While the media has been responsible since the ’70s for making rock stars of winemakers, this adoration seems finally to be dawdling. This is thanks to other instant obscenities such as MasterChef, but more so to the increasing recognition of the importance of vineyards, if not your actual viticulturers.

The adoration of the winemaker had been seriously shoved along by the likes of Halliday, who awards an incredibly high percentage of them the maximum five stars in his annual wine buyers’ guide. He also points very highly many wines and winemakers who have no winery, but simply get their fruit made somewhere else by somebody, or indeed, simply buy wine from somewhere else, lick up a label, and send James and his team a bottle or two.

While this may be seen to be continuing the cult of the rockstar winesmith, I suspect it has also eroded it significantly in recent years, as too many of them, winery or not, are rewarded such high points.

Real rock star Keith Richard maintains that 98 per cent of the music scene produces utter crap. Most of the wine made in Australia may not be quite so deplorable, but the vast majority of it is dreadfully boring, if not plain faulty. Ask the rest of the world.

Add to that the terrible state of labeling art. The frightening flood of amateur labels emerging on amateur wheelie bin wines made by growers who can no longer sell their fruit to big wineries is the last thing Australia needs. The professional labeling business is hardly any better.

Which leads me back to the top. If winemakers can’t make better stuff from the dead easy grapes, like Cabernet, Shiraz and Chardonnay, how in the hell are they going to suddenly perfect Garganaga, Torontes or Saperavi?

If label designers and back label writers must descend to the depths of tasteless nonsense they currently subject us to, how are they ever going to present varieties they’ve never seen before?

And if the marketers have never seen them before, it’s likely the winemakers have never made them before. So winemakers who are finally giving up on the dead easy staples – Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet – because they couldn’t do them well enough, are plunging desperately into tanks of stuff much more difficult and exotic than they’ve ever attempted before.

Such blundering can ruin the reputation of these newbies before they even get a chance.

In the rock star stakes, winemaker Natasha Mooney deserves her reputation: she’s clever.

For Fox Gordon, her home brand, or others to whom she consults, she makes “easy-drinking fruit bombs” from Arneis, Aglianico, Sagrantino, Sangiovese, Tempranillo and Zinfandel.

“It’s a hard sell, so far, with these alternatives”, she told me. “It’s difficult to tell how much the market can absorb. It’s a big learning curve for the drinker, as much as the retailer.”

“We’ll make more serious wines from these new varieties as I learn more about them. In the meantime profit is still Shiraz-driven!”

But Tash makes great Shiraz, see.