Hitching a lift up Jacob's ladder

By SIMON HENDERY

Australia's Orlando Wyndham exports almost twice as many bottles of its flagship Jacob's Creek wine as are sent overseas by the entire New Zealand wine industry.

But many of the secrets of wine marketing success are the same on both sides of the Tasman, says Orlando Wyndham chief winemaker Philip Laffer.

Jacob's Creek is Australia's biggest-selling wine label internationally.

New Zealanders drink about 200,000 cases of the 5 million cases of the wine sold around the world each year.

By comparison, New Zealand exports about 2.7 million cases of wine each year.

In Auckland this week, Laffer said some of the keys to the success of Jacob's Creek haD been its clean, simple packaging, unpretentious product-focused advertising and a commitment to a high-quality product relative to price.

"You also have to be careful in terms of where you position yourself. If you're bottom-end you'll probably always stay bottom-end. If you're too far up the scale you immediately lose your opportunities in terms of customer base."

New Zealand market leader Montana had followed a similar philosophy, Laffer said.

New Zealand's smaller producers could afford to focus more on the upper end of the market because buyers would pay a premium for the wines this country produces best.

* New Zealand has been judged Wine Region of the Year by US publication Wine Enthusiast Magazine. Winegrowers chief executive officer Philip Gregan said the award would help boost New Zealand sales into the US, which is New Zealand's second-largest wine market, behind Britain.