Well I?m back, with many changes on the way?too many to report on here. The move was predictably stressful, complete with long waits at the police for foreign national registration, idiot bank employees who don?t do what you ask them to, negligent estate agents only interested in their miserable commission?and that?s if they?re still employed, considering the global financial meltdown that ensued, seemingly occurring right after I physically landed at Heathrow and cleared the baggage claim. Oh well, at least the internet service provider finally showed up and set me up, so on towards the more exciting, positive bits of news...I look forward to coming back more often to post, particularly on my own domain. Look for updates on that soon.

Onto the wine?one of the final remaining, seemingly recession-proof products around, particularly if you?re a wine producer from Argentina or South Africa, or perhaps a wine importer in China, but I?m getting ahead of myself again.

I find the UK wine marketplace, from the consumer?s perspective, incredibly fascinating in ways that would make importers and distributors from back in the US think twice and want to look hard and long on certain matters. After all, this is the market from which, time and again, I?ve seen trends emerge, subsequently reaching American stocklists, on average and depending on the specific trend, around 12-18 months later. Whether we?re talking organics, fair-trade wines, an upsurge in country/region-specific wines being consumed (Austria, Bierzo, NZ Pinot Noir, Chilean takes on Alsace, Argentine Tempranillo, and many more ), or even a specific craze for wines that single out a particular grape variety, it always seems like it all begins here first. A small clarification of course, we always need one of those?when I discuss market trends, the proportions I am are referring to could well be regarded as ?mainstream? or en-masse. Leaving aside the handful of enlightened, forward-looking importers, distributors, retailers and agents involved in the US wine trade, I?m thinking of trends that American consumers simply haven?t embraced in mainstream fashion.

What trends am I talking about, then, in terms of the ?here and now?? The recently sudden and intense interest, expressed particularly by some of the largest retail entities in the US (Target, Walmart, etc?), in ?certified organic? and ?fair trade? wines, has been preceded by all sorts of retail outlets here in the UK by almost five or six years. In fact, the revered wine education cathedral of sorts, Vinopolis, recently hosted a consumer-oriented Fair Trade tasting featuring South African and South-American wines. In terms of the prevalence of ?Fair Trade certified? wines in the marketplace here, even large supermarket chains maintain extensive production relationships with wine producers in Argentina, Chile and South Africa that intend to compensate the grape farming coops that supply them fairly and ethically. The venerable Trainsfair USA, I believe, is just beginning to crank the gears that will soon establish an American Fair Trade certification scheme in the vein of its successful coffee program. One recently elaborated section of its website seems to be calling all potentially interested retailers, importers and distributors of Fair Trade certified wines, complete with legal advice and guidelines to becoming approved agents.

I don?t have much in the way of a formal set of closing thoughts on this, but a few questions come to mind in terms of this apparent phenomenon where certain trends poke their heads out in the UK first:

1) Could this simply be attributed to there being an altogether greater sense of open-mindedness here in the UK? I?ve seen many food products here, ingredients easily available at mainstream chain supermarkets for very reasonable prices?meats, spices and foods for which I used to have to trek all the way to a Whole Foods in the US, sometimes fifty miles each way, just to get in line and pay frighteningly exorbitant prices, given that my purchases didn?t consist of the bland crap available in most stores.

2) The second question revolves around economic irony: Why is it that the UK is at the forefront of wine consumer trends, as far as imports, when it is actually the US market which the latest reports point to as being the most profitable market to export to, on a per liter of wine basis? This should be taken into account in addition to the US being ranked the second largest export market (by volume). Would the people at the American Association of Wine Economists have a paper on this?

Whether I am here or there, from now on I will be posting recommendations and pieces such as this one on both the American and British wine market environments. More to follow in the near future?

Well I?m back, with many changes on the way?too many to report on here. The move was predictably stressful, complete with long waits at the police for foreign national registration, idiot bank employees who don?t do what you ask them to, negligent estate agents only interested in their miserable commission?and that?s if they?re still employed, considering the global financial meltdown that ensued, seemingly occurring right after I physically landed at Heathrow and cleared the baggage claim. Oh well, at least the internet service provider finally showed up and set me up, so on towards the more exciting, positive bits of news...I look forward to coming back more often to post, particularly on my own domain. Look for updates on that soon.

Onto the wine?one of the final remaining, seemingly recession-proof products around, particularly if you?re a wine producer from Argentina or South Africa, or perhaps a wine importer in China, but I?m getting ahead of myself again.

