Collaboration the key to unlocking industry recovery, says Will Taylor

With almost 40 years of wine legal practice, Finlaysons Lawyers chair of partners Will Taylor has witnessed the Australian wine industry through its highs and lows. He says today's conditions are among the toughest he has seen in his career, and that the industry's future may depend on one thing: collaboration. As Taylor puts it, the current state of the industry is “really horrible”. “That doesn’t mean that everybody is doing really badly…but even the people who are doing quite well on the sales front are suffering from much higher input costs than they have in the past, so it’s a real struggle,” he said. While signs of recovery are emerging, Taylor argues that waiting for market conditions to improve won't be enough on its own and that the industry needs a fundamental shift in thinking. “The mindset at the moment in fine wine making land is to control everything, and I think some of those people will have to change mindset…to learn to compromise in order to generate some cash. That's not a criticism, that's a compliment. They need to be perfectionist to make great wine, and that's why we have got such great winemakers in this country…[but] that model is not working anymore, and people are going to be forced to share if they're going to stay in business,” he affirmed.