Bordeaux 2009 "overpriced"

Harpers- Wednesday, 14 July 2010

Bordeaux lovers can find better value in previous vintages than in the 2009 en primeur market, Liv-Ex has declared.

The company, whose index keeps tabs on price movements throughout the fine wine market, says that in a study of 22 leading chateaux "we find that, on average, the 2009s are trading at a 30% premium to the 2005s and a touch above the 2000s".

It adds: "This makes it the most expensive currently available vintage, bar 1982, despite it being two years away from delivery. Even at this nascent stage, the 2009s looks fully (if not over) priced and those in search of investment opportunities are likely to find better value elsewhere."

Lafite's release price was 53% higher than in 2005 and cases were changing hands for £13,200 within 24 hours.

"Since then prices have been somewhat unsteady, drifting between £11,000 and £13,900, with the most recent trade hitting £11,500: 15% higher than the current price of the 2005 and on a par with the 100-point 2003," Liv-Ex said.

Rosé a bright spot for on-trade – WSTA
Harpers- Wednesday, 13 July 2010

Figures released by the Wine & Spirit Trade Association show that sales of rosé wine have grown by 21.4% in value in the past year, with volumes ahead by 18.4%.

Off-trade rosé sales were up 9.2% in value and 7.6% in volume.

The WSTA said there had been a recovery in Champagne with the off-trade ahead by 12.5% in volume and 7.7% in value.

The figures - which combine IWSR, Nielsen and CGA Strategy data - show only wine (+1.3%) and cider (+3%) with any real value growth in the on-trade.

WSTA chief executive Jeremy Beadles said: "Given the fact that sales of other wines in bars, clubs and restaurants are down over the course of the year, the big rise in rosé is all the more striking.

"The recent good weather will have continued to boost its popularity.

"The growth in the £6 to £7 and £9 to £10 ranges does suggest that while consumers may be cutting back on spending elsewhere the attraction of a better bottle of wine at home is tempting wine drinker to spend a little more."

Restaurant discounts are "unsustainable", says report

Harpers- Wednesday, 13 July 2010

Top-end restaurants are discounting at "unsustainable" levels as they try to woo customers, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Partner David Chubb said: "While the propensity to dine out is still very much a part of UK culture, the pursuit of value for money by the consumer has led to even high-end restaurants in London laying on fixed menus and other offers usually seen in casual dining.

"Restaurants must use their customer data to analyse whether such offers are bringing new customers through the door or whether their regulars, who would dine regardless, are just doing so and paying less."

PWC said such discounting was not a long-term option and was a factor in restaurant failure rates that are 30% higher than they were two years ago.

It calculates that restaurant company insolvency levels in the second quarter of 2010 are up 5% on the first three months of the year, but down 30% from their peak of 183 in the first quarter of 2009.

Chubb warned: "While restaurant closures have slowed, both regional and London eateries are still very reliant on promotions and as a result profit margins remain under pressure. Consumers are likely to demand even greater value for money in the coming months as the impact of higher taxes and interest rates take hold."

Pub company insolvencies are down a third from the peak of the recession, according to PWC, but fears of further Government spending cuts, potential interest rate rises, and a reduction in discretionary spend could slow recovery – causing a further wave of restructuring and insolvency.

The failure rate in the pubs and bars sector peaked in the last quarter of 2009. Insolvencies fell by almost a third in the second quarter of 2010 but Chubb said the failure rate was still comparatively high, trading conditions remained difficult.

"Even without entering insolvency, creditors may still experience pain," said Chubb.

Marlborough wineries in receivership

Decanter -July 13, 2010

Several wineries based in New Zealand's Marlborough have gone into receivership, with indications that more may follow.

Earlier this month, Cape Campbell Wines and its affiliate companies, Brown Sorensen Vineyards and the Brown Family Trust, went into voluntary receivership, owing creditors millions of dollars.

Cape Campbell Wines was owned by the Brown family, part of the Marlborough wine industry for 30 years.

John Fisk of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been appointed to manage Cape Campbell's assets, said the three entities had liabilities totaling between $10m and $12m. He said he was unsure whether the company would continue to trade or be liquidated.

Last month, Awatere Vineyard Estates, a large contract grower owned by Auckland-based Barry Sutton, was put into receivership in addition to the Marlborough wine company Gravitas.

David Cox, European director of the New Zealand Wine Growers Association, said that growers had been hit hardest by the strong New Zealand dollar.

'There is little doubt that many of New Zealand's wineries which export to overseas markets have been experiencing some fairly severe margin pressures for their exports this year due to the unfavourable foreign exchange rate for the NZ$.'

'For some (not all) of those wineries who are exporting Sauvignon Blanc, this has been compounded by the over-supply of Sauvignon Blanc from the large 2008 and 2009 vintages which has had an adverse effect on some export prices', he added.

Ending on a cautious note of optimism, he told decanter.com, 'The 2010 vintage has come in at a reduced tonnage (263,000 tonnes versus 285,000 tonnes in 2009) and yields were down.

'As a result, export prices have already started to rise to more profitable levels and the requirement to deplete excess stock is diminishing quickly.'

Fine wine comment: Italian en primeur requires no guesswork

The Drinks business, 8 July

Jochen Erler takes part in Piedmont’s Nebbiolo Prima first release event and finds that the Bordelais could learn much from the Italians' professional approach.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the annual Nebbiolo Prima wine tasting which takes place in Alba, a small town at the feet of the beautiful hills of Torino and Piedmont.

As the title implies, it is a first tasting of wines made from the Nebbiolo grape. Only wine produced from Nebbiolo grapes grown in the DOCs Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero are admitted here.

One can compare this event with the en primeur events in Bordeaux and Burgundy because like in France this is a first offer of wines to the market.

However, the Alba tasting does not take place in the same time frame as that in France where the new wines are tasted one year after harvest regardless of their stage of development.

In contrast to the en primeur events in Bordeaux and Burgundy, the wines tasted at the event in Alba are not from the barrel. They have already been bottled, and the event is rather a first release tasting. Hence there are no wines still undergoing malolactic fermentation as can happen in the cellars in France. The new wines sampled in Alba openly show their strength or weakness; no guesswork about their future mature status is required.

In accordance with the DOCG regulations, the Barolo wines are presented in Alba after two years ageing in barrels, the Barbaresco wines with one year of barrel ageing. Their riservas have an additional two years in the barrel before being bottled.

The most striking difference between the en primeur tastings in France and this Nebbiolo Prima is the modus procedendi of the event.

The organisers of the Alba event offer a comprehensive four-day program for wine buyers and journalists. Coaches are provided, always leaving on time. The sit-down tastings are held in the morning in a spacious hall, well-lit and aired, at large tables covered with white tablecloths.

Unlike at the en primeur tastings in France, there are detailed lists of the wines – about 100 per session – stating the name of the producer, their vintage year, and where possible their brand name and vineyard site. Professional sommeliers serve the wines, five wines per flight.

After a well-catered al fresco lunch the coaches bring the participants to another hall. Here the producers, whose wines have been tasted in the morning, offer a selection of their wines. I enjoyed the lively discussions I had with the producers. I could verify or modify my findings from the morning tasting session. This is a highly unusual bonus at any tasting of this dimension.

In the late afternoon participants can make pre-arranged visits to wineries. I was lucky to visit the only organic winery in Barbaresco, and another winery for a Barolo vertical tasting. The day finishes in a top restaurant with the producers from the area, whose wines accompany the meal.

What a comfortable and enjoyable way to be introduced to the new wines of a noble grape variety.

First impressions

I missed the tasting of the Roero wines. Most of the Barbarescos (vintage 2007) and Barolos (vintage 2006), as well as their riservas (2005 and 2004 respectively) had been aged in new barrique.

They need more time to reach maturity, the Barbarescos at least one or two years, the Barolos many more years.

Only a few wines express already now a rich complexity and are of a delicate balance. These rare wines were aged in the traditional big wood (tonno) or in used barrique.

There were also very few disappointing wines, with great fruit on the nose, but little to offer on the palate and less in length.

What about the vintages? The wines of the 2005 vintage have started to soften their tannins, while the 2004 wines still need more time. The 2006 is again a “vin de garde”. The 2007 can be placed between the 2005 and the 2004/2006.

Jochen Erler, 08.07.2010

Riesling Rendezvous returns

The Drinks business, 14 July

Descriptions such as racy acidity, diesel, petrol and rot as well as complicated production terms on labels do nothing to help the plight of Riesling in attracting more drinkers in the future, according to Riesling experts.

The statements were made during Monday's opening address of Riesling Rendezvous, a biennial trade event held in Washington state which is co-hosted by Chateau Ste. Michelle and the Dr Loosen Estate.

"Put yourself in the mind of consumers," said Ted Baseler, president of Chateau Ste. Michelle. "Doesn't the sound of acidity, rot and petrol sound inviting?" he asked the event's audience rhetorically, while adding in jest: "Frankly, anything to do with petroleum at the moment is not a great thing!"

Revered producer Ernst Loosen and author Stuart Piggot completed the opening address. As the former supported Baseler's comments about the difficulty for consumers in deciphering wine terms, he provided Old World examples such as Grosses Gewachs and Grand Cru, while for the US (where Loosen co-produces a wine with Chateau Ste. Michelle) he joked that "everything is labelled as a reserve," a comment to which the 250-strong audience errupted in laughter.

However, despite the vocabulary concerns, Riesling has becoming the fastest growing white wine varietal in the US for three consecutive years, bolstering the event's raison d'etre, with Baseler and Loosen adding: "With the increasingly high quality Riesling being produced from around the world, we view Riesling's future as very bright."

The opening address was followed by a panel-led blind tasting of 14 Rieslings from Austria, France, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the US (from the states of Washington, Oregon, New York and Michigan). The international panel included Etienne Hugel, Johannes Leitz, Willi Brundlmayer, Peter Bell of Fox Run Vineyards, Tom Barry of Jim Barry Wines and Wendy Stuckley from Chateau Ste. Michelle.

During the course of the tasting, guests tasted and discussed the differences in Riesling production around the world, including latitude, hang time, acidification (and deacidification), as well as the subject of what makes a Riesling taste as though it's from the Old World or New World.

This, the third Riesling Rendezvous to take place, is being held over the course of two days at Bellevue's Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington state and includes a variety of tastings, workshops and seminars.

Jane Parkinson, in Washington State, 14.07.2010

Alsace wine labelling overhaul on the horizon
Harpers- Wednesday, 14 July 2010

The newly elected president of Alsace wines' trade body the CIVA has pledged to make Alsace wine labels easier to understand for consumers.

Rémy Gresser succeeds Jean-Nicolas Schaeffer, who headed up the CIVA for the last three years as a representative of the negociant members.Gresser runs a family estate in Andlau and is a firm believer in biodynamics which he applies on his 11ha. "Passionate about Alsace, he aims to promote its regional specificities," a CIVA spokesman said.

Gresser has revealed plans to review Alsace wine labelling to specify the style of the wine, its level of sweetness, and food and wine matching suggestions to demystify the wines for consumers.

"The wealth of Alsace lies in its diversity: we have a great array of wine styles, grape varieties, and terroirs. It is up to us to have a more commercial approach," he said.

"The Alsace brand should appear on every bottle via a logo or a quality mark offering consumers a guarantee of authenticity."

Gresser has been involved in Alsace wine production for more than thirty years. This is the second time he has been president of the CIVA - the first was in 2004/2005.

French expect 2010 vintage to match 2009

Harpers- Wednesday, 14 July 2010

France expects to produce 47.3 million hectolitres of wine in the 2010 vintage, broadly on a par with the 2009 figure.

The Ministry of Agriculture forecasts that almost half the wines from this year's harvest - 23 million hl - will be classified as having Protected Designation of Origin.

A further 13 million hl will have Protected Geographical Indication status, with other wines and juices accounting for 3.6 million hl.

Just under 8 million hl of French wines produced this year are destined for distillation into brandy, according to official predictions.

Argentine wine scoops innovation award
The Drinks Business – 14 July 2010

SIAL d’Or, the trade competition which rewards 30 international developments for their major commercial success in their national markets, has announced its 2010 winners.  

The wine category winner is O2, a sweet white sparkling wine targeting "young active women" at 10.9% abv from Moët Hennessy Argentina.

SIAL d’Or highlighted some interesting developments such as Martini Soda from Italy – a mix between Martini Blanco and a sparkling soda with 8% abv and Shandy from Israel – a low abv beer with apple flavour.

256 products entered this year's competition and all of them will be displayed during the exhibition in Paris from 17-21 October.

The competition recognises products in three segments: SIAL d’Or by Category; the SIAL d’Or by Country; and Global SIAL d’Or.

The winner of the top award – Global SIAL d'Or – will be announced during the official award-giving ceremony, held during the exhibition.

Valéry Lobry, SIAL’s general manager, said: “SIAL is the global reference for food innovation, its role is also to single out major trading successes in the food industry. SIAL d’Or is therefore a key moment of the exhibition.”

When the First Sip Is the Sommelier’s, Not Yours

NY Times, 6 July 2010 - by ERIC ASIMOV

STEPHEN SILBERLING, a tax lawyer who considers himself a knowledgeable wine drinker, could not contain his astonishment as he told me of his recent experience in a New York restaurant. He had ordered a 2007 Chapoutier Côtes du Rhône Belleruche, a wine he and his date had enjoyed so much the previous week that they decided to drink it again. As they sipped their first glass, however, they both thought the wine tasted different, and they debated whether it was flawed.

Listening to the conversation, the sommelier piped up.

“He said, ‘I’ve tasted the wine, it’s fine,’ ” Mr. Silberling recalled. “He tasted the wine? I was very surprised. I had never heard of that being done before.”

Few issues of wine etiquette seem to cause as much consternation as the increasingly common practice of a sommelier taking a small sip of wine, usually unbidden, to test for soundness. Diners often are surprised to learn that their bottle has in effect been shared with the restaurant, even if it’s just the smallest amount.

The practice, which is more common at high-end restaurants with ambitious wine lists, can make diners uncomfortable. Some believe the restaurant may be taking advantage of them by consuming wine that they have bought. Others feel demeaned, that their role of assessing the wine has been usurped.

“I know I’d rather be doing the tasting because I trust myself,” Mr. Silberling said.

It’s a touchy subject, particularly because, from the restaurant’s point of view, it’s all for the consumer’s benefit. Some restaurants believe that, since they are more familiar than most consumers with the wines they offer, they can save diners from accidentally accepting a bottle that is not up to standard. “I think it’s an important service,” said Daniel Johnnes, wine director for Daniel Boulud’s Dinex Group. “We want the sommelier to assure that the wine gets to the customer as it is intended.”

I have noticed this practice more often in the last decade, but in fact it was one of the original tasks of the sommelier.

“It goes back hundreds of years, when the role of sommeliers was to ensure that kings or royalty didn’t get poisoned,” said Evan Goldstein, a wine educator and former president of the American chapter of the Court of Master Sommeliers, an organization dedicated to raising the standards of beverage service. “My understanding is that the tastevin was put on a chain and put around the neck of the sommelier exactly for that purpose.”

Ah, the tastevin, the shallow silver cup that today largely evokes the image of the supercilious sommelier. In the United States, where most restaurants have tried to relax the formality of wine service, one rarely sees a tastevin. Le Bernardin in New York is one of the few that still employs it as a working tool.

“I want to ensure the wine I serve is in perfect condition,” said Aldo Sohm, Le Bernardin’s chef sommelier. “We use it. It’s not just for show.”

Allowing the sommelier a sniff or small taste of a wine is a sensible precaution for a restaurant to take, I think, both from its own point of view and from the customer’s. No good restaurant wants to serve flawed or bad wine, and tasting the wine first is a step toward preventing that.

Many people, even those who know something about wine, are not comfortable suggesting that a bottle is flawed. They might feel uncertain, or embarrassed, and would rather endure a bottle they are not enjoying than send it back. If a sommelier can prevent that, I think it’s worth the sip that’s sacrificed.

