All language subtitles for Chateau Chunder 1080p BBC

A lot of people in this country
pooh-pooh Australian table wines.

This is a pity, as many fine
Australian wines appeal not only to
the Australian palate

but also to the cognoscenti
of Great Britain.

Blackstone Bordeaux is rightly
praised as a peppermint-flavoured
Burgundy.

Whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank
with any of the world's best
sugary wines.

GLUGS

Quite the reverse is true
of Chateau Chunder

which is an Appellation Controlee

specially grown for those keen
on regurgitation.
BURPS

A fine wine which truly opens up
the sluices at both ends.

This is a bottle with a message in,
and the message is "Beware".

This is not a wine for drinking,
this is a wine for laying down
and avoiding.

It's the biggest question
in the history of wine.

The colour, the smell, the flavour.
"What is this?"

How did an unfashionable backwater

with no track record...

Listen, they don't make wine
in Australia.

And if they did, who'd buy it?

..in a notoriously elitist
business...

You should have seen their noses
wrinkled up!

..go from making Chateau Chunder...

With a wine like this...

..to become the toast of
the international wine world?

..you could conquer the world.

This is a story of courage
in the face of adversity...

They used to say, "Chateau Chunder
from Down Under!"

..of opportunity knocking...

We knew we had fine wine.
All we needed was the chance.

..of preaching to the not-yet
converted.

We were trying to create
a wine revolution.

We needed some heroes to work with.

And our hero was Australia.

Australian wine helped us go
from this...

to this.

Australian wine blazed the trail,

changed the drinking habit
of the British Isles.

I love Aussie wine, yeah. Love it.

This is not just the story of wine.

It's the story of us.

You just opened the bottle,
swirled it round

and whoa! You were home!

Wine. Old World. Revered.

Infused with history

and mystery.

And somehow, inescapably French.

We know how to make in France some
wines which are very sophisticated.

I would say it is the evolution
of knowledge in agronomy.

The French have been making wine
since the 6th century BC.

It is embedded in the fabric of
their lives.

For us, it's more about lifestyle

and something that we live
every day.

And it's not written in a book.

You just have to...

You can't learn it by reading it.
You have to live it.

Crucial to French wine-making
is the notion of "terroir".

Terroir is the connection of soils,

pathological and geological,

climates and the know-how
or the talent of the winemaker.

Hmm. Complicated concept, terroir.

When Australians started making
wine,

terroir took a back seat to more
practical concerns.

My uncle Dan used to sit in
the corner, in a rocking chair.

I remember him being in here
one evening.

I was with him. I was seven,
something like that. Six or seven.

He was a dead shot.

A bloke could be sitting here
and this bloody rat ran along
the rafter.

And he just went "Bang!" and the rat
fell in the red fermenter.

I said, "Do you want me to get that
out, Uncle Dan?"

He said, "No, it'll add a bit of
body to the wine. The ferment will
kill it."

For fourth generation Hunter Valley
winemaker Bruce Tyrrell,

and his father, Murray, it wasn't
just rats in the rafters

that made wine drinking
somewhat unsavoury.

Back in the '50s and early '60s,

if you drank wine, you were queer,
eccentric or both.

I had a girlfriend at university
from a country town.

Her parents weren't sure I was a
suitable person for her to be going
out with

because I was a plonkie!

I got kicked out of the house

when I took some sparkling Burgundy
to a lunch and not another drink.

Get outta here, you plonkie!
And don't come back!

And she couldn't do the washing up.
Her father was not pleased!

Like the Tyrrells, the Hill Smith
family from South Australia

struggled through the 1930s and '40s
to make a living in the wine
business.

My father, Wyndham, was a bit
of a cavalier,

raconteur, sportsman.

He carried with him the badge of
being the first man in Australia

to face Larwood during the bodyline
series.

He came back to a business that was
in jeopardy with the banks.

And Dad set on a course of rescaping
the way we did business,
the wine we made.

But still, through all those years,

there wasn't growth in the game.

There were lots of fashion moments
where things took off

and people tried to chase the
rainbow, but nothing eventuated.

Throughout the first half
of the 20th century,

Australian winemakers had one big
problem.

No-one drank wine.

The real Aussie went to the pub
for rounds of beer with his mates.

When you were in the pub,
you had to buy your round.

If you left before you bought
your round,

then you were a piker.

And if there were nine people
in the drinking group,

that meant you had to drink
nine beers.

The Aussies' love affair
with the pub

led to years of strict
licensing laws

and a unique drinking culture.

Hey, shut it, mate. We're closed.

'We've got six o'clock closing
of hotels,

'we've got excessive restrictions on
the drinking of alcohol in public
places.'

And that really did sort of shape
our drinking history, if you like,
for the next 50 years.

And we were, really, very aware of
the six o'clock swill.

And we were also aware of the five
minutes past six

when everyone fell out the door
of the pub,

mostly drunk and incapable.

Binge-drinking beer
was standard practice,

even applauded.

As for wine, that was for the dregs
of society.

There were wine saloons.

Wine saloons had a very
unfashionable reputation.

They were largely home to
the alcoholic,

the old, the elderly, the lonely.

With an almost non-existent market
at home,

Australian winemakers looked for one
overseas.

Britain was the obvious choice.

