Modestly priced wines pour into U.S. from Australia

Bearing catchy names like Yellow Tail, Blue Tongue and Devil’s Lair Fifth Leg, the “charming and approachable” challengers are gaining a place on U.S. dinner tables with disarming efficiency.

Australian wines, once a bit player in the contest to please American palates, represent a growing threat in what industry experts view as the world’s most lucrative market. Last year, they shipped 20 million cases to the United States, up from 1.3 million cases 10 years earlier.

“Australia has penetrated the heart of the traditional mass premium price range,” said Jon Fredrikson, president of a San Francisco Bay Area research firm. “The wines represent great value, the flavors . . . fruity, tend to appeal to the American palate.”

Australia’s producers have so far focused on generating sales in the mass premium price range — about $6 to $9 — and had captured 30 percent of sales in that bracket by December, according to ACNielsen research. U.S. winemakers held 49 percent of sales in those price points.

The Aussies’ success is no accident. Heavily reliant upon exports, they use popular images of Australia as friendly, untamed and a little outlandish to market their wine. And, the country’s wine industry and government spend about $26 million a year researching flavors and other factors that influence buying decisions.

The United States, by comparison, invests about $14 million in such studies, said Karen Ross, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

What have Australia’s research found? It seems that U.S. consumers, brought up on sugary soft drinks, are more likely to buy wine with lush, fruit-forward flavors.

Tapping into this preference, Australia has managed to quickly become the source of 28 percent of all wine imported to the United States. Shiraz and other varietals from the land of kangaroos and boomerangs fill 7 percent of U.S. wine glasses.

Sometimes it’s hard to be tough against such an amicable foe. The image of Australia being a friendly place has helped the wine industry’s popularity, said Jan Stuebing, director of the Australian Wine Bureau.

“The U.S. market is not an easy market,” Stuebing said, but Australian winemakers have seemed to crack the formula by not complicating the process.

“They want wine to be enjoyed by a wide audience in a nonintimidating fashion,” Stuebing said.

Some California winemakers have jumped on the idea and are marketing wines based on California’s reputation as a sunny, laid-back state with great wine.

Australia has wine flavor profiles similar to those of California. But with more room for grape growing and cheaper production costs, Australia can produce a lot of good wine at cut-rate prices.

“California cannot rest on its laurels solely because it’s California,” said Mick Schroeter, a vice president and winemaker at Geyser Peak in Alexander Valley.

It’s about being smarter in production, trying to trim costs but improving quality at the same time, said Schroeter, who worked as a red wine maker for 15 years at Penfolds, in Barossa Valley, Australia, before coming to California.

So strong is the impact, that the California wine industry is revamping its way of business.

“We now have wines that are better in quality for the same or less money,” said Mark Chandler, executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission. “This has forced the California wine industry to respond and become more competitive.”

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