At RN74, a top wine-oriented restaurant in San Francisco, sommeliers check every bottle, said Christie Dufault, who is a sommelier there and a wine and beverage instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley. She is still haunted by a southern Rhône wine she once served a table without having tasted it. After they left, having consumed only half the bottle, she checked it and found it was badly corked.

“I’ve seen consumers become way more knowledgeable, but I recommended a wine that was completely foreign to these people,” she said. “They didn’t recognize that the wine was flawed. We don’t want that scenario to ever be repeated.”

Nonetheless, some consumers, even educated ones, are suspicious of the practice.

“I’ve never seen it, and I would say I’m happy I’ve never seen it,” said Joe Roberts, who blogs about wine at 1winedude.com. “I would imagine the first reaction would be, somebody’s trying to cop a taste of my expensive wine.”

Ms. Dufault realizes the practice may require sommeliers to step into delicate territory.

“We want customers to realize that good sommeliers are looking out for their best interests,” she said. “It’s our job to observe our guests. If I observe a guest who really knows wine, then maybe this service isn’t necessary.”

Fred Dexheimer, a master sommelier whose company, Juiceman Consulting, advises restaurants on wine service, believes sniffing and tasting before serving is a sound practice.

“I want the guest to have the best experience possible,” he said. “It’s like a chef making sure all the sauces are correct.”

But Mr. Dexheimer said he has seen the ritual abused by sommeliers who have poured themselves a little more wine than perhaps was necessary. He said sommeliers have to understand that some wines are more prone to problems than others, and therefore are more important to check. He mentioned unfiltered white wines, for example, or wines whose cork might have some visible mold on it. I might add to that list wines like white Burgundies, which are prone to oxidation problems that some consumers may not recognize.

Even if a sommelier has tasted a wine and found it sound, that does not ensure that a customer will like it. So what happens if a sommelier believes a wine has no problem, but the customer rejects it, as was the case with Mr. Silberling?

“The rule is, if the customer is not happy with the wine, take the wine back,” Mr. Johnnes said. “It doesn’t happen so frequently that we can’t do that.”

He suggests engaging in conversation with the customer. It may be that a wine needs to breathe a bit, or needs to be gently cooled. But if those options are not satisfactory, he said, just take the wine back.

Some bottles are obviously flawed, but others can be borderline cases. What is undetectable to some people, even to experts, is off-putting to others. Above all, he said, sommeliers should never argue with customers, even if they believe a bottle is sound.

Mr. Dexheimer remembers doing just that as a young sommelier. “I still have guilty nightmares about that 10 years later,” he said. “Take the rest of that bottle and educate your staff, or pour it by the glass. There are ways to recover from that, but if you make a guest unhappy, you’ll never get that guest back.”

One way of alleviating the mistrust that some customers may feel, he suggested, is simply to alert guests that you, the sommelier, are going to taste the wine to make sure it’s all right.

That would work for Mr. Roberts, the wine blogger. “It would almost go from something that seems malignant to something that’s viewed as good service,” he said.

Communication, Mr. Dexheimer said, is one more way to remove the pretension from wine.

“If you communicate everything you do to the guests, you help to create an atmosphere of trust,” he said. “If you don’t ask permission, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Fresh plan to stop supermarkets selling alcohol below cost price

Daily Mail, By Sean Poulter - 2nd July 2010

Plans to stop supermarkets selling alcohol at below cost price are to be published within weeks.

However, the proposals rule out the unit pricing for alcohol favoured by many doctors.

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the former chief medical officer, had suggested a minimum of 50p per unit, which would increase the price of a bottle of wine to at least £4.50 and the average six-pack of lager to £6.00.

The plans follow accusations that Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons fuel binge-drinking by using beer as a loss leader to tempt shoppers.

Deals have included offers of less than 69p a pint on beer, makingit cheaper than some bottled waters.

The Coalition has identified four options for outlawing deals considered irresponsible by doctors and police chiefs.

• One would ban stores selling drink at below the cost of duty and VAT.
• Another adds in a value for the cost of production, distribution and marketing.
• A third would ban sales below the cost of the wholesale invoice sent to retailers.
• The fourth would suspend competition law that outlaws collusion between firms allowing retailers to decide a fair price.

The options will be presented in a consultation document in early August.

Details are revealed today by The Grocer magazine. Editor Adam Leyland said: 'Banning so-called below cost sales of alcohol sounds simple, but in reality it will be incredibly difficult to gain a consensus. No one can agree what the cost really is.'

Carlsberg UK chief executive Isaac Sheps told the magazine: 'If you go only on duty and VAT, it's easier to control because this is a number nobody can mess with.'

But Mark Hunter, of brewing firm Molson Coors, said the cost of production must be included if the law is to have any impact.

The Home Office said it was committed to banning the sale of alcohol below cost-price.

Cheers to new Indian wine

The Indian Times, Jun 26, 2010

Indian vintners are bringing variety to the wine market by looking beyond classic French grapes. Say cheers to Sangiovese and Tempranillo ...

Over the past few years, Indians have been steadily increasing their consumption of wine. So much so that until the recent global economic meltdown, the rate of growth of the country's wine market made wine exporters from countries such as France, Italy and Australia giddy thinking about the number of cases they could drop at Indian ports. But despite the hype surrounding the wine market, the choice of local wines has been limited to a quartet of French varieties grown largely in Nashik.

Indian producers have enjoyed relative success making and selling red wines Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz as well as whites Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc. Shiraz, referred to as Syrah in France, grew with consummate ease, turning out an intense style under the Indian sun. Cabernet Sauvignon has always travelled well and wasn't a hard sell, as it is a mildly tannic wine that goes down easily. The floral and citrus notes of the Sauvignon Blanc made it a summer afternoon favourite and the Chenin Blanc, its Indian style curiously sweet,was a delight for Indians who had grown up on Goan 'Port' wine. This is where the story began. This is where it is still pretty much rooted as new wine producers, in the last three years, have chosen the quartet by default. There has, however, been a creeping attempt to experiment with grape varieties.

Indage Vintners has, in the past, introduced Merlot, Chardonnay and Malbec and Grover Vineyards launched its Viognier in 2003.Sula was the first to import Merlot in 2002 and then gradually produce it at home. The then diffident wine-drinking profile was averse to red wine, finding it either too dry or too tannic. On the other hand, Merlot, a relatively medium bodied wine with soft tannins, went down easily. It sold well and still remains one of Sula's most popular reds.

The trend to break away from the stereotype isn't isolated, either to wine maker or to wine country. In fact, Australia, which, until four years ago, produced pretty much what India did with the exception of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, is now experimenting with Italian varieties like Sangiovese and Nebiollo and Spanish grape Tempranillo. Vintage Wines, which produces wines under the brand Revielo, recently released India's first vintage of home-grown Italian grapes, namely Sangiovese, Nero D'Avola and Grillo. The results are nothing if not encouraging. Directors Yatin and Kiran Patil were prompted by their Italian wine maker to plant Italian - Sicilian in particular - varieties as the climate there is similar to the weather in Nashik. "We were aware that Indians are not acquainted with either the Nero D'Avola or Grillo, but they would take to these wines because they are relatively easy drinking," says Kiran Patil, continuing, "we have also crushed our first Sangiovese vintage this year. This grape makes the Super Chianti and Brunellos in Italy, so naturally, we're quite excited."

According to wine maker Rajesh Rasal, both the Indian drinker and soil are ready to embrace variety. Rasal has the unique reputation of being a second-generation Indian wine maker who is perhaps the only one to make wine for more than one Indian wine company simultaneously. Rasal has made wine for the brands Pause and Good Earth and is currently working on turning out wine producer Riona's first vintage in Sangli. "I've seen Indian preferences for wine evolve from light, easy-drinking varieties in the past to more dry and structured wines today," he says. "So, if the Indian palate is evolving, so must the range of wines produced. I believe that the Spanish grape Tempranillo is going to be the next big thing. It has the potential for late ripening, is heavy bodied and yet balanced with smooth tannins. It's a great food wine too and has the potential to thrive in Nashik, particularly Dindori, where the temperature is moderate (good for late ripening) and humidity, low (helps prevent disease)."

Dindori is a sub-region within Nashik and 22 km north of the city. By far one of the biggest wineries in Dindori, Chateau D'Ori is also actively testing the soil and micro-climate by planting new grape varieties. Managing director Ranjit Dhuru believes there's tremendous potential for French varieties Grenache, Malbec, Viognier, Chardonnay and Spanish grape Tempranillo. "Dindori has several advantages, soil and climate-wise which make it ideal to experiment with new varieties," he says. "The murum (stony) soil drains well, doesn't retain much water and is rich in nutrients while the day-night temperature contrast does well for the characteristics of the grapes. We also produce the Merlot, which is not common in Nashik. We have produced Chardonnay and will bottle the current vintage soon. We plan to bottle Tempranillo and Grenache by 2011 and Viognier should be in the market by 2012."

According to Rasal, Indians can expect new wine regions too. "It's a new world out there, especially up north," he says. "Uttarakhand could well be the next frontier for the Indian wine industry - a temperate climate with temperatures not getting above 28 degrees celsius and falling to 5 degrees celsius. It gets to about zero degrees in winter, which provides that crucial period of dormancy for cool climate grapes like Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir."

Mercury Wines MD Viral Pancholia, who currently produces wines predominantly from the French quartet, is looking to produce a dessert wine from the Muscat grape. "The trials have been encouraging," he says. "A diverse offering is necessary to keep Indians interested in domestic wine, especially when you consider the number of international wines that are becoming popular with Indians." From a retailer's perspective, Nature's Basket CEO Mohit Khattar welcomes the trend, averring that a larger selection of Indian wines is always welcome. Not only does it increase consumption among those who are familiar with wine, but also encourages those who are getting started to try more wines.

Wine: The new frontier

NZ Herald, By Jo Burzynska - Jun 16, 2010

A pioneering organic estate, the chief winemaker at the country's largest wine company and a new boutique operation fusing French and Kiwi creativity are all components of the rich and diverse blend that makes up New Zealand's wine industry.

These players may be treading quite different paths in their work, but each is playing their own important part in shaping the future of the wines we're drinking.

BIG GUN

"Tasting the 1989 Montana Classic sauvignon blanc, which went on to [win the award for] the world's best, I was convinced that wine was the industry for me," recalls Patrick Materman. A year later he joined the company as a cellar hand - his first job in the wine industry - and now 20 years on he's at the winemaking helm of Montana's current owners and the country's largest wine producer, Pernod Ricard New Zealand, with his recent appointment as its chief winemaker.

In those two decades, Materman describes how he's witnessed the transformation of our wine industry. It's an era in which exports have grown from $100 million to over $1 billion a year, the number of wineries multiplied from around 130 to over 650, and plantings in Marlborough - where Materman calls home - expanded from being a few scattered vineyards to covering the entire region.

"It's exciting to have played a part in this growth; to have been involved in the evolution of wine styles, the technical research, and promoting the wines both domestically and internationally," he says.

However, it hasn't always been easy, as Materman recalls challenges from the wash-out vintage of 1995 to the country's current oversupply of sauvignon blanc.

"It's been tough seeing price erosion as a result of oversupply on what is one of the world's truly special and unique wines."

Materman has also seen plenty of change within Montana itself. It's gone from being a local winery to part of a major multinational group through its purchase by Allied Domecq in 2003, and its subsequent sale, two years later, to French drinks group Pernod Ricard.

"It's interesting being part of a large international company," notes Materman. "[It] provides insight into the global business, strength in distribution and the ability to share knowledge within the group."

However, Materman's heart still lies very much in New Zealand's vineyards, where he's come to spend increasing amounts of time over the course of his career "getting to understand the nuances from different vineyard sites".

It's exploiting these differences, combined with exploring new winegrowing avenues that's been at the heart of some of the most interesting projects driven by Materman. One of these is Montana's current quest to make an icon sauvignon blanc - a pertinent endeavour at a time when the country needs to keep the world wowed by its flagship variety.

"Essentially the Icon Project looks to take Marlborough sauvignon blanc to a whole new level," he explains. "Its specific goals are to increase palate interest with weight and texture, and to develop a sauvignon blanc with greater longevity."

He's also been behind Montana's new Living Land series of organically produced wines.

Materman is keen to show New Zealand is more than a one-trick pony. "Although sauvignon's the mainstay of the industry and [our] real point of difference internationally, there is a need for the industry to explore alternative varieties so as not to be totally dependant on it," he says.

A pet project of Materman's, Montana's Showcase Series does just that in featuring emerging grapes from across the country, such as arneis, viognier and New Zealand's first ever sauvignon gris. While big companies have been accused of homogenising the world of wines, it's reassuring that the man dictating styles in our largest wine group is not afraid to do something different.

ORGANIC GROWTH

James and Annie Millton were certainly regarded as pretty different and even a little weird when they started growing grapes organically in Gisborne about 30 years ago.

At a time when few questioned the use of chemicals in viticulture, their adoption of this philosophy meant they were largely held at arms length by the wine industry of that time.

"Our decision to embrace organic growing came from wanting to produce the best wine," explains James Millton, "and observing that in those days of the excessive use the industry was making [of] such terrible chemicals, it was obvious that at vintage time they did not work, but instead left behind plants which had their life energy weakened."

They made the first wines under their Millton label in 1984, but admit that "fear of ridicule" meant they didn't claim their organic credentials until later that decade.

Wine drinkers also shared the industry's lack of interest in more natural winemaking at that time.

"It wasn't until Chernobyl in Russia, Mad Cow Disease in Britain and Pinatubo in the Philippines [the volcanic eruption that discharged climate-changing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere] did people more widely start thinking about what was going on around them," says Millton.

"Every global disaster played very well into our export sales."

Increased sales may have been a lucky spin off, but Millton's adoption of organics is founded on their desire to make authentic wines, the estate's slogan being, "Before a wine can be great, it must first be true".

"Organics bring a true sense of place to a wine, without disguise," he says.

"I want the four elements of taste to be reflected in these wines and endeavour not to use materials which would otherwise disguise their origins.

"While we follow our principles, we also want to make the very best wines from the given season," he adds. "They may not shine on a judging table, but they're certain to leave a memory of the true character."

Millton's wines have certainly left a positive impression on the palates of wine lovers throughout the world. Their Clos de Ste Anne is one of New Zealand's greatest chardonnays and they also make stand-out syrah, viognier, chenin blanc and an intriguing multi-varietal aromatic blend, the Trois Enfants.

Last year also saw them release the accessibly priced Crazy By Nature range.

Organic, as all their wines now are, its name alludes to the response they got to their move to eschew chemicals back in those early days.

In another move considered lunatic by some, Millton were also one of the first winegrowers in the Southern Hemisphere to practise biodynamics.

Like organics, biodynamics doesn't permit the use of synthetic chemicals, but also works with the sun, stars, planets and moon and uses special preparations to enhance the life (bio) energy (dynamic) of the living things on the estate, explains Millton.

In recent years the Milltons' "madness" has been caught by and indeed inspired many new winegrowers keen to work with rather than against nature in ther winemaking.

As well as the massive drive to "sustainable winegrowing" being pushed by the New Zealand Winegrowers organisation, there has been a huge surge in the conversion to organics in the country's vineyards, while some of the country's most respected wineries have joined Millton in embracing biodynamics.

"We kept on with organics and we have not gone back," says Millton.

"Instead there's been a tsunami of interest in organics and biodynamics [in New Zealand]."

A little bit crazy maybe, but the Milltons are no longer alone.

KIWI-FRANCO FUSION

Another cutting-edge couple, who channel two different cultures into their wines are Frenchman David Ramonteau and his New Zealand partner, Kate Galloway.

They're the duo behind impressive new boutique label Alluviale and avant-gardiste wine, Dada.