But here, wine was only for
the well-off, the well-bred

or the continentals.

If you said wine, wine was one of
those words that you had to have
audible quotation marksround,

like, "Wine."

"Ooh, wine's not for the likes
of us!"

Like you'd say round "Barbados".

People used to say that.

"Wine's not for the likes of us."

It wasn't part of normal life
at all.

It was something very, very exotic.

People thought because they were
the wrong class, they literally
couldn't drink wine.

While wine drinking was rare in both
Australia and Britain,

the difference was Australia had
the climate to grow grapes.

They'd been making wine
since the 1830s.

But most of it was high alcohol
fortified wine,

like port and sherry.

'The perfumed sherries are wonderful
wines.'

Especially for old ladies
who can't sleep!

The high alcohol meant it travelled
better than table wine

and much of it was exported
to Britain.

For "medicinal" purposes.

ADVERT: 'A fine brandy after dinner

'is a delight for the epicure.

'While the same brandy is thoroughly
known for its medicinal value
everywhere.'

Ah, that's Penfold's!

I'm going to hand round a bottle
of medicated wine.

This is when you could actually
advertise that wine was good
for you.

This is probably from the '20s
or the '30s.

It's Penfold's. It's Australian.

It says, "This preparation to be
used as medicine only.

"A glassful three times a day."

It is port enriched with beef
extract and pure malt.

It says, "It is of considerable
assistance

"to those called upon to undergo
feats of endurance, vocal, mental
or physical.

"Use regularly as directed
and you MUST smile."

In the 1950s, less than half a per
cent of the world's wine production

came from Australia.

But that was about to change

as boatloads of new immigrants began
to arrive down under.

They brought with them new food
and customs

and a taste for table wine.

They're not necessarily
approaching wine

with a view to understanding
vintages and vineyards and all those
sort of things.

They just want a drink. But they're
now eating foreign food.

They're eating pizza,
they're eating spaghetti.

And so all that foreign influence

is associated with this other stuff,
wine.

While immigrants were spreading
the wine-drinking habit,

Australian society was growing
more affluent.

More people owned cars

and they were beginning to travel.

We find people from all walks of
life coming here for our wine.

And we find that younger people,

and there are increasing numbers of
younger people coming each week.

For winemakers like Murray Tyrrell,

this meant for the first time they
had more customers than they could
handle.

'Of all the things my old man did,
probably the most important one'

is he's probably the father of wine
tourism in Australia.

How much do you know about the wines
you're buying, or are you depending
on the winemaker?

No, we're depending on the taste!

We reckon that Murray Tyrrell's
got the game sewn up!

We're selling our total production
here at our cellar doors

and we just can't meet demand.

To meet the growing demand,

Australian winemakers looked to
the latest advances

in the science of winemaking.

They brought pressure tanks, they
brought cool fermenting systems,

they brought cultured yeasts,

they brought knowledge about how to
use sulphur dioxide to predict
the wine and the juice.

Perhaps the most significant change
for the whole industry was
refrigeration.

So that in our hot summers,
we could control the temperature
of our ferments.

And so the quality of Australian
wines in the '60s

just sky-rocketed.

On the back of its domestic success,

Australia set its sights on
the major wine markets of Europe.

But in 1965,

international exports were still
insignificant -

only eight million litres of wine
a year,

about one-fiftieth
of France's total.

Most people in Europe never saw
an Australian wine.

They'd never tasted it.
It was like anyone in Australia
hearing about English wine.

It just wasn't there.

My father, who loved wine
and drank good wine,

his sister emigrated to Australia
one year, just after the war.

She would send us a case of
Australian claret every year
for Christmas.

It was labelled Australian claret.

My father wouldn't even drink it.
He would say, "Just use it
for cooking."

He didn't taste it. He just said,
"It can't be any good."

Australian wine needed a champion.

An indefatigable soul to persuade
the Europeans

that Australian wine was not a joke,

but a sleeping giant to mock
at your peril.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you
please be seated where you will.

Len Evans was a man of many talents.

Golf professional.

Sculptor. And as head of
the Australian wine bureau,

a passionate advocate
for Australian wine.

I think this country has a chance of
becoming a wine nation of note.

He genuinely believed that
Australian wine had a world-beating
future.

He used to say that from way back.

And I must say, I didn't believe him
then.

To help him spread the word
in London,

Len Evans inherited the Australian
Wine Bureau's only overseas office.

But its location presented something
of a challenge!

There used to be something called
The Australian Wine Bureau

in the most unlikely place in Soho,

surrounded by sex shops,

that had a nice dusty collection
of all the wines that were then
characteristic of Australia.

And that was the sole destination
for ex-pats or visitors

or curious drinkers to go to
to buy Australian wine.

And to just be dealing with this
almost hysterical bemusement

on people's faces was an endless
toil!

Whether Len Evans liked it or not,

the British still saw Australian
wine as a joke.

Malcolm insisted we brought
some wine.

How very kind of you. It's a new
Australian label.

Australian? Here's the white.

"Wombat White."

And the red. "Kanga Rouge".

Malcolm bought them especially
for you!

You know how he loves
a really good wine.

Yes. Which is why he's given
this rubbish to us!

We've always had a sort of love/hate
relationship with Australians,
as you know.

