Shiraz Loses Shine!
A piece in Australia's The Age notes that:

Shiraz represents not only this country's main wine export - some believe it drives the whole export bandwagon. Producers wishing to sell their chardonnay or sauvignon blanc must have a shiraz - preferably something old-vine and something with non-irrigated, bushvine Barossa Valley fruit - if they want to do really well.

The trouble is, there's more young-vine shiraz about than old-vine - shiraz production was up 43 per cent this 2004 vintage - and this growing tidal wave of wine is being sold at mostly fighting supermarket prices, not super-premium Grange prices. Shiraz now represents a quarter of Australia's national wine production. MORE>


Some of the comments seem a bit premature to me, especially as I'm not sure we've arrived that the point noted in the last part of the article (viz. "Is the world shiraz-ed out?" The answer is "not yet, but keep providing drinkers with less choice in style and suddenly cabernet sauvignon will begin to look more and more appealing".)