Brian's Musings

Grapes rotting on vines; billions of bottles’ worth of wine sitting in tank farms, wanted by no one. Australia’s inland bulk wine producers are in crisis, causing an image problem for the wider industry.

BRIAN CROSER claps a heavy hand on my shoulder and drags me in from the cold.

 » Read more about: CRUSHED HOPES  »

After 55 vintages in Australia, you might surmise I have seen it all. Hot years, cold years, wet years, drought years, big crops, small crops, no crop. In 1983, the “Ash Wednesday” fire year, the fire was followed by a tropical deluge. We harvested no grapes from Clare or Coonawarra. Piccadilly Valley was not yet in production.

 » Read more about: Tapanappa 2024 Vintage Report  »

Brian Croser sends a first-hand report from Tapanappa in the Piccadilly Valley on a small but promising harvest. Above, Croser scrutinizes the Chardonnay grapes in the Tiers Vineyard.

We all know what comes in small packages, but can they be a little bigger than the 2024 vintage from our Tiers,

 » Read more about: South Australia 2024 – a view from the Adelaide Hills  »

RESPECTED AUSTRALIAN WINEMAKERS BRIAN CROSER AND LOUISA ROSE SHARE THEIR VIEWS ON THE WORLD-RENOWNED AUSTRALIAN WINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE BEING BLED DRY BECAUSE OF EVER-DECREASING FUNDING.

The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) is 70 years old next year.

One of us has been admiring and utilising their work for more than 50 of those 70 years,

 » Read more about: World-renowned AWRI being bled dry  »

by Brian Croser

The Australian wine industry has squandered three decades being confused about the differences between premium and non-premium wine and where the opportunities really lie. Brian Croser reports. 

Imagine the world without America and China. I don’t mean their geographic absence, rather imagine after the Australian wine industry’s 1990s growth spurt,

 » Read more about: THE FUTURE IS ‘FINE’  »

On 11 April we were yet to begin the harvest for all but a young block of Foggy Hill Pinot Noir that was harvested on 5 April.

In an average year we would have harvested all three of our vineyards by April 11.

After 54 diverse vintages, none the same as any other,

 » Read more about: 2023 Diary of a Vintage  »

Brian Croser of Tapanappa provides the sequel to his report on the nerve-wracking 2023 harvest. Above, the vines at Tapanappa are finally free of the netting that kept the berries safe from the birds.

It is 18 April, a gloriously typical autumn day in the Adelaide Hills.

 » Read more about: South Australia 2023 – a sequel  »

 » Read more about: South Australia 2023 – a first-hand view  »

James Halliday’s Top 100 wines for 2022 have been revealed! 

We are thrilled to announce our 2019 Foggy Hill Vineyard DEFINITUS Pinot Noir has made the prestigious list.

2019 Foggy Hill DEFINITUS Pinot Noir

Bramble, briar and black tea aromatics set the scene for a very complex pinot that needs encouragement to release its perfume.

 » Read more about: 2019 Foggy Hill Vineyard DEFINITUS Pinot Noir has made James Halliday’s TOP 100  »

WBM, September/October 2022 Issue

SAM (Southern Annular Modulation) is determined to go south again as the Australian spring arrives. In southeastern Australia that means another summer of cool south-easterly winds, generated deep in the Great Southern Ocean, that arrive on our southern shores at the top of the counterclockwise revolving high-pressure systems as they transit from west to east.

 » Read more about: And it was all yellow… and green and orange and red and purple  »

WBM, July / August Issue

The word sustainability buzzes around the internet incessantly and now rings in my ears, replacing that persistent Leonard Cohen anthem as my new ‘ear worm’. I am about to tread in a place that better angels would avoid, but there are some things about sustainability that need saying.

First and foremost,

 » Read more about: Let’s Not Forget Economic Sustainability  »

Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard, Photo by Jodie Pilgrim

A distinctive attribute of fine wine is that it endures, reposes in cellars often long after the maker and collector have sipped their last, to re-emerge at family celebrations or in more mercenary circumstance at fine wine auction.

At the auction of a bottle of aged wine,

 » Read more about: TRUE TO STORY  »

Tapanappa, Brian Croser

Timing is the well-spring of opportunity. 

