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Tag: winemaker

  • Australian winemakers fight EU to retain Prosecco name

    Australian winemakers fight EU to retain Prosecco name

    Winemakers from Victoria’s King Valley traveled to Canberra on Tuesday to lobby parliamentarians to protect their use of the prosecco grape variety name. Australian winemakers are “not giving any ground” against the European Union, which does not want exporters to sell foods trademarked under geographical indicators as a condition in Australia’s free trade deal.

    Australian Grape and Wine is a producer representative organization leading the campaign against the name ban. Chief executive Lee Mclean said the European Union wanted to use the Australia EU Free Trade Agreement to ban Australian producers from using the variety name.

    “The fact is, prosecco is a grape variety name, just like chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon,” Mr McLean said.

    “The European Union’s approach to this issue is motivated by a desire to protect Italian producers from the competition and nothing more.”

    In 2009, Italy changed the name of the prosecco grape variety to “glera” within the European Union.nIf the condition is agreed upon as part of Australia’s EU free trade deal, Australian winemakers could have to use “glera” or “Australian prosecco” on labels. Most Australian prosecco is produced in Victoria’s King Valley and Murray Valley where many winemakers have invested heavily in the grape variety.

    Pizzini Wines owner Alfred Pizzini said this was not the first time winemakers had been to Canberra to state their case.

    “It’s been an ongoing conversation with government,” Mr Pizzini said.

    “This is coming to a pinnacle because the free trade arrangements are negotiated as we speak and could be finalized over the next six months.”

    Mr Pizzini estimated the King Valley needed to plant up to 50 hectares of prosecco each year to keep up with demand and the loss of the name would have economic impacts on exports.

    “In the short term it would be economically damaging, but we’ve got to be careful not to give any ground because it’s the use of the name of a grape variety,” he said.

    “I think one of the potential problems we will have, a lot of export of prosecco goes through Singapore ports.

    “If we lose that name, there’s a good chance we will lose the opportunity to send prosecco through Singapore.”

    Victorian winemakers fear the loss of the name prosecco could lead to further grape variety names being banned in Australia. Brown Brothers winemaker Katherine Brown told ABC Radio they would stand strong against Italy.

    “Champagne is a method and it’s made in a certain way and we understand the French want to keep that as their own, but prosecco is a grape variety,” Ms Brown said.

    “Italians have created a region in Italy called prosecco and they are claiming now that sparkling wine that comes from there is the only wine that can have prosecco on it and the rest of us who have been using prosecco grapes need to find another name.”

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  • Raise your glass to a good cause

    Raise your glass to a good cause

    Being located along South Australia’s Limestone Coast, the vineyards of winemaker The Hidden Sea were once covered by a vast ocean and home to a thriving marine ecosystem. “Ancient mineralized relics, including an extraordinary 26 million-year-old whale fossil, and an extensive museum of marine life, now lay buried beneath the alluvial soils of this World Heritage wine region,” the venture’s co-founder, Justin Moran, says.

    This marine heritage is one of the key factors that drove Justin and fellow co-founder Richie Vandenberg to launch The Hidden Sea with a very specific mission – to remove plastic from the oceans.

    Richie and I are not only good friends, but we also share very similar values and the drive that our business should have a higher purpose,” Justin says. “So, yes, The Hidden Sea is a commercial business, and we need to make a profit, but a profit from work that benefits humanity.”

    Although best known for a ten-year career in the AFL with Hawthorn – he captained the club from 2005 to 2007 – Richie grew up amongst the vineyards and has over 12 years’ experience as a grower, and more than 25 years’ association with the wine industry through his family enterprise. Serial entrepreneur Justin has successfully built and sold businesses in the retail, restaurant, nightclub, FMCG, entertainment, and technology sectors. “Our wines are soft and round, approachable and true to variety,” Richie enthuses. “We make wines for people that care, so when someone buys our wine, they’re not just satisfying their own immediate needs but also contributing to something much larger than themselves, and our wines must therefore reflect this trust.” The origin of the ‘terroir’ on which the wines age grown is celebrated through the depiction of the ancient fossil on the labels of the Hidden Sea range.

    “Of the 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced since its invention in the 1930s, only nine percent has ever been recycled.”

    The pair believe that consumers are looking to be a part of something bigger than themselves. “We enable them to achieve this through the simple purchase of wine,” Richie explains. “For every bottle sold, we remove 10 plastic bottles from our oceans and recycle them through our partner, ReSea Project.” Every collection the business makes is audited and traced through an on-bottle QR code system. The ReSea project supports coastal communities, with local fishermen supplementing their income by removing plastic from rivers and the ocean, and in so doing improving their earning potential from their primary role by helping marine life flourish in a plastic-free environment.

    “Since the 1 July 2020, we have removed and recycled over 1.2 million single-use plastic bottles from our world’s oceans,” Justin says, adding that that figure equates to 21,000 kilograms of plastic being removed. “What we are proud of at The Hidden Sea is that this result is not a percentage, or case sales, or profit – it’s a tangible impact on our ocean that is quantifiable.”

    Justin and Richie have a specific long-term goal for the business. By 2030 they aim – with the help of their customers, market partners and retailers – to remove a billion plastic bottles from the oceans and recycle them.

    Ultimately, Justin says that industry around the world needs to build a circular economy for plastics, so that plastic bottles and packaging is constantly recycled and reused, rather than being discarded and going to landfill. “Of the 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced since its invention in the 1930s, only nine per cent has ever been recycled,” Justin laments. “This alarming statistic means that every human now consumes enough plastic each week to make a credit card through their normal diet, according to research by the WWF.”

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