I find the UK wine marketplace, from the consumer?s perspective, incredibly fascinating in ways that would make importers and distributors from back in the US think twice and want to look hard and long on certain matters. After all, this is the market from which, time and again, I?ve seen trends emerge, subsequently reaching American stocklists, on average and depending on the specific trend, around 12-18 months later. Whether we?re talking organics, fair-trade wines, an upsurge in country/region-specific wines being consumed (Austria, Bierzo, NZ Pinot Noir, Chilean takes on Alsace, Argentine Tempranillo, and many more ), or even a specific craze for wines that single out a particular grape variety, it always seems like it all begins here first. A small clarification of course, we always need one of those?when I discuss market trends, the proportions I am are referring to could well be regarded as ?mainstream? or en-masse. Leaving aside the handful of enlightened, forward-looking importers, distributors, retailers and agents involved in the US wine trade, I?m thinking of trends that American consumers simply haven?t embraced in mainstream fashion.

What trends am I talking about, then, in terms of the ?here and now?? The recently sudden and intense interest, expressed particularly by some of the largest retail entities in the US (Target, Walmart, etc?), in ?certified organic? and ?fair trade? wines, has been preceded by all sorts of retail outlets here in the UK by almost five or six years. In fact, the revered wine education cathedral of sorts, Vinopolis, recently hosted a consumer-oriented Fair Trade tasting featuring South African and South-American wines. In terms of the prevalence of ?Fair Trade certified? wines in the marketplace here, even large supermarket chains maintain extensive production relationships with wine producers in Argentina, Chile and South Africa that intend to compensate the grape farming coops that supply them fairly and ethically. The venerable Trainsfair USA, I believe, is just beginning to crank the gears that will soon establish an American Fair Trade certification scheme in the vein of its successful coffee program. One recently elaborated section of its website seems to be calling all potentially interested retailers, importers and distributors of Fair Trade certified wines, complete with legal advice and guidelines to becoming approved agents.

I don?t have much in the way of a formal set of closing thoughts on this, but a few questions come to mind in terms of this apparent phenomenon where certain trends poke their heads out in the UK first:

1) Could this simply be attributed to there being an altogether greater sense of open-mindedness here in the UK? I?ve seen many food products here, ingredients easily available at mainstream chain supermarkets for very reasonable prices?meats, spices and foods for which I used to have to trek all the way to a Whole Foods in the US, sometimes fifty miles each way, just to get in line and pay frighteningly exorbitant prices, given that my purchases didn?t consist of the bland crap available in most stores.

2) The second question revolves around economic irony: Why is it that the UK is at the forefront of wine consumer trends, as far as imports, when it is actually the US market which the latest reports point to as being the most profitable market to export to, on a per liter of wine basis? This should be taken into account in addition to the US being ranked the second largest export market (by volume). Would the people at the American Association of Wine Economists have a paper on this?

Whether I am here or there, from now on I will be posting recommendations and pieces such as this one on both the American and British wine market environments. More to follow in the near future?

The average wine consumer has no idea what it means for a wine to be organic. And when it comes to Biodynamic wines, most wine drinkers have never even heard of them. But that doesn't matter, because an increasing number of the most sought-after, expensive wines in the world are biodynamically produced, which means that biodynamics is one of the most significant modern trends in global winemaking.

The only problem (for those who care) is that biodynamic winemaking involves a maddening, paradoxical mixture of scientifically sound farming practices and utterly ridiculous new-age mysticism. If you want to know just how kooky it can get, you might be interested in a recent feature on biodynamic wine in SF Weekly, which dives into detail on the cow skulls stuffed with oak bark left in a hole; the red deer bladders filled with yarrow flowers buried in compost piles; the proscriptions to burn insects in the vineyards only during certain proper planetary alignment; and the claims that the moon should determine when you put your wine into new barrels.

Of course, if you actually believe in biodynamics, you now hate my guts along with Joe Eskenazi, the author of the aforementioned article which is entitled Voodoo on the Vine.

Joe's angle on biodynamic winemaking will draw criticism for focusing only on the strangest parts of an elaborate farming and winemaking methodology. His (and my) detractors would be justified in complaining at the sensationalism of a few practices, and a few predilections of the methods inventor, while many, even most biodynamic winemaking principles are the same as good old organic farming.

