Brian Croser has been in the Australian wine industry for over 50 years. He helped build it. Now he’s watching it struggle — and he’s got a lot to say about why. This is a big conversation. Brian sits down with Brendan Carter from Bottleshock to talk about what’s actually going wrong, what the industry refuses to confront, and where the opportunity is if people are willing to look at it honestly.
The core argument: Australian wine is world-class. The top echelon from $20 a bottle up can compete with any country on earth. But we’re nowhere near achieving our share of global premium wine markets, and the reasons are as much about politics and emotion as they are about economics.
They get into:
→ The false wars — inland vs cool climate, grape grower vs winemaker — and why they’ve been holding the industry back for 50 years
→ Why Australian vineyards are “sticky” — we tolerate losses far longer than California or anywhere else, and what that means for oversupply
→ Four years of inventory sitting in cellars across the country
→ Why government intervention is the kiss of death and market forces have to drive the correction
→ The Italian parallel — what happened after their postwar oversupply crisis, the introduction of the DOC system in 1963, and what Australia can and can’t learn from it
→ China’s shift from mimicking Bordeaux to doubling down on Marselan and Chinese identity — and why that matters for us
→ The Southeast Asian opportunity — $8 a litre in Asia vs $3 in traditional markets, a growing middle class, and the natural fit between Australian wine styles and Asian cuisine
→ Why Australian wine’s best distribution channel might not be Australian restaurants but Southeast Asian ones
→ The case for a value-based levy instead of a volume-based one — and why the current system lets the spending power of industry funding depreciate year after year
→ What the AWRI has achieved globally — smoke taint, Brettanomyces, screw cap adoption — and why we need to refocus R&D on premium grape quality rather than capacity building
→ The immigration argument nobody in wine is making — 51.5% of Australians are either foreign born or have a foreign-born parent, and what that means for the food and wine culture we’re building
→ Why a smaller, more premium, more focused industry is where we’re headed — and why that might be a good thing Brian also talks about the speech he’s about to give at the very last University of Adelaide graduation ceremony — 150 years from the university’s first lectures. This conversation is essential viewing for anyone who works in, sells, or cares about the future of Australian wine.