Wouter Bos (The Netherlands)
The right choice
It's the next big challenge facing Australia's $3 billion a year wine export industry - increasing our sales to Europe. That's where specialists like one of Australia's newest citizens, Wouter Bos, are making in-roads.
When Dutch-born Wouter Bos became an Australian citizen on Australia Day 2005 he was not only celebrating becoming an 'official' Australian citizen after decades of 'feeling like an Aussie anyway', he was celebrating a major coup for Australia's wine industry and his fledgling company, 'In Wine Export.'
He'd just received orders for almost 50,000 bottles of Australian wine from new buyers in Germany, the Netherlands and Romania.
'It was hard work. The first eighteen months after setting up the company were slow, making frequent flights to Europe to establish contacts with the help of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and building up some kind of rapport with buyers,' Wouter said.
'I have stood on empty railway platforms at 11 o'clock at night with three cartons of Australian wine, wondering what on earth I was doing there and I've even been mugged at railway stations.'
Australia is the world's fourth largest wine exporter but compared to sales to the United Kingdom and United States totalling almost two billion dollars a year, combined sales to Europe are barely ten per cent of that amount.
Wouter's 2005 orders to Europe were a mix of Ferguson's 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Yarra Valley; the Ceccantis 2003 Riesling from Victoria's Kiewa Valley; Glendonbrook's 2002 Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from the NSW Hunter Valley; and the Woodhouse Estate 2004 Merlot from Griffith in the New South Wales Riverina district.
'Australia has given me opportunities that I probably would never have had if I'd stayed home in Holland. I have enjoyed myself immensely,' Wouter said.
'I always wanted to become an Australian citizen and was proud of Australia and have always tried to promote Australia overseas, but the problem was I was also proud of where I'd come from, and until several years ago when dual citizenship became possible for me, becoming an Australian citizen would have meant giving up one citizenship for another.
'I like the people, the climate, the ambience, the multiculturalism, the restaurants, the whole way of living.
'It's hard to put into words what Australian citizenship means. It means I finally made a choice and it was the right choice for me.'