But that is precisely the problem. Most biodynamic farming principles make sense because they are the same as scientifically grounded organic farming (e.g. don't use pesticides; let the sheep take care of the weeds and fertilize the soil; etc.). But then the whole system is undermined by the use of, and rationalization for, special preparations and actions that are not only bizarre in their conception, but explained by the worst kind of pseudo-scientific quasi-religious gobbledygook that you could possible imagine.

You can't imagine how angry this makes me. You see, I love biodynamic wine. Some of my favorite wines in the world; some of the best wines I have ever tasted in my life; some of the wineries that seem to consistently make some of the highest quality wines I have ever experienced are produced biodynamically, and I don't believe this is a coincidence.

This is what Joe Eskenazi did not include in his article, perhaps because he's not fully immersed in the world of wine. While he rightfully points out, with the appropriate level of cynicism, the fact that some wine producers are moving to make biodynamic wine because they think it will sell better, there are many more producers who have been making wine biodynamically for years, even decades without ever telling anyone about it, least of all the people who buy their wine. These winemakers are some of the smartest, most talented folks in the wine industry. The only reason they would possibly be producing wine biodynamically (which Eskenazi's article points out is much more labor, time, and cost intensive than any other farming method) must be that they believe they make better wine that way.

There are two types of people in the world. Those who believe that while science is not perfect, it is the most powerful interpretation that we have found of the world around us, and those who believe that there are better explanations for what we observe in the natural world than science can provide. I am very much a member of the first group. There's a lot we don't know about the world yet, and there are a lot of really interesting interpretations about how things work, but the scientific method produces the most reliable interpretations of what is real and what is true that I know of. I (and pretty much everyone in a first world nation, whether they know it or not) trust my life to that fact nearly every moment of every single day.

And that belief I hold is precisely the source of my unending frustration with biodynamic wine. I think it's good stuff. But I know it's not good for the reasons that the people who make it, and the people who tell them how to make it, say it is. The claims of the philosophy that underlies biodynamic wine growing, and the specific explanations for various prescriptions of the farming and winemaking process are just plain wrong. They can be proved wrong, in some cases simply with a calculator, but in all cases by rigorous scientific enquiry.

Which is why I keep hoping that someone will come up with Biodynamics Lite™: a kinder, gentler form of biodynamic winemaking that throws out all the bullshit, and sticks to the things that science tells us will actually work.

I plan on continuing to drink more and more biodynamic wine, and encourage everyone who loves wine to do so as well. I just hope there is a day when I don't have to roll my eyes a little every time I see the word on a wine label, or bite my fist as a winemaker proudly tells me that the reason I love his wine is due to the fact that he completely avoided the dueling vortices when he mixed his preparation of ground up quartz crystals.

Read the full article in SF Weekly.

My friend Jack at Fork & Bottle has the most complete list of biodynamic wine producers that I know of.

In August, during the 2008 European Wine Blogger’s Conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Perry - someone I can now call a good friend. Tom is an American expat who has worked and lived in Spain for over 30 years and is incredibly well- versed on the Spanish wine economy, not to mention an incredibly interesting guy who will capture your attention for hours on end.

Not surprisingly, Tom is also heavily involved with the Great Wine Capitals project. From their website:

The Global Network of Great Wine Capitals,which embraces Melbourne, Bordeaux, San Francisco - Napa Valley, Porto, Cape Town, Bilbao-Rioja, Florence and Mendoza, works to encourage international winery tourism, as well as economic, academic and cultural exchanges between these famous capitals of wine.

To tell you the truth, I don’t have much experience with the Great Wine Capitals, and have only run into it a few times. Bit from what I can tell, it is a project that helps the capitals themselves to embrace enotourism.

According to Tom, my sense of the project was accurate in that the project is geared towards supporting wine capitals to better assist travelers. Additionally, there is a new website currently being constructed that will offer various tools for wine travelers. After Tom participated in the EWBC, he is convinced that social media and blogging should also become a part of the strategy for future incarnations of the Great Wine Capitals website. We can only hope that he succeeds in convincing the group as a whole.

Today, Catavino offers you a short interview conducted by email with Tom. Please take note of the last question, as it is directed specifically towards our readers. So please take a moment to answer the question and show Tom what a bunch of wine blog readers can do!

I just spent about a half hour on your site, and I realized that it appears to have very little for the consumer. This makes me think, what is the message of Great Wine Capitals for the wine consumer? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the focus, what is the goal of Great Wine Capitals?

