Not Such a G’Day: How Yellow Tail Crushed the Aussies

Slate is reporting that the success of Yellow Tail has damaged the rest of the Australian wine industry:

“A few years ago, Australian wines were the hottest around: Consumers couldn’t get enough of those strapping shirazes with the quirky names (the Mad Hatter, the Dead Arm, the Ball Buster) and the eye-catching labels. Across all price points, Australia was ascendant. Not anymore: Buyers who used to make a beeline for the Antipodean section of their local wine shops are today waltzing right past it. Depending on who’s doing the counting, exports of Australian wines to the United States fell by 15 percent to 26 percent in value last year; whatever the precise figure, the arrows are all pointing sharply downward, and with retailers paring back their Aussie selections in response to the flagging demand, this year threatens more of the same. Foster’s may be Australian for beer (mate); it appears that screwed is now Australian for wine.

“To be sure, vintners everywhere are struggling on account of the global economic crisis, and Australia has been hit especially hard by the gyrations in the financial markets. The Australian dollar surged to a 25-year high against the U.S. dollar last summer, which was a big headache for a wine industry heavily dependent on sales abroad. Unremittingly severe weather has also had devastating consequences. Droughts have ravaged parts of Australian wine country. The recent heat wave and wildfires in Victoria destroyed wineries and damaged a number of vineyards, with as much as 70 percent of the crop lost in some areas. But while the Australians have been victimized by a run of bad luck, their woes are mostly self-generated; they’ve trashed their own brand, a point many of them now concede.”

Read the rest of the article.