Yenda is a town in The Riverina, a large irrigated agricultural area in New South Wales close to the confluence of the Murray and Murrmbidgee rivers, of only 1,503 people (as of the census in 2011). It is notable as the location of the headquarters of Australia's largest family-owned wine company which produces an almost unimaginable quantity of wine, sold under a number of well-known brands; Casella Family Brands.
Yellow Tail claims to be the 'most loved brand in the world' for the third year in a a row and has been producing wine since 2001. By 2013 they had bottled 1 billion bottles, using the bottling plant installed in 2006 that is capable of filling 36,000 bottles per hour! Yellow Tail is available in over 50 countries and represents the biggest wine export from Australia.
We know from the statistics above that this is a wine deliberately aimed at the mass market. It is cheap. I paid £7, but had I had a Tesco Clubcard I could have saved another £1. No loyalty card required to pay the same at Asda.
But is it any good?
I have typed before that I try to keep an open mind and I admit to having been a bit sniffy about Yellow Tail in the past. So this week I am again testing my prejudices.
One of the attractions of wine, according to many of the people who comment on such things, is that the consumer somehow enjoys the 'sense of place' that you get from drinking a good wine. Some would even say that it is this sense of place that makes a wine good.
I have never been entirely comfortable that I know what a sense of place could possibly taste like. I have come to understand it as an abstract notion meaning the wine / beer / cheese / pork pie in question has something about it that similar products from elsewhere don't have. With beer, cheese and pork pies, all of which I enjoy very much, it is a much simpler decision to make; I like / I don't like this particular pie, piece of cheese, pint of beer. But with wine, because of the potentially extended lifespan of the product throughout which the characteristics of the product may change, it becomes a little trickier. A whole world of analysis and subsequent opinion has grown up across the world of wine. Magazines, books, websites, TV shows and even a plethora of partly informed blogs such as this one lend support to the notion that simply opening and drinking a bottle of wine the consumer isn't putting in enough effort to decide on its merits. S/he should be looking for more.
In this instance it could be argued that the wine doesn't have a sense of place. There are no faults in the wine. It is easy to drink, tastes clean and fruity, is lively and acidic without being tart or sharp, has an obvious sweetness and is inexpensive. It is rather one-dimensional, having no complexity, it is quite light and doesn't leave a lasting impression. If you put in the analytical effort to discover its hidden depths you will most likely be disappointed, as there aren't any.
But. Wait a minute. What is the place this wine comes from like? It is a vast, irrigated region producing very high volumes of acceptable quality foods a drinks. It has been made in a factory-style winery capable of producing more wine than it is feasible to imagine and that, in my opinion, is exactly what it tastes of.
My conclusion is this. I must be honest in my assessment and consider the merits of every wine I try in the context of what it claims to be. There is no point at all in declaring this wine is not as good as the Chablis I recently drank, costing £19.99 a bottle, because it isn't trying to convince me that it is! The Yellow Tail marketing says it is '...a wine brand that is easy to drink and delivers consistent quality, taste and value' and I think it does that. I don't particularly like it, but if I buy it again I am sure I will know what to expect.
Any way you choose to look at it Casella Family Brands is a success story. If you don't like Yellow Tail, try Peter Lehmann from the Barossa Valley, Morris of Rutherglen or Bailey's of Glenrowan in Victoria as they, and others, are all now in the family. Not bad for a a Sicilian couple who emigrated to Australia in 1957, bought a farm in 1965 and started making wine in 1969. That's a little over 50 years to become Australia's largest wine exporter, so they must be doing something right.
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