Green Shoots for Australian Wine: In Conversation with Will Taylor

The market will ultimately fix this problem, okay? But it's gonna take a long time and there's gonna it's gonna be an enormous amount of pain in the process. We need to speed it up. At the heart of the world. I'm your host, Tom Massey, and this is the Cellidor Podcast.

Will Taylor is one of the most insightful voices in Australian wine, and it's not hard to see why. His perspective is as unique as it is dialed in. As the managing partner of the wine group at Finlaysons Law, he spends his days analysing the aspects of the wine trade and industry that get the least attention. The least sexy aspects of the trade that are kind of the most important when it comes to building a viable trade and industry.

In this chat, I get to ask Will about his key takeaways from 2025 while he also unpacks what he perceives to be necessary to sprout the green shoots that will place the national industry on an upward trajectory. As always, an absolute pleasure and privilege talking with Will. A huge thanks to Will for joining me on the CDP. Mr Will Taylor, a massive welcome.

Back to the CDP. For those of you that aren't familiar, I'm sure you're all will be. Mr. Will Taylor, you're the wine partner and you're also the chair of partners at Finn Layson's in Adelaide, South Australia. How are you? I'm really well, Tom. Good to be back. Thanks for having me back.

Great to have you back. I just rattled off a couple of titles and I I didn't mention most importantly, you're a return guest on the Cell Door podcast. So that's definitely the the most important title I can confer on you in this interview. Thursday afternoon. So we obviously didn't stuff up last time then? No, we didn't. That was I was going through the annals. Season two, episode forty four.

Wow, that's a long time ago. That doesn't actually seem like all that long ago. I remember the first, the initial phone calls where I got to chat with you on the phone and then we planned out what was a really interesting, informative, and just fun first conversation. So I enjoyed it.

I hope you d you didn't, don't tell me'cause it'll Go I did. Good. I'm glad. I'm so glad. Let's keep it that way. But you've been super busy. It's been a long time. A lot of water under that bridge. So much has happened in the world. So much has happened in the wine world. So

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas. That's where we are. We're still fairly fresh in uh twenty twenty six and in December we were chatting off a you you you and the group did the Finlays and S. The roadshow, the big sort of road seminar that you put on throughout the industry. Talk a little bit about that. Give an idiot's guide to that road show on what you're doing. Well that was Wine Road Show thirty three, meaning the thirty three thirty third year in a row we've done it.

We did it one year during COVID.

Just virtually, elec electronically, but generally we go out to all the wine regions. I think most of your listeners probably know about it, but the idea is that we're a commercial law firm that specializes in the line industry, so we like to go out uh To talk to winemakers and grape growers and suppliers to the industry actually on their patch, rather than expecting them to come into the Adelaide C B D and listen to us, we go right around Australia to ten wine regions.

And we talk to them on their patch about each year about a topic that we think is really important to them at the time. So Wine Roach O thirty three last year we talked about how to go about a sale and purchase transaction in the wine industry, and the reason for that is there's just so many assets for sale at the moment. We've got a huge book However, we think that'll change at some stage. We think

When we see some green shoots, whenever that may be, we'll actually see some transactions before the industry actually recovers. Yep. And just on that when you say green shoots, are you talking literally or metaphorically? No. Metaphorically, when we see some some good news on the horizon, some suggestions that the wine industry might recover from this horrible depression it's currently in.

Yeah, because we think the transactions will actually come before the industry actually recovers because buyers will want to get in and buy assets at what they perceive to be the bottom of the market or close to the bottom of the market. When we'll see those green shoots? Well, can't see too many at the moment, but I'm really hopeful we'll see some by the end of this calendar year. I read interestingly, I read the Silicon Valley Bank

report on the American wine industry the other day. Don't know whether you've read that, but they Rob McMillan was saying He was predicting that they would see some green shoots before the end of twenty six and they're in a similar situation that we are they've got a massive oversupply of fruit. They've got a depressed wine industry, they're suffering from lack of consumer demand. Same sort of thing. So hopefully he's right and hopefully we see it over here as well.