My generation, the “Boomers” have enjoyed pretty good timing and I know I have, and I am grateful. 

My career as a vigneron began with my training in the later 60’s and early 70’s, paralleling the birth and development of the modern Australian wine matrix.

 » Read more about: Timing is the well spring of opportunity  »

The CSIRO has sort of announced the redundancy of at least three senior scientists, experts and researchers in grapevine genetics and physiology at the Adelaide CSIRO offices located at the Waite Research Institute.

A further number of technical support staff and rumour has it more to come, have been or will be laid off in parallel.

 » Read more about: The Urgency Of Levy Reform  »

Since 1929, a levy derived support system for the Australian wine community’s research and promotional programs has generated very large benefits.

The core rationale for these levies is that they are used to address market failure, those activities that have identifiable benefits for the whole grape and wine community and the nation, that otherwise would not be funded by enterprise.

 » Read more about: Levy Reform In The Australian Wine Community  »

Vignerons the world over, live with the caprice of nature, the weather God in particular.

The optimal result of a bountiful crop of outstanding quality grapes is a small sliver on the roulette wheel of weather dictated outcomes through a seven-month growing season, regardless of provenance.

More often the combination of a small crop of outstanding quality creates a consumer demand that can’t be met,

 » Read more about: THANK YOU SAM  »

Image of the current harvest at Foggy Hill Vineyard by Jodie Pilgrim.

It’s 3 pm on the first of April, April Fool’s Day, but nobody anywhere in the world is in prankish mode.

In the Piccadilly Valley in the centre of the Adelaide Hills it is 17 °C, the maximum temperature of this mid-autumn day.

 » Read more about: South Australia’s cool 2022 vintage  »

Veteran of 52 vintages and the varying weather they have exhibited, Brian Croser, of Tapanappa in South Australia, wonders whether they’re in for a cooler period.

For the avoidance of doubt and of a fusillade of online scorn and abuse, what I am about to describe is the beginning of a cool vintage against a backdrop of inexorably increasing temperatures.

 » Read more about: A century of South Australian climate change  »

As a pioneer of Australian cool-climate viticulture, Brian Croser was the first to plant Chardonnay in the Adelaide Hills – now his latest vintage is out.

Few people can claim pioneer status in the 21st century but Brian Croser can: he was the first to plant vines in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills in 1979 – in the Tiers Vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley.

 » Read more about: Tapanappa Unveils Latest Chardonnay Vintage  »

Listen to Brian’s live podcast “Cork Talk” with Tim Atkins MW on Brian’s thoughts about Australian fine wine and the future of fine wine world:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XSErrxRTCziVWJziLbmjw?si=57ErAnmzQRmdN3oUGtzt-A

 » Read more about: Live podcast “Cork Talk” with Tim Atkins MW  »

On September 30 I retire by decree, as a director of Wine Australia after an eventful seven years including three quite different iterations of the board and two chairpersons, not counting an interim chairperson.

I am the only soldier left standing from the initial board of Wine Australia, beginning as an amalgamation of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and the Australian Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation in July 2014.

 » Read more about: Croser reflects on 40 years of industry politics – and nothing much has changed!  »

We can never know About tomorrow Still we have to choose Which way to go

You and I are standing At the crossroads Darling, there is one thing You should know

When I joined a wine publishing house 21 years ago my boss Paul Clancy gave me his old tuxedo for all those dinners he didn’t want to go to,

 » Read more about: The Life of Brian  »

Describing himself humbly as a ‘single vineyard vigneron’, others in the wine trade might call Tapanappa’s Brian Croser ‘a vine and wine visionary’ or ‘innovator’. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years he has arguably done more than anyone to shape the Australian wine industry – a true trailblazer, mentor and industry leader.

 » Read more about: The New Normal: Winemaking in the COVID environment  »

The Tiers Vineyard Old Block in the Piccadilly Valley is 41 years old, planted in 1980.

The oldest planting at The Tiers was planted the year before in 1979 and was pulled out in 2003 to make way for the new Tiers 1.5m planting of Dijon clones on rootstock at the high vine density of 1.5 metres between rows and 1.5m metres between vines in the row (4,444 vines/hectare).

 » Read more about: Tiers Has A Hip Replacement  »