English Wine Producers St George's Day Tasting

This annual tasting took place last Friday at Chelsea Football Club. Unusual to have a trade tasting on a Friday but it was scheduled to coincide with St George's Day. Despite some perfectly acceptable whites (of which Three Choirs' basic "English House Dry" stood out as good value for money at £5.85), I still think the future of English wine is sparkling.

The pick of the sparkling wines came from the more "established" producers. Camel Valley from Cornwall (07 Brut), Nyetimber from West Sussex (01 Blanc de Blancs) and Denbies from Surrey (02 Greenfields). All had fairly searing acidity as you would expect and autolysis was pleasantly restrained in favour of some good primary fruit characters, suggesting English sparkling wine is not simply moulding itself in the image of Champagne. There were also some interesting vegetal notes in wines with higher proportions of Pinot Noir.

Prices remain high however, with some sparkling wines nudging £30 retail. The euro exchange rate has pushed prices of Champagne, Cava and Prosecco up over the last 18 months but this is still expensive enough to make consumers think twice before buying. Relying on the novelty aspect of English wine is not a viable long-term strategy and even those consumers who want to buy English wine need to feel they are getting value for money compared to EU and new world alternatives.

The one important and unforgivable negative is that the labels are almost universally awful. With the exception of Chapel Down, which has a smart black and red label design (see pic), the rest really need to pay some attention to presentation. Asking premium prices for English wine is hard enough but when the packaging is so unappealing producers are doing themselves no favours.

Wines of Portugal 2010

Went to this today at Lord's, with net practice on the sunny Nursery Ground providing a truly spring-like backdrop. Fairly quiet when I arrived but was filling up by lunchtime. There were themed tables showcasing the Alvarinho, Touriga Nacional and Moscatel grape varieties. The Alvarinho was mostly from the north west - Vinho Verde and the Minho (non-DOP) region - but also some from Lisboa (the new name for Estremadura). The star Alvarinho for me was Quinta dos Loridos' 2008, with good minerality, highish acidity and a refreshingly low 12.5% abv.

Of the Touriga Nacionals, the Pedra Cancela 2008 stood out - dark ruby coloured with ripe red fruit flavours (raspberries with some violet), fine, grippy tannins and fairly high acidity (pic below).

Sarah Ahmed did talks "every hour, on the hour" on various aspects of Portuguese wine. I saw one on the Dao and food matching. Sarah mentioned that the high tannin and acidity mix in the Dao makes for particularly good foody wines. She described the Dao as rugged and mountainous, with elevation ranging between 200m and 900m, large diurnal temperature variation and high rainfall which means vines build up good reserves for the dry, hot summers.

I am always impressed by Portuguese wines but they still account for less than 1% of the UK off trade wine market (and most of that is Mateus Rose!) The wine-drinking public has no real image of Portuguese wine (positive or negative) and the indigenous grape varieties are perceived as hard to get to grips with. Hopefully some of their generic marketing efforts will pay off and the public will wake up to what are increasingly impressive wines. The Douro is maybe the most exciting area, and probably has the best potential for branding, on the back of consumers' regognition of Port.

Some Italy wine facts

Revising Italian wines for an upcoming exam. Here are some interesting facts:

- Pinot Grigio accounts for ONE THIRD of all wine sales in the UK off trade (supermarkets etc).

- The quality seal DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) was introduced in the early 1980s in an attempt to create a super-DOC status. The requirements to qualify for DOCG are the same as DOC, with the added hurdle of a blind tasting carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture.

- Prosecco is a grape variety not a region (the region, recently conferred DOCG status, is Conegliano-Valdobbiadene). The Italians were so worried about other countries selling wine bearing the name Prosecco that, in a bid to protect it (and in a wonderful application of EU beaurocracy), they have just renamed the Prosecco grape "Glera" and the region itself "Prosecco".

The Sampler

Visited The Sampler (link) in Islington a couple of days ago. A fantastic concept, especially their Icons selection which lets you taste a range of fine wine which most pockets would not stretch to. The wines below are currently on show.

• Chateau Musar 1970
• Chateau Musar 1977
• Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1985
• Paternina Conde de Los Andes 1955 Rioja Gran Reserva
• Torbreck RunRig 1999
• Borgogno Barolo Riserva 1961
• Chave Hermitage 1998
• Pichon Baron 1964

Here is what I tasted:

Reserve de Gassac 2007 (£9.90 per btl) - citrus, floral notes and a savoury finish from this Viognier/Marsanne blend

Araldica Barbera d'Asti 2007 (£8.20) - high acidity, red cherries, sweet spice, hint of choc, slightly jammy

Chateau Musar 2002 (£21.50) - dried/cured meats and leather on nose, huge red fruit flavours (dried and fresh), raisins, cured meats, leather, vegetal/leafy, goes on and on

Gilles Barge Cote-Rotie Cuvee du Plessy 2003 (£36.00) - red cherry, dark savoury spice on nose but less on palate, some tertiary (leather, vegetal)

Mascarello Barolo Monprivato 1996 (£90.00) - finegrained tannins, highish acidity, lovely long finish, quite 'Burgundian' in style

Chateau Cissac 1978 - savoury, earthy, concentrated coffee nose-, with dried fruit and raisins on palate, but somewhat dominated by developmental characters (meat-leather-coffee) - I have tried a 1995 Cissac which was past it so am amazed that the '78 is still drinking so well

 

Giacomo Borgogno Barolo 1961 (£175.00) - from the "icons" range this one - raspberries on nose, with spice, vanillin, cloves, nutmeg, raisins, prunes, dried black fruit, smoky, coffee ground, leather (opening out with a bit of air); on the palate high acidity, fine dusty tannins, and still with awesome fruit concentration which suggests this could go on and on (unlike the Cissac...)

