When I was young (in the 1970s), young people in Australia did not drink wine. They drank beer — wine was snobby / snooty / elitist, and the cheap stuff was undrinkable. These days, wine is quite respectable, and Australia is a leading global wine producer (and quite proud of having some of the oldest grapevines in the world). This is a pretty serious change. I am not going to try to explain this change, but it does seem to me that a number of relevant factors have been involved, and I will look at some of them here.
The archetypal, cliché, Australian male of the 1960s and 1970s, often referred to as Norm, was like this (Let sleeping Norms lie):
He slumped on a lounge chair, gazing at the TV over an enormous beer gut, tinny [beer can] in his hand ... He was an unapologetic middle-aged slob, who resisted all entreaties to exercise. “I’m an all-round sportsman,” said Norm, but he was referring to the games he watched on the small screen, not to actually playing sport.This situation got so bad that, in the mid 1970s, a cartoon character Norm (pictured above) became the anti-hero of TV ads for an official government Life. Be In It health campaign. He drew laughs, for sure, but also embarrassed gasps of recognition across Australia.
This, then, was one of the major changes — being a beer slob was no longer an aspirational lifestyle. The re-evaluation of what a healthy lifestyle actually meant, in practice, created a climate that the wine industry could (and did) take advantage of. After all, one drinks less wine than beer, and not usually while slumped in front of a TV. So, wine was presented as part of the new aspirational lifestyle.
Another background change was the recognition of cultural diversity. Other countries have lots of migrants, sure, but Australia is in a very different situation because of the large percentage of them (as opposed to a large number). According to government statistics, at least 40% of the people are either migrants themselves (c. 25%) or their parents were. That is, the “language of the home” (as opposed to school or workplace) may not be English (or the Australian version of it). So, that cliché “ocker” Australian image (eg. Crocodile Dundee), so beloved of the foreign media, misses a lot of the reality. This blatantly obvious ethnic situation was ignored under the previous British cultural dominance. *
I am happy to say that my generation was the one that started to change this. We Baby Boomers were the first ones to explicitly have a government minister for “ethnic affairs” (the flamboyant and unforgettable Al Grasby), and (much later) one for “Aboriginal affairs”. Things have continued to improve since those formal recognitions of the state of affairs in multi-cultural Australia. More recently, of course, there has been interest in other forms of cultural diversity, such as gender and sexual equality, in addition to this ethnic diversity.
For the wine industry, the recognition of ethnic diversity was a veritable boon, because many of these migrants came from countries where wine was a normal part of the culture. The importance of this cannot be overstated (as shown in the graph below). Once you recognize the people, you also recognize their cultural heritage, and this then becomes part of your own contemporary culture. Drinking wine was no longer snobby, but was instead now perfectly normal; and the subsequent TV and print ads produced by the wine industry reflected this.
Naturally, Australian Millennials are rightly carrying on the work. It does seem possible, to me, that this may have something to do with the recent observation that these Millennials are apparently also drinking wine (Australian), unlike their contemporaries elsewhere (Australian millennials drive wine consumption post-pandemic).
There is, of course, no purpose to changing the culture if there is no-one to lead the way towards something new, in this case wine. This is where Len Evans comes in. The adjective always used to describe him was “ebullient”, and it fitted perfectly. Len was your classic “man of the people”, and he loved to communicate the enjoyment of wine. I have described his many, many (lasting) effects on the Australian wine industry in my post on The Len Evans effect, so I won't repeat them here.
Of course, this is not to say that there was no-one else involved, because there were plenty of other prominent people in the Australian wine industry. The most notable of these was James Halliday, especially through his roles as writer and educator. His approach was more up-market than that of Len Evans, but no less important, once a person got started on their interest in wine. His James Halliday’s Australian Wine Guide (1986) was invaluable to me.
Rear L to R - James Halliday, Peter Hoj, Philip Laffer; front L to R - Len Evans, Hazel Murphy and Wolf Blass.
Lastly, we should not overlook the inestimable concept of bag-in-box wine, or Cask Wine, as Australians know it. This classic wine presentation had its 50th birthday quite a few years ago (The wine cask turns 50), having been pioneered in Australia in 1965 (1965 — Cask wine invented).
There are many aspects to this practical invention, from storing open wine without spoilage, to portability for parties, to its eminent recyclability (being a plastic bladder in a cardboard box, not glass) (The wine innovation that deserves more attention). There is much current discussion of putting wine in cans, instead of bottles (Wine in cans in 2020), but this long-standing method should have just as much appeal for environmentally conscientious wine consumers (Wine packaging in the modern world is not (yet) sustainable).
The point here is that Millennials have made it clear that they care about their future, and the wine industry must join them. Innovative packaging helped change Australian drinking culture back in the 1970s, and there is a need for this to happen again now, globally. The best stuff comes in bottles, we all know that! You don’t lay down a cellar full of “Chateau Cardboard” (as we also called it in Australia); and, so, the bag-in-box packaging has not been used for the best-quality wines. Presumably the same will be true for cans — cellaring “a 12-pack of wine” will not be the same as laying down “a case of wine”. This must change; and it may already be doing so (Is a boxed wine revolution on its way?).
The advertisers can do it. Back in the 1970s, the most successful Australian brand of bladder wines, Orlando Coolabah (launched in 1973), had a series of television ads based on the slogan: “Where do you hide your Coolabah?” (see Australia Remember When). It showed examples such as hiding your wine cask behind a large pot plant, so that the other party-goers could not get their hands on the good stuff. This is still firmly embedded in my memory, over 50 years later, so there is no reason to expect current advertisers to be any less successful.
Conclusion
This may all sound pretty extreme, since I have covered a change in an entire national culture, with many aspects to it. However, isn't that what the wine industry is currently faced with? If Millennials are not happy with the current wine culture, then the future must also involve a cultural change, one way or the other (The wine industry is asking the wrong question).
* In Australia, the most murky past is therefore not being a migrant! My own murkiness thereby comes from the fact that 7 of my 8 great grandparents were all born in Australia, which makes me pretty rare. The 8th one, by the way, was the Scotsman who brought in the Morrison name. Through one lineage, I can actually trace myself back to the Second Fleet, which was the second lot of British boats to invade, in 1790. Should I be proud of this?
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