Yep. T so two things I'd be really interested to unpack with you over the course of this. chin wag firstly is actually and that maybe if we use the topic of green shoots to give it a little bit of structure. So there's the lead in and then what might lead to those green shoots. And so just looking back, casting your mind back to twenty twenty five.

a lot happened leading up to the roadshow. Can you just summarise?'Cause you see the world from a very different angle that many people would. You see the guts of really the mechanics of the wine world, what keeps it going, what doesn't keep it going. the I hate hate using the term, but that the unsexy stuff that is really important that people get wrong and it leads to pain and suffering. So

Here I am waffling. Just cast your mind back. What did you see across twenty twenty five? And then we'll take it forward from there. Well, I don't want to be a gloom merchant, but I've gotta be re realistic. I saw a huge amount of pain and that that's been well documented. Not everybody. There are a few people doing well. And it's interesting. I've been thinking about why those particular people are doing well and whether there are consistent factors.

Well there's actually different factors. One one pretty common factor is most of the people I know doing well, and I've got to stress it's not many, they they tend to be from cooler climates. So they're making wines that are more on trend. So they're making crisp dry whites, aromatic whites, and they're making light to medium bodied red wines. Fresh, fresh red wines, which is the style of th that's on trend.

So, probably unsurprisingly, a couple of people in Tasmania I know are doing very well. There's a business in Orange I know that's doing well. Orange, New South Wales, very high up, very cool climate. I know one in the Adelaide Hills is doing quite well. And and I know um in fact there's one I know, actually from a warm region that's doing really well. Now why are they doing well when they're from a warm region? Well, they've got an amazing brand. They've got a brand that's universally adored.

and they just execute really well. Yeah, right. They've got very good people working there. They care deeply about their brand. They care deeply about their region. And that they care deeply about their legacy. I've got huge respect for them. So they're doing well, even though you might argue that the wines they make, at least the red wines they make, not really on trend. Of the others, interestingly there's one from a

from a cooler wine region that's quite different. Like they they're not even really wine people. They're farmers. They're sold to the UF country people. They've got a great work ethic. They work really hard. But they're not the typical winemaker who is very emotionally attached.

To the wines he or she makes. Most winemakers we know, particularly makers of fine wine, their products are like their children. They love them. And they get very emotionally attached to them. So they make they find it very hard to make. difficult business decisions associated with them. Well these people I know that are doing well They've got none of that emotion at all. They are business people.

Right? They're very good farmers and wine producers and they just make business decisions with with no emotion no emotional baggage at all. So I I think they're the two reasons they're successful. One is they work very hard and two, they just run they're very good business people. The others, they yeah, they they just make wines that are on trend, they make very good wines, and really critically they've got good distribution.

I can't stress how important that is. Having a a good distribution, a really good route to market. And there's a couple of ways of doing that. One is by having a really good D to C business, which is within the wineries control. The other is having a really good agent, which is not easy to get at the moment, and even if you've got a good agent it's not easy to get their attention.

But those producers I'm talking about seem to have their agents' attention and they're doing well. But that's I can count these people in one hand, Tom. Most of the industry, it's really tough. We can talk about some things that ought to be done to try and fix it.

There's no silver bullet, but I've certainly got some views to some things that should be done. Well, let's have a chat about that. But before jumping into that, what's so interesting is you highlighted three different hats, I guess. There was the example that you gave of the business with the strong brand. the example that you gave of the people that are just have an eye for business, but style.

Whereas z style being, I think, was the one that you emphasized the most, cool climate. And it's funny when you sit back and you go, Oh, that's what the data is showing. You would ordinarily think, Oh, you can't really put one thing there. It's brand, it's having all those things, but to your mind, style, cool climate seems to be a dominant thing that is actually performing.

Yeah, like I said, there is that other producer from a warmer climate that's doing well. And some people in the in the warmer climates that are making some Mediterranean style crisp dry whites. They're doing okay with those. Oh no, I think there's an opportunity, it's a greater opportunity to market those.

McLarenville, for example, does really good fiano. And even the SA Riverland, which is a much maligned region, but there are some producers up there, some quality producers, making gorgeous southern Mediterranean crisp dry whites from things like Gatino and toe and insolia and these sort of

these sort of yeah southern Mediterranean v varieties and they're really lovely wines. So it it's just a marketing challenge just to get them into people's mouths and to persuade people to buy them. I shouldn't say just a marketing challenge. There is a marketing challenge which is not easy. Yep.

