Buying Australian wine is very confusing..........so I don't.

I'll come straight out and say it.  I have absolutely no idea what most wines companies are saying when they describe their products in their marketing collateral.

I make this statement because I consider us a perfect target-market for the wine industry.  Educated young professionals, double income no kids (DINKS), working hard to maintain a certain lifestyle that includes having a few nice drinks.

Over the last few months I've been looking at how the wine industry promotes it's products and it comes across as being very 'in-house' - as if everyone is talking amongst themselves.  As a potential consumer I feel on the outer for not understanding wine making chemistry and edaphology.

So I said to myself "self, who are the top selling wines in Australia and is it easy too see why people are buying them."

The best I could find was a 2010 report on AC Nielson sales data for the Australian wine industry that listed the top 25 selling wines in Australia.

Yellowglen made number 1 and had 4 wines in the top 25.

5 of the 25 were cleanskins?!

5 were from overseas - 4 from NZ and 1 from Italy.

The ol' Passion Pop made number 8 on the list - what the?

I started going through some of the web sites.  Wow, what an experience.  Marketing and branding 100% dedicated to selling me something.  And all they've done is worked out what I want to get out of life and sold it back to me in a bottle.

I kid you not - I was half-way through the Yellowglen web site and I caught myself thinking "Hmmm, I might get a few of these for my wife, she'll love them."  I've never looked at Yellowglen in my life and in 10 minutes they had converted me to a purchase.

A quote from the report - his words not mine: 'Nothing sums up more how so much of the wine trade is divorced from the reality of what customers want.'

How can cleanskins, New Zealanders and Passion Pop be our most popular wines?

So who is getting my share-of-wallet on drinks?  Beer and cider winning hands down.  Cider is starting to overtake beer very quickly.