Ramonteau was born into a winemaking family in France's mountainous Jurancon region. After studying in Bordeaux, he joined a French wine research company as a technical consultant, which took him around the winemaking globe and eventually to New Zealand.

It was here he met his future partner, Galloway, when they were both working a vintage in Hawkes Bay. She worked as a chef, but while working in Europe she decided to follow her love of wine back to New Zealand and train as a winemaker.

She went on to work as a consultant, which saw her make wine all over France, then return home to become chief winemaker at Alpha Domus, a position she still holds.

"There are huge differences in certain aspects of winemaking between France and New Zealand, largely due to the age of the industry in the different countries," says Galloway.

"We don't work with the same fruit so the resulting wine styles are very different and it's foolish to try and mimic too closely the wine of the other country."

It was New Zealand's distinctive fruit, among other positive attributes, that appealed to Ramonteau about the country.

"I was impressed by the beauty of the country and the incredible intensity of everything that grows here - fruits, vegetable, flowers," he says.

"The winemaking collective is very eclectic, welcoming, warm and interesting - in this aspect it differs very much from the competitive, secretive nature of the industry in France."

Ramonteau, who also consults for Hatton estate, did a stint as consultant winemaker with Blake Family Vineyards, who started the Alluviale label.

When the Blake family decided to sell the label in 2007 he and Galloway jumped at the chance to take it over; making their first wines together under the Alluviale name the following vintage.

The label now makes three wines, an elegant red Bordeaux blend from the Gimblett Gravels; one of the country's rare sauvignon semillon blends and perhaps one of the country's best sauvignon stickies, Anobli.

A successful marriage of the French and New Zealand is evident in all Alluviale wines, via their vibrant New Zealand fruit tempered by the textural complexity found in France's best.

Ramonteau and Galloway were also behind one of the most radical wine releases in recent years with the launch Dada1 under a cloak of intrigue. No mention was made of either the makers or the grape varieties of this strikingly packaged blend of white varieties.

While the wine has done well in Australia and Britain, Galloway and Ramonteau admit that it has struggled somewhat in New Zealand.

"As New Zealand has a young wine culture and no other reference system such as AOC [France's geographical indication system], we rely heavily on varietal labelling here," says Ramonteau.

"Blending white wine was not considered the way to make a premium wine and not announcing the varieties was too radical for most people."

Thankfully, like the Milltons with their organics, Alluviale will be persevering with Dada, with Dada2 - this time a blended red - due for release in early 2011.

It's the people prepared to take chances and push the boundaries like Ramonteau and Galloway, the Milltons and Materman, in wineries both small and large, that are creating the real interest in the wine industry today and whose courage and commitment will likely be the key to its success in the future.

Research initiated to boost diversity of wines produced in several European wine-making areas

Source: LEIA Foundation

The European project known as INNOYEAST (Innovation and improvement of European wine industry competitiveness by the research and development of native microencapsulated wine yeasts to produce quality wines) has been officially initiated.

The goal of this R+D+i project is cooperation in the competitive development for the whole European wine-producing sector by means of the isolation, selection and microencapsulation of the autochthonous yeasts from several European wine-producing regions (Rioja Alavesa, Bordeaux, Chianti and Vinho verde), in order to foment diversity in and typicality of the different wines made in these areas.

The project is to last for over two years (2009-2011) and in funded by the European Commission. The project involves, apart from the mentioned Rioja Alavesa vineyard, wine-producers Vinos de los Herederos del Marqués de Riscal, as well as Guserbiot, the biotechnology-based enterprise located in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of Euskadi. Also collaborating are other wine-producers, research centres and universities from the participating wine regions.

The incorporation, moreover, of microencapsulation will provide the autochthonous yeasts great added value. Microencapsulation is an innovative technology that enables the encapsulation of molecules or microorganisms in minute capsules to be employed with numerous advantages in sectors such as foodstuffs or pharmacy.

The microencapsulation of autochthonous yeasts obtained in this research project will facilitate their use by wine producers, enhancing their implementation and ensuring an effective and quality fermentation.

NextGen Wine Competition Helps Define Millennials

WineBusiness, by Scott Carpenter and Laura Carpenter -21 June

The NextGen Wine Competition held June 13 and 14 was the first U.S. competition judged solely by Millennial, or 21 to 35 year-old, wine professionals.

“It was a real mix of characters,” said Elisa Thurman, managing producer for the event. “The difference from other competitions was that it was upbeat, with more energy; sometimes you could hear cheering. Some judges were traditional, others were wearing sandals or sitting with their feet crossed on the chair. The judging showed the diversity of the Millennial Generation.”

The judging panel included young wine and beverage professionals such as Peter Vars, manager of Thomas Liquors in St. Paul, Minnesota. He said the world of wine to Millennials is about value and sharing. “To us, the wine experience, in judging or in tasting with friends, is about value. And value is not just about the price point, it means where the grapes were grown, how the wine was made, then sharing it quickly with social media such as Facebook. In other words, to us it's not about pedigree and scores. It's about the excitement of learning.”

“I agree,” said Nova Cadamatre, assistant winemaker at Souverain. “All of us felt it wasn't just about quality, it was about value and stylistic differences, too. As to whether anything specific was found, such as categorizing taste differences between young versus older wine lovers, it’ll take more Millennial competitions in order to get any solid patterns.”

“Additional value is the biggest part of the millennial equation,” said Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, LLC, and adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame. “Additional value means social currency. Think of things you can turn around and spend. Knowledge, information, even a great video, they are all social currency.

“That's why Millennials are so attracted to wine; there's a lot to know about it.”

Phillips said that as a sub-culture, Millennials have language, preferences and customs that are distinct to their own generation, and they have a strong influence over fellow Millennial buying decisions.

Donny and August Sebastiani, recognized pioneers in developing innovative wines, served as honorary co-chairs. “For four generations, our family has produced quality value wines and now it's our chance to take our wine business to the next level,” said Donny.
Wine Competition management say they intend to make this an annual event

The NextGen Wine Competition for Millennial Wine drinkers is the newest competition launched by Wine Competition Management. For more information, go to www.nexgenwinecomp.info.

In all, 24 judges rated 730 wines from around the world.

In the open division, meaning the wine was made by winemakers of any age; Gallo's Barefoot Cellars (non-vintage) Moscato Spumanti took Best of Show.

Charter Oak Winery received Best of Show in the Millennial Winemakers Challenge for its ’07 Monte Rosso Zinfandel.

Double Gold went to Luigi Bosca's Finca La Linda ’09 Torrontes of Argentina.

Others winners include Dry Creek's Wilson Winery, Best of Class for its ’07 Syrah; Van Ruiten Winery, Lodi, CA, took Gold for its ’08 Petite Sirah.

Wine: No added sulphur

NZ Herald ,By Joelle Thomson - Jun 22, 2010

Couching his question in friendly terms, he sent a box of quirky French reds for tasting, asking: "If a wine has no sulphur added, does it mean it has no sulphur at all?"

Regular readers will understand instantly why I felt another preservative-free wine column coming on, but fear not.

This week's column is actually about syrah and grenache.

Before we get to that, the answer is: No. All wines contain sulphur because it's a natural by-product of fermentation.

To carry the theme further, one of those French reds was described as "naked" by wine importer Paul Mitchell because the wine has no added sulphur and was not subjected to the standard winemaking practices of fining and filtering.

Both are controversially said to "strip" wine of flavour and character, though they also stabilise it from refermentation by removing all residual solid matter (grape skins, pips et al).

Click on to the website of this dark, brooding red - vinedemio.com - and winemakers Sebastian and Zoe Vincenti Barthelemy explain that they adhere to "passive winemaking".

Like a small but steadily growing number of winemakers around the planet, they want their wines to taste natural rather than worked, which accounts for why the "naked" wine - 2009 Domaine de Fondreche "Nature" Cotes-du-Ventoux - tastes so earthy.

Is it good? I thought so, as did three very different male wine drinkers, who liked it for being big, bold and black as the cloudy, moonless night on which we tasted it.

This wine tastes as dark as 70 per cent-cocoa chocolate, too, thanks to the intensity of the syrah and grenache grapes it's made from.

And lest "passive winemaking" sounds like vinous child neglect, its makers kept this wine on its yeast lees (dead yeast cells, post-fermentation) for six months longer than necessary, as a protective measure against oxidation.

It's biodynamic winemaking, of course. Your average reds all contain added sulphur to prevent oxidation. As do most of the dried fruits and nuts we eat. The amounts are miniscule and true allergies are rare.

My pick of the reds that Mitchell sent was the 2007 Domaine Vindemio Regain and the 2009 Saint Cosme Cotes-du-Rhone is a close rival. All are good go-to winter reds. They all over-deliver.

If I had $20 to my name and was charged with buying a top French red, these would be my first, second and third choices. Sadly, for the one-stop shopper, they can't be found at the local supermarket. Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and get on the list for his old-fashioned snail-mail newsletter, which opens doors of flavour to another world of wine.

Chamarré: is the French wine industry ready for brands?

Daily Wine News - 22 June 2010 (First appeared in La Journée Vinicole, edition 222, June 18.)

Hailed in 2005 when it was first launched as France’s response to the mega brands of the New World, Chamarré has gone into receivership.

The company continues to trade and, in accordance with French law, has been placed under observation for four months.

The procedure was triggered to allow the company time to restructure its debts and a recovery plan is currently being drafted.

In an interview published in La Journée Vinicole this week, founder and company chief Pascal Renaudat insists that the company’s business model is sound.

His belief is vindicated by end of year sales figures for 2009 which show a 35% volume increase on the previous year and the fact that the US branch should reach break-even point this year.

Renaudat believes that failure to achieve greater synergies amongst suppliers is one of the primary causes of the firm’s current difficulties and that this, in turn, stems from lack of brand experience within the French wine industry.

“Launching a brand implies a profound change in people’s approach,” he said.

“If nobody before us had ever launched a French brand of wine internationally, it’s because it’s complicated”.

As he drafts the firm’s restructuring plan, Pascal Renaudat is hoping to encourage the co-operative wineries backing Chamarré to pool more resources to achieve greater sales clout.

Hence, he believes that the receivership procedure provides the perfect opportunity to “address the fundamental issues”.

“There needs to be greater awareness of the resources required to launch a brand,” he said.

This surely also involves the French authorities who in recent years have been pushing the wine industry to come up with more dynamic, market-relevant projects.

The outcome of Chamarré’s restructuring process is of paramount importance, not only to the co-operative groups that hold 24% of its shares, but for the French wine industry as a whole.

At the crux of this are not necessarily financial issues – although the brand’s premium retail positioning provides improved revenues for growers – but more structural issues.

Even if Chamarré were ultimately to collapse, it would not send out financial shock waves within the industry but major doubts as to whether it is capable of rallying around a defining project for the future.

“How many real projects are there in France today that are capable of providing a focal point for the French wine industry as a whole?” asks Pascal Renaudat.

The truth is that Chamarré needs 100% backing by the industry if it is to successfully overcome the major shortcoming that every study and review has identified: a dearth of brands.

OIV summary on the global situation of the wine and vine industry in 2009

OIV's yearly statistical analysis results, presented during the 33rd World Wine and Vine Congress, indicate that the activities in this field have slowed down in 2009.


Mr Federico Castellucci explained that the total global area dedicated to vineyards had regressed by 1.2% in 2009, and that the global grape production was marked by a 1.5% decrease in 2009 (675.3 million quintals) compared with 2008 (685.7 million quintals), but exceeded those of 2007 (665.2 million quintals) and 2006 (667.5 million quintals).

The global situation in terms of wine and vine in 2009 recorded an increase in wine production of 1.1 million hectolitres compared with 2008, to reach 268.7 million hectolitres against 267.6 million hectolitres the previous year.

On the other hand, with a global decrease of 3.6% in wine consumption recorded in 2009 (236.5 million hectolitres), the downward trend started in 2008 (245, 2 million hectolitres) continued in a context of diminishing global demand.
Mr Federico Castellucci also presented the evolution of global wine exchanges for 2009, which was marked by a decrease of 3.47 million hectolitres of wine exports compared with 2008.
“After an uninterrupted period of growth since 2000, global wine exports have broken with this trend in 2008 because of the economic crisis and pursued this downward trend in 2009. However, the global volume of exported wines in 2009 is still largely superior to that recorded in 2006 and the previous years” declared Mr Castellucci.

QR technology creeps onto latest wine labels

Source: thedrinksbusiness.com

Slowly gaining acceptance in the wine trade is the adoption of QR (quick response) technology involving label-based two-dimensional bar codes which, when captured with a mobile phone, take you to the wine's website.

The tool, widely used in Asia, and popular in Japan since the mid-90s, has been applied to the repackaged Portuguese brand Tagus Creek, and New Zealand’s latest label, Insight, from Vinultra.

Essentially, the codes are a way to bridge the gap between the offline and online worlds, and provide an opportunity for wine producers to provide consumers with the latest details on what they’re drinking, without having to constantly update back labels.

New lab to test wine going to EU

By kristina-koveshnikova- nbr.co.nz

Government-owned AsureQuality has established an Auckland-based export wine certification laboratory to analyse wine destined for Europe.

AsureQuality is a commercial company that provides food safety and biosecurity services to the food and primary production sectors.

The organisation has been granted formal recognition by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) for analysing wines for export to the European Union (EU).

Dubbed the “wine cellar” because of its location in the customised basement area of the chemistry block extension, the new laboratory is part of the recent 819m2 refurbishment at the Lynfield site.

The laboratory, which employs four highly experienced specialists, is already testing a significant amount of New Zealand’s export wine.

Scott Leathem, Auckland laboratory operations manager, said the facility currently has a turn around time for results of three days.

“The testing methods we use for the wine export certification programme are all based on the EU reference methods and are NZFSA recognised, which means we can ensure the best results possible for our customers,” Mr Scott says.

The range of analyses for the export certification programme includes: actual alcohol (distillation/density); total alcohol (sugars/alcohol by calculation); total dry extract (density); and citric acidity.

Virginia Heavily Promoting the Wine Industry

Nbc24.com Jun 20, 2010

Saturday, some of Governor Bob McDonnell's top staff stopped at a Crozet vineyard to toast a wine industry funding plan. The commonwealth is more than doubling the money to promote Virginia's wine industry - more than $1 million will go to research and marketing.

Pollak Vineyards Sales Associate Aaron Spring says Virginia's premiere wineries are getting a reputation across the nation. "A lot of the traffic we see in here are people from outside of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, California. They come from all over the place to try Virginia wine."

Governor McDonnell's Chief of Staff Martin Kent joined Virginia's Secretary of Agriculture Todd Haymore at King Family Vineyards in Crozet Saturday to celebrate the wine liter tax bill. The legislation will give a $1.3 million boost to the industry.

Haymore said, "The money that's going to be deposited for more research, education and marketing is hopefully going to help take the wine industry to another level, not only here in Virginia, but also nationally and internationally."

Haymore says the goal is to help spread the word about Virginia's vineyards by dedicating nearly $800,000 to wine marketing. The other $500,000 will go toward education and research.

Haymore said, "For the past decade, we've only had about $580,000 total. So we're going from $580,000 to $1.3 million in one year. That makes a big difference."

A difference that Virginia winemakers hope you can taste in the quality of future vintages.

The governor was scheduled to take part in the ceremonial bill signing at King Family Vineyards Saturday, but was unable to make the event due to a family emergency. He's pledged to make a trip to Crozet sometime this fall.

NIELSEN: DESPITE IMPROVING ECONOMY, (US) ALCOHOL BEVERAGE CONSUMERS CAUTIOUSLY INDULGE

www.nielsen.com

Consumers Who Trade Down Satisfied with Quality, Likely to Continue to Buy Less Expensive Alcohol Beverages

LAS VEGAS – June 16, 2010 - - There may be cause for celebration as the economy shows some signs of improvement, but U.S. consumers remain somewhat cautious about their alcohol beverage spending. The Nielsen Company presented the new insights at its Consumer 360 Conference, the global intersection of what consumers watch and buy.

