2006TheBobbyDazzlerShiraz

Sans Wine is nature’s most complex beverage and delivers more flavour than any other drink known to mankind, yet this is not enough to entice many away from one dimensional, sugar-filled drinks like R.T.D.’s (Ready To Drinks) and other pre mixed concoctions. Thankfully, the Australian Wine Industry has repeatedly risen to the challenge. Significant innovations began in 1956 with the release of Orlando’s ‘Barossa Pearlâ€?Sparkling Wine, marketed to a predominately beer drinking public. What very soon became apparent was that many people who had never thought of themselves as wine drinkers, let alone sparkling wine drinkers for that matter, were ready for Barossa Pearl and its subsequent cousins, ‘Sparkling Star Wineâ€? ‘Cold Duckâ€?and ‘Blue Raphsodyâ€? Barossa Pearl, (now a forgotten Australian legend), first sold in the millions and then in the tens of millions until finally being superseded by changes in public tastes that the product itself had generated. The great legacy of Barossa Pearl to the Australian wine industry, was that it introduced a hitherto untapped mass market to the pleasures of civilised wine drinking, at the same time cultivating a new wine and food culture. The tradition of innovation was continued into the 1980’s by winemakers like Stephen Hickinbotham. His new red wine of broad appeal called ‘Cab Macâ€?was fresh and Beaujolais like, being made by allowing whole berries to macerate prior to fermentation in a process known as ‘maceration carboniqueâ€?