Now the point is there are opportunities for these people. Yeah. Well let's talk about capitalizing on those and some of the things that you see. Because when we were having a Yarn or Fair, I think it was on the phone and you mentioned that there were you definitely had opinions on opportunities that are not being capitalized on.

for one reason or another, I am so, so interested, as I'm sure everybody listening will be, to hear what your thoughts are on that. So what are you talking about? What are you seeing? Well, that's one of them. I think crisp southern Mediterranean dry whites for some of those people in the warmer regions is a great opportunity. Look, the traditional markets Australia's obviously very mature, UK's very mature and very hard at the moment, USA's very hard at the market at the moment.

India's an interesting one. India's it's a r be really hard for a small producer to get into India at the moment. But it's interesting how you would might have noticed last week how Europe's done that signed that FTA, that free trade agreement with India, the EU. And I was actually talking about this with a CEO of a large Australian wine business this morning and Uh w we were saying may we were thinking maybe the EU will build the category for us.

The e i Spain, Italy, France, they all go in there now with the tariff benefits they've got. I mean that their tariffs have been slashed, absolutely slashed. There's still a small tariff, but nothing like what there was. So they now have the opportunity to go in there and build the wine category in India. And a lot of Indians drink. A hell of a lot of Indians don't, but India's got so many people that there are a lot of drinkers there. So it's mainly bearing spirits.

But there is some wine and the EU could build that category for us and then we could go in there on their coattails. I think that's a that's an opportunity for the industry as a whole, not an immediate opportunity. We've got to let that play out. But in the medium term that could be quite an opportunity for Australia. Any other opportunities? for a lot of people. Some people are doing really well with fantastic D to C with re really good

social media promotion, really good wine club promotion. We're getting better and better at that, but there are still not enough people, I don't think, doing that as well as they could. That's an opportunity for them. Um There there's more I think there's more I can see at industry level than indiv individual producer level.

Yep. Well well let's flip it because I think even though it's less pleasant to talk about, I think what people will be m equally as interested in is some of their the short back and sides that you're willing to deliver If possible, ho I'm hoping I can tease it out of you. So c'cause you would see in a very raw way, both transactionally, but also at a thousand foot view, the things that are not being done. So can you speak to that at any length?

Well, at the moment I can see a lot of corners being cut because people don't have enough money. Um so that's not a criticism. And the most important one, the biggest one by far, is that not enough Australian winemakers are travelling. We built an amazing business for the Australian wine industry in the UK and then the USA back in the 90s and thereafter. And the way we built that.

wasn't by generic promotions. Sure we had some generic promotions and we had Hazel Murphy with the Australian Wine Bureau in the UK, who who had some great initiatives where she brought really important gatekeepers out to Australia. That was important stuff, but that wasn't the key way that we built our business in the UK and in the USA. The key way we did it was individual Australian winemakers got over there, pounded the pavement, got their wines into people's throats and told their stories.

Now, some people bemoan the fact that we haven't got the characters in the industry today that we used to have. And when we had people like classic characters like Bob McLean and Peter Lehman and Greg Trott And Jeff Merrill and all these famous Australian winemakers who were real characters and the Poms and then the Yanks really warmed to them. But we do have those characters. I know a lot of great young Australian winemakers who are real personalities.

And are also brilliant winemakers. So we do ac we do actually have those characters. It's just that they're not getting out there. And the reason they're not getting overseas and doing that is that no one in the industry's got any money.

So I talked about what I'd like to see happening at industry level. On the demand side, you can talk about the supply side later, but on the demand side, what we need is the government actually needs to fund and it might be an extension of the Export Market Development Grant programme or something else. It needs to fund Australian winemakers

or part fund them to get overseas and do that again. And largely that'll pay for itself because that will bring this industry or help to bring this industry that's really on its knees at the moment, it'll give it a shot in the arm. And if the industry starts to make money, the government gets the tax dollars. So it's not just a handout, it's it's a it's a facilitator, it's a catalyst.

to developing export business for Australia, which the government and the taxpayer would ultimately benef benefit from. Two two quick questions on that. First one, anecdotally, when you comment that

we're not traveling enough. And that's something that I've heard from a number of different people in my own experience, spending a lot of time over in the US and I'm in constant contact with people over there. You know, the the tyranny of distance, the money, that's definitely understandable. But just anecdotally Who are the sorts of people without naming names, of course?

who talk to you and give you these kind of raw anecdotes where you can see the impact of that on what's going on. Or that sorry, the impact of the non impact of that. However you want to phrase that. You know what I'm trying to say. Where w how are you doing that? Right. Well I my job, Tom, is to deal with wine makers every day. So I'm talking to winemakers primarily, also growers, also

people in industry bodies, also suppliers to the industry, but mainly winemakers. I'm talking to them either by email or by or on the phone or by Teams most of the day, every day. So I have a lot of conversations with people about the issues that the wine industry have or has. So that that that's where it comes from, just from my day to day work.