I think the site has a lot of useful information for consumers, especially to help them identify excellence in winery tourism on an international level through the winners of the “Best Of” awards. It is also a potentially useful tool when consumers are planning a visit to one of the regions-there’s information about lodging, restaurants, wine routes, wineries…as well as a network of travel agents specializing in organizing visits to the regions.

The Great Wine Capitals also has a strong B2B focus, putting businesses together in the different regions through the Chambers of Commerce and regional development offices.

Cooperation among the regions is also important-joint research programs are carried out, information is exchanged between universities, speakers from one region are invited to lecture in other member cities, member cities visit each other’s wine regions and the like. For example, we are all benefiting greatly from South Africa’s biodiversity initiatives, Napa’s strength in the wine tourism business and Rioja’s experience with improving its image through outstanding winery architecture projects.

As an example, the European Great Wine Capitals (Bilbao-Rioja, Florence, Bordeaux and Porto) were recently awarded a European Union research grant to study the use of encapsulated, native yeasts in vineyards in each region. The goal of the study is to create and market native yeasts in order to preserve variety in the different wine regions rather than use international yeast strains.

I know the Organization’s annual awards, the “Best of Wine Toursim” to members of your group, but what does it take to win this award? What does this mean for a winery who wins it?

“Best Of”: Each region organizes a local contest among interested wineries, restaurants, winery tourism companies etc. in several categories:

* Accommodation
* Architecture, Parks and Gardens
* Art and Culture
* Innovative Wine Tourism Experiences
* Wine tourism restaurants
* Sustainable wine tourism practices
* Wine tourism services

Then, each country’s winners compete against one another on an international level to win the international awards.

In each case, the awards are given by a jury that rates the candidates on the basis of a questionnaire and personal visits.

For the winners, the award is recognition for excellence in each category.

I browsed last years Global Tourism winners, and went to the websites linked to from the winners page. What I noticed is that 1 of the sites, did not function at all. 2 of them wouldn’t let me past the home page. 2 Others, were covered with flash and hard to navigate. Question: Since the Internet is becoming to important to promoting wines, and tourism, might we see a “Best of Internet Technology” award somewhere down the line?

Creating a “Best Of” of Internet technology: a good idea! Let’s see if we can make it fly.

The website and winners’ information: the current website leaves a lot to be desired with few interactive features and difficult navigation. A new website is about to be launched that will be easier to navigate, with many more interactive features and more visuals.

Your point is well taken about the sites of some of the international winners. I was able to navigate through all of them. One was only in Italian which is obviously a mistake. About Flash: I don’t know why it’s so bad (apart from being invisible to Google).

Catavino note: Flash is bad for a viariety of reason’s, primarily because it’is hard to navigate in some browsers, is slow to load, and as a journalist, it does not allow us to copy facts and figures for use in articles. Apart from this, many sites do not load at all or eats up so many resources that the reader’s browser can freeze. Flash is good for videos and pictures, but not for text. It’s like using oil paints to write a letter to a friend. It’s slow and awkward, hence the invention of the pen, or better yet, the keyboard)!

Bilbao-Rioja: Explain as best you can this contradiction.

Bilbao-Rioja: not a contradiction at all. Historically, most of the startup capital for Rioja wineries came from Bilbao and the Basque Country in general (CVNE, Bodegas Bilbaínas, Bodegas & Bebidas, Olarra…and many more) and the port of Bilbao was where the wine was shipped from. Also, the north of Spain has always been the biggest market for Rioja.

Also, don’t forget that the Great Wine Capitals is a network of major cities located in or near important wine regions.

Porto, and Bilbao-Rioja are “Great wine capitals” in Iberia, though I think they have a pretty strong peer in Jerez. What does it take to be a “great wine capital” and what are your plans to expand?

Our charter says that there can only be one capital per country. There is no doubt that Jerez is an important wine capital but the selection committee preferred to have Rioja in the network. Until we have one capital from each of the major wine producing countries (we lack one from Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Hungary for example-but are working on all fronts to select suitable candidates) it will probably stay that way. Perhaps in the future the charter will be changed.

What are your future plans for Great Wine Capitals? What should we as consumers know?

Future plans for the GWC are to improve the Travel Network, create new cooperative projects in education, research, winery tourism and business opportunities, as well as improve our communication capabilities. FYI, I’m the leader of the communications committee and one of the points on the agenda of the upcoming annual meeting is using social networks.

