I can remember exactly where and when the Australian wine industry changed forever. It was mid-afternoon on Monday, June 17, 1996, at Darling Harbour in Sydney. Downstairs, in the huge exhibition hall, hundreds of winemakers were pouring chardonnay and shiraz for thousands of punters at the first Wine Australia event. The biggest showcase of its kind ever staged, it had been opened a couple of days earlier with much fanfare by then-prime minister John Howard.
In the conference room upstairs, I was surrounded by dozens of people in business suits, listening to Len Evans, chair of Wine Australia, launch a document called Strategy 2025. It was a bold vision. “By the year 2025, the Australian wine industry will achieve $4.5 billion in annual sales by being the world’s most influential and profitable supplier of branded wines, pioneering wine as a universal first choice lifestyle beverage.”