I I also socialise a lot with people in the wine industry'cause is what I'm into. So I've got a lot of mates in the industry and we talk about these things as as well. And then that my my follow up question was gonna be going to your very interesting comments on

the larger scale movements that could alleviate some of this pain. Not easy. When it gets to bigger picture policy movements, that's where I guess those that don't have the experience or the vision because of their background go, what would it take to

spark something like that off. Can you just e even if an thousand foot sort of level, what are the different steps to making something like that a reality, what would need to fall into place, what would need to be done to make that sort of assistance real?

Okay, well it it's also the supply side which I'll talk about later too, which we also need to get government to help with. The starting point is at the industry peak body, Australian grape and wine needs to be asking for it. And I think they are in their pre budget submission. I think from what I hear they will be asking for that type of thing. Then they've got an office in Canberra. They need to be in the politicians' ears, which they are.

I actually reckon they do a pretty good job. I'm not a basher of the industry bodies like a lot of people in the industry are. I think they work really hard and some pretty good people in there and they do a pretty good job with very limited funds. So that's the first thing. Then individual winemakers need to be getting onto their politicians and pushing for this. And I s as I said, I was talking to a CEO of a major wine company today.

And he is going to be pushing that barrow with government. He's going to be meeting with government. The major Australian wineries they talk a lot to government. So they need to be pushing the same barrow. But individual winemakers need to be writing to their local members, talking to their local members

Whenever they get an opportunity to talk to a politician, just pushing for it and making the point that it actually makes economic sense. It makes commercial sense for the government. It's not just a handout where taxpayers' money are gonna dis are get i is gonna disappear. It's actually going to create business, which then generates revenue for the government, for the for the taxpayer. Okay. Can you comment more on the supply side? So that's very interesting and I've just I'm

jotting down notes as we're talking here and I've got demand. I've put a partial tick next to that. Then I've got an arrow over to supply with the question mark. So the floor is yours, sir. Well dem the supply side is critically important. We all know we've got a massive overs supply of grapes and wine in this country.

we've got a whole mass of unproductive viticultural land. Right? Unproductive in the sense that although we grow grapes on it, there's no home for the grapes. So What I think we need to do, again we need to prevail on government, and we need a system, and this system needs to just not be put in place, it needs to be broadcast and pushed hard by the government, people encouraged to take advantage of it.

And what this system will do is it will speed up the correction. The market will ultimately fix this problem, okay?

But it's gonna take a long time and it's gonna and it's gonna be enormous amount of pain in the process. We need to speed it up. The way to speed it up, I think, is there needs to be a programme where if a grower goes to government, to the appropriate government department, and says, Here is a credible business plan to transition my property to an alternative use that will make money.

But I can't fund it. Because no bank banks aren't going near growers at the moment. Right? That's a very common situation. So I think the government should then say, Okay, I think If this is a credible business plan, then we will not give you the money, because government the government's made it pretty clear they're not giving handouts. We will give you a soft loan. So it'll be a no interest ro loan or a very soft and very low interest loan.

The government needs to introduce a scheme whereby grower goes to government with a credible business plan to transition their property to an alternative use. The government gives them a soft loan. to facilitate the transaction. Otherwise the transaction won't occur. Now one, that's compassionate. Two, it turns a whole lot of unproductive Australian rural land into productive land, which has got to be a good thing. And three it gives it provides more business in Australia.

that'll that'll enable the government to generate more revenue in terms of tax dollars. So it makes econom absolute economic sense. It's gotta make economic sense to turn unproductive land into productive land and to generate business for people who are otherwise be on the dole dole queue and generate some tech stores.

