Dollar Exchange Rate Gloom for New World Wine?

Just a quick thought on the implications of recent falls in sterling against the dollar (see graph). The situation as against sterling at the beginning of the year was a strong euro and a relatively weak dollar. One of the effects seen by the London on-trade was that, coupled with the additional pinch of April's duty rises, a significant number of bars and restaurants de-listed their French and Spanish house wines in favour of suppliers from the US and other nations who sell in dollars (such as Chile).

The dollar hit a 7-month high last Friday, apparently due to a combination of downbeat UK and Eurozone forecasts and falling commodities prices. I don't have an answer to this, but I wonder if a recovering dollar (and relatively weak euro) will by the end of the year prompt a switch back to old world house wines. And if so, if that will be an early indicator of tough times ahead for New World dollar-driven exports into Europe.

French 2008 Harvest Begins

The first French grapes of the year were picked yesterday in Rousillon, marking the start of the 2008 northern hemisphere harvest. Domaine Cazes, 2km north of Perpignan, is the largest organic and biodynamic producer in France. It began picking for its white vin de pays, according to the local wine body, the Conseil Interprofessionel des Vins du Roussillon. It is about a week earlier than last year's harvest.

The 2008 French wine harvest is expected to be even smaller than last year. Viniflhor, the French agricultural body, has predicted a 12% drop in wine volumes on the five-year average.

Info Mine - Grape Ripeness

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Starting with the basics - the purpose of grapes is to entice birds to eat them and disperse the seeds, thereby propagating the grape vine. But they don't want to be eaten too early, which is why when unripe they are green (camouflage) and have high levels of tannins and acids (not tasty), turning an appetising red/purple-black when ripe. This colour-change process is known as veraison and is an indicator of chemical ripening within the grape. (Before you ask "what about yellow grapes", these have been shown to be the result of a mutation in the gene regulating pigment.)

2. Without wanting to get too technical, there are two separate, although related, types of ripeness in grapes - phenolic (or physiological) ripeness and sugar ripeness.

3. In a nutshell, phenolic ripeness has to do with changes in the tannins in the seeds, skins and stems and is influenced primarily by "hang time", the amount of time the grape is left on the vine. Sugar ripeness involves the breakdown of acids and the increase in sugar levels and has more to do with the amount of sunlight and warmth which the grape has experienced (which obviously varies from vintage to vintage).

4. Depending on climate, growers will harvest according to phenolic or sugar ripeness (depending on which tends to occur first). In warm regions, phenolic ripeness occurs after sugar ripeness, meaning it is farily easy to produce wines with high levels of sugar (and therefore potential alcohol), but the challenge is to ensure phenolic ripeness is not delayed so long that the wines become seriously alcoholic. By the same token, picking before phenolic ripeness is achieved to avoid excessive alcohol will leave a bitter green taste.

5. Some new world producers tend to err on the side of over-ripeness ("excessive hang-time"), rather than risk green, under-developed wines. This can produce sweet, sugary wines which are easy on the undemanding palate but have undesirable side effects such as high levels of alcohol and the so-called "dead fruit" phenomenon.

Bilbao - Tapas Capital of the World?

My goodness Bilbao has got a lot of tapas bars! What a fantastic way to spend an evening, sauntering from one establishment to another, an Albariño here, a cañita there, with a plentiful supply of jamon serrano and quails eggs on toast to soak up the booze the keep things on the right side of civilised.

On a recent weekend trip there we spent an evening making our way around the arcaded main square in the old town (known as the Casco Viejo). Children played by the fountains in the centre of the square late into the evening, while their parents (presumably) kept a watchful eye from behind servings of olives and crianza. The bars all have service hatches leading onto the pavement, meaning you don't even have to go inside to order. This turns the English "grab a corner seat and don't move all evening" mentality completely on its head - outside in the street is where it all happens.

On our second evening we visited a tapas bar-lined street in the central shopping district which someone had recommended. Again, the same challenge applied - i.e. how far can you make it along the street, putting in pit stops in all the likely looking tapas joints along the way? In our case the answer was less than 100 yards in about three hours!

