Trouble at vineyard in Australia, as the stampede to open hundreds of wineries in the 80s, when the capacity was already cooked, has come home to roost in a bevvy of mixed metaphors. Oz has arrived at the point of unsustainability and those wineries not built on huge marketing spend but on a kangaroo lable and an Aborigine-sounding name, are drubbing up vines like fury. Livings must be made. When you consider that Sicily produces more wine than the whole of Australia, you begin to understand just how darned good the Aussies have been at creating their New World brand (and how bad the Sicilians have been), but that marketing is no substitute for logistical economics.

And so, just as the French ended up swimming in their own wine lake, the Australians have been doing some back stroke of their own – ironic that they should have followed the French to the bitter end.

You can email jus@poggioargentiera.com to order.

It’s never been a simple wine , either conceptually or in the making, but we haven’t wobbled from the original idea of a tremendously powerful V8 red, that purrs like a sleeping lion. Quite a lot to fit into a bottle, but we had a shot anyway. The blend of Alicante, a grape we have loved from the start for it’s colour and complexity, Shiraz and Cab.  franc, for it’s filet steak qualities, really does pack a punch.

So thank you, panel of judges, we are chuffed.

Now all we need is to win the Biggest Conker Competition at school…..

The Somerset Wine Tasting Group tasting Poggio Argentiera wines

Once again, we understood the relative obscurity of Maremma outside Italy, but, 50 down, couple of billion ro so to go. It’s a start. And again, little old Lalicante, ooooh don’tcha just love it, gave everyone something memorable with which to round off the evening.

Justine of Poggio Argentiera and Hugh of Somerset Wine Tasting Group

Thanks to Hugh,Bill and all who made us so welcome.

Now then, what mean we by ‘pub’? Brewery chain with 2-for-10 meals, swirly carpet and Kidz Zone Fun Menu? Gastropub with bleached pine tables, seared tuna and frightening brushed chrome light fittings in the loo? Blackboard-infested karaoke/quiz/Sky Sports/Abba tribute band/Tibetan yak pie nite gaff with 2 customers (one deceased).

No, my Lovelies, we mean The George. Even the name of it is as it should be. The George Inn at Croscombe, between Wells and Shepton Mallet, run with love and aplomb by Peter and Veryan Graham. Stone floor, incumbent dog, roaring fires, good beer, local people, big chunks of steak in a pie. THIS is where Tolkien would have sent Hobbits.

Just had a super evening there, where we presented a couple of our wines to some of Peter’s B&B-owning friends,along with Ed Hay from Mendip Bottle, who also presented some of his list. A glugging-good time had by all, I think.

Thanks then, to Peter, for being a model publican – friendly, rooted to the local place, people and produce, and safe…safe because, a publican who undertands that his customers want good, really good, food, beer and wine, in a chunky warm room with no muzak, (and a sleepy dog), is a publican who will still be pulling George the Thirst beer long after all the yaks are extinct.

Quality, as a production target and marketing pick ‘n’ mix term, is about to become passe. Illy coffee no longer claim to make ‘quality’ coffee: now it’s ‘perfect’. That’s great, but they’re going to need a particularly deep thesaurus to dig into when Nescafe start with the same claim. We shall all be rushing out to buy Coffee Next to Godliness. Or maybe not, Godliness being so unfashionable in this country at the moment. Better make it a woolly-minded liberal pc coffee instead.

when I was a teeny-tiny marketeer I was spoon-fed Kotler, the staple diet of any 1980’s Marketing baby. I liked it, and even today am just as partial to the Main Man of Marketing as I am to a Farley’s rusk. And as he says today, ”marketing changes“.  Here at Podge Arge, we make wine. We make it for a variety of reasons, not least because we like to , but mostly, let’s be honest, we make wine to sell it so we can pay the mortgage and buy Farley’s rusks to feed the baby with.

And continuing to be honest, we think honesty pays, that honesty, in this ever increasingly transparent world, is something that people want, and that marketing was, is, and will always be , the creation and the selling of a want, for a profit. Before, people made wine because other people liked drinking it and were happy to pay for it. It wasn’t hard to set a price that the drinker was happy to pay, and which created enough profit for the winemaker to live on. Now, the number of producers, wines, prices, qualities, points of sale, blah , blah, are VAST, and the drinker is overwhelmed. Somewhere in his DNA, his wine gene is crying freedom and wanting to get back to the days when he could get a drop of vino from this chap he knew.

So what we are moving towards is selling honesty: kind of , ‘buy a bottle of honesty and get the wine for free’. This is our philosophy. And this, is where we start….if you’re a blogger, or a wine-siter, (or even if you’re not, ’cause we’re not that pedantic), we want you to to help to make an Honest Wine Guide for Poggio Argentiera. We’re asking you to accept delivery (no catch, we pay) of cellar samples, give them a good glug, and tell us what you think, good or bad.  (Actually, you don;’t even have to tell us what you think, but given that getting your opinion is The Point, we’d really like it if you did). Whatever you think, good or bad, will be published in a review section of the site…because we want your honesty to help other people choose what to buy.

At the mo, this is an Italy only thing, but we have Plans, and anyway, if you are beggingly desperate we might be able to sort something out, even if it’s at a later date. Chin chin.