So I think we need to push that really hard, again through the same avenues I mentioned before. I'm pretty sure Australian Grape and Wine are gonna put that or something like it in their pre budget submission. The CEO of the major Australian winery that I talked to this morning is gonna push that.

And we need individual winemakers to also be to be pushing for that. And the and the industry body the other industry bodies. So the state bodies, the regional bodies. Everyone needs to be pushing for this. and not take no for an answer. Just keep pushing and pushing until we get something out of government.

Two two follow up questions on that. And well well the first one's more of a comment and it could morph into a question, but referring to j just some of the cold, hard realities that people in the industry face at this time, not being able to get loans. And if you're th I've heard people term it wine prison, where you literally wherever you turn, you don't see a way forward. Everything seems too hard and you can't work with what you've got.

mental health is massive. Huge. So many terrible stories coming through that are just absolutely heartbreaking. The impacts this is having on people. I know that the team at Finlaysons do a lot of different things. Some of these may be a little touchy, but What do you have any comments on that sort of topic per se? I d I don't r really know where to take that. It's just horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Well just the thing on just to touch on the thing on no loans, you can't get a loan.

That in itself's not the problem because there's no point in getting a loan unless you're gonna make money. Otherwise you're just gonna you're deferring the problem. I think you need a scheme like I mentioned before you get the loan.

It's uh there's gotta be a way of making money at the end of the day, otherwise there's no point in getting the loan. In terms of other stuff here, mental health's a huge problem. I'm aware of another individual with a distrip distribution company in the UK that committed suicide yesterday. Yes. Yeah, we have done something on that. We did a workshop at the we do a workshop at the technical conference when every three years when I hold the

Australian Lion Street Technical Conference and we did one I reckon three conferences ago on or might have been two conferences ago on on mental health issues. We got Stu Bourne, Stuart Bourne involved. Don't have Stewart from from the Barossa, sole growers is his business.

He's a great guy. He's done a lot of work and continues to do a lot of work in the mental health space, as well as being a really good winemaker. He's the he he's just a quality bloke. So we got him involved and uh we worked with him to conceive a seminar. And we talked about some things people can do to get to get help in this situation.

The industry is really it's really resilient. It's incredible. I saw it last time we had a downturn, the decade of pain back in the noughties. How resilient people were. So many more I thought so many more businesses weren't gonna survive that than actually did. And I'm seeing the same time this the same thing this time. The industry is incredible resil c incredibly resilient.

and really uh compassionate. People just put their arms around each other. If you've seen it with bushfires, how uh how brilliant people are at coming to the aid w without being asked. People just come to the aid of other people in the industry. So That that's incredibly helpful. We just need to uh we just need to work on Getting through it. We just need to find some solutions like the ones I suggested, but we probably need more solutions than that.

Amen. My my other follow up question was gonna be and I w once again, I'm not sure how much you can comment on this, but you did mention the some of the industry bodies, Australian grape and wine, wine odds. And if you could just shed a little bit of light from your perspective,'cause I do often find these bodies cop the ire of the industry, sometimes understandably so, but also th that it has to be directed somewhere and yeah, send it up the chain. It's an unenviable position.

But you commented very earnestly that you see them working very hard, doing the best they can, trying to make the most of these situations. Can you just expand on that a little bit? Because I think that's probably something, particularly from somebody of your perspective. that people wouldn't hear an awful lot about.

Yeah. Well look, they do they cop a lot of ire to use your words, Tom. Some of it's justified. They make mistakes, like like everybody, but they do work very hard and particularly the The operational people, the employees, the staff of both organizations. There's some good people in there.

And they do work very hard. So I've got a lot of respect for them. There's been s I think there's been some mistakes maybe made at board level over the years with some of the organisations. But I don't blame the staff for that. They're very good people. There does need to be structural reform of the industry though. There is too much duplication of functions. Particularly administrative functions.

And there's a still a complete lack of understanding in the industry as to what wine Australia does compared to what Australian grape and wine does. And people get them totally confused. They think they're the same thing or they think they do

One does one thing, another does the other thing, it's the other way around and so then th there needs to be clarity in what they do. But you'll we also need to remove the duplication of functions. It's difficult because Wine Australia is a statutory corporation.