Particularly with sport.

So there was a certain amount of
bashing Australians as being uncouth

and their wines were uncouth
and so on.

"Couth" or not, there actually was
a wine called Kanga Rouge!

When I arrived, they had the last
bottlings of this vast volume
of wine called Kanga Rouge.

I remember they had individual
bottle labels.

Each of the bottles were numbered.

I range up the previous winemaker

and said, "I've been given the
opportunity of buying bottle number
one of Kanga Rouge.

"What do you think it's worth?
$50? $100?"

And he said, "David, don't be
so silly. We bottled 1,000
bottle number ones!"

That was the first I know
of great marketing stories about
the Australian wine industry!

While the marketing tricks
and jokey names

created an image of a bottle
best avoided,

the wine itself was a pleasant
surprise.

I've got a bottle here
of Kanga Rouge.

That was the wine that people now
laugh at.

They've never tried it, the people
who laughed at it.

I've tried it. I've drunk lots
of this stuff.

See what that says? Coonawarra.

Shiraz.

1978. Not plonk. Not rubbish.

Top area of South Australia.

Top grape. Top year.

And down there, alcohol, 10.9.

And it tasted as rich and as juicy
and as gorgeous as could be.

If people laugh about this,
they don't know what they're
talking about.

Facing the prejudice head on, Len
Evans served Australian wine

to the Circle of Wine Writers
in London.

I want you all to taste the
sensation of this beautiful
Australian wine.

Kevin's having more!

They responded with predictable
disdain.

He then served the same wines
blind at lunch.

This time to great acclaim.

Number two was...

That's what you call a great
Australian wine!

The chastened wine writers
immediately made him a member
of their circle

and Len Evans' blind tasting games
are still popular around the world
today.

OK. You have a wine in front of you.
First question. Is this Australian
or not?

The so-called "options game"

is played with almost religious
conviction

at the annual Len Evans' tutorial,

where young Australians learn
the trade the Len Evans way.

Who says it is Australian?

You are the only one who's correct.

Cheers!

While Len Evans was having some
success with London's wine writers,

throughout the 1970s, exports
of Australian wine were actually
declining.

By contrast, France's doubled.

Len Evans needed help.

And it came in the unexpected shape
of a woman from Manchester.

There was a job advertised.
"Australian Trade Commission seeks
a business development manager."

It was advertised for a man,

which you couldn't do today,

but the Trade Commissioner
at the time,

the Australian who was based there,

said, "I think we'll give you a go."

So I started work with the
Australian government in Manchester.

An English person. Knew very little
about, never been to Australia.

I was given a range of products

that I had to look after to help
the exporters.

I worked with steaming coal,
coking coal,

cardboard mousetraps, Oak boots.

And they asked me if I'd look after
wine as well.

I had no background in wine,
no knowledge about wine.

I didn't know anybody who drank wine
at all.

When Hazel started out,

it's almost as though the industry
was in such dire straights

that they had nothing to lose.

They used to say, "Chateau Chunder
from Down Under."

So we were climbing a pretty big
mountain.

It was like, "Let's let this crazy
woman go out there and sell our wine
for us."

She actually did that in the way of
pouring it,

and getting the winemakers to
pour it,

to tens of thousands of people.

In the first year we did it,

we probably did about 20,000
consumers at different events.

What was interesting was that
in those days

the French, Spanish and Italians
didn't pour wine for the public.

They didn't trust the public.
The Australians did.

I remember I was at the London Wine
Trade Fair

and I was doing a tasting of
something, Beaujolais, or something
like that.

And some bloody bloke knocked
my elbow and I turned

and saw a really scruffy, unwashed
kind of creature

in his khaki, and said,
"Jack, can I have a word?"

I said, "I'm sorry. I'm busy.
I'm doing a wine-tasting."

"Come on, give us a break, mate."

And he said, "What flavours do you
like in your red wine?"

And I just thought, "I don't know."
I remember saying to him,

"Oh, um, blackcurrant,
something like that."

And he said,
"What about white wine?"

I said, "I don't know. Peaches.
Tropical fruit. That kind of stuff.

"Now, please, I'm really busy."

He said, "Hang on, mate.
How much do you want to pay?"

I went,

"I don't... £3.99.

"And now, please, leave me alone."

A year later, I was at the London
Wine Trade Fair again.

And there was a knock on my arm
again!

And I turned round and thought,
"Looks and smells vaguely familiar!"

And the bloke says,
"Here, no, come on."

And he gave me a glass of red wine.
He said, "Try this."

And I tasted it and went,

"Bloody hell, that tastes like
blackcurrants!"

And he said, "Yeah, that's what
you said you liked."

I said, "Jesus, how much is this?"
He said, "£3.99. That's what you
said you wanted to pay."

And he said, "I've got a white wine
here."

I said, "Don't tell me -
it'll taste of peaches."

He said, "That's what you said
you liked."

I said, "£3.99?" He said, "That's
what you said you wanted to pay."

It was a revelation.

The Australians made wine
that we wanted. And they asked us
what we liked.

That had never happened in the world
of wine before.

While Australians were now making
their wine according to
British taste,

the names sounded distinctly
European.

Burgundy,

Claret,

Moselle.

And Hermitage.

