September Already

Well, goodbye summer (such that it was). The first of September brings with it the promise of showers, scattered and not-so-scattered. Having just returned from sunny Spain, the arrival of the UK autumn is especially brusque. For those in the UK on-trade it does, however, herald a seasonal reappraisal of wine lists. For a few brief weeks, habitually stony-faced sommeliers and bar managers may actually deign to talk to wine companies, opening the door just enough for us to try to jam a foot in.

The process of getting wines onto a restaurant or bar wine list is excruciatingly slow at the best of times and can take anything from several weeks to several years. The times of year when people will look at their wine list generally fall into the pre-winter and pre-summer slots, but the exact timings vary from venue to venue and are influenced by a seemingly infinite number of variables such as holidays (frequent) and changes of management (sometimes even more frequent). Needless to say, missing out on a semi-annual tasting will set you back another 6 or 12 months in the process.

Annoyingly, more and more establishments are also signing up to exclusivity agreements with major drinks suppliers in the belief that locking in prices for a foreseeable period makes business sense. Cutting down on paperwork seems to be all-important to some on-trade customers, meaning a small specialist supplier is disadvantaged against the drinks behemoths who can offer a one-stop shop for wines, spirits and beers. Sommeliers and bar managers have to decide whether they want an easy life or an interesting one. If they want to take the hassle-free route of locking themselves in to supplies of branded, ubiquitous wines then fine, but in doing so they are likely to be missing out on some innovative, interesting wine - not to mention, as I keep telling them, some great bargains!

April Frost Decimates Bordeaux Harvests

The frost on 5 April has wiped out 60-70% of the whites in the Pessac-Leognan area of Bordeaux, according to James Ryland, sales director for Andre Lurton wines, one of the large producers in the area.

May was also the second wettest on record since 1946 in Bordeaux, meaning producers all over the region have been contending with high levels of mildew. Lussac St-Emilion was hit hard by hail in June, totally ruining the vines in one of Chateau Barbe Blanche's vineyards.

Despite this doom and gloom, the 2008 vintage has not been written off yet. July and August have had good amounts of sun and by delaying the harvest until as late as early October, producers still hope to salvage a good crop. Indeed, the story is not dissimilar to the 2007 Bordeaux vintage, which was saved from a similarly inauspicious beginning by the combination of an Indian summer in September and late harvesting. Ryland claims that Andre Lurton's remaining unscathed grapes are of "exceptional" quality. Time will tell.

Info Mine - Biodynamic Wine

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

1. So what's all this about biodynamic wine then? It's a bit presumptious of me to think it can be covered in 5 paragraphs, but I'll give it a go. The theoretical roots of biodynamic agriculture lie in eight lectures given in 1924 by Austrian philosopher/scientist Rudolf Steiner. The lectures were entitled Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture and drew on Steiner's lifetime mission to reconcile the spiritual and physical worlds.

2. In practice, biodynamic viticulture is not that dissimilar to organic - think of it as "organic +". The most important difference is the biodynamic preparations used instead of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. For example, cow manure fermented in a cow horn, stinging nettle tea and oak bark fermented in the skull of a domestic animal.

3. Each biodynamic producer seems to follow a slightly customised system which, while anchored to the wide Steiner principles, tends to vary in the particulars from winegrower to winegrower. Something they all agree on is the importance of soil health and the central role of compost in achieving this. Pinning the vineyard's annual cycle to planetary movements appears less common.

Rudolf Steiner

4. The international organisation Demeter (www.demeter.net) is the principal certifying body. To become certified you first need to have organic certification (from the Soil Association or other equivalent body). You must also have used the full gamut of biodynamic preparations (sprays and compost) for two years. Keeping animals (chickens, sheep) among the vines is recommended, although not mandatory. Some biodynamic producers, such as Michel Chapoutier, have complained that the Demeter certification process is not rigorous enough.

5. Lastly, it is sometimes said that biodynamics is cultish and anti-scientific. The fact that it has been invested in and is practiced by large, profitable producers such as Chapoutier in the Rhone Valley, Pontet Canet in Bordeaux, Matetic in Chile and Milton and Seresin in New Zealand suggests there must be something to it. Limited proper research is so far available, although, a 21 year comparison of traditional and organic/biodynamic farming was published in 2002 in the scientific journal Science. It concluded that although biodynamic yields were lower, it outperformed traditional agriculture on counts such as biodiversity, resource utilisation and soil microbes.

Sources: wineanorak.com, Demeter, quaffersoffers.co.uk

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.