Since you have an audience on this blog of wine lovers and producers., what questions do you have for them?

A question for the blogging community: if you are interested in visiting a wine region, what concrete resources do you use (specifically, which resources on the internet) to plan your trip?

I want to Thank Tom for answering my questions, and I ask that all of you take the time to answer Tom’s question above, if not add your own questions for Tom. I know he’ll be listening!

Cheers,

Ryan Opaz

All content protected by a Creative Commons License2005-2008. Catavino.net.

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One of the greatest experiences that a wine lover can encounter is a wine that stops them in their tracks. I'll admit that I'm excitable in general, but there's nothing that gets me quite so giddy as a schoolboy as when I stumble across a wine that truly bowls me over. Such wines are the closest I get anymore to the emotions of that first passionate kiss in a new relationship -- they electrify me. While the world slows down to a crawl around me, all I want to do is stick my nose in the glass and inhale slowly.

This is one of those wines. I was minding my own business, tasting away through a public wine tasting in San Francisco. As a matter of course, I marched up to the Guigal table, and tasted through what they had to offer, like I have done before at other tastings. I enjoy Guigal wines a great deal, especially their more exclusive bottlings.

But while I've had Guigal wines that have been great, even exceptional, I've never had one knock me on my ass in quite the same way as this wine did when I put it in my mouth.

Etienne Guigal founded his winery in the tiny Northern Rhone village of Ampuis in 1946. The vineyards he purchased to begin producing wine had been growing grapes for as long as anyone can remember. So long that some of the stone walls in the fields dated back more than 2400 years to Roman times.

The enterprising 32-year-old Guigal was no stranger to the wine business when he bought his first vineyard, having worked as a winemaker for several years before striking out on his own. By the time his blindness forced him to turn operations over to his son in the Sixties, he had personally worked more than 67 vintages.

The estate is now beginning its third generation of family ownership, and is widely recognized as one of the top wine producers in both the region, and the world. From its humble beginnings, the estate has grown to sizable proportions, or what amounts to sizable proportions in the relatively small appellations of the region. The estate now owns vineyards in Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, and Saint-Joseph, and buys a significant amount of fruit from producers all over the region.

I'm not entirely sure of the estate's current production levels but they are somewhere north of 340,000 cases, with the bulk of that being wines made from purchased grapes. The wines are currently made by Philippe Guigal and his father Marcel.

This particular wine is 95% Syrah and 5% Viognier, culled from some of the oldest blocks among 6 of Guigal's vineyards:

Le Clos "Côte Blonde",
La Garde "Côte Blonde",
La Grande Plantée "Côte Blonde",
La Pommière "Côte Brune",
Le Pavillon Rouge "Côte Brune",
Le Moulin "Côte Brune"

Some of these vineyards were planted in the early 16th century. Of course, they have been replanted over the ages, and the average age of the vines now is around 50 years. While the vineyards are not certified, they are essentially farmed organically.

The grapes for the wine are hand harvested, meticulously sorted, destemmed, and then undergo a cold soak for sometimes more than a month before fermentation is allowed to begin in steel tanks. After fermentation, the juice is transferred to the estate's own barrels (since 2003 the estate has run its own cooperage on the property) where it ages for at least 38 months before bottling.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in color, this wine leaps out of the glass, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags your ass into a field in the middle of southern France and then stands back laughing as you stumble blissfully among sage, lavender, rosemary, and a small lake of fresh cassis. In the mouth the wine is equally explosive with an incredibly juicy core of cassis that is riddled with crystalline, granitic minerality. Perfectly balanced, with the texture of satin, and tannins that don't grip so much as they caress. And just when you think it can't get any better, the floral notes from the Viognier sweep in like valkyries to carry you away into the finish. Please, sir, may I have another? This is definitely the best current vintage of Côte-Rôtie I have ever tasted.

Food Pairing:
I'd love to drink this with a slow roasted leg of lamb with rosemary.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10.

How Much?: $130

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Négociant Cameron Hughes has made a name for himself selecting and sometimes blending wines that drink like twice or sometimes three times their asking price. Using direct to consumer marketing on his website and distribution through warehouse retailers like Costco and Sam’s Club, Hughes effectively disintermediates the 3-tier wine distribution system here in the U.S. This means he can make money selling $10-20 wines that he sources from some of the top producers around the world.