Barossa notes will follow, but this is an interim note in part to thank all those who have sent samples through for me to look at. Often messages, too: I will be in touch, and the email mountain is slowly being subjected to the forces of keyboard weathering.

Since the request for samples resulted in a little justified teasing, let me just quickly resume the reason for the request, and add a few further comments on the hoary old ‘integrity’ issue.

I’m here principally to research what I hope will be a worthwhile book on Australia as a place to grow good and great wine. Notes on funding are given below.

I will travel as much as I feasibly can during the year. That said, I won’t get to visit every vineyard in Australia. That’s the first reason for asking for samples.

I am chiefly interested in wines which express their vineyard origins, for better or worse. Looking at samples enables me to make a preliminary judgment about that, and to visit those who seem to me furthest down that path. That’s reason number two.

Big Ned: patron saint of wine writers?(Why ‘for better or worse’? Wines which truly express their origins will often seem profoundly odd when they first see the light of day, and will usually be viewed as being neither consumer-friendly nor market-driven. They have to create their own market, create their own taste. They may bomb at wine shows. If the place is a good one, the varieties well-chosen for that place, and the winemaking sensitive to the potential of both, then success will eventually follow. Failure, though, is also a possibility: great site/variety combinations are rare. This is, thus, a difficult, hard path, and any producer who decides that he or she would prefer to make market-driven, consumer-friendly wine and have an easier life is entitled to that sensible view.)

Reason number three is that notes made on wines at home are almost always better notes than those made on wines when visiting wineries. When you are tasting at a winery, you are often being simultaneously peppered with lots of very interesting background information, which you endeavour to scramble down at the same time as the tasting note. You are also usually late for your next appointment and rushing through the note. Other stuff may be going on around you, or you may just be realising with horror that you’ve left your camera or your address book at the last winery. You’re probably tired. And I’m dopy and slow in any case.

Reason four is that 95% of all wine is made for drinking with food and not for tasting in isolation. Tasting at home enables me to do that to some extent. It’s always preferable to tasting along a bench in isolation. Far too many wines are judged on the basis of tasting alone. Bad idea.

Tasting samples, of course, is no substitute for winery visits, but it’s a very useful complement. The wine world is a commodity world, and commodity trading has always proceded on the basis of sample provision. Tea, coffee, fragrance, spices, cloth, leather ... all of these trades are the same. Wine writers are specialist trade commentators as well as consumer intermediaries. But their role as consumer intermediaries does imply ethical practice, which is why I am always happy to address this issue as best I can.

Funding? Our travel here has been reimbursed by a grant from the Ian Cocks Trust. My travel within Australia is being generically sponsored by the AWBC. And the University salary is funded by two private donations to the University, from the Croser family and Javier Moll. This is all in the public domain, and will be in the book. I am also underwriting our presence here with some UK earnings, but I am keen to minimise this in order to maximise the work which I am here to do. If anyone wants to come round and look at my account books, just let me know.

I would love to be able to pay for our travel here, our presence here, for all my internal travel and for all the samples I taste. There are probably only three wine writers in the world who might be in a financial position to do that. None of them in fact does do that. Without the assistance I am receiving, my project would be a non-starter. Indeed if a sort of ethical fundamentalism held sway in wine writing, then it would be a career for the fabulously wealthy only. It would also be rather dull, since the insights which come from some kind of intimacy of access would be entirely missing. For this reason it strikes me as utopian.

Despite the funding circumstances outlined above, I am not here to massage egos and write pretty things about everyone I meet, every vineyard I see and every wine I taste. If anyone thinks I’m doing that, please flip me an email.

Nor (as should be lone-pine obvious) am I here because of any local lacuna in wine-writing expertise. Australia has a fine cohort of wine writers, all of whom know more about Australian wine than I ever will. All I can bring to the party is a different perspective, one which comes from regular travel to the wine-producing regions of Europe, South America and South Africa. (My knowledge of North America is deficient.) I’m here to learn and then to re-transmit ... which is what I will now get on with doing.