As Australia wine exports to Europe
rose dramatically,

the Europeans retaliated by banning
the Australian use of European
names.

Australian winemakers turned
adversity into advantage

by using the name of the grape
variety instead.

So Australia had to introduce the
concept of varietal labelling.

And that became very appealing
to consumers

because they now suddenly realised
what they were tasting.

A French wine, you always had to
know a bit of geography and a bit of
history

and also have a bit of luck
to get a decent wine.

Australian wine just said person's
name, the grape variety. So simple!

Like buying apples in a supermarket.

That was the door opener that
Australia walked through.

JAUNTY TUNE

Now, Aussie winemakers called their
wine Shiraz instead of Hermitage,

Cabernet instead of Claret,

and instead of White Burgundy,

it was Chardonnay.

Australia's love affair with
Chardonnay had started back in 1970
in the Hunter Valley.

Murray Tyrrell discovered
there were some Chardonnay vines
next to his vineyard.

Dad always talked about those

when they used to come past coming
home from school as kids
in the buggy.

They'd always pull in and eat those
grapes cos they were the ripest
and the best flavour.

And in those days, it was called
white Pineau, P-I-N-E-A-U.

The problem was, the so-called white
Pineau belonged to Penfold's.

We asked Penfold's three times could
we have cuttings. They said no.

Using some Aussie initiative,

Murray and Bruce set off
on a midnight mission

that would change the course
of Australian wine.

And after the third occasion, we
snuck in one night and nicked 'em!

They weren't there at night
when we did it.

And after we'd had 'em,
it was a bit late!

And that's our Chardonnay
as you know it today.

In Australia it got its start.

With Chardonnay the new weapon
of choice,

Australia launched its invasion
of the British wine market.

Alongside Tyrrells,

the invasion was spearheaded
by Rosemount Estate,

also from the Hunter Valley.

It was a style of wine that
the UK market hadn't seen.

It was rich, it was round,
it tasted of fruit.

It was soft. It had a lot of things
that were exciting.

It had flavour. I think that's what
was probably the key to it.

I remember turning up at a big
tasting in London that I think was
at Lord's.

And the Great British wine trade was
there, most of it men, wearing suits
with the right kind ofaccents.

People used to drinking Burgundy
all the time.

And they had Rosemount Chardonnay
for the first time.

And it was like seeing people
watching creatures from another
planet!

The colour, the smell, the flavour,
"What is this?"

It's a bit like seeing a naked woman
for the first time!

Lovers of Australian Chardonnay

came up with a new catch-phrase
for their wine.

"Sunshine in a bottle."

Suddenly, all those sort of Monty
Python jokes about Australian wine

began to fall away.

The exciting new flavours
of "sunshine in a bottle"

appealed to a society enjoying
a social and sexual revolution.

I think it's true that Australian
wine has contributed to
the feminisation of wine.

I think it's because it arrived
in Britain at a very particular
historical moment.

The career woman was born
in the '80s

with her padded shoulders
and her Filofax.

Younger women with degrees,
alone in big cities,

were going out, they needed
something to do with friends.

Spit and sawdust pubs and pints of
beer were not really what it was
about.

I would say that wine-drinking was
always a big girlie in Britain,
anyway.

And by making wines less challenging
and more fruit cocktaily,

it probably did make it easier
for girlies to drink it.

# Char-donnay

# It's the upmarket drink of today #

Ever the master of sexual politics,
Australia's cultural attache

added his own perspective on the
career girl's favourite tipple.

# It used to be double Tequilas

# That could prize off the pants
of those Sheilas

# But now they won't have it away,
no way

# For less than
a large Chardonnay! #

Despite the popularity of Chardonnay
with the ladies,

the movers and shakers
in the British wine business

were still mostly men.

Hazel Murphy had an idea.

Bring a group of them
out to Australia

to see where "sunshine in a bottle"
actually came from.

We arranged a trip for the
aficionados of wine in the UK,

the most highly respected, who were,
at the time,

not a very large group
of masters of wine.

He's not trying to make a white
Burgundy.

He's trying to make a damn good
Australian Chardonnay.

The Pinot '73. That's got a hell
of a lot of colour.

One of the masters of wine
on the trip

was Bristol wine merchant
John Avery.

You have to realise that
on that trip in '85,

it represented about 70 to 80%
of the entire buying power of
the British wine trade.

In one hit!

In those days, we were nearly
all men

and Rosemount arranged for a bottle
of their Chardonnay to be posted

to all the wives, with a note
saying. "Your husband will be
drinking this wine in Australia.

"Here's a bottle for you to taste."
How wonderful!

That was a brilliant marketing
stroke, cos everyone came back

and all the wives said,
"This is a wonderful firm.
You must deal with them."

'It was fun. They came here. They
kicked up their heels.'

They took away the sense of fun
that we all have in what we do.

There was always a serious tasting,

lots of questions, lots of answers,
very open.

And then we'd go and have a glass
of Cooper's Ale, you know?

You don't do that in France,
I suspect.

They just took this whole thing back
and said, "This is a new thing that
we've discovered,

"that we didn't know existed.
And it's exciting, it's new
and it's fresh.

"And the people are nice!"

By the mid-1980s,

Britain was enjoying many influences

from the nice Antipodeans.

Australia was absolutely
flavour of the month.

