Wine tastings sour
Licensing concern: Graeme and Georgia Wilson of Windy Ridge Winery near Foster will continue to attend events at Mossvale Park, such as the music festival on Saturday.
Newly introduced liquor licensing laws threaten local events and festivals and have left a bad taste with local winery owners.
Lyre Bird Hill Winery and Guest House’s Owen Schmidt said fees to attend festivals have gone up dramatically.
“It’s up to $90 for an occasion and that will make us consider whether we do some of these smaller ones,” he said.
They go to about 12 festivals a year, creating a bit of a hole in the budget for the small Koonwarra winery.
Festivals are used as a marketing tool to promote the winery and entice visitors to come to the cellar door in the future.
At some events Lyre Bird Hill doesn’t sell any wine.
Fees for the cellar door winery have also gone up by about $150 to almost $400.
While the new rules came in on January 1, Lyre Bird Hill had purchased most of their licences for the first quarter of the year at 2009 prices.
Mr Schmidt said their licence for the Inverloch Food and Wine Festival on the weekend was the last one before prices went up.
“They are going to want a lot more information than we have supplied in the past, so it’s a lot more running around in circles,” he said.
“It’s costing us more in time and in money.”
“Basically we feel we’re getting it because what happens in Melbourne. Why penalise the rest of the state, because things don’t happen properly in Melbourne?”
At Windy Ridge Winery, near Foster, Graeme Wilson said they will cut down the number of events they go to.
They will continue to attend bigger events such as Mossvale Music Festival last weekend.
“The trouble is with things like an art gallery opening where we sell four or five bottles of wine,” he said.
Fees for a limited licence needed to sell wine away from the cellar door costs $90.50, up from $27.70.
They purchased 41 licences in the past 18 months, excluding their vigneron licence, which cost them $1135.
It will cost them $3348 if they go to the same number of events in the next 18 months.
Mr Wilson said this was a massive increase.
“It’s more than tripled the cost of limited licences and for small businesses like us we rely fairly heavily on being out at events like art exhibition openings, music in the local halls and food and wine festivals and every one of them needs a limited licence over and above the vigneron licence we hold that allows us to make wine and sell it here,” he said.
Another issue is that licences have to be applied for two months in advance of an event rather than the previous one month.
Mr Wilson said the minister had made a concession, allowing wineries to do 12 farmers markets in a 12 month period on one limited licence.
“We are asking him to consider doing up to 12 art exhibitions or local music festivals rather than having to apply for another licence.”
On Phillip Island the story is much the same, with Purple Hen Vineyard and Winery owner Rick Lacey saying the “threefold increase in the cost of a limited licence” will impact on local wineries wanting to hold wine tastings at events.
Mr Lacey said it isn’t just the costs that will impact on wineries but the fact there is a lot more administration and bureaucracy involved in trying to obtain one of the limited licences.
“Before you could just go online and it was all very easy and straight forward to get a licence but the new laws have made this process a whole lot more difficult,” he said.
In expressing his concern for the new limited liquor licence, owner of Carrajung’s Toms Cap Vineyard and Restaurant Graham Morris said the increase could prohibit small vineyards participating in wine and food festivals because it will be too expensive.
Prom Country Regional Tourism has started surveying its members to ascertain the affect of the new licensing rules.
PCRT executive officer Christine Legg said they have people on their executive board who have been hit very hard by the new fees.
At the Inverloch Food and Wine Festival on Saturday, Dom Brusamarello said they had been working with inspector Curley and Liquor Licensing Victoria to develop a Responsible Service of Alcohol policy for the festival.
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