Australia wins Gold at 2017 Organic Wine Awards

Australia has won nine Gold medals at the 8th Organic Wine Awards.

The awards, held annually in Germany, saw Tamburlaine Organic Wines, Stefano Lubiana Wines and Angove Family Winemakers proudly win three gold and one silver each!

The winning wines are as listed below:

The awards set a new attendance record, with the judging panel having a tough job tasting nearly 1100 wines from 25 countries in just four days.

Senior winemaker at Tamburlaine Organic Wines Aaron Mercer told Central Western Daily that he was proud of the results including his riesling winning silver in Germany, which he said was the “home of riesling”.

“We only submitted four wines and each won a medal and three golds,” Mercer said.

Tamburlaine Wines’ executive director Jonathan Scott explained that the winery needed to form relationships with some Orange growers to help meet demand for organic wine.

“We can’t just buy fruit off the market, we have to buy specific fruit and we’re working with growers in the Orange region,” Scott said.

“Traditional viticulture uses systemic chemicals, they work very effectively but they get into the plant and it can be that you end up with minute residues which can dull the flavour.”

Australia’s growing market for organic wines

The growing trend in the community for products that are seen as environmentally friendly means the production and export of organic and biodynamic wines in Australia has been rapidly growing.

NAB Business Research and Insights has stated that organic wine grape production in Australia increased 120% between 2011 and 2014 alone, with those grapes reaching an Australian value of $117m in 2016.

Wine Australia states that certified organic or biodynamic wines exported from Australia are a ‘niche but growing export segment that was worth $12 million in 2016’.

While this only accounted for 250,000 cases of organic wine in in 2016, this small part of the market still grew by 37% in value and 50% in volume in 2016 compared with the previous 12 months, and has grown over the past four years at a compound average growth rate of over 50% in both value and volume.

The main market for Australian exported organic and biodynamic wines is Sweden, which accounted for 31%. Exports of organic wines to Sweden grew by a whopping 58% in value in 2016. The UK was ranked second with 24% of exports, followed by Canada (8%), the US (8%) and China (7%).