You had the whole Neighbours thing.

Neighbours was, for many years
following,

an enormous influence on how
people perceived Australia.

You had Fosters starting TV ads
with Paul Hogan.

He'd done Crocodile Dundee

which was a huge hit.

This is just like the dances
at home.

These things had just begun to make
people see Australia in a different
light.

Strewth! There's a lad down there
with no strides on!

The Fosters ads were very English
humour.

People realised the Aussie humour
was very like the English humour.

The shared language, culture
and humour

paved the way for the wine to be
sold on the back of the lifestyle
down under.

And who better to bottle the essence
of Australiana

than a couple of Yorkshiremen?

We were sat talking about how
we were going to basically

give the British public
Oz in a glass.

We were able to come up with
some ideas

which would really do
a fantastic job

in communicating to a Brit
with no knowledge

that there was something better
out there.

Statements like
"Putting the cat out"

actually set out exactly what
the promise in the bottle was.

Aghhh!

And these posters put the theme of
the cat and a quiet game of Bridge

versus jumping off the bridge
with a bungee.

This whole Australian aspirational
lifestyle.

And it really did capture
the public's attention.

'Australians are very particular
about how they pick their wines.

'And when they find a bottle
they particularly like,

'they'll go to considerable lengths
to get it.'

Yee-hah!

Consumers were engaged. They'd seen
something they'd never seen before.

It really excited people who
normally weren't into wine.

They were intimidated by it.
They didn't understand it.

But here were these brands that
actually spoke to them in a language
they understood.

'And you're sitting
in middle England

'in a miserable Midlands town

'with fog all round you and a rotten
job and the rain pouring down.'

And you get a glass of that.

And you think of this somewhere,
way south in the southern seas,

there's somewhere called Australia

making this kind of nectar!

Britain's increasing interest
in food and drink

was reflected by the imaginatively
named BBC show, Food & Drink

and its flamboyant hosts Oz Clark
and Jilly Goolden.

Anyway, now, at last,
on to something to drink!

These Australian wines...

'I realised there was absolutely
no point in using'

traditional wine speak,

which was all about breeding and
structure and balance and finesse.

Things that meant absolutely nothing

to the bloke at home, or his missus.

Then have a taste. See if they can
carry through this medley of
delicious succulent flavours.

So I decided to use my point of
reference

of what thing smelt and tasted like

to describe a wine
as a thumbnail sketch.

You've got the nectarines.
You've got the lychees.

All these lovely things. But you've
got a zip of acidity as well.

'I was the very first person
in the world to do that.'

Now every back label, every
restaurant wine list, picks it up.

Oz is the man to ask about this.
He's just come from down under.

And I drank rather a lot!

Jilly and her equally enthusiastic
side-kick were on a mission.

..a refreshing wine. Jilly, we had
to plough through a lot of stuff
which was fairly washed out...

'Jilly and I decided we were going
to try and democratise
the world of wine.'

It sounds a bit silly, but we
thought we could make a difference.

We thought using wine we could make
a difference, we could cut through
class barriers.

Get ready to put your schnozzle
right into the glass and snort!

Australia wine gave us the chance
to say, "See this?

"That bloke, his name's Tyrrell.
Mr Tyrrell made this.

"See that name, Chardonnay? Can you
pronounce that? Chardonnay."

That is exactly what I want
from an Australian white wine.

'Tens of millions of people were
watching this week by week.'

I said, "One other thing.
On the bottom there,

"Produce of Australia.
Produce of Australia."

The Aussies don't let you down.

With Oz and Jilly fuelling the
British thirst for their wines,

Aussie winemakers flocked
to the European trade fairs.

Excellent Aussie wine!

I like that. But it's half the price
of the other one!

Something's wrong somewhere!

Probably the biggest congregation
of us was in London

when there was the first
wine trade fair in Olympia.

And there was a big Aussie
contingent.

And I remember just this -
it was like a crusade.

Everyone who came in the door
wanted to talk to the Australians.
Cos it was fun!

I remember running around,

and you got to the Australian stands

and not only was there people three,
four, deep,

pushing people out of the way to get
a taste of these new Australian
wines,

but you had these guys behind these
stands pouring these wines

and doing things like putting
red wine in ice buckets
cos it was so hot!

Breaking all the rules.

I do remember looking at the regions
of France and looking at their
foot traffic.

And these poor souls were standing
behind their trestle tables

with their glasses and a few bottles
of wine and absolutely no-one
to talk to!

It was a revelation. It was actually
quite exciting.

I don't think the French have
forgiven us yet. I don't think
they ever will!

Australia's democratic revolution
was dismissed in France

as merely a triumph of marketing.

Marketing is good for the car.

Mercedes need the marketing.

But not the wine!

Marketing was the great black-out
that Australia had mastered

and the French didn't place
any importance in marketing.

They thought the product would speak
for itself.

They thought we were hoodwinking
the world with our clever marketing.

The wine is for the food.

When you have a nice chicken,

at lunch, at dinner,

with the nice potatoes,
you don't need the marketing.

It's a different mentality,

different idea of the wine,

and different idea about
la culture du vin.

And nothing epitomised the
difference in "la culture du vin"

more than the great Australian
invention,

the wine cask,

also known as the bag in a box.