It's established under an Act of Parliament. So the industry can't just change it without going to government. And if you go to government, who knows what they'll do. So so it needs to be very carefully handled. But but I I don't necessarily think Structure's not so much the problem. You can actually remove duplication of functions and get clarity if you're a bit clever.

Without w with the same organisations, you can do a thing like having a shared services entity that provides all the back office to both of them, so there's only one entity doing that, they're not duplicating those functions. So there there are things that can be done if they're a bit clever.

And I know there's a whole lot of work being done on that. I know that's high on the agenda of Australian grape and wine this year. I had a coffee with the new chair the other day and she's got that right at the top of her priority list. So I know that's going to happen. The other thing that needs to be fixed is the levy system. We need levy reform.

Because that's a mess. A lot of people don't understand that understandably'cause it's complicated. We spend far too much money collecting the levies. That's just wasted money. So that ne that all needs to be streamlined as well. So we will need to go to government to sort that out because those levies are collected under Acts of Parliament.

But the industry's got no money, so why waste money? Okay, we've got precious resources, we need to clean that up. I heard someone told me a number rightly or wrongly, that we spend nearly a million dollars collecting fifteen million dollars.

Which is just outrageous. So I d that might not be right, but that's what someone told me. So uh we need to we certainly need to fix it up. Let's talk about green chutes. Literally and metaphorically. So going back to the comment you made at the outset after reading the American report.

t green shoots hopefully potentially on the horizon. And that m some of this may be well, I imagine a lot of this would be speculative. But what would you be hoping to see going in further into twenty twenty six? Things that may create a little bit of upward motion, momentum, hope. Don't wanna dabble in too many superlatives or cliches, but what would you be looking for? And what do you think's actually practically achievable? We've covered a lot of it. Yeah. But just

looking forward? Well the indicators we look at to measure it are things like great prices, bulk wine prices, export figures, th those types of things. how we get there, well we need to well, we need to we absolutely need to fix this oversupply. So there's a whole lot of wine in tanks. I don't know where that's gonna go. I heard that one big company sent a huge amount of bulk wine, a big parcel of bulk wine into China a week or so ago at twenty cents a liter. That doesn't do us any good.

But I I like guess it gets rid of some wine. Doesn't do us any good though. Jesus. It's terrible. So And then we've got the wow online. There is a massive amount of wine all around the world. It's not just here. So I don't know where it goes. You can't just pour it down the sink, can you? It's a big environmental issue there. So th that needs to be dealt with. Then we do need to we do we just need a whole lot of vineyard pulled out or converted to alternative use.

Now, I know a certain amount has come out, probably more than's been reported, based on people I talk to. Also based on some big company people I talk to, a lot is planned to come out in the next twelve months. So watch this space. I think we're gonna I think we're gonna start seeing a fair bit of so so this isn't the uh the poor, unhappy grower that I was talking about before. This is big company owned stuff is gonna start to come out.

Which is really painful for those companies, but good on them if they start the correction because we absolutely need it. So they're gonna start taking the pain. That's good for the industry as a whole. And we need to see the same sort of thing happening around the world because this is a global problem. So I I really hope Robin Robert Millen's right about the US.

The EU, well, there are the the growers are much more active, especially in France. They make their concerns known and they get a they get rid of a fair few grapes by dumping them on the steps of parliament. Why not? Well we're unintended, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we need yeah, we need the rest of the world to sort it out too, because it's very much a global problem.

Okay. Final question or theme for comments and risks being another cliche, but the term innovation and It s sometimes it can take or oftentimes I think throughout history it takes squeezed quite tightly to produce change and expansive thought outside the box. And once again, just a general comment on what you're seeing, seeing the work that you're doing, there there's a lot of activity. It's everywhere in the world. Yeah. America, Europe, here. That is not correlation doesn't equal causation.

But it's a good thing to see. There's gotta be some excitement on so many different issues on so many different fronts. That's gotta be a cause for Excitement? Yeah, absolutely. As long as they're productive conversations. Yeah, look, most of the time when innovations talked about these days, it's about innovation in the marketplace. Understandably because we need to sell a whole lot more wine as we've been discussing.

But there's great innovation going on, and Australia's always been really good at this. There's great innovation going on in the vineyards and in the wineries, as we speak. There's some really interesting stuff being done in relation to frost protection, for example, smoke taint.