Nielsen’s research shows that a significant percentage of consumers claim they are going out less often now than before the economic downturn. Nearly half of consumers (47 percent) report going to bars or clubs less often, while an even greater number say they are paying fewer visits to casual (58 percent) and fine dining (60 percent) establishments. On the other hand, when asked how they will change their habits as the economy improves, 37 percent of consumers say they will visit casual restaurants more often, while less than a third of consumers will make frequent returns to fine dining (27 percent) and bars or nightclubs (16 percent). Interestingly, the results showed a significant Generation divide – younger Millennial consumers(aged 21-27) signaled their intent to go out much more often as the economy improved, while consumers 55+ were much less optimistic about their future “going out” prospects. “Staying in continues to be the new night out,” said Danny Brager, vice president, group client director, Beverage Alcohol, The Nielsen Company. “As the economy worsened, consumers turned to at-home dining and entertaining, and now that the economy is starting to improve, uncertainty about the extent of the recovery continues to dampen the consumer ‘rush’ to go out more often. While this shift represents a serious challenge for restaurants, this trend continues to serve as a significant opportunity for alcohol beverage retailers, who are actively promoting products and beverages that can help enhance consumers’ ‘night out’ at home.”

Standing Pat

While “trading down” has been the buzz of the economic downturn, more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed claim they have not changed their alcohol beverage purchases because of price. Of that group, one-quarter of these consumers are simply buying less often. A lesser amount (13 percent) continues to buy the same products, but wait until they go on sale. Twenty percent tried less expensive products but weren’t happy with the quality or experience.

“While the majority of consumers say they have stayed the course, we do see evidence of alcohol beverage consumers adjusting to new realities and evaluating what, where and how often they buy.

They’re much more conscious of the choices they make,” said Brager, echoing themes presented by others at the conference. Compared to before the start of the economic downturn, 16 percent of beer consumers, 18 percent of spirit consumers and 23 percent of wine consumers say they usually purchase less expensive products.

A Trade Up Comeback?

Of those that did trade down, more than two-thirds (79 percent of wine consumers, 67 percent of beer consumers and 63 percent of spirits consumers) say they can generally find good products at lower prices. And for those that are not finding the quality as good? They’re willing to sacrifice some quality in order to save.

The majority of trading down consumers tells Nielsen they will continue to buy less expensive products as the economy continues to improve (75 percent of wine consumers, 70 percent of beer consumers and 66 percent of spirits consumers). When examining those consumers that report that thy would trade back up, Millennials (age 21 – 34) in particular, are relatively more likely to trade back up, compared to other age groups across all alcohol beverage categories.

“Although trading down activity dominated the recession discussion, especially among wine consumers, a large segment of consumers stood pat in their price selections,” said Brager. “That said, there is a noteworthy segment of consumers who did trade down, and it appears that we probably won’t see much of a trade up comeback from that group. Alcohol beverage companies need to determine how to deal with consumers whose trading down actions are more entrenched. Are these consumers affecting their business and if so what strategies do they employ to impact that behavior, whether it be new products, assortment strategies, differentiated channel strategies, price and promotion activity or precision merchandising?

Planned Purchases

Compared to the start of the economic downturn, about one-third (36 percent) of consumers say their purchases are more planned, and less on impulse.

“Instead of picking up their favorite beverage on a whim, some consumers, particularly spirits consumers, are now more planful about their purchases,” said Brager. “This presents tremendous opportunities for alcohol beverage manufacturers and retailers to reach these consumers before they enter the store.”

About Nielsen’s Beverage Alcohol Consumer Survey

Nielsen surveyed approximately 7,500 U.S. alcohol beverage consumers of legal drinking age in April/May 2010. Responses from the online survey are across age groups, income level and gender.

Cheating in the wine industry – why does it happen?
By: WINE magazine  Published: 17 Jun 10  

During the 18th century, ‘stretching’ or ‘cutting in’ wine was widely practised by Bordeaux wine producers that added wine from Spain or southern France to increase the amount of claret they could flog to the English. Appellation systems like France’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) or Spain’s Denominación de Origen (DO) were developed specifically to prevent lesser wines being labelled as those from more prestigious appellations, and to stipulate and enforce which grapes or combinations of grapes were permitted.

But even today there are those who try to buck the system. In 2005, French company Vins Georges Duboeuf was found guilty of blending lesser wines with red Burgundy and selling them at inflated prices. In March 2008, Italian producers were investigated for cutting their Brunello di Montalcino (100% Sangiovese) with other grape varieties. And in February this year, 12 French wine producers and traders were found guilty of selling 18 million bottles of Pinot Noir (actually cut with cheaper Merlot and Syrah) to US wine giant Gallo for its popular Red Bicyclette label. It seems French fraud agency officials became suspicious on discovering that wine merchant Ducasse had sold 53 889 hectolitres (hl) of Vin de Pays d’Oc Pinot Noir in 2006 when the entire region had only produced around 53 000hl. A class-action suit has now also been filed against Gallo, with consumer Mark Zeller claiming that “by labelling, marketing, promoting, distributing, and selling the falsely labelled wine, [the defendants] either knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known that their conduct was misleading and deceptive”.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHEATING
“Very broadly speaking,” says Solms, “there are two types of cheating. The first is realistic cheating where the person makes a rational, objective assessment of a situation, considers the rules, and decides that the outcome will be better if he fudges or disobeys the rules. This might include someone who thinks a French rule preventing the use of such-and-such a grape variety is idiotic, or that adding water to wine will improve the wine and isn’t harming anyone. The realistic cheat is frustrated by the rules because they seem arbitrary or unnecessary or silly, or because there are too many rules, or perhaps because the rules aren’t policed adequately so everyone else is breaking them and he’s actually at a disadvantage if he doesn’t!”

Then there’s narcissistic cheating, which Solms says is far more malignant. “These people believe they are above the law; that rules are for other people; that breaking rules is okay even if it harms what psychoanalysts term the ‘object’ – in this case consumers or the industry as a whole – because of their sense of superiority. They don’t care about consequences; they don’t even feel guilt. ‘Why should I? The object suffers, I’m okay!’ To use paedophiles as an extreme example, they know that there are things you shouldn’t do to children: ‘But those things don’t apply to me!’ Narcissistic cheats can be very nasty people.”

Solms says there is a maturation element to narcissism. “Little kids cheat – we expect them to – but as we get older, we (should) develop the emotional maturity to put up with life’s frustrations, to accept that we’re good at some things and not so good at others, to tolerate doubt and imperfection. Narcissists lack this emotional maturity; they have a need to be brilliant, the best, or not take part at all. Artists – including painters, sculptors and winemakers – are commonly narcissists. They’re sometimes the most obnoxious people, yet we admire them.”

Solms attributes this ‘funny ambiguity’ to the following: “We all have a latent memory of our early narcissistic selves and of the pain involved in adjusting to our real place in the world – the discovery that we’re not the centre of the universe! So we admire artists precisely because they haven’t relinquished their narcissism; their narcissism is actually their source of greatness.”

At the other end of the scale, residual narcissism also helps to explain the angry mob mentality that takes over when one of our ‘heroes’ doesn’t merely transcend the rules but disregards them. “Suddenly the KWV guys were absolute dogs and people were just about calling for them to be burned at the stake!” recalls Solms.

In conclusion, the academic-turned-businessman wryly observes: “Having come relatively late in life to the world of commerce, I must say it was quite a shock to experience the cut and thrust of sales and marketing; the scheming involved in persuading people that they need to drink your wine; the things people do to gain a competitive advantage. In the mindset of the capitalist order, cheating is actually not that far away from how the system is meant to work!”

On Natural Wines

My column is about the seemingly emotional, threatening issue of natural wines. I use the term natural wines throughout the column, but it’s a measure of how nebulous the issue is to say that many people disagree on the use of that phrase. Some prefer other terms, like real wine, or natural winemaking.

What is meant by whichever term you prefer? Even trying to define the parameters is difficult and contentious.

In general, it means striving to farm without using chemical pesticides, fungicides or herbicides. It means plowing fields, and harvesting by hand rather than with machinery.

In the cellar, natural winemakers allow the juice to ferment with indigenous yeasts rather than by adding yeast formulated in laboratories. In the cellar they generally do not add sugar to prolong fermentation or increase the alcohol content, nor do they add enzymes, acid, tannins, water or coloring to make up for what is lacking. They do not add sulfur dioxide to the grapes they harvest, which would kill the natural yeasts, and if they do add sulfur later on as a preservative it is in very low doses. They do not use reverse osmosis, microoxygenation, concentrators or any other technology that allows producers to mold the wine into their preferred final shape.

Yet, even among natural winemakers themselves the debate is endless. Some might say that controlling the temperature of the fermenting wine with refrigeration equipment has no place in the process, while others are not bothered by such details. Some would object to using any machinery other than human feet to press the grapes. Others find nothing wrong in lightly filtering the wine, a practice that many mainstream winemakers abhor.

Here’s how I would simplify it. In the vineyard, don’t use poisons, and try to limit the use of copper sulfate and sulfur, chemicals that are permitted even under organic viticulture for combating mildew. In the cellar, don’t add anything to the juice or wine, and don’t take anything out. I have no problem with a little sulfur dioxide as a stabilizer because, after all, who wants a wine that’s spoiled by the time you open it? And yet, in rare cases like the wines of Radikon, unsulfured wines can be amazingly stable.

Paul Draper, the chief executive and winemaker of Ridge Vineyards, once described wine as the perfect beverage because the grapes contain all that is necessary to have wine. Beer needs the addition of water to grain and hops. Spirits require distilling. But grapes really require no more than time to become wine. Of course, to turn wine into a commercial product necessitates some degree of human intervention. The question is, how much?

The excellent British wine writer Andrew Jefford, in a recent column in Decanter, described his feeling of excitement on returning to Europe after a year-long stay in Australia. “Australian wines excite thanks to intensely flavored grapes, generous acid additions and evident oak,’’ he wrote, while discussing the inexpensive regional wines of Europe that he missed during his residence.

Adding acid, to me, is more intervention than I would prefer. No doubt, I’ve enjoyed wines in which the acid level has been adjusted. But all things being equal, I would prefer to drink wines in which such adjustments were not considered necessary. Even when a producer decides a wine requires some sort of acid adjustment, it seems to me that more creative approaches are available than simply dumping a bag of tartaric acid into the blend.

I heard recently of one producer who made a point of harvesting some grapes early, to be turned into highly acidic verjus, should it be necessary to adjust the acidity of the wine. Again, it would be better not to need adjustments, but adding verjus, made from the same grapes that went into the wine, seems to be a more benign adjustment than adding a product completely divorced from the wine.

Arguments about what constitutes natural wine can indeed seem endless. They can stretch from how the soil is treated, to whether irrigation is used, to the actual packaging of the wine. Often they get heated and personal, but I saw a useful discussion recently at Wine Berserkers.

And my blogging colleague Cory Cartwright is just beginning a month of posts on natural wines that will no doubt be provocative and interesting.

While I love natural wines, the line between what is and what’s not is not always clear. There is no orthodoxy, and I’m not doctrinaire about it. Simply being natural is no different than being red or white. It’s no guarantee of quality or style. And even among wines that are considered natural, some seem in the glass to be entirely conventional, while others, you can tell right away, are different in style and flavor.

It would be impossible to give a complete list of natural wines. But if you want to taste for yourselves, look for wines imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, Jenny & Francois or Savio Soares Selections, just to name a few importers dealing with these sorts of wines. For domestic versions, look for Lioco, Donkey and Goat or La Clarine. I apologize for not being more specific, but feel free to offer your suggestions.

Natural Winemaking Stirs Debate

New York Times, 14 June 2010, By ERIC ASIMOV

THE world of wine is full of hornets’ nests. The minute you step on one, whether you nudge it accidentally or boot it with malice aforethought, the angry buzzing begins, rising to a high-pitched howl that would send anybody in search of shelter and a beer.

Prime among these are natural wines. These wines, which barely make up a tiny slice of the marketplace, effortlessly polarize, not least because of the implied repudiation contained in the word “natural.” If your wine is natural, what does that make mine? Unnatural? Artificial?

Even defining the term incites the sort of Talmudic bickering usually reserved for philosophers and sports talk-radio hosts. Generally speaking, though, it is intended to mean wines made of grapes grown organically, or in rough approximation, and then made into wine with a minimum of manipulation — nothing added, nothing taken away, the winemaker simply shepherding the grape juice along its natural path of fermentation into wine.

This would seem to be the kind of laudable idealism worth encouraging. Instead, in recent months natural wines and their adherents have been harshly criticized in newspaper and magazine articles, in conferences and on Internet bulletin boards. Some writers have warned of green-washing, the practice of making false or exaggerated claims about ecologically virtuous practices in order to reap marketing gains. Others resent what they feel is a scolding, finger-wagging sanctimony inherent not only in the term “natural wines,” but also in the admirers of the wines. Most damning is the assertion that many wines regarded as natural are unclean, impure and downright bad.

“Natural Isn’t Perfect” was the headline in The Washington Post this spring for an article by the wine columnist Dave McIntyre, who wrote, “The minimalist approach of the natural-wine movement, taken to its extreme, can be an excuse for bad wine-making.”

For fans of natural wines, and I am one, the criticism can be profoundly frustrating. Most people who make or like the wines feel as they do simply because they enjoy the way the wines taste, not because they follow a particular dogma. When successful, natural wines can be superb, seeming bold, vibrant and fresh, graceful and unforced.

“Do you like raw milk cheese and dry-aged beef, do you prefer real sourdough over white bread?” asked Lou Amdur, whose wine bar in Los Angeles, Lou on Vine, took part last month in a series of seminars and discussions of natural wines. “These wines are in the same constellation.”

A lot is expected of natural wines, partly because of the term’s connotations of purity. Yet to criticize the genre because not all the wines measure up holds them to an unfair standard. Bad winemaking is bad winemaking wherever you find it. Mr. McIntyre could just as easily criticize mainstream brands for using their popularity and financial success to excuse atrocious winemaking.

I’ve had natural wines from the Loire and Beaujolais, where the movement began, that are as clean and crystalline as anybody might ever want. Others have been murky and funky, yet nonetheless enchanting. And yes, some have been microbiological disasters, refermenting in the bottle or worse. The mistakes have been few, though, while the good examples have been among the most beautiful, intriguing wines I have ever tasted.

“These are often experimental wines, and I love that people are risking their livelihoods making their wines,” Mr. Amdur said. “These people are not making a lot of money.”

Nonetheless, some producers are trying to capitalize on the growing environmental awareness of consumers by touting their wines as biodynamic or organic. Partly, this parallels the organic-food movement, in which big corporations, not wanting to cede the business, have instead tried to co-opt it by weakening standards and employing their marketing might.

“There are producers who say they are farming organically, but when you dig a little deeper you find it’s true only 85 percent of the time,” said Scott Pactor, who owns Appellation, a wine shop in Manhattan that carries a loosely defined collection of organic, biodynamic and sustainably produced wines. “Greenwashing creates cynicism.”

Indeed, some wine writers have used examples of this sort of greenwashing to batter the entire genre.

I’m not surprised to find exaggeration among those who claim to make natural wines, or any other kind of wine. The history of the wine trade is replete with fraud, adulteration and all manner of chiseling from antiquity to the present.

While the numbers of natural-wine makers and of restaurants, bars and shops that champion them is small, their influence is disproportionate. Like artists, musicians and writers in the avant-garde, the movement traffics in ideas that swirl far beyond the interests of the vast majority of ordinary fans. Nonetheless, their ideas may change the way people think of grape growing and winemaking.

