Winner of Australia's premier wine award at the 2000 Royal Melbourne Wine Show was a 1999 shiraz from Coonawarra wine company, Punters Corner. The prize, the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy, for best one year old red wine, is said to be worth a million plus dollars in sales and publicity and as such is eagerly sought by most winemakers.

Those who don't win tend to denigrate the prestige of the prize claiming that competing wines are unfinished, that is, that most of them are still maturing in barrels at the time of judging. Critics forget or are ignorant of the fact that some of the great wines of France are also appraised while still in wood and that those appraisals set prices for decades to come.

The name Punters Corner will now be a wine household name in this country and though the company's prices will undoubtedly rise, one wonders if the smallish operation will have the production capacity to capitalise on its unexpected fame. Punters Corner wine is made under contract by another Coonawarra winery, Balnaves.

© Martin Fields