There's some great work being done, very innovative work being done. Also in the wineries, there's great in innovation occurring all the time, which is fantastic. But I guess the most depressing need is innovation in the marketplace, because we just need to sell wine. There there is a lot of work being done. I know for example Vinicky, the big new wine company, which is the result of the merger of Accolade and Pernod Ricard's wine business. One of the key planks

that their CEO says why they're going to be successful is they're going to be really innovative in the marketplace. And that's fantastic because they've got the resources to do it. So I really hope for the sake of the whole Australian wine industry that they are really successful. I think we I think wha we need to get over the snob factor regarding

wine products or things other than fine table wine. We have to absolutely we've got to make the best table wine we possibly can. But we shouldn't poo poo or denigrate innovative products at the commercial end that will actually move some wine and move some grapes.

Because we need it a as an industry. Those sorts of products have been looked down on by a lot of fine winemakers. But we've got to get over that. But we need to encourage that. I'll give you an example. I was in Portugal only a few months ago. And the Portuguese port producers have got the same problem that everybody's got. In fact they've got a really severe problem because fortified wine is way out of fashion.

In Australia, for example, Seppelsfield have stopped making sherry, which is a tragedy. I adore sherry, including the great wines that Seppelsfield made are absolutely well cast sherries, but they're not making them, understandably, because they can't sell them. So I don't blame them for not making them.

So the fortified winemakers over there, the great porthouses, have got a really big problem trying to sell fortified wine. So what they've done is they've come up with this new product called Porto Spritz. And it's white port and really good fever tree tonic water and then some botanicals. And Every wine list you see, you go around in in you go in the good at good restaurants in Porto and Lisbon, in the cocktails category or in the aperitifs category, it's got Porto spritz.

So they're really they're really cutting through. They've got traction. So everyone's drinking porto spritz, white port and and fever tree tonic and botanical. So that's why they're moving some white port. So Taylors and Grahams and Dows and Wars and Quintet and Novile is great fine wine producers, they're not too up themselves to promote this innovative spritzer. W we need to be doing the same thing. A lot of people are trying really hard. It's becoming a bit of a crowded a crowded scene.

But there's all sorts of there's always something else you can do. There's always something else you can think of.

So people just need to keep trying. So I'm all in favor of it. Amen. Will Taylor, it is so educational every single time sitting down listening to you. talk so insightful, so much me we covered. Just to finish on a slightly different note

How are you? You've been busy. I'm good. New Year, you've been you've been at the Oz Open, you're enjoying your glass of Chardonnay. Super quickly, care to share what you drink. What are you drinking? I'm drinking Kuyong Folk Line twenty twenty one Chardonnay for Morning's Peninsula. Which is made by the uh produced by the Port Phillip Estate people, Marco and Melissa Georgia, who are great people, and they produce great wines.

Very good. And you're well generally. Yeah, you're refreshed after I hope you got some time off over the new year. I did, but I've just been the well I actually I had a bit of a I bit a had a bit of a shocker, Tom. For the first time in sixty four years I missed Christmas. That's dear. I got that horrible influenza a bug and spent Christmas Day in bed groaning. Uh that was horrible. But I managed to recover. I think I actually think I got it at the last day of the Adelaide Test match.

'Cause there wasn't a lot of social distancing in the cricket. Won a test match. But I came down with it on the twenty-fifth of December in a big way, managed to pull myself out of bed on the twenty-sixth Boxing Day, just to go downstairs, lie on the couch and watch the Boxing Day test. for two and a half days. But then recovered and uh yeah, I'm good now. I just had a few really great days of the Australian Open over in Melbourne last week.

And back in the office and firing on all cylinders. Just a quick thank you to all our listeners for tuning into and supporting the Cellador podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or any of the other episodes, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could consider making a donation to help keep the show going. Every contribution, no matter the size, makes a huge difference. You can support the podcast with a donation via PayPal at the cellar doorpodcast.com dot au

Even the smallest donation is a huge help. And if you're unable to donate, please consider leaving a review and or sharing the podcast with your network, as these are great ways to help the show grow. Thank you again for your continued support. Really appreciate you jumping on and having a a chin wag with me. I'm honored a privilege having you on the C D P. Thank you so much. Thanks, Tom. Very much enjoy it. Anytime. A huge thanks to the legends who How awesome recovery.

and all those who have made