Archive for the 'Industry Issues' Category

Lately those of us in the wine media have been deluged with reports that suggest consumers are “trading down,” purchasing low-priced wines in place of high-priced wines. In 2007, the fastest growing segments of the wine market were from $12-15 and $15-20. But according to Morgan Stanley, for the four weeks of 2008 ending December 28, wine sales above $7 fell 4.5%, while those below $7 grew by 1%. It’s been well documented that on-premise wine sales have struggled all year, which also has translated into tough times for wines that retail anywhere in the double digits.
I get it—up to a point.

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Since this is my last post for UnReserved, I decided to take a look back at the most hotly debated topics over the past 11 months. The number of comments on each shows which topics touched your nerves. The topics of the posts most commented on included:

Global Warming
Californian vs. European Wine
Tempranillo (who knew?)
Screwcaps and Corks
Two-Buck Chuck

We also had a great run in a post where I asked people to nominate alternative names for American-made Port-style wines. “Forto” was the winner.

I wonder what made these subjects so compelling, and what other subjects in wine you would like to discuss.

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A week after the death of Robert Mondavi the waves of sympathy for the family, and appreciation of Bob’s countless contributions to wine continue to swirl around the Napa Valley, the wine world and the Internet.

At a seminar in St. Helena Wednesday sponsored by French barrel maker Taransaud, British wine merchant Anthony Hanson, a Master of Wine, author and Christie’s auction house agent, was moderator. He dedicated the day-long session to Robert Mondavi. Looking around the room, I could see several winemakers who worked directly for Mondavi, particularly Zelma Long, who was a speaker. She took over as Mondavi winemaker in the 1970s and went on to an illustrious career heading up Simi Winery in Sonoma County and in the past several years as a winemaking consultant in California and wine entrepreneur in South Africa. Many others in the crowd were also directly or indirectly connected to Robert Mondavi.

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Everyone in the California wine industry has been buzzing about the severe frosts this spring. Since I first posted on this topic on March 19, we’ve had a series of nights when the temperature dipped below freezing.

When I first wrote, it was merely the threat of damage to the young spring growth on the vines that was the issue. Then about 10 days ago it was no longer a threat but real damage. Growers in many parts of the state, and in fact in many different states, had new spring growth nipped in the bud or frozen in the shoots by unsually cold temperatures.

What does this tell us about global warming?

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Author Jancis Robinson chastised her wine-writing colleagues recently for not having stiff enough spines. According to a Decanter article she told them at a posh gathering in Spain that they need to be more open about wines they like and dislike and resist vintners efforts to “keep us sweet.”

Ironically, the event itself was sponsored by La Melonera, a wine-related development project, and journalists attending were treated to two days of great wines along with discussions between winemakers from several countries and international journalists. It was unclear whether the journalists had to pay the 2,000 Euro fee, or were admitted free as is often the custom at wine industry events.

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What type of wine package does the least damage to the environment? The answer to the question is not quite as simple as you might think.

It seems obvious that glass bottles with cork closures and tin capsules would be the right thing to buy on Earth Day, since all these items are recyclable. But it may be that wine in the clunky but inexpensive bag-in-box format goes lighter on the earth.

Greenness and light carbon footprints are hot topics in the wine industry right now, as wineries, regions and the competing packaging companies shoot almost daily press releases touting their green credentials. It’s a hot topic in a lot of other industries, too, according to this USA Today article.

But with everybody patting themselves on the back there may be a whiplash effect when the issues get better sorted out. First of all, glass is heavy, and packaging wine in glass makes it a very heavy thing to transport as Tyler Colman of the Dr. Vino blog and others have examined very closely.

The heavier an item is, the more ship, train and truck fuel it requires to move it from the winery to you. That makes its carbon footprint heavier, which is bad for the atmosphere and contributes to climate change, most experts on the subject say.

Especially unfriendly are the trendy, super-heavy wine bottles that seem to weigh as much empty as they do full. These are beautiful and artistic, but any winery that sticks with this packaging is going to have some explaining to do to the public.

There is no compelling practical reason for these babies other than their heft in a consumer’s hands. Wineries can get the same protection from light and the same aging potential from a much lighter bottle.

Boxed wines count very little of their weight from the package, so liter by liter, they win the contest for the least spewing of gas and diesel fumes per mile to market.

The cork companies have seized on the green credentials of their products, pointing out how many trees and animals are saved and how much carbon is turned to oxygen by preserving and using the cork oak forests in Portugal and Spain.

The key point here is that you don’t have to cut a cork tree down to harvest the cork. Workers strip a layer of cork off the tree about once every nine years, and the layer grows back with no other damage to the tree. That’s about as renewable as it gets. Of course they do have to ship them halfway around the world to wineries in California and Australia, which must burn a lot of diesel.

Makers of other bottle closures like screw tops and synthetic corks, however, argue that their products can be manufactured closer to the wineries, using comparatively few raw materials, little energy and are recyclable, too.

Some wineries are starting to package their wines in plastic bottles like soda. I love San Pellegrino in plastic because it’s so lightweight and unbreakable, so it won’t put me off to see wine in plastic bottles. By the way, what’s more absurd than sending water around the world in heavy glass bottles? Wine is absolutely eco-responsible compared to that.

The greenest wine packaging of all is probably the refillable jug or carboy. If you’re lucky enough to live near wineries (and everyone does now because wineries operate in all 50 states, about 5,000 of them total in the US) and one of them lets you bring your own container and fill it up, then you are in a very green place. (Or at the very least you can be a wine locavore and drink the local juice.)

I believe that in California The Hess Collection Winery in Napa and Preston Vineyards in Sonoma County have offered this opportunity from time to time. Who else lets you bring your own jug?

What is wine going to be like in a post-climate change world? Well, we don’t have to wait to find out. The future has been creeping up on us for some time:

Late April 1980, St. Helena, Calif.–I woke up in the middle of the night. My heart pounded. A loud, buzzing roar like fighter planes revving on the deck of an aircraft carrier broke the 3 a.m. quiet of my street. It was the first spring that I lived in Napa Valley, and for a few seconds I couldn’t identify the sound.

Then I realized it must be coming from the wind machines, even though I’d never heard them before. A farmer whose vineyard was near my house had ignited the monstrous internal combustion engines that ran the low-tech, high-horsepower frost prevention equipment. Each consisted of an 18-foot tower with an airplane-like propeller mounted on top. A gas-guzzling engine powered it at high speed.

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Italian-Americans seemed to dominate the program Monday night in New York City when Wine Enthusiast honored its 2007 Wine Star Award winners at a well-orchestrated reception and dinner for more than 300. Ray Chadwick, the CEO of multinational wine company Diageo Chateau & Estate was Man of the Year, and I doubt if he’s Italian, but many of the other award winners were.

It got me thinking about the powerful influence Italians have exerted on the world of wine, and especially in the US.

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A study at the California Institute of Technology came up with scientific backing for the widely observed phenomenon that people tend to like expensive wines more than less expensive wines.

The interesting part, to me, is not just that knowing you are drinking a high-priced wine makes you say that you like it better, but that something happens in the brain so that you really believe it’s better. You’re not simply being consciously snobbish.

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I may hate myself in the morning, but here goes: There’s another way to look at Wine.com’s practice of ratting out other retailers than the scathing treatment I’ve read in Vinography and elsewhere, condemning the flailing Internet wine retailer as anti-consumer for its admittedly hardball tactic of reporting to authorities the direct-shipping transgressions of some of its fellow retailers around the country.

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