Spanish friends tell me that as far as tapas culture goes, Bilbao has nothing on nearby Santander. Could there be a rival contender for the title of Tapas Capital of the World? One thing's for sure - I intend to go back and find out.

Sardinian Vermentino

On a recent trip to northern Sardinia I was surprised by the overall quality of the white wines. Even the bog standard house whites were highly quaffable, not to mention thirst-quenching in the sweltering heat.

On closer inspection far and away the most prevalent white varietal is Vermentino. Originally from the Iberian peninsula, Vermentino is now widely planted in northern Sardinia (the link with Spain is also cultural - the port of Alghero has strong Catalan roots and the language is still spoken and even appears on restaurant menus).

Sardinia's only DOCG is Vermentino di Gallura, upgraded from DOC status in 1996. Its typically aromatic, almost bitter palate apparently comes from the soil of sandy clay on a granite base. Check it out!

Info Mine - Malbec

The Wine Mine Blagging Toolkit - 5 wine nuggets with which to impress your friends...

1. Malbec is one of the 6 grape varieties permitted in red Bordeaux. Its primary function in Bordeaux is in blends with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

2. It is a thin-skinned grape, is darker in colour than Cabernet and has an earthiness on the palate, with touches of spice.

3. Originally from Cahors, Malbec is becoming increasingly identified as the signature Argentinan varietal. Most of the Argentinian plantings of Malbec are in Mendoza, which has the requisite high levels of heat and sun (partly due to its high altitude).

4. Synonyms for Malbec include Auxerrois and Cot Noir (in Cahors) and Pressac.

5. For a good entry-level Malbec check out the offering from Argentinian winery Terrazas de los Andes, retailing at around £7.25.

The En Primeur Game

Influential wine people have been railing against the Bordeaux en primeur system recently, on the back of record levels of trading for the recently released 2005 vintage. Ex-Petrus winemaker Jean-Claude Berrouet has called the system a "madness" and Jancis Robinson has understatedly lamented the "shortcomings" of the en primeur "game".

The financial argument against en primeur is roughly that "us poor drinkers shouldn't be forced to tie up our money so far in advance of taking delivery of the wine". As wine journalist Stephen Brook puts it, en primeur is a system "designed to transfer large amounts of cash from your pocket into the pockets of wealthy Bordeaux proprietors and merchants at the earliest possible moment". I don't actually think this cuts the mustard as a reason to get rid of en primeur. Any valuable commodity in short supply will give rise to a futures market. Like it or loathe it, the majority of buyers of top flight Bordeaux are primarily investors, not drinkers. The fact that it is not possible to predict exactly how good a bottled wine will be from a barrel sample is simply another variable to take into account if you want to dabble in an investment that is per se something of a lottery.

Economics aside, I believe there is a much better argument against en primeur in Berrouet's observation that wines now have to be "as seductive as possible far earlier, to the detriment of the Bordeaux style". If the crucial tasting moment becomes the moment of purchase, i.e. the time when the barrel samples are tasted by buyers, winemakers may feel pressure to create younger developing wines aimed to drink well at the moment of en primeur purchase (when they should still be in malolactic fermentation) rather than the ultimate moment of drinking. If this were the case, it would be a sad development for the world's top wines.

I am not qualified enough to know whether or not this trend is in fact yet the case but if it is, what can be done to modify the en primeur system? Presumably some sort of regulatory intervention would be required, either by the French government or at EU level. It is hard to imagine such intervention suceeding on economic grounds - as we have seen, there is no real consumer protection issue at stake and futures markets already exist for almost every conceivable commodity. Intervention would have to come from the wine/agricultural authorities and the case would have to be made on the basis of preserving the quality of the wine, for example by imposing minimum timetables for development of a wine before it can be offered for sale and requiring transparency of volumes produced and offered for sale.

We live in capitalist times and we do to an extent have to accept that. If there are people out there prepared to pay £3,000 for a bottle of wine then - at least in financial terms - that is what it is worth. However, regulatory powers can and should be used to safeguard quality, which, after all, should be the main concern of wine drinkers the world over.

Sources: O. Styles, Decanter