Or down under as "the goon bag".

Most people hide this stuff!

'Orlando Coolabah.'

This was a bag in a box
with a little tap on it.

It revolutionised drinking habits
in Australia.

It basically meant you could take
four litres of wine,
or whatever it was,

and you could drink it over a period
of days or even weeks,

without it going stale.

Because as the bag collapsed,
there was no head space in there,

no oxygen getting in there
to oxidise the wine.

A lot of that wine wasn't what we
would call the greatest wine
in the world.

But it converted a lot of people
to wine drinking.

It made wine an everyday item
in Australian households.

Its value and convenience meant
by the mid-'80s

wine casks accounted for half of
the entire Australian market.

My parents drank a two-litre Yolanda
cask as opposed to the four-litre
because they were classier!

And goon bags continued to be
an essential part of life

for many Australians.

I remember one party using an empty
inflated goon bag as a pillow.

Goon of fortune is where you...
Goon of fortune!

It's where you...
Oh, it's so classy!

You tie the goon bag to the washing
line and spin the line round.

And, uh... The wheel of fortune.

This is a true lifestyle.

There is a lifestyle for people
who are very original,

very clever, enjoy the poesie.

And there is a lifestyle for people
who have no taste.

As more and more people developed
a taste for wine,

Australia's position in the world
as a wine exporter

soared from 18th in the early '80s

to sixth, ten years later.

New wineries sprouted up
all over the country

as wine exports to the UK increased
20-fold during the '90s

to 140 million litres.

But the ever-increasing production
of wine

caused one major headache
for Australian winemakers.

Corks!

They were on the phone to Spain and
Portugal, where all corks come from,

saying, "We need more, more, more,
more corks."

And the guys producing the corks
simply could not process them.

They couldn't get them through
the cleansing process

which takes a very long time.

And they were shipping off actually
sub-standard corks.

And instead of getting on the first
plane to Spain or Portugal
and giving them a punch

and saying, "Give us better corks",
they didn't. They say, "OK, you
shafted us. We'll shaft you."

So Australia developed a better
alternative to cork.

In fact, the Aussies had been
testing an alternative for years.

It was called the Stelvin,
or screw cap.

We've now been developing screw caps
for over four decades.

I could pour for you today
the 1971 Autumn Riesling

initially bottled under screw cap.
40 years of age.

A lovely hermetic seal, perfect!

The French looked on with horror

as another sacred cow
was slaughtered.

With a screw top, what
do you remember?

Nothing. You open. Dup, dup, dup.

Where is the dream?

Where is the legend?

Screw caps is probably the last
Waterloo for the French.

Because from the beginning,
we know we've got to lost.

The only thing you dream,
you dream with a screw top,
screw top more.

You dream. People buy more.

People remember, "I have
a nice screw top. It's wonderful.

"I make one, two, three.
Oh, it was fabulous."

It is for the wine. Do you think
it is good, that?

Because we don't have an image
of sharing of the moment of opening

and the moment of the "Pop!"

This is a part of the magic as well.

Some French wineries embraced
the innovative Australians

and even invited flying winemakers
to France

to reveal some of the secrets
of their success.

There were about 16 of us
who went over

over those five to ten years
in the early 1990s.

So what do we do? Nothing clever.

Nothing alchemist,
nothing ridiculous space age.

It was about sanitation,

good, clean winemaking.
We clean tanks.

Once I was inside the tank and I had
the feeling I was being watched.

I stuck my head out
and there were ten Frenchmen

wandering what the noise was
inside the tank.

They'd never seen that before.

All the tanks were clean on the
outside but dirty on the inside.

The English wine trade loved it.

They were advertising it as a French
wine made by an Australian
winemaker.

What a great turnaround for
the Australian wine industry

that ten years earlier was making
Chateau Chunder!

ANGRY VOICES

But not everyone in France was so
welcoming of outside influences.

A militant group called CRAV,

the Committee for Viticultural
Action,

attacked the foreign imports that
threatened their local industry.

The CRAV is quite a nasty little
group of people

who have taken activism
to its ultimate

of setting fire to wineries and
emptying tanks and breaking windows.

I think it's quite a brave
supermarket in the south of France

in Beziers, or that region,

would put a bottle of Jacob's Creek
on their shelves.

As viticultural extremists smashed
up commercial wine imports,

a British writer appeared
on a leading French TV show

armed with a bottle of Australia's
finest.

'I was the only non-French guest.'

All the rest were very high up
French men of wine.

We each had to bring a bottle of
wine to serve to our fellow guests.

I'd just come back from Australia
so I had a bottle of Grange.

'You should have seen their noses
wrinkled up'

even before they'd got the nose
to the glass.

I mean, oh, it was dismissed as
a sort of "pharmacist's wine"!

'They were so patronising
and really contemptuous,'

both towards me and towards
the whole of Australian wine.

But Australia had the last laugh

when, in 1999, the hugely
influential US magazine
Wine Spectator

put Penfold's Grange
on its front cover.

'The '55 Grange
was on the front page'

as one of the 12 wines
of the 20th century.

You know, that sort of
acknowledgement,

retrospectively, decades later,

does as much for a wine as, say,
a review of the current vintage.

Penfold's had been making Grange,

a high-end blended Shiraz,

since 1951,

long before the Chardonnay boom.

