Monthly Report - March 2024

Cobb and Co – Hamilton, New Zealand late 1970’s

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We started raising our own family early, and because of this, the whole restaurant scene sort of passed me by, especially as I was living in country Western Australia by then.  Tim was a little different in that though he had a similar lower-middle class background, during his university and early years of employment he lived in central Perth and residing in Northbridge, Mt Lawley, Maylands, and with restaurants galore he thoroughly immersed himself in the eating and drinking out culture (then moved to Melbourne … enough said).  It also should be noted that I quite like cooking, which also limited the eating outside of the lifestyle we had – so starting the vineyard and making our first wines I had a great appreciation of wines as a drinker and collector, but not one who drank wines in restaurants or understood these dark arts of wine and food pairing and how wine would be promoted in these settings.

So, jumping forward to our first few vintages, very few direct contacts on our mailing list and buyers meant that we had to contact retailers and restaurants continuously seeking placement on shelves or on the wine lists.  And this is when I became very jaded dear comrades, the Sommeliers in many restaurants are “difficult” for a word.  I would have as a guess, for every 20 calls and messages, 2-3 may reply and when you secure a tasting time and date maybe 50% of those would cancel on the day or the day before.  If by pure chance you do get to taste your wines with them, it is highly likely that they would either find fault or just instantly forget what they had just drunk – the great man himself David Lloyd, the previous owner and winemaker at Eldridge Estate, once told me that serving wines to Sommeliers is “humility training” and he was so spot on.  Most wine sales to restaurants came from the restaurant contacting us and seeking our wines – based on having tried the wines or recommendations, very very few were from placing the wines in front of them.

So many wasted hours and bottles, with the added wash of being told the wines are not great or forgettable seems the worst of it.  Oh, if only.  Discounts on the wholesale prices are expected, especially if on-pour by the glass, and getting paid became a running battle for months, if not over a year in some cases.  Once we sent four cases of wine to a Sydney restaurant as they needed them before a Christmas function.  They signed for them when they arrived at their door and then when the bill was sent, they replied stating that they never received them – still makes my blood boil as it was a very fancy restaurant on the North Shore of Sydney, and we knew the mark-up applied to those bottles.

We should be looking at chasing up more restaurants and wine bars for wine placements, but unless you are promoted by the establishment or are placed as Homer Simpson once said so accurately “I will have the second cheapest wine bottle on the list”, it very rarely goes past a case or two for a lot of effort.  There are many Sommeliers along the way that I have met and thought they were really good sticks – Foni Pollitt at Mayfair Lane in West Perth and Stuart Knox at Fix in Sydney are two that immediately spring to mind – and the work that many Sommeliers do can be awesome as many run WSET wine courses as well as tastings and other wine promotion type activities.

But.

Are Sommeliers still a “critical line item” in this world of instant connectivity and YouTube?  I understand the need for a curated wine list and ensuring bases are covered and so on, but do you need to have “wine” staff to achieve this aim?  Wine lists are not as scary as they once were and a couple of google searches and/or QR codes scanned, and most patrons would get as much information as the staff could provide.  Many restaurants are also becoming reliant on a single supplier or distributor, thus checking their wine list is a version of déjà vu from another restaurant wine list just viewed a while back.

The top end of the Sommelier industry itself is also mired in controversy with the cheating at Sommelier exams and sexual harassment of female staff, especially within the American Association.  A recent article written by Robert Joseph (here) about the latest Association de la Sommellerie Internationale annual general meeting touched on the problems facing the group, but reading through it, it felt like the dinosaurs were wondering what that light flashing across the sky could be.  Like a form of kismet, the destiny of this tiny subset within our industry may be reduced to a few performances for the most elite in the thinnest of airs, with the balance owning or operating wine bars away from the white tablecloths and clinking of cutlery.

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