Some of the winemakers might be primitive in their methods, but others are decidedly scientific in their craft. The fact is that making wine without benefit of chemicals or other technological shortcuts demands precision and exactitude. Far more so, perhaps, than in conventional winemaking. I find this passion and determination inspiring.

Not so long ago the organic and local food movements were condemned as the province of eccentrics and fanatics. Yet the proof was in quality and flavor, and many of their ideas have won out. The same may eventually be true in wine.

Social Media More Than a Buzzword at Wineries Like Carr and Jordan

Palate Press, June 16, 2010 by Wayne Kelterer  
Social media has become one of the most used buzzwords of the last several years—along with Google (as a verb), subprime, death panels, friend, un-friend, tweet, and of course, blog. Wine has its own set of buzzwords, of course, from biodynamic and sustainable to screwcap, critter label, and boxed wine. Put social media and wine together, and you have a possibility to dramatically shift the way we connect with and consume wine.

With an iPhone or other smart device in nearly every pocket, instant wine reviews are only a tap away. Millennials, those born after 1980, are turning to wine much younger and with more enthusiasm than their parents did (Exhibit A: me). And, they’re using the internet’s social applications to fuel their exploration, as an abundance of good wine meets multitudes of WiFi-enabled voices ready to sing a wine’s praises—or lament its flaws.

But what relevance does social media really have for wine marketing?

I saw an unattributed quote recently that “social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.” Social media is not a magic bullet—a cure-all for poor marketing strategy and bad products. But there’s no question that reaching the masses with a winery’s story, virtually for free, could be an incredibly powerful tactic.

About a year ago I spoke with a young winemaker about the impact social media has had on his brand. Ryan Carr owns Carr Winery in downtown Santa Barbara, California, with production of less than ten thousand cases a year. Carr has a huge following in the Santa Barbara area, selling much of their wine directly to customers, sometimes straight from the barrel. Social media plays a key role in their local marketing strategy.

“We actually stopped doing print marketing because of it,” he told me, as we sat in his office above the Carr tasting room. “We did a simple little experiment over the course of two weeks. One week we did nothing but print [media] about what was going on here over the weekend… And the following week, we did just internet—Facebook, Twitter—and no paper, nothing at all.”

The results? “The internet was far superior,” Ryan says. Carr now hosts Tweet-ups and is actively engaged with their online social community. Ryan’s impressed by what social media has done for them. “As a marketing tool, it’s been huge.”

Social media success for one small winery with a local customer base is one thing, but what about the giants of wine? Some argue that a grassroots approach cannot be applied to large well-established brands without losing authenticity.

Not so, says John Jordan, CEO of Jordan Vineyard and Winery in Healdsburg, California. Over the past year, Jordan has been hitting their social media campaigns hard. They launched a vineyard blog, and now devote two full-time positions to their social media efforts.

Four weeks ago I sat down with John to discuss their social media efforts. I had to ask the obvious question right upfront: “Why spend time with a young guy like me who has only written a blog for six months?”

John’s response got right at the point of social media. “First of all,” John said, “I am a young guy myself…I am in my 30s, the quintessential Gen-Xer.” Unlike Millennials, John spent his college days playing John Maden on his Xbox, not friending people on Facebook. But he keeps current, and has an intense interest in social media and what it can do for Jordan. It’s simply about telling your story, he says.

“There are some fundamental shifts happening in wine consumption patterns,” John continued. “The Boomers, given where they are in their income lifecycle, have a higher disposable income stream than Millennials do. That’s going to change.”

Plus, he added, “The next big generation of wine drinkers isn’t interested in being told what to drink by a critic. They really don’t care if something is a 96 or a 94; they want to try it themselves and make up their own mind—and try lots of different things.”

It’s this last fact that presents a challenge to Jordan and similar wineries. If the next generation of wine drinkers is going to drink lots of different things, how do you make sure your bottle ends up at the party from time to time?

In the not too distant past, Jordan could claim to be one of only a few premium California wines on the market. But they’re no longer alone, and indeed there are superb wines coming from every corner of the wine world. “There are so many brands and so much good juice out there,” says John. “The companies like Jordan, Silver Oak, or Opus One can’t claim we make the best wine [anymore]. We can’t say the same things we could in the early 80s…You have to be humbler, you have to be hungrier. You have to realize that people want a story, they want an experience.” In other words, a bottle can’t win on the quality game alone. There has to be another reason to take it along to the party.

But while it’s easy to talk about using social media, it’s much harder to put social media marketing into practice. “It’s not something you do and you’re done,” John told me. “It is a new modality of engagement…it’s about constantly telling your story. You have to make a commitment as your organization.” For Jordan this requires more than just a financial commitment, it’s also commitment of time and energy. From chef to winemaker, the entire Jordan team makes an effort to participate, at times putting in extra hours to do so.

John sees other wineries coming up short. “In my view, wineries play lip service to understanding [social media]…but they really don’t understand it as organizations. They don’t really commit to it. They say, ‘well we have a Facebook page and we are going to tell you when our next sale is.’ They say that’s a social media presence, and it isn’t…they miss the whole point and the substance behind the blogosphere and telling your story.”

Like any social shift, it is hard to predict the final outcome. Technology will continue to exert ever greater impact on our lives and on the ways we relate to the world, and the wine industry will need to change and adapt to using this technology to reach new consumer markets. Savvy CEOs like Ryan Carr and John Jordan—the ones who are already adapting—will continue to keep their eyes on the horizon.

Ryan Carr summed up his commitment to social media this way: “We definitely plan on keeping up with it…keeping up with what’s to come.”

Brimstone in the Bottle: Sulfur Compounds in Wine

Palate Press, March 1, 2010 by Tom Mansell  

The word “sulfur,” in my mind, is inexorably linked back to Mr. Burcik’s high school chemistry class, when we were given soft, pungent, yellow chunks to mix with other chemicals.  When elemental sulfur is exposed to air, it forms sulfur dioxide, which burns the inside of the nose and stinks up the whole chemistry wing of the building.

Sulfur isn’t just about the pungent sting of a burnt match, though, and in wine it’s not just about the presence of sulfites.  Sulfur-based aroma compounds are found at all stages of the winemaking process, and can range from downright noxious to fruity and pleasant.  Let’s take a look at some of the various sulfur-containing aroma compounds found in wine.

Sulfites

Perhaps when we hear of “sulfur” in wine, we think first of sulfites.    The term “sulfites” refers to the various forms of sulfur dioxide present in wine. The original application of sulfites was burning sulfur candles in amphorae (the clay vessels used to make wine in ancient times).  Ancient winemakers (be they Greeks, Armenians, Egyptians, or Romans, depending on whom you ask) probably didn’t know why burned sulfur (sulfur dioxide, or SO₂) helped preserve their wine, but the use of sulfites has been fairly ubiquitous in winemaking since and continues to this day.

Sulfites are used for many reasons in winemaking to (1) inhibit growth of wild yeasts and bacteria, (2) bind with acetaldehyde and other oxidizing molecules, preserving color and aroma, and (3) inhibit some polyphenol oxidases in grape juice, reducing browning.

The aroma characteristics of sulfites are unmistakable and can be obvious when a winemaker has been heavy-handed. The best descriptor I can think of is struck match, but there is more to smelling sulfites than aroma. Sulfites create a trigeminal response, meaning they irritate the nasal passages, creating a stinging sensation.

Sulfides and Mercaptans

If sulfites are regarded as oxidized sulfur, then sulfides and mercaptans are at the other end of the oxidation spectrum: reduced sulfur. These compounds have a real stink to them.

Hydrogen Sulfide
If you’ve ever made wine, been around winemaking, or even opened a stinky bottle of wine (had a bad experience with a Languedoc recently… whoa!), you probably are familiar with the smell of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). It smells like rotten eggs, and it’s commonly found in wine.

This malodorous molecule can come from two sources during fermentation: (1) excessive elemental sulfur sprayed on grapes and (2) nutrient deficiency in yeast. The first case seems easy enough to understand (sulfur is reduced by yeast enzymes), but the origins of H₂S due to yeast nutrient deficiency are slightly more subtle.

Yeast require a source of nitrogen to complete fermentations. Low nitrogen can lead to stuck, and as many home fermenters know, stinky fermentations. In the absence of nitrogen, which is a principal component of the protein building blocks, yeast will begin to degrade amino acids in order to make the specific amino acids they need. When sulfur-containing amino acids like cysteine and methionine get degraded, they release sulfur groups that are processed into various sulfur-containing compounds, hydrogen sulfide among them. To prevent this, winemakers often measure YAN (yeast available nitrogen), supplement fermentations with yeast nutrients, choose yeast strains carefully (if inoculated), and aerate the fermenting wine.

Hydrogen sulfide in wine can suppress perception of fruit aromas, even if it’s below the point where the wine smells like rotten eggs. Luckily for many wine drinkers, it is very volatile and blows off quickly. It has been speculated that decanting wine (or just aerating if all you’ve got is a pitcher) can aid in perception of fruit and other pleasant aromas by blowing off hydrogen sulfide.

Mercaptans and Disulfides
Another set of players in our sulfurous rogue’s gallery are the mercaptans. These sulfur compounds are also formed by the degradation of amino acids and smell rather like some cruciferous vegetables. Examples include methyl mercaptan (cabbage, garlic, burnt rubber) and ethyl mercaptan (the compound added to natural gas to warn us of gas leaks). The human nose is highly sensitive to these compounds (detected in the low parts-per-billion range). Winemakers can diminish the amount of mercaptans by copper fining, but this practice is risky given the legal limits on copper in wine in many countries. This could be one reason why the Romans drank from goblets of copper and lead, another heavy metal that binds mercaptans. Indeed, if you smell some of these aromas in a wine and can find a pre-1982 copper penny (modern pennies are mostly zinc), you could try a copper fining experiment for yourself by dropping the coin in your glass.

But as if mercaptans didn’t sound bad enough, these compounds can react (sometimes with each other) to form sulfides. Examples include dimethyl sulfide (canned corn, seafood, cooked cabbage) and methyl ethyl sulfide (onion), ethyl disulfide (rubber) and dimethyl trisulfide (fish, cabbage). Sulfides and disulfides cannot be fined with copper. In fact, there’s not much a winemaker can do to get rid of them. Luckily, sulfides and disulfides are perceived at a higher threshold than mercaptans and usually are not present in high enough amounts to be detectable in wine. However, disulfides can still be problematic while aging in the bottle. (see inset)

Aside: Screwcaps and Reduction

The composition of many sulfur compounds in wine depends on what is known as the reduction-oxidation (redox) potential in wine. During fermentation, wine is a chemically reducing environment, where mercaptans and thiols can thrive without fear of reacting with other thiol groups to form disulfides. After fermentation ends, the redox potential of a wine becomes more oxidizing (by aeration, racking, etc.). If mercaptans are around in high enough numbers, they can react to form disulfides. If they are below the detection threshold, these might go unnoticed by the winemaker and bottled with the wine.

What does this have to do with screwcaps? Closures, it turns out, have an awful lot to do with the redox state of a wine. Some closures allow lots of oxygen ingress (synthetic cork, bag in box, etc.) while some allow little oxygen (a good natural cork) and some barely any oxygen at all (screwcaps). It’s been speculated that the small amount of oxygen ingress can stabilize disulfides in bottle, preventing them from breaking apart into the more potent mercaptan aroma compounds. This could explain why a “reductive” fault or flaw is often attributed to screwcapped wines, and the screwcap is given the blame. Whether this is justified or not is up for debate, and some would argue that screwcaps help preserve volatile thiol aromas like passion fruit and grapefruit (think about New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, religiously bottled under screwcap). There is still considerable debate on this topic as screwcaps become more widely adopted around the world.

Volatile Thiols

Volatile thiols are another set of sulfur compounds that affect wine aroma. In truth, thiols and mercaptans are the same type of molecule (both have -SH groups), but in most wine circles, the difference is lexicographical. Thiols smell good and mercaptans smell bad. It’s kind of like how “finish” is good but “aftertaste” is bad. Anyway, one notable volatile thiol 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one (4-MMP), a common descriptor of which ranges from “boxwood” to “cat pee”. It’s a major contributor to the varietal character of Sauvignon Blanc. Other thiols include 3-mercaptohexanol (grapefruit, passionfruit) and furfurylthiol (coffee, toasty oak, popcorn).

Most volatile thiols are produced by grapes themselves, but are present in grape juice in a kind of “masked” form. Many are found conjugated to the sulfur-containig amino acid cysteine (remember cysteine?). During fermentation, however, yeast enzymes separate the volatile thiols from cysteine, allowing their fruity aromas to be perceived. The French enologist Emile Peynaud described this mechanism as a way to taste some of the tropical flavors found in Sauvignon Blanc grapes: holding the juice in the mouth for a bit and allowing the natural enzymes in saliva to release the aroma compounds. Only recently (after his death) was he proven right.

Sulfur roundup

Many prominent aromas in wine are derived from sulfur-containing compounds. Some of them are off-putting (e.g., cabbage and rotten eggs), while some are pleasant and give wines their very varietal character. We have discussed some of the major groups of sulfur-containing aromas in wine and some ways winemakers can modify them to their advantage, either by copper fining, aerating, or by choice of closure.

I hope that next time you encounter any of these aromas, you’ll know what to do and where they come from in the winemaking process. Hydrogen sulfide will blow off with aeration, mercaptans will bind to a copper penny, and volatile thiols may appear only after a few seconds in the mouth. There are many more known sulfur-derived compounds in wine, so get out there and smell the sulfur!

Tough Going for Malbec

Zesterdaily.com, By Patrick Comiskey - 14 June 2010

In wine and execution, the 'Malbec Days' celebration in southwest France disappoints

Cahors is a medieval town on the River Lot in southwest France and at the heart of a wine region by the same name. It's not far from Bordeaux, but it might as well be on another planet.

Cahors the appellation is the last great repository of Malbec vines in that country, a grape variety that once occupied significant acreage in Bordeaux and the Loire. Malbec has become well known to Americans because of its success in Argentina, where it's employed in fairly inexpensive reds as well as an increasing number of very fine, if uncomplex, premium wines. As a category, Argentine Malbec has been wildly successful; in fact in every corner of the world (except France), Argentine Malbec has eclipsed French iterations.

'Malbec Days' aims to bring attention to French producers

This may have been the motivation behind "Malbec Days," which I attended in late May, billed as a celebration of the variety and the inky dark wines to which it contributes. It was an attempt to bring some attention back to Malbec's ancestral home, and perhaps to draw some of the spotlight away from Argentine efforts, even as Argentine producers (well, one Argentine producer) shared the dais with the host country (There was much speculation as to why, in a celebration promoted as international, there appeared just one Argentine producer: Ricardo Giadorou of Bodegas Dolium, from Lujan de Cuyo. It almost suggested a bit of insecurity on the part of the hosts as they strove not to be outshone by the visitors, though it must be said that Mendoza producers had little to gain by participating.). But the presentation, much like the wines of the region, came off as a little clumsy.

Cahors is nothing if not beautiful; a medieval town that projects like a short thumb against the river's gentle contours, with narrow ancient streets that exude a provincial charm. The place and the people, like the wines, feel completely lost in time.

It is the Lot River itself that literally forms the appellation -- virtually all of the vineyard land bears a view of the river, which snakes through the countryside in an undulating sequence of hairpin turns, lazily making its way toward the Garonne River and on to the Atlantic. With each bend the river has produced a complex alluvial plain, and above the plain it has carved through slopes and terraces of limestone and clay. That makeup, according to many a local vigneron, compares favorably to Burgundy. Indeed the famous French soil scientist Claude Bourguignon, a man who literally bears the name Burgundy in his own, was so impressed with the soils here that he and his wife Lydia decided to plant a vineyard. It is unfortunate then that the wines struggle to convey these exceptional terroirs.