I have been able to taste back
every two or three years
back to '52 Grange.

And that has reaffirmed,
time and time again,

the extraordinary capacity
that Grange has

to age over a minimum of 20 years.

'I think Grange is a rock'n'roll
wine.'

It's actually a wine that takes you
and takes you on a journey

that other wines don't do.

By the mid-'90s, Britain's
enthusiasm for Australian wine

was matched by the Americans.

And leading the chorus was
the world's most influential
wine writer,

the so-called "emperor" of wine,
Robert Parker Jnr.

The people who are making good wines

do get recognised immediately,
where 30 years ago,

the school of thought was they
had to make good wine for 20 years
before we give them anycredit.

I think Robert Parker, to some
extent, launched Australian wine
into the US market

and made the Barossa famous.

Those big Barossa reds got 100
out of 100

and suddenly went from $10 to $200
a bottle.

What Hazel was doing, people were
doing in the UK,

was saying that Australian wines
were great and cheap and cheerful,
that sort of thing.

Whereas Robert Parker said these
wines aren't just good value
for money,

this country makes some of the
greatest wines in the world.

Parker's Wine Advocate magazine
was seen as an independent voice

and a swathe of cash-rich young
Americans had money to invest
in fine wines.

On Parker's word, the Silicon Valley
set from the dot.com boom
bought up big.

Some Aussie wine producers became
millionaires overnight.

Robert is so powerful so that once
you get 100 points from Parker

you're put into a different league.
For example,

Parker re-reviewed one of my wines
several years ago

and upgraded it from 99 points to
100. You wouldn't think that would
make any difference,

but the few cases of that wine
that we had left basically sold out
within seconds.

Robert Parker's enthusiasm
for their wine

encouraged Australians to target
the cheaper end of the lucrative
US market too.

John Casella, son of Italian
immigrants,

found the Americans keen to try
his new easy-drinking brand
Yellow Tail.

They saw Australia
as the next big thing

and hence we were given shelf space,
we were given opportunities.

Yellow Tail arrived at just
the right time.

We didn't have to age it for years
in barrels.

We didn't have to wait for
a perfect vintage.

It was something that we could do
continuously

and grow at an ever-increasing pace.

In the first year, their target
was 25,000 cases.

They sold over a million!

Now the family winery
looks like this.

Yellow Tail boasts storage capacity
for 230 million litres of wine.

It produces 58,000 bottles an hour

on the fastest bottling line
in the world.

Of all bottled products now leaving
Australia,

20% bear the Yellow Tail logo.

We've brought a lot of people to
Australian wine that would have
normally not bought Australian wine.

So the effect has been positive
rather than negative.

In 2001,

the year Yellow Tail launched
in America,

Australian wine imports to Britain
were up to 171 million litres,

just over half that of France.

Only two years later,

it was 243 million litres

and overtook a declining France

to become the number one wine
importing country to the UK.

'An enormous amount of success,
so much so

'there's a whole generation
of English drinkers

'who have been brought up probably
drinking nothing else other than
Australian wine.'

Australian wine revolutionised
the way that people in the UK
and Ireland drank wine.

They blazed a trail and changed
the drinking habits of
the British Isles.

Take that, Monty Python! We won!

I love Aussie wine, yeah.

It's lovely.

Shanny-shanny-shanny! Oi! Oi! Oi!

While the Aussie winemakers
celebrated their success,

the smell of money attracted
outside admirers.

Large corporations salivated
over the rapidly increasing
sales figures

and targeted wineries with offers
of big cash buy-outs.

During the '90s, there was this
massive global intrigue

about wine, in wine,

wanting to invest in wine,
wanting to acquire wineries.

And we had a lot of people making
phone calls.

And I would always say,

"Look, don't bother.
Just don't bother.

"I'll see you coming up the drive
and I'll just shoot you."

For some family-owned wineries,
history meant more than
the bottom line.

You keep looking back and saying,
"What are the runs
on the scoreboard?

"What have we achieved?
Is it measurable in dollars?"

Possibly not.

But by the start of the new
millennium,

it was increasingly difficult
to keep the fat cats out.

Soon, 80% of the country's wine
production

was controlled by only four
companies.

The breweries came in. Spirit
producers came into the wine game.

They didn't understand the cycle.

They thought it was on a perpetual
trend line

that went from west to east
like that.

Even Rosemount, with its
all-conquering Chardonnay,

couldn't hold out against the tide
of corporate takeovers

as beer company Southcorp, now owned
by Foster's, bought them out.

Rosemount is a very different
business today from when it was
a family company.

I think it reinforces the concept
that wine companies are probably
best run by families.

For breweries, beer is made to
a weatherproof recipe.

So the new owners had little
patience for the mysteries of time
and climate.

The wine industry is a long-term
thinking area

where you really need to be planning
a long way ahead,

as far as planting vineyards,
exploring regions,

trialling grape varieties.

So that is completely at odds with
the short-term thinking
of corporations

who are always thinking about
returns for shareholders.

The big companies
just do not get it.

They think they can rationalise,
streamline,

make marketing and sales,
distribution, those things,
bound together, more effective.

And, in fact, they march rapidly
in the opposite direction.

There is a point at which growth
has to slow down.

