With the end of the year looming, we take a look back at how 2020 has treated the global drinks industry. Here are just-drinks’ ten most-read articles written by our wine experts, led by category commentator Chris Losh, over the last 12 months.
10. Will Australia’s bushfires bring on wine industry burn-out?
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This year started with Australia dominating the news headlines. In February, Chris considered what the country’s bushfire crisis had done – and would continue to do – to Australia’s wine producers.
9. COVID’s acceleration of technological solutions in the vineyard
With necessity long being the mother of invention, the COVID crisis has brought outlying technology into the mainstream, and at speed. Chris has seen similar leaps and bounds at the production end of the wine industry.
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8. Why France’s wine industry should look beyond COVID-19 for the source of its woes
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By GlobalDataThe wine producers in France found themselves in a bit of a hole this year – but then, so was every other wine company around the world. Unlike their foreign peers, however, the French could’t lay the blame squarely at a pandemic’s door. Indeed, as Chris discovered, the guilty party was much closer to home.
7. Tariffs risk reversing Australian wine’s hard-won China wins
In late-November, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) advanced an on-going anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine with the announcement that bottled imports from the country would face preliminary tariffs of as much as 217%. Comments from the Australian wine industry that this was a disappointing outcome were, to say the least, an understatement.
6. South Africa’s wine industry is on its knees and it’s not just thanks to COVID
South Africa’s wine producers have been hard-done-by this year, more so than any other wine-producing nation. As Chris explained, the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has become a case study in ‘How not to support your high-profile industries’.
5. Why black lives in wine should matter more than ever before
More than any other drinks category, wine has long had an issue with diversity. For Chris, who has been reporting on wine for a long time, the Black Lives Matter movement engendered a strong sense of deja-vu.
4. Treasury Wine Estates’ Penfolds demerger – Seriously, what is the point?
In announcing the initial conclusions of a recent business review today, Treasury Wine Estates prompted the very simple question: Why? A statement to the Australian Stock Exchange in April featured the following line from the group: “Treasury Wine Estates … announced its intention to consider a demerger of the Penfolds business … into a separate company.” Take another look at it. Did you trip up at the same point that I did? “… announced its intention to consider…”
3. Why has wine failed to educate the consumer on price? Ask Jacob’s Creek
As former Diageo CEO Paul Walsh once told just-drinks: “They say, in wine, a fool and his money are easily parted.” Unfortunately, for the wine category, the consumer is no fool. Chris looked at Pernod Ricard’s attempts to move Jacob’s Creek up the value chain and found a brand struggling under the weight of consumer perception.
2. How is the coronavirus hitting the wine industry?
Every industry has been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic this year. In wine, the sales channels were battered while production also had battles to fight. In April, Chris surveyed the wreckage.
1. Why the wine industry will struggle to balance supply with demand post-COVID
As the grape harvest hit its peak in the northern hemisphere in September, Chris surveyed the devastation wreaked by COVID-19 and asked: Just what are we going to do with all our wine?
Click here for all of just-drinks’ reviews of 2020