A somewhat somber wine

 Malbec from Cahors isn't necessarily the stuff of grande fetes and lively celebrations. Malbec from Cahors isn't lively at all: It's a thick, brooding wine exhibiting an array of black fruits -- cassis, black fig, prune, blackberry -- usually interlaced with a complex melange of savory notes, like leather, licorice, violets, India ink and bay laurel. All of these descriptors suggest a compelling wine, but a typical bottling never showed any appreciable lift, that invigorating feeling of length on the palate. Instead, the wines were frequently and abruptly brought up short by tough, aggressive tannins, with the astringency of oversteeped tea.

I had hoped to see a region which, with an eye to its Argentine counterpart, not to mention the rest of the world, might have learned to tame somewhat these massive tannins. After all, for the rest of the world's red winemakers, tannin management is a keen concern and a finely honed skill; an out-of-balance, overly tannic wine is practically a global exception. But in Cahors, it is the rule. The wines were defiantly blocky and tannic, and the message from producers of the conference is that that is what Malbec is and how it should be.

Indeed, in a place so lost in time, the winemaking appeared to be in a similar state. At harvest, we were told time and again that Malbec grapes were left to macerate for weeks, sometimes for as long as 40 days. It's like leaving a pot of tea to steep for hours rather than a few minutes, rendering a jaw-clenching wallop of tannin with each sip. I don't think I've ever used the word "wrenching" so often in tasting notes.

Surroundings too hot, meals too rich

Such wines occasionally age beautifully, as those aggressive tannins are given time to soften and burnish. It was a shame then, that during the presentations so few older bottles were uncorked for us to bear witness. Instead, a number of counterproductive decisions actually made the wines show worse. If you're keen to show off the region, for example, why place your celebration in a dark, poorly ventilated convention hall where the temperatures quickly rose to more than 80 degrees, rendering those tannins even more ungainly? Why taste these wines in the full sun of a warm spring day on the ancient medieval Valentre Bridge -- a gorgeous setting, admittedly, and with a cool river breeze on your back, quite pleasant; but alas, the bridge had been draped in clear plastic tenting, which produced an ovenlike greenhouse effect, once again rendering the wines undrinkable.

A proper meal might have put them in a better light, too; highly tannic wines are often employed to cut into the rich specialties of the region like duck confit and cassoulet. But these weren't served. Instead, the festival organizers seemed to have wiped out an entire population of local geese for the extraction of their inner organs. It was foie gras in many forms that weekend, with such delectables as foie gras "tacos," foie mousses, foie empanadas, foie tiramisu, and my personal favorite, the heart-stopping foie gras "sushi roll," with rice wrapped with prosciutto instead of the traditional nori. Never mind that the best foil for foie is a light, sweet white wine; these attempts to appear progressive and international felt instead to be fairly tone deaf and insensitive, and did little to promote the wines themselves.

There were, of course, a handful of exceptions among wineries. Chateau du Cedre is clearly one of the standard-bearers of the region, under the watchful eye of winemaker Pascal Verhaeghe, who is now consulting for many other more forward-thinking wineries. Chateau les Croisille showed some remarkable promise, as did the wines of Clos Triguedina and Lacapelle Cabanac.

Perhaps the most interesting was a wine called Un Jour sur Terre by the winery Clos d'un Jour, whose winemaker Stephane Azemar took the very untraditional step of aging his wines in terra cotta amphorae, which were buried for 12 months in cellar earth. With its bright nose of raspberry, hint of eucalypt, its fresh yet very deep black cherry flavors and elegant tannins that actually contributed length rather than constraint to the finish, it was the most compelling wine of the week and left a sense that non-traditional approaches may rescue Cahors from being mired in its own tradition.

Small Family Winery Goes Global with Social Media

Palate Press, June 15, 2010, by Oscar Quevedo  
Quevedo is a family brand producing quality Port from vineyards they have owned for more than one hundred years. PALATE PRESS: The Online Wine Magazine asked Oscar Quevedo about their recent decisions to export their wines and to build their brand through social media. This is what he had to say.

I belong to a small family of Port wine producers based in the Douro Valley for many years. As opposed to the many British families that controlled and aggressively sold Port wine in northern Europe, my family, Quevedo, focused on its natural market to promote its wines – Portugal. But now, this is changing and over 90% of our production is exported for many countries in three different continents. What has changed? A few things, the most relevant of which was the adoption of social media to promote our wines.

Let’s go back to our roots. My ancestors have been making Port for over 100 years. At that time, we bottled our wine under the brand Quinta de Santo António, the etymology derived from the main property of my great grandfather. The large gap between the British and the Portuguese cultures kept Quinta de Santo António out of the limelight that the foreign Port wine producers enjoyed. Consequently, our focus veered from that of our neighbors. Instead of developing a marketing strategy, we developed methods for improving the quality of our vines. The advantage being that if we couldn’t sell our Port outside of Portugal, we could at least ensure that the big shippers would eventually come to us for our quality Port when they needed to feed their foreign markets.

But during the 1960s, when my great grandfather Raul died, we experienced a dramatic setback, as we almost disappeared from the Port wine business completely. The properties owned by my great grandfather were divided among their five daughters and two sons; and consequently, the wine production was compromised. All of his children, but my grandmother, decided to sell to third parties, which forced my family’s winery to collapse. My grandmother, however, kept running her part of the vineyards and shared her passion with my father. My father had always dreamed about having his own winery since he was a kid. Step by step, he fulfilled his dream by purchasing some quintas and finally building the winery, and by 1990, he restored the family tradition of making wine with the brand Quevedo.

My mum and dad, both with no background in winemaking, made our first harvest in the new winery in 1991; however, we still relied heavily on the big shippers to buy and sell our Port under their name. It wouldn’t be until the 21st century that we finally broke free to create our own brand.

When my sister Cláudia, our winemaker, finished her enology degree in the late 90s, and after working for a short period with another Port producer, something changed. The fifth generation joined the family business, adding fresh blood and new ideas to the mix. The Douro was changing really fast, released from old traditions of Port wine production we tried to embrace the boat of technology revolution. But more important that the material stuff, there was a dream in the renewed family, and the dream was to sell our wine with our label to foreign markets. Though my sister and I were very young at the time, we shared that same dream. Our hope of conquering the exports market was justified by the fact that Port wine is the most well known Portuguese product and one of the most recognized wines in the world. We knew that we would never be a high end brand if we continued to rely on the domestic market alone to sell our wines. Moreover, we wouldn’t have to change anything in our production system, only the labels would have to be altered.

This took longer than we first expected. Time was passing, and by 2005, very little had changed. Our Ports were still sold mainly in the domestic market, and we were ages away from selling our juice in the UK and US. By this time, we needed a different approach. With a scarce marketing budget, social media—or better said, conversing with potential consumers online—was becoming a very appealing option.

After some research, we hired a social media consultant familiar with wine, and more importantly, the US and UK market. Without any idea of what social media was, or how to engage or converse with people online, we needed someone to guide us appropriately, providing us with actionable steps to get us to our goal. We created a blog and set up accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube to show the world how life in the remote and distant wine region of northern Portugal worked. We tried to connect with people, soliciting their feedback about our wines and inviting our followers to visit us and drink our wines from the barrels and feel the soil where our vines grow.

Social media revealed a very useful complement to our strategy of attending wine fairs all around Europe. Actually, social media worked as a differentiation factor that—fortunately for us—no one else in the Port business was using at that time. Our new importers found  a good complement in social media for helping them selling our wines. Some, like our American importer, P. R. Grisley, understood better than anyone the importance of social media.

Going back to July 2008 when we first started blogging, I remember some very difficult weeks and months. Nobody was following or interacting with us, and we needed to search within for motivation and inspiration. To make matters worse, at the time, I was working in banking, first in Switzerland and later in Madrid, many kilometers away from my homeland. As I was so far away, it was difficult to keep focused on our end goal. But the passion for wine and for the Douro made me decide, in May 2009, that instead of staying in my lucrative and stable job, I would rather risk some of my revenues for a bigger cause. I wanted to help my family, and as I was the social media enthusiast, I felt compelled to continue within the same vein.

I wanted to show the audience we were there to share our lives, the good and the bad moments of our days; to share everything as if readers were living our lives together with us.

Eventually, the community started to include us and decided to give our wines a chance. This waterfall effect didn’t all happen at the same time. It happened over the course of several years, in part, as a result of social media’s stronger impact in some markets over others. More emails were arriving from people wanting to know more about Portugal, the Douro, our wines and our family. I’ve also enjoyed spending a lot of my spare time meeting people in person that I only had met virtually.

The benefits of social media, though still a niche media, allowed us to expand our horizons internationally. The downside—if there is one—is that it takes a considerable amount of time; however, it also has brought us many more clients.

Now you may be saying, “Right Oscar, that’s all very cool, BUT what’s the ROI with social media?” Well, I can assure you that if we were not using it, we wouldn’t have our wines being distributed in UK, US, and Hong Kong. Some other European markets were also consolidated due to social media. Basically we were exporting under 20% of our production three years ago, and year to date 90% of our sales are exports. But what these figures don’t show you is that when you find a new importer or distributor because of social media, he is buying from you because of the network and the bonds you created with a group of people that may later buy our wine. The distributor has many doors opened by the producer, giving the producer more power in terms of negotiation with the distributor, which is something difficult to have nowadays in the wine business.

In the long term, we do not want to grow much more than we have. We would rather stay a small family winery and focus on increasing the quality of our wines, brand awareness, and making special wines for a niche market. But no matter what our future holds, social media will always play the most important part of our marketing strategy!

Wineries' Tweet Success
zesterdaily.com – 9 June 2010

California winemakers are wooing customers by hosting live online 'tweetup' tastings

Tweetup or die, says Rick Bakas. If you want to sell wine to the generation drinking more fruit of the vine than any previous American generation, host a Twitter tasting.

While most California wineries are stuck in a recessionary downdraft, sales are climbing at Napa Valley's St. Supery Winery, where Bakas is director of social media. Hosting 27 tweetups since September, wine sales are up 35% for the first quarter of this year when compared to the same period in 2009, Bakas says.

Going online increases visibility

It's not a radical concept, says Bakas. “The digital space is just another place where people talk to each other.” But instead of 20 people talking to each other at a traditional tasting where the winemaker has flown in to host a dinner party for wine collectors and journalists, there are 200 people sitting at home with a bottle of the same wine, tasting it at the same time and twittering back and forth with each other about what they think. The winemaker (Michael Scholz, in the case of St. Supery) is sitting at his desk at the winery, available via video to answer their questions.

Other vintners are following St. Supery's lead. More than 50 wineries have experimented with Twitter tastings, says Kendall Johnson with Charles Communications, a PR firm that has helped create Twitter tastings for winery clients including Wente and Deloach Vineyards. “They have become part of the discussion with every marketing plan.”

Twitter events draw young participants

Wente Vineyards uses TasteLive.com, a platform created by Braintree, Mass. wine retailer Craig Drollett. Any winery or wine group can organize a Twitter tasting anywhere using the online site. “The viral nature of Twitter means that more people hear about Wente wines and get to talk to me," says fourth generation winemaker Karl Wente. “We get a younger audience. And our sales were up 2% in 2009, which was a down year.”

“Twitter tastings are going to be a part of my life for a long time to come,” Wente says, and that's a good thing. While he still believes in the importance of face-to-face meetings, with Twitter, “I reach people I wouldn't otherwise reach.”

When you count the number of friends following tweets from folks who are participating directly in the tasting, the number of people St. Supery reaches with a Twitter tasting can be staggering. “We estimate that 150,000 to 225,000 people are seeing tweets about our wines,” says Bakas. “Nothing else could get us that reach."

An American invention, Twitter tastings began with more problems than promise, according to some publicists. There were gaffs in the presentations and glitches in getting wine to people. Wineries are solving the problems by making it easier to get the wines, often at a discount. “Now we tie retailers directly in with consumers through the tastings,” says Johnson.

Tweetups work in different ways. For a group of bloggers, a winery may ship samples of the wines directly to everyone involved in the tastings. It's not legal in most states to give away wine to consumers, so wineries pair with retailers to offer in-store discounts or online coupons as incentives to attend.

The early adopters are a geeky bunch, says Bakas. But St. Supery's tweetups are evolving to embrace a broader range of wine fans. The winery has helped organize six international Twitter tastings showcasing a broad range of wines from several producers. At many of these events, the live Twitter feed is projected on a screen at a central location with perhaps 100 tasters sipping the wines while they follow the comments on the screen.

Participant numbers are skyrocketing

Last November, a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon tweetup involved more than 20 producers. It was so successful that St. Supery helped to organize a California Cab tasting in January. A month later, a Sauvignon Blanc tasting attracted 600 tweeters who posted 3,600 tweets in two hours. On May 6, a 24-hour Chardonnay twitter tasting with participants coordinated by hosts around the globe resulted in 6,000 individual tweets. “Twitter tastings have a life of their own now,” Bakas says.

When Bakas started tweeting in 2008, he was just another wine enthusiast eager to engage in an endless dialogue about eating and drinking, 140 characters at a time. St. Supery hired him to be its first director of social media last August, and he threw his first Twitter tasting one month later. That makes Bakas a social media expert, or at least he thinks it does. This month, he releases a how-to book he calls “Quick Bites: 75 Savory Tips for Social Media Success.”

“Wineries are trying to connect with the millennial generation, which is drinking wine but there is no brand loyalty,” he says. “They are smart and like being able to make smart choices. Twitter tastings allow wineries to give them what they want.”

Sherry: A little secret no more

Chicago Tribune, Bill Daley - June 2, 2010
Cocktails made with sherry help spread the word

Psst! I've got a secret and, boy, am I eager to share it with you. It's one word, six letters. Sherry.
Yep, sherry. And I'm not just talking about that cream stuff your grandmother sips daintily out of a wee glass cup. I'm talking sherry in all its various guises, from dryly crisp to richly nutty to, OK, seductively sweet. Enjoyed in Spain for centuries, sherry has a place at the table (and the party) today, whether you are noshing on olives, ham and nuts before dinner or forking down a decadent chocolate cake afterward.

Trouble is, most Americans don't realize all the possibilities sherry offers. That's why the Secret Sherry Society was formed (secretsherrysociety.com).

The society delivers the serious goods about sherry with the help of high-wattage stars like chef Wylie Dufresne of New York's famed WD-50 restaurant and mixologist Nate Dumas of Brooklyn's Clover Club. But it's all done with tongue firmly in cheek; the Web site is stocked with fun stuff like "exploding" videos, not-so-secret passwords, cyber blindfolds and portraits that move mysteriously inside their frames.

"Sherry is relatively unknown and undervalued in this country, so to get it on the radar screen of American wine drinkers, we had to do something fun with it and make it more accessible," said Lisa Mendelson, a spokeswoman for the Sherry Council of America, the Washington, D.C., sponsor of the Secret Sherry Society.

Mendelson said sherry does have its base of fans, many of the older generation. But she said younger people are beginning to drink sherry, too, especially in cocktails whipped up by inventive mixologists.

One such mixologist is Charles Joly of The Drawing Room in Chicago. Nationally known for his creative cocktail concoctions, Joly entered and won a prestigious council-sponsored contest to create the top sherry cocktail. His Bread & Wine incorporated a dry oloroso sherry, scotch and absinthe with lemon juice and a touch of maple syrup. For Joly, the appeal of sherry lies in its diversity as well as its flavor.

"You can take a dry sherry like a fino, and at the other end of the spectrum there's a Pedro Ximenez that you'd barely think was in the same category. That's a beautiful thing," he said. "The younger generation needs to try it. And if cocktails serve as an introduction, maybe they'll think it's something they can drink straight."

Joly encounters a number of people reluctant to try sherry because they mistakenly fear it's too sweet. He said the best way to learn about sherry might just be asking your friendly neighborhood mixologist to measure out some pours of various sherries and pair them with food.

"Get out there and try different things," he said. "Maybe instead of a glass of wine or sparkling wine, have a sherry. Experiment."

