Secret Vines Blog

Pleasing Oscar.....

9th November, 2009

A favourite line of mine is from one of the early Oscar Wilde plays, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III.

Oscar asks.......

What is a cynic? The man who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

I reckon this line of thought applies to buying wine like no other. It's a pretty tricky field in which to judge value. Australia alone has well over 2,000 wineries and there are tens of thousands more around the world. So there are literally millions of wines out there.

But the question is what makes good wine and how are prices set?

Wine is not a commodity like gold or coal where there is a benchmark price that producers need to meet.

Wine producers set their own price. So price rarely represents value.

The big multinationals use a ‘smoke and mirrors' approach. They spend a little on the grapes and winemaking which they buy in bulk. Then they spend big on marketing and sales rebates so the product ends up looking like good value. Ah, the power of perception!

To avoid accusations of bias I'll call in the help of Halliday ratings. Rosemount for instance has a 3 star and Lindemanns a 4 star rating (and this is for their very best wines which are not usually the ones found in the fast moving section of a local bottle shop.)

Whereas virtually all the producers we feature (Paxton, Primo Estate, Harewood Estate, Sentanta, Bremerton, Frankland Estate, Cascabel, Oliver's Taranga, Carlie Estate, Five Geese, Hewitson, Torzi Matthews etc., etc...) are 5 star through and through. Which makes our wineries some of the most outstanding in the country, regardless of the fact that many people have not heard of them.

Our goal is to sort through all the dross and bring you the very best wines we can get our hands on. That's our service. I sort through mountains of wines to make sure every single wine represents outstanding value.

While we're on ratings, I've started to include ratings on the wines in the tasting notes online so you can see what journo's think and what I think. I'm a hash judge of quality and an even harsher judge of value.

I'm incredibly happy with our latest packs, so check them out click here.

Would Oscar be pleased? I hope so!