops of the outer suburbs.

So the Labor left and the Liberal right need to find a new term of abuse. Chardonnay has changed from an elite indulgence to the taste of Australia.

© 2007 Sun Herald

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