392 - Leadership Drought: A Call to Wine Australia Amid Small And Family Winery Despair

Whether you drink a little bit of South Australian wine, or a lot, your decisions about what you buy and where you buy it from, make a big difference. We sit with three passionate people from the wine industry, today, and they have some tales of woe to share, some stories about labour of love they all carry out, and some messages to those of us who’d like to see a thriving sector of small, family-run wineries who bring texture and body to the glass and to many circles of the economy throughout our state.

There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. Well, actually, there are four, but they are woven through the episode.

And in the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature a new song from Suedan, that is slightly related to our theme: Whiskey Did It.

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Running Sheet: Leadership Drought: A Call to Wine Australia Amid Small And Family Winery Despair00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week

Not one but four SA Drinks Of The Week this week. They are interwoven throughout the episode. If you would like to hear the tasting notes, you’ll find them here:

00:09:08 – Paulmara Estates 2021 “The Marriage” Cabernet Shiraz

00:47:27 – Ben Murray Wines 2021 Barossa Valley Shiraz

01:18:15 – Flinders Run 2021 Baroota Creek Cabernet Sauvignon

01:49:05 – Paulmara Estates 2021 ARETÎ

00:03:19 Paul Georgiadis, Emanuel Skorpos, Dan Eggleton

It’s a tough gig, being at the helm of a family-owned winery in Australia in 2024. China’s tariffs on Australian wine bit hard, causing a glut in supply, while the multinationals like Coles and Woolworths used their clout to create “fake” boutique wines that “magically” got shelf space and retailer support from, well, Coles and Woolworths. Meanwhile, our 2500 wineries and grape growers have been contributing to the coffers of Wine Australia in the hope that its role of supporting and regulating the Australian grape and wine industry would mean that someone was looking out for them and not ignoring the big bad wolves who are plundering the sector every day. But, if you’re surviving in this industry, maybe that’s enough because as one of the guests who couldn’t make it today was quoted as saying on the ABC recently, you don’t get into the wine industry to make money, you do it because you love it!

Who are our guests? We have Paul Georgiadis who, among other things, is the founder and owner of Paulmara Estates, along with his wife, Mara. We’re recording at Paulmara in Marananga today. We also have the man who suggested we hold this discussion, Emanuel Skorpos, the Principal Vintner at Flinders Run in the Southern Flinders, and Dan Eggleton, the cofounder and winemaker at Ben Murray Wines and Principal and Founder of Vinous Consulting.

I like naming elephants in rooms, so my first reflection is that we’re all blokes, sitting around this table. We haven’t excluded women, it’s more that Emanuel is directly connected to you all and this gathering developed organically from there. Had we more microphones, I would have arranged for Jane Richards to join us from Eight At The Gate Wines in Wrattonbully – she is an absolute dynamo – and I’m sure you all work with women in different roles. Can we acknowledge some be