Portraits of 'The Eight Unknown'

Sherry is a fortified wine, dosed with brandy to bring the alcohol content up to 18 percent, depending on the type of sherry being made. There are two broad divisions between sherries that basically come down to whether the sherry develops a yeast film, called flor, during creation. The flor keeps out oxygen, which is why fino and manzanilla sherries are so pale. Sherries without the flor, like oloroso, are exposed to air and develop a brown color and nutty flavor.

The Secret Sherry Society offers fun, useful descriptions of sherry varieties online with "The Eight Unknown" (secretsherrysociety.com), which playfully ascribes human features to each. Here is some of what the society has to say:

1 Fino: The palest member of the sherry family. Fino's dry, yet delicate wit is the perfect aperitif to a good meal. Serve chilled with Spanish olives, Marcona almonds or manchego cheese.

2 Manzanilla: Fino's crisp, refreshing offspring, Manzanilla, gets its slightly salty characteristic from its seaside hometown of Sanlucar de Barrameda. Serve chilled with Spanish olives or Marcona almonds.

3 Amontillado: Dry, robust and just the slightest bit nutty. Pairs beautifully with chicken, cured cheeses and smoked fish. Darker than fino but lighter than oloroso.

4 Oloroso: Dark, full-bodied and smooth, with a slightly higher alcohol content than the other sherries. Pairs best with salty or spicy cured meats, like serrano ham or any red meat.

5 Palo cortado: Oloroso's lesser-known sibling, palo cortado, combines the nose of an amontillado with the flavor of an oloroso. This sherry is the perfect match for any meat or seafood.

6 Cream: When oloroso and Pedro Ximenez get together, sweet, velvety cream sherry is born. Best served over ice or paired with a butter cookie.

7 Moscatel: Sweet, soft and always ready for dessert. Delicious with a piece of dark chocolate.

A Toast to Marilyn
Zestedaily.com – 3 June 2010

Marilyn Monroe fans are wild about a collection of wines named after the iconic actress.

Marilyn Monroe has a legacy of talent, pathos and passion (along with interesting taste in men). Her enduring popularity extends to a wine made in her honor: Marilyn Merlot.

"Every vintage sells out in just a few months," said Robert Holder of Nova Wines, which makes Marilyn Merlot. "A new 'celebrity' wine seems to pop up every day, but there is only one Marilyn, and we've enjoyed years of growing demand."

Robert and his wife Donna came up with the idea for the destined-to-be-cult wine one night in St. Helena over a bottle of homemade Merlot. One of their friends enjoying the wine suggested they call it Marilyn Merlot.

They did, initially passing around bottles casually as Christmas gifts or for use in local charity auctions.

Demand transforms hobby into thriving Nova Wines
That was in the early 1980s. Soon, the Holders realized the wine had legs and officially made Marilyn Merlot a business. They called the new venture Nova Wines and worked out an exclusive agreement with Monroe's estate for the use of her name and a number of famous photographs.

The Holders, along with winemaker John McKay, a veteran of Hanzell, Charles Krug, Monticello and Napa Wine Co., source grapes for Marilyn Merlot from throughout the Napa Valley, including vineyards in Yountville, Oakville and Rutherford.

The wine is released every year on June 1, Monroe's birthday. The current vintage, 2008, is, a blend of 84 percent merlot and 16 percent cabernet sauvignon from vineyards in Oakville and Yountville. It is distributed nationwide and costs $29.

For the first time ever, there will also be a Sauvignon Blonde, 2009 vintage, a 100 percent sauvignon blanc from the Yount Mill Vineyard, also available nationally for $16.

Marilyn fans are ardent supporters of the wine

While critics have given their blessings to the wines, vouching for their quality, the real frenzy comes from Monroe fans, who clamor each year to add a new label to their lineup.

The shopping area of Nova’s website provides a glimpse into how much past vintages can go for these days. One bottle of 1985 Marilyn Merlot, for example, is listed at $3,800. Collectors are very, very particular about the condition of the label and foil atop the cork, which has featured a pair of ruby red lips since the 1991 vintage.

Nova also makes "Norma Jeane," a merlot released each year in November, Beaujolais-style; the 2009 is out now for a modest $10.50. A Marilyn Cabernet Sauvignon ($45) was also made from 1993 through 2002. The Holders chose instead to focus on making "Blonde de Noirs" sparkling wine. The 2001 vintage is a blend of mostly pinot noir (76 percent) with chardonnay (24 percent), sourced from Russian River Valley and Mendocino vineyards.

These bottlings feature label art derived from a single photo of Marilyn Monroe: From 1993 through 1997, the photo is a headshot; from 1998 on, it has been a classic full-body pose of the star.

And then there's the Marilyn Velvet Collection, a magnum (1.5 liters, the equivalent of two standard bottles) Bordeaux blend draped in a red velvet box with Monroe's racy 1953 Playboy centerfold shot. The picture -- which depicts her reclining nude on red velvet -- is known officially as "Pose 8," and it's the first time the photo has been available on a product. One bottle will set you back $200.

"We've seen Marilyn Merlot and its sisters appreciate in value more dramatically than other wines," said Holder. "Twelve-bottle sets of the 1985 through 1996 vintages sell for as much as $7,500, appreciating well beyond the levels of many first-growth Bordeaux."

Funny that Marilyn herself was once famous for saying, "I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful."

Wine: Presentation is key

Daily Mail, By Joelle Thomson - Jun 15, 2010

How we present ourselves says a lot about us to other people, and the same applies to how wines are presented to us, if the nakedly ambitious marketing of champagne, organic wines and pinot noirs I've seen recently is anything to go by.

When it's wearing the badge of Bio-Gro organic certification, a wine is expected by its makers to sell its socks off - as Two Gates Omahu, in last week's column, hopefully is. And when a bottle is labelled champagne, pinot noir or even "big woop", it is also expected to sell in a heartbeat.

Under normal circumstances, a wine called "big woop" would send me running in the opposite direction, but this one-litre shiraz is a top drop of dry red wine for a swift glass with dinner each night. And since truly dry reds from Australia at this price have become something of a rarity in a market saturated with cheap, sweet shiraz, dolled up as "dry" wine, this delivers on quality and price.

A new Central Otago pinot noir is more elegantly dressed by far, made to honour the late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen.

The wine is the 2008 Soho McQueen Couture Pinot Noir, which arrived on my doorstep half-consumed after a tasting - supplies are short but quality is high, thanks to winemaker Grant Taylor; one of this country's top pinot noir makers.

Taylor is better-known for winning the top gong from the International Wine Challenge in London for his 2000 Gibbston Reserve Pinot Noir. He has now planted his own grapes in Gibbston, from which he makes Valli Wines and this one-off bottle of liquid velvet.

Wine-in-a-glass entrepreneur ridiculed in Dragons' Den toasts M&S success

Daily Mail, By Sean Poulter  -14th June 2010

When every member of the BBC's Dragons' Den panel says an invention is rubbish, most people scurry off back to their day jobs, vowing never to come up with a silly idea again.

But James Nash refused to give up on his dream and he is having the last laugh as Marks & Spencer struggle to keep up with demand for his 'cup-a-wine' concept.

Mr Nash's invention – a single-serve plastic glass of French wine with a tear-off lid – solves the problem of feeling like a glass of wine but not having a glass or a corkscrew.

Mr Nash first took the idea to BBC's Dragons Den last year only for it to be rejected out of hand.

He asked the Dragons - Peter Jones, Theo Paphitis, Duncan Bannatyne, James Caan and Deborah Meaden - for £250,000 for a 25per cent stake in his business, Wine Innovations Ltd.

However, they gave him a torrid grilling and bowed out because they were unconvinced anyone would be interested.

Duncan Bannatyne was particularly dismissive, saying: 'People don't want to buy wine in plastic glasses like that with a seal on top. For that reason, I'm out.' The 187ml glasses equate to about a quarter of a bottle of wine, which adds up to 2.25 units and below the drink drive limit for most people of 3 units. They are bigger serving than the traditional small - 125ml - and medium -175ml - offered by most pubs and bars.  However, they do not match the 250ml large glasses now offered by many wine bars. The new M&S Le Froglet wine individual glasses, which each cost £2.25 for a Shiraz, Rose and Chardonnay, were launched just last week and the store has found they quickly sell out.

The website cluelessaboutwine.co.uk said shoppers seem excited about the concept.'Judging by the buzz in the shop I suspect that these may well be a hit,' it said. 'They look so off the wall that curiosity will force a purchase and then good old bourgeois convenience will take over.'

'This is a new idea, and what it does have the ability to do is to give the consumer a realistic portion, a more manageable drinking quantity which saves you spoiling a whole bottle for a glass.

'It also provides you with a nice collection of plastic picnic glasses. 'It does change the perception of wine, and could make a 'ready meal for one' a richer experience.' However, the website did point out that the extra convenience does come at a price. If the same wine was bought in a full 75cl bottle the price comes to £5.49 versus £9 for the equivalent amount in four of the new packs.

Mr Nash, who is based in Surrey, said: 'It was disheartening to be dismissed by all the Dragons, but I knew I had a great concept which would work in outdoor events, BBQ, picnics, concerts and wouldn't give up.

'I'm really looking forward to facing the Dragons again as 'the one that got away'. Hopefully sales of the product will show that they're not always right.' An M&S spokesman said: 'The glasses are merchandised in our 'Food on the Move' section, which is obviously the aisle people on the go head to - particularly office workers. 'We think that they are proving popular with people who want to perhaps enjoy the summer with a glass of wine in the park as part of an impromptu picnic - either after work or for a relaxing lunch.

'They are also popular with commuters who want to enjoy a drink on the train home from work to wind down. We have found that they are very popular in locations popular with tourists.'

The M&S winemaker, Belinda Kleinig, said:  'This is a really exciting step for M&S – our research has shown that our customers really like the greater convenience of lighter weight bottles so we thought we’d take it one step further with great quality wine ready to drink from a glass.'

Wine: Two sales strategies help keep one vintner going strong

Washington Post - By Dave McIntyre, June 16, 2010

When the economy tanked in late 2008, many high-end wineries suffered a precipitous drop in sales. Americans suddenly were "buying down," eating at less-expensive restaurants or at home and choosing wines considerably cheaper than those they were accustomed to, favoring value over prestige.

Yet last year, David Adelsheim, founder of one of the oldest and most revered wineries in Oregon's Willamette Valley, marked an increase in sales of his upper-tier wines. How did he manage to grow in a shrinking economy?

Direct-to-consumer sales.

In 2009, Adelsheim Vineyard saw such sales increase by 25 percent, while traditional sales through the three-tier system of producer-wholesaler-retailer fell by 5 percent, Adelsheim said during a recent visit to Washington. Consumer-direct sales are still just a small part of the winery's bottom line, but they are becoming increasingly important for many reasons.

Most of Adelsheim's consumer-direct sales are through the winery's subscription club. Members receive four shipments a year of a single-vineyard pinot noir. Those are produced in quantities too small for the three-tier system, usually 50 to 300 cases. Members have a month to order more, after which the wines go on sale online and at the winery.  Club members also receive invitations to special events at the winery, but of course only those who live nearby can attend regularly. So Adelsheim came to town to host a dinner for Washington area club members at Proof restaurant in Penn Quarter. Adelsheim said his consumer-direct sales are important because of the limitations of the three-tier system, but he does not consider them a threat to that traditional way of getting wine to market. "We purposely sell two product lines so we don't offend our distributor partners," he said. "Distributors have helped us build our brand since the early 1980s. This is not a war on the three-tier system, but rather a recognition that the three-tier system is how wine is sold in this country. That system will be in place for a long time."

Large wholesaler groups feel threatened by small consumer-direct operations, however, and they are indeed treating such programs as an offensive against them. Wholesaler-backed legislation was introduced in Congress in April -- in the same week Adelsheim was in town to thank the loyal customers who'd bolstered his bottom line -- that would make it difficult to challenge state laws restricting direct sales. The measure, H.R. 5034, could also imperil progress over the past five years that has made direct sales legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia (but not in Maryland). Despite strong opposition from consumers and producers, the bill has more than 100 co-sponsors in the House.

Opponents of direct shipping argue that online wine sales are tough to regulate and create a risk of underage drinkers' getting their hands on wine or other alcoholic beverages. And Craig Wolf, president of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, said the three-tier system "stimulates innovation and competition and provides consumers with unprecedented choice and variety."

Adelsheim disputes those arguments, and his experience demonstrates that the direct-shipping issue is relevant not just to small boutique wineries that have trouble gaining representation through crowded distribution channels. "It's ridiculous to say that it will somehow damage the fabric of American life when teenagers can order $70 bottles of wine two weeks in advance of drinking them," he said.

Consumer-direct sales are ideal for small-production wines, he said. "The complexity of single-vineyard pinots is hard to explain through the three-tier system" when the story must be passed by a distributor to retailers and sommeliers, and from them to customers. "It's like playing telephone," Adelsheim said.

"Selling directly to consumers isn't about taking business away from distributors and retailers," he said. "It's about giving our customers more choices."

If It Says "Old Vines," Will You Buy?

Wine Spectator, by Matt Kramer - June 15, 2010

The benefits of old vines are debatable, particularly to those who don't have them

Recently, a reader (Ms. Donna White) asked, “How old do vines need to be to produce a good wine? Conventional wisdom dictates that older vines produce the best fruit. Is this a truth?”

Of all the many ambiguities of wine, “old vines” seems to be one of the more troublesome. Every grower I’ve met, everywhere in the world, who has old vines insists that older vines are better. Yet I’ve met a fair number of growers who suggest that “old-vine admiration” is, if not bunk, then certainly overstated and overrated. Not coincidentally, these same scoffers are not in possession of old vines.

So, who you gonna believe? Do old vines really make a difference? And from a wine lover’s point of view, is it enough to tip the balance of whether you should buy a particular bottle or not? Sometimes wines so labeled are more expensive (as in Burgundy, for example), but sometimes not (as in Spain, Argentina, and even California with Zinfandel, for example).

First, what exactly is an “old vine”? No one knows. A lot depends on where you’re sitting. If you happen to be a producer in, say, Argentina or Spain, both of which are chockablock with vines that are 60 to 100 years old, the notion of “old” only starts at the half-century mark. In Oregon or New Zealand, comparative newcomers to the game, you’d be feeling mighty fine about your vineyard to be able to boast of 25-year-old vines when those in many neighboring sites are half that age or less.

My own benchmark for the title is something close to the half-century mark. There’s no need to be overly precise or prescriptive about it. In the same way that I prefer bankers and doctors to have some gray in their hair, I like to see vines that have seen 40 or 50 vintages. My guess is that whatever qualities exist beyond the half-century mark probably approach the diminishing returns category. But I wouldn’t care to swear to that.

No one can say definitively whether the presumed effects of old vines increase beyond a certain age. Does a 100-year-old vine deliver four times as much “specialness” as a mere sapling of 25? Or do the perceived effects of old vines kick in at a certain age—let’s say 30 years old—and then plateau out at, say, 50?

And to make matters more complicated yet, are old vines defined strictly by their roots? Saucelito Canyon Vineyard in Arroyo Grande on the south Central Coast creates one of California’s greatest Zinfandels. Its owners grafted new Zinfandel cuttings onto the original, still-alive Zinfandel roots from 1880 that they literally uncovered when they cleared away the undergrowth.

Are those “old vines”? I think so. Yet someone could say that a new cutting no longer represents the original genetic legacy implicit in the concept of an “old vine”—a grapevine version of “new wine in old bottles.” That is, old vines are a kind of plant material repository that goes beyond old root systems.

The great Barolo producer Aldo Conterno told me that he won’t use Nebbiolo fruit from vines younger than 25 years old for any of his wines labeled Barolo. Mr. Conterno also believes that 40-year-old vines are ideal, delivering a winning trifecta of deep roots, characterful fruit and reasonable yields.

