POKOLBIN, Australia — As Australian wine power couple Liz and Jerome Scarborough gaze out on their eponymous wine estate, a decision made decades earlier is leaving an increasingly pleasant aftertaste.
Fluctuations in the Australian dollar and the whims of overseas markets in the 1990s left them feeling vulnerable, and so the family decided in the 2000s to not export their wine and pivoted to a focus on the Sydney market, just two hours from their Hunter Valley doorstep. “The hard part with international sales is that you can go overnight from making money to not making money, and that’s why we like the domestic market,” said Jerome, who grew up watching his father Ian work in the vineyards and became winemaker himself in 2005.
