For a start, there are a number of factors that influence your drinking habits that don't apply when you live in Bowen. I'm sure if I lived somewhere with ready access to a Dan Murphy's, a decent independent wine retailer, or a number of eateries and watering holes with interesting by the glass wine lists my drinking habits would be different. For a start I'd be able to go looking for some of those 200 European Wines for $50 and under.
Access to a decent independent wine retailer and a range of eateries with reasonable corkage and a BYO wine only policy would provide an excuse to pick up some special bottles to go with an interesting dinner.
At some point in the indeterminate future I'll probably have to relocate, so those factors may come into play if and when I do, but for the time being I'm ensconced in the Little House of Concrete, so I'm stuck with the current situation.
As stated, there are all sorts of factors that influence your drinking habits. It's quite possible to do very nicely thank-you by buying nothing but cleanskins from Dan Murphy's. I know people who operate like that, and they're getting something reasonable at the same time as they get the chance to direct the money they save into other avenues.
If we were in the habit of heading to Townsville and/or Mackay I could possibly do the same. Alternatively I could make the odd phone call to somewhere like Boccaccio Cellars where the prices on unlabelled cleanskins look very attractive indeed.
There's a slight problem with that sort of thing. I like to know what I’m drinking, and I like to be able to compare and contrast by name and vintage. Sure, I like Clare Riesling, and I noted what’s probably a pretty fair one over there under the $10 mark, but I also like to know where it comes from. If I get a phone call from, say, Jim Barry offering me a box of substantially discounted Watervale I’m in like a shot. No problem.
That also means the winery gets the full whatever I pay for the wine, rather than the relative pittance they’ve had to the middle man, who’s going to add on his margin before it goes out the door at $8 or whatever.
Now, I want something interesting to drink at the end of the day, and I want it every day. I don't necessarily want it to be something special. It'd be nice to have the financial and cellaring wherewithal to allow you to drink a properly cellared something from Langton's 2010 Classification of Australian Wine every night of the week, but I don't have it and there's plenty of interesting drinking further down the pecking order.
For me, the best way of getting that something interesting is to track down some decent wineries with an interesting range of good quality wines and buy directly from there.
So I do. It'd be nice to be able to add a few extra names to the existing list, but there's only so much an individual can do. If we had wine drinking visitors turning up on the doorstep more often, or a number of good BYO wine only eateries to head off to with friends that might be different.
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