I recently tasted with Alejandro Fernandez of Pesquera in Spain’s Ribera del Duero and was particularly struck by a newcomer to his portfolio called El Vínculo. This wine surprised me if only because it comes from the La Mancha region, which is about 200 miles south of Mr. Fernandez’s native Ribera del Duero. By Spanish standards that’s a world away.

Mr. Fernandez said that he decided to make wine from La Mancha—a vast flat area with about as much reputation for fine wine as California’s Central Valley—because he came upon a vineyard of head-trained Tempranillo vines ranging in age from 60 to 100 years old. “It was too good to pass up,” he said. And indeed, El Vínculo is the best wine from La Mancha that I’ve tasted.

Old-vine love is ardent among wine producers around the world. But it wasn’t always so. When Robert O'Callaghan, founder of Rockford Wines in Australia’s Barossa Valley, started his winery in 1984, he paid triple the going rate for old-vine Shiraz to encourage his suppliers to retain their old vines.

Why did he need to do this? Because in the 1980s the South Australia state government offered financial inducements to Barossa growers to "modernize" their vineyards by uprooting their old vines.

Now, the Barossa crowd is singing—yodeling, really—an entirely different tune. The Barossa Grape & Wine Association, a trade group of 750 grapegrowers and 173 wine producers, has created what it calls an Old Vine Charter, an inventory of Barossa’s remaining old vines, which are respectively classed as Old Vine (35 years or old), Survivor Vine (75 years or older) or Centurion Vine (100 years or older).

Old vines present challenges to the winegrower. They require a lot of nurturing. Yields often are uneconomically low. The old-vine vineyard is a love that dare not speak its name to one’s banker.

But economics aside, winegrowers seem to cherish old vines. Ask an owner about his or her old-vine vineyard and, like stroking a favorite, reliable old horse, they’ll talk about the regularity of old-vine production.

Where young vines can careen from vintage to vintage—with extremes of production and unpredictable ratios of sugar levels and phenolic compounds depending on the weather—old vines are steady. Their grapes are rarely unbalanced. And they’re rarely unripe, either. You almost never hear about unripe grapes with old vines, even in places that can suffer from decidedly cool growing seasons, such as Burgundy.

And old vines provide options unavailable with young vines. You can harvest your grapes earlier in certain (warmer) climates, because old-vine grapes often achieve riper tannins sooner.

The deep roots of old vines are their greatest asset. In a rainy harvest, a young vine’s shallow root system sucks up surface water, bloating the grapes and diluting the juice. Yet old vines are often surprisingly unaffected, as their deeper roots are untouched by a passing rainstorm. And in drought conditions those same deep roots can tap into water reserves in the subsoil unreachable by younger vines.

So are old vines a deal-maker? Is it a meaningful designation that can—or should—tip the buying decision? I can only offer you one man’s opinion, based upon an awful lot of talking with producers on this very topic, and backed up, I might add, with my own checkbook.

Yes, old vines can make a difference. Everyone knows that nothing is more important than what the Italians evocatively call la materia prima, the foundation ingredient. If you’ve got a good site and good winemaking—which are hardly incidental—then old vines can make a discernible impact.

This impact is twofold. For us tasters, the sensory impact of old-vine wines typically is found on the midpalate. Think of a candy with a hard core and you’ve got it. Mostly this is a result of the low yields that old vines usually offer. (Old vines can be trained to pump out, though.)

Also, as the wine ages and the bright fruitiness of youth diminishes, you get a sense of a more layered complexity in old vines. This element of maturity in the wine is often essential to deciphering the impact of old vines, which is why tasters of very young wines are either puzzled by or skeptical about old vines’ purported attributes. These differences are often not apparent until a wine is at least a decade old.

Does all this matter to you as a wine buyer? It does to me. All other things being equal (which they rarely are, I know), I’ll buy an old-vine wine every time. It’s a kind of insurance policy, wouldn’t you say?

EU withdraws plans for rules on organic wine production

Bevrage Daily.com By Guy Montague-Jones, 17-Jun-2010

The EU Commission has withdrawn draft proposals to introduce standards for the production of organic wine, citing an unwillingness to dilute organic rules.

Wine has so far been excluded from the EU organic regulation, which only extends to the grapes used in wine production. Organic wine has therefore been marketed only as wine produced from organic grapes.

Draft proposals had been under consideration within the Standing Committee on Organic Foodstuffs and a number of bilateral meetings to develop specific standards for organic wine.

Proposals  

Based on an independent study under the Orwine project, these proposals included a lower limit for sulphites and a smaller list of permitted additives and processing aids than in conventional wine. It had also been proposed to disallow five oenological practices and restrict the use of three others.

Despite several months of discussion, attempts to find a credible compromise with respect to organic standards failed.

Wrong signal  

Dacian Cellos, EU commissioner for agriculture & rural development, said: “It is clear that conditions for such new rules are not right in a majority of member states. I am not willing to compromise on organic standards because it sends the wrong signal to consumers on the importance we attach to quality policy.”

Although Cellos said no compromise is possible at present, he said the proposals could be reconsidered at a future date. “Our hope would be that the industry and research can make progress, and Commission can come back to these proposals in future.”

Hong Kong to overtake US as top auction destination

Decanter -June 16, 2010- by Richard Woodard

Hong Kong is on course to become the world's leading wine auction centre this year, outstripping the US as the Asian passion for fine wine intensifies.

According to figures published by the South China Morning Post, sales could top US$100m in 2010 after the territory accumulated wine sales of more than HK$400m (US$51.4m) in the first half of the year.

Leading wine auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's have increasingly switched sales to the Far East to secure higher prices for their customers.

And an Acker, Merrall & Condit sale in Hong Kong at the end of May was Asia's biggest ever and the second most lucrative wine auction on record.

The sale of lots from the cellar of controversial US wine collector Eric Greenberg made more than HK$150m.

According to the newspaper, US wine auction sales slumped 36% to about US$106m last year, part of a global fall which saw receipts dip 15% to US$233.3m.

Wine with Veggies
winereviewonline.com,  by Gerald D. Boyd – 15 June 2010

Back in the day, one of the first rules of wine and food pairing I learned was “white wine with white meat and fish, red wine with red meat.”   It was long ago, and it made sense then.  Today, I find it amusing that some people still abide by The Rule as gospel and that when The Rule was the rule, there was little indication that the vast wine and food community would eventually embrace pork as “the other white meat,” or that organic grape growing and vegetarian cooking would become hot topics.

In the early 1970s, as a new wine consumer, I faithfully followed the white with white, red with red rule, because it was the only game in town.   We were hungry carnivores then and proud of it.  Eating out and experimenting with cooking at home became fashionable and “the rule” became a cliché.  Dining out or in was now an adventure, as menus morphed from traditional meat and potatoes to a tempting variety of ethnic foods.  Almost overnight, the national food scene went from just food on a plate, to a new term that became a universal buzzword among foodies -- cuisine.

And we learned a few more new terms:  sustainability, organics, biodynamics and vegetarianism.  Meatless meals, of course, were not new, but the folks who chose to go down that road were often looked at with a gimlet eye by those who relished a big honkin’ juicy beefsteak.  Not many years ago, there were few vegetarian restaurants.  Not so today.  A new interest in fresh food, rather than processed foods, has taken on new value.  And the wine industry, at least in the New World, widely supports and practices sustainable viticulture, in partnership with food farming and preparation.

Over the years, I watched this movement, thinking at various times that I needed to take the oath and move over to what some people view as the dark side, that place where people are content to nourish themselves on sticks and twigs.  In June of last year I finally took the step and became a vegetarian.  It wasn’t an easy decision; my wife still eats meat and prefers to call herself a “flexitarian.”  How would I handle the whole wine thing?  There were questions I had never considered.  For instance, vegans--vegetarians who do not eat meat or fish as well as dairy products--must be aware of wines that are fined using egg whites, or filtered using isinglass, a gelatin prepared from a fish bladder.

Add those concerns to the unspoken assumption that all wine writers tuck into beef with a glass of hearty red wine and I was looking at a personal wine and food crisis.  So what was the answer?  Talk to some food and wine professionals to get their views on wine and vegetarian cooking.  I know what I like and think I have a good feel for wine pairings with dishes that do not include meat.  But I needed suggestions from the front-line people who deal with questions about wine pairing with vegetarian dishes.

Nicole Madden, wine buyer for Ubuntu, located in the river-front section of Napa city and one of the hottest vegetarian restaurants in California, offered some insightful pointers.  Madden says that sustainability is the main concern at Ubuntu, selecting produce from their own garden.  “I find that high acidity whites like Riesling and Grüner Veltliner heighten the flavors of veggies and the various herbs used in the cooking process at Ubuntu.”  Madden is attracted more to whites and rosés for pairing with veggies. “Rich wines with a lot of acidity, like Rhône whites and Spanish white wines, work nicely with our food.”  On a recent visit to Ubuntu I had a marinated beet salad that was especially nice with a Sauvignon Blanc.  “Sauvignon Blancs with texture, both barrel fermented and aged, but also tank fermented, are good wines with some vegetable dishes,” says Madden.

She is very high on some of the Japanese-inspired dishes, featuring soy, seaweed and mushrooms that are created at Ubuntu.  Then I asked her if there were any wines to avoid when pairing with vegetarian dishes.  “I have not been able to match Muscadet with veggies; it works with shell fish, but not veggies.”  Ubuntu’s wine list also shies away from big, tannic red wines, but the restaurant is at the gateway to the Napa Valley, so Madden is practical.  “Being in Napa, we have to have Cabernet Sauvignon, and there have been cabs I love, but I try to avoid them, as well as big plumy Merlots.”  She paused and then added, “I recently added the 2006 Yorkville Cellars Carmenère, an organically farmed red with spicy floral flavors that works very nice with vegan bean stew.  Syrahs can work because of the aromatics but the spicy leaner Syrahs are best with veggies.”

Merry Edwards, a Pinot Noir specialist in Sonoma County, believes in the symbiotic relationship between wine and food, suggesting a number of pairings with vegetarian dishes, on her winery’s website.  “Any dish with mushrooms pairs well with Pinot, from risotto to pasta to cream of mushroom soup.”  A few pairings that Edwards mentioned that I must try are the Merry Edwards 2008 Olivet Lane Pinot Noir with three cheese ravioli with roasted red pepper-garlic sauce, and the 2007 Meredith Estate Pinot Noir with a wild mushroom risotto with radicchio and grated parmesan.

Pinot Noir can have an attractive earthiness that marries nicely with the “forest floor” character of mushrooms.  I find, though, that the natural fruity character of Pinot Noir, not the straight-up berry notes of Merlot or Syrah, but a sumptuous wild dark fruit often with a subtle spicy back note, provides a contrast to the earthy flavors of mushrooms, especially combined with herb-crusted cheeses or one of my favorites, the boldly-flavored Parmigiano-Reggiano.   Beets (the liver of the vegetable group for some people) work the same symbiosis with Pinot Noir, as do earthy root veggies like turnips and rutabagas.

I admit, though, that there is more to wine than Pinot Noir, so I submitted a few questions to Italian winemaker Alois Legeder, a vegetarian and a man of few words. 
Legeder professes to not be a supporter of specific rules when pairing wine with vegetarian dishes, adding: “The decision neither to eat meat or fish has strongly changed my eating habits, so that today when choosing wine I do not want to follow certain rules or criteria.  In my opinion, a good wine pairs always with a good dish,” says Legeder, suggesting Tagliolini at Tartufo (pasta with truffles) with the Legeder Lowengang Chardonnay as “a perfect pairing.”

He has found that when preparing vegetarian dishes, spinach and artichoke are two things that do not pair with any wine.  Spinach and artichoke are not among my favorite foods, so I don’t know if they work with wine or not.  What I do know is that the best tactic is to experiment, experiment, and then experiment some more.  Legeder’s advice is sound, but people often look for guidelines when making decisions they are not sure about, like pairing wine with food.  For me, finding a good wine with meatless dishes is an on-going challenge, although I haven’t, as yet, come across too many occasions where the wine choice is all that different for vegetarian meals than it was for meals centered round meat or fish.  So I guess the old rule of white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat still makes a lot of sense.

Female wine drinkers overtake men, who still get the wine list

My 6 -Bloomberg News- By John Mariani

I was surprised to read that 53 percent of wine drinkers in the United States are women, according to the Wine Market Council. And last year, women matched men as "core drinkers," those who drink wine at least once a week.

That trend may accelerate if women heed the results of a recent survey of 20,000 women over 13 years by Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. The poll showed that women who regularly drink a moderate amount of alcohol, particularly red wine, are less likely to have long-term weight gain than non-drinkers.

Nevertheless, when a man and a woman sit down to dinner in a restaurant, it's usually the guy who grabs or is handed the wine list and chooses the bottle.

"In our more upscale dining restaurants, eight times out of ten, it is the gentlemen at the table still making the decisions," said Virginia Philip, sommelier at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Fla.

Philip, 42, is one of only 13 women certified as a Master Sommelier out of 130 worldwide. She oversees a cellar of 28,000 bottles and 1,600 selections at the resort's L'Escalier fine dining room and eight other restaurants, with prices ranging from $35 to $15,000.

"If women are drinking with other women, obviously they choose the wine," she said. "European women tend to be more comfortable ordering wine when men are present at the table."

Once, men were always automatically handed the wine list everywhere, she said.

"Unless someone knows who I am, the list is passed to the man, who then hands it back to me," she said. "We have worked very diligently in our restaurants over the last five to eight years to not allow that to happen and to offer the list to the table. Still, if the host is the woman at the table, nine times out of ten she passes it to the man. I am convinced women do this to not 'bruise the ego' of the gentlemen they are dining with."

Despite her renown — the American Sommelier Association declared her the Best Sommelier in the World in 2002 — she said her fellow male Master Sommeliers pounce on the list.

"I sit back and allow them to make their selections, within reason," she said. "I may order a glass of something else just to get what I really want or to put my two cents in. If I want to see that list, I have to ask for it."

Philip said she finds that women have an idea of what they "think" they want to drink when they come into the restaurants. She sees her role as one of guidance and education. Usually that means starting with lighter white or sparkling wines, then moving to pinot noir, tempranillo and malbec as the next most likely steppingstones, she said.

"In our Seafood Bar and our Asian restaurant Echo, white wines are generally a done deal," Philip said. "White wines such as torrontes, riesling and soave as alternatives to pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc are varietals women generally do like and are more likely to order than men.

"By far, it's the men who are ordering the big, expensive, red cult wines out of California," Philip said.

In that stratosphere, L'Escalier sells wines like ZD Abacus M/V for $950, Colgin Tychson Hill Vineyard 2005 for $1,000, and Harlan Estate 2004 at $1,525.

At Corton, in New York's Tribeca, management has devised a system that seeks to avoid embarrassment.

"When the guests sit down, the captain will place the cocktail and wine list right on the table and see who reaches for it," sommelier Ame Brewster said. "We give them a few minutes to look at it, then I'll go up to the person going through the pages."

While Brewster says she has never had a woman who will be hosting the dinner call in advance to ask the list to be handed to her, some have phoned to ask for a specific wine to be chilled or opened upon arrival.

"Over the eight years I've been involved with wine service I've noticed more people have discussions among themselves about the wine," said Brewster. "I find that women are more open about discussing the possible wines with me."

The assumption that women tend to order a "nice dry chardonnay" by the glass has changed, Brewster said. "Women order seasonally. In winter they tend to go for red and in warm months for whites."

Corton offers chef-partner Paul Liebrandt's eight-course, $145 tasting menu, with a $120 option of matching wines, a choice where she sees no real difference between men and women. But when it comes to ordering big, expensive bottles from a list famous for its selection of rare burgundies, males tend to be the show-offs.

"Even there, though, women are moving up in price," she said. "I'd say with those kinds of wines we're running four to one, men to women."

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