Nobody can go on exponentially
growing.

Australia got caught up in its own
hype, if you like, and started
believing its own bullshit.

And a lot of us at the time
started saying, "Is it really going
to keep going like this?

"Are you sure that common sense
wouldn't dictate that it'll start
slowing off?

"No? OK. Right. We'll just keep
going, shall we? Fine."

And keep going they did.

The industry set a target
of 4.5 billion turnover for 2025,

a target that was hit 20 years
early.

That of itself should have sounded
a note of warning.

It's an agricultural industry
after all, at its base.

A combination of corporate control

and government tax breaks

meant that more and more vines
were being planted each year.

And quality was beginning to suffer.

The world was flooded with
sub-standard Australia wine.

When Australia started dumping cheap
glut stuff on our market,

I just thought, "I can't believe
this!"

You've worked so hard to say
Australian wine always over delivers

and now you're breeding a new
generation of people who are saying,

"We've moved on from Australian wine
cos Australian wine under delivers."

Whoever was left drinking
Australian wine,

was the wrong kind of ambassador.

Bridget Jones was partial to
a bottle of Chardonnay...

Or six. ..by herself.
In the Cafe Rouge, yes.

By herself. With her friends.

And after that,

it's... Especially after the film.

It became a bit of a loser's choice.
It was a bit naff. It was a bit sad.

It wasn't the greatest of looks.

It was the final nail in the coffin
for Chardonnay.

Footballers' Wives was on
at the same time.

And one of them was actually called
Chardonnay.

"Chardonnay! Chardonnay!"
That's what did it.

Whether Footballers' Wives
or Bridget Jones were to blame,

Australian wine was facing a crisis.

What happened in this whole
recent story

is that people, to a degree,
got a little lackadaisical

and a little bit corporatised
as people.

That wasn't the Australia
that people were buying into.

All of us had had enough of
Australia's industrial junk.

And so we set out to get the things
that were great about Australia's
wine

back in front of the world.

There's more great wine being made
in this country today than ever
in its history.

There's more interesting wine,
more diversity of wine style.

Australian winemakers are now
focused on reflecting the variety

that comes from a land with more
wine regions than anywhere else.

We're looking more at regionality
and individual vineyard site.

Those wines which are about
that sense of place

rather than looking at how are we
going to get the biggest crop

or how are we going to make
the most wine.

So it's everything.
You incorporate everything.

It's the land, it's the vines,
it's the people.

It's the whole farm.

I suppose, in a way, it equates with
the French word "terroir".

The land, the vines,

terroir.

The Aussies are starting to sound
almost French!

And in the Rhone valley
in southern France,

there's a French winemaker with a
fondness for all things Australian.

You can't imagine how much
I've learned in Australia.

Australia was in the 21st century
when France was still in
the 19th century.

As well as boasting one of the
largest collections of Aboriginal
art in the northern hemisphere,

Chapoutier has invested heavily
in Australian vineyards.

I have seen some of the most
beautiful soils in the world there.

I really think that today,
a lot of French winemakers

are observing what's happened
in Australia

and trying to take inspiration
in this direction.

French and Australian winemakers
are now philosophically closer
than ever before.

And the new generation is helping
close the gap yet further.

'The old generation in France,
my parents' generation,

'were more, "If it's a good wine
it will sell by itself",
blah, blah, blah.

But also the thing that maybe
my generation

are starting to think about,
"Yes, we need marketing"

and of course when we see some
kangaroo on the bottle,

we have to say, "OK, we have to do
something like this."

And some French wines are doing
exactly that.

The marketing is really well done

because you really understand what
is the variety, what is the grape.

And there is also a touch of humour

because some French wines
are really boring!

Ribet! Ribet! Ribet!

The first one we've got
is quite unusual.

It's a sparkling wine
from Australia.

It's actually from Tasmania

and it contains Chardonnay,
Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier,

the classic champagne grapes.

Australian wine has gone from
Chateau Chunder

to "sunshine in a bottle"
to the mystery of terroir

in a single generation.

The Australian wine is a little bit
more expressive, a bit more intense.

It is from a sunnier place.

From Old World to New World,

from banquet hall to beach party,

whatever your taste -
or lack of it -

the Aussies have taken us from
laying down and avoiding their wine

to standing up and celebrating it.

Whenever I encounter Australian
winemakers,

they're still on a quest,
all desperately trying to make
each vintage better thanthe last.

It's like the French would say their
best wine was made 100 years ago.

You ask us, our best wine
hasn't been made yet.

# Dimiat, Oremus, Johannisberg,
Teinturier,

# Montonico and Zinfandel
And Carignan and Malaga

# And Rolle Bombrio Bianco
And Gloria Mortagua

# Centurion, Camaralet,
Franconian, Picutener

# And Carmenere, Tersallier,
Marzemino, Livatica

# And Bouvier and Monastrell
and Travenger and Trollinger

# There's Muscadet, Viognier
and Muscat Blanc a Petits Grains

# And also Maritetico
with Estadio Cubillo

# And ruby Claret and Roussillon
and Sauvignon

# And Riesling, Mischa, Malbec,
Marzemino and Semillon

# These are amongst the ones

# Of which the news has come
to Jancis

# There may be many others
But I don't fancy their chances! #