Time for Friday night drinks, and the tale of Ben Ean Moselle. For a decade from the mid-70s, my dad was national distribution manager for Lindeman’s and at one point, he shipped 12 million dozen bottles of Ben Ean every year.

That’s about a case for every Australian adult! At this point we were a nation of beer drinkers, but Ben Ean began the transition. In fact, if you grew up in the 70s in Australia it’s most likely your first glass of wine was Lindeman’s Ben Ean Moselle.

It was a sweet white wine, close to undrinkable, and had, of course, nothing to do with Moselle, or Germany. Like most Australian wines, it was just a name. Whites were called Riesling or Moselle, and reds claret or Burgundy until the French stopped us lying about our wine.

Along with its rivals Porphry Pearl, Sparkling Rhinegold, Cold Duck and Asti Spumante, it lost favour in the 80s as tastes matured under the Chardonnay assault, but it’s making a comeback. Sort of.

We recently took dad to the Lindeman’s Winery in the Hunter, which has been bought back by 2 great local winemaking families - McGuigan and Peterson. And they’ve renamed it - https://benean.com.au/about/ 

The great Lindeman’s name is dead, and they’ve renamed it Ben Ean, because they reckon that a new generation who never tasted it, thinks it is an iconic wine name and they will now produce good, drinkable wines, under the banner of the cheap sweet wine of the 70s.

So, goodbye Lindeman’s, hello Ben Ean.