Selling Chilean Wines in a Recession: A Market Survey

Click here to read this article.

Are Chilean wines holding up during the recession?

A recent piece of research from Chilean investment bank Banchile concluded that Chile's ability to offer quality wines at cheap prices would see it gain market share from foreign competitors who generally have greater labour and raw material costs. It gave a "buy" recommendation for Concha y Toro shares and classed them as "medium risk" (the main risks being exposure to foreign exchange markets due to 80% of its sales being exports and climatic risk).

Wine Exports

Whilst Concha y Toro shares may currently be undervalued, data from inside the Chilean wine industry does not paint a wholly rosy picture. According to the monthly export figures of wine industry association Vinos de Chile, growth in exports of wine peaked in October 2007 and has since tumbled back down to Q2 06 levels.

Government statistical body ODEPA notes that, while the volume of total wine exported in 2008 was 3.5% lower than in 2007, there was actually a 9.6% increase in total value due to higher unit costs and a shift towards bottled DOC wines rather than bulk and non-DOC wines. In 2009, despite a 9.5% increase in volumes exported in the first 6 months, unit prices have decreased once more, meaning the value of 2009 wine exports to August is 2.7% lower than in 2008. From this it may be surmised that Chile is slightly increasing its export volumes, although prices are being squeezed. In terms of recession-proofing, this is not necessarily a bad sign, as despite lower margins, market penetration (and therefore brand development) is increasing.

Total Exports and the Price of Copper

Whilst total Chilean exports by value have fallen in the last 7 quarters (see table below - click on image for larger version), this comes on the back of 4 years of sustained growth, meaning they are still at Q1 06 levels. Chile is the largest exporter of copper, making the Chilean economy highly dependent on world copper prices.



From Q3 05 there was a pronounced spike in copper prices (see graph below), although they then fell sharply in Q1 08. The export data therefore needs to be read in the light of these fluctuations in the price of copper. Copper prices are important for the Chilean wine industry however, as they directly affect Chilean GDP and therefore the national wine market, but perhaps more importantly because several Chilean wineries are owned by companies or families with interests in the copper sector.

New Wave Spanish Wine Awards 2009

This tasting took place yesterday at The Worx in Parsons Green. On show were a selection of 110 Spanish wines which to qualify had to be either imported into the UK or be shown at the Wines from Spain annual generic tasting.

The Cantosan Brut sparkling Verdejo from Grupo Yllera offers fantastic value at £5.99 and is a good alternative to Cava. (See Jancis Robinson's comments on the same here.)

Getariako Txakolina Getaria 2008 is an interesting Basque wine which comes in an Alsace-shaped bottle. Made from indigenous Basque grape varieties, it is slightly Pinot Gris-ish, has a little residual sugar and is only 11% abv. Moving from the eastern to the western side of northern Spain, Galician producer Bodegas Docampo's Vina do Campo is also Alsatian in character and also refreshingly low in alcohol (12%). At £9.95 it is very fairly priced.

The judges (chaired by Tim Atkin MW) seem to have looked for varietal typicity when awarding best of category. The Best White Under £10 went to Castrocelta Albarino 2008, a classic Albarino with tons of apple and green melon. Best Value White was awarded to Frutos Villar's Maria de Molina 2008, clean and crisp citrus flavours and a pronounced nose - outstanding value at £5.99. Best Red Under £10 went to the Luna Beberide Mencia 2007, two years old but still a vivid purple colour and equally young-tasting, with a palate of zippy red cherries.

Some of the reds, especially those from the more traditional regions, were disappointingly over-oaked and tannic. A refreshing exception was Can Rafols dels Caus' Gran Caus 2001, a deep garnet-coloured 'Bordeaux on steroids' with really concentrated fruit (and a lot of sediment in the bottle). Pretty good value at £15.99. Ochoa's Vendimia Seleccionada 2001 was garnet coloured, with a vegetal claret-like nose and some good fruit on the palate (but will it keep much longer?) A Pinot Noir from Ronda was predictably baked and showed why Andalucia's climate is just too harsh for thin-skinned Pinot Noir.

As to price, there seemed to be quite a few good value wines in the up-to-£15 bracket, but in the £30-50 range I would generally have wanted more for my money. There still seems to be a line of thought in Spanish winemaking that quality is directly related to the amount of new oak used. It seems to me that oak should never be used as a flavour component in its own right, but rather to compliment the all-important primary fruit character. If it overpowers the fruit, it is not doing its job.

In the small fortifieds section there was a lovely Moscatel de Grano Menudo (aka Muscat a Petits Grains) from Bodegas Camilo Castilla and a fantastic, delicate Palo Cortado from Fernando de Castilla (which, incidentally, was also the Best Wine of Show and Best Dry Sherry!)