Monthly Archives: June 2019

Pocos, Locos, y Mal Unidos: The Paradox of Sardinian Wine

June 18, 2019 By in Italian wine, wine, wine exports, wine markets Leave a comment

cervoPocos, locos y mal unidos. This description of Sardinia and its people (often wrongly attributed to Charles V) is a useful way to think about Sardinia’s wine sector and the headwinds it faces today.

Sardinian wine is a relatively small (pocos) player in Italian wine with perhaps 20,000 hectares of vines out of Italy’s vast 750,000 hectare total. The winemakers are crazy (locos), but that’s a given and not meant as an insult. I think we all agree that you’ve got to be at least a little crazy to try to make a living growing grapes or  making wine.

Small (and Crazy) can be Beautiful

Being small and a little crazy is not an insurmountable disadvantage in global wine. In fact, it can be a good place to begin. Take New Zealand as an example.

New Zealand’s wine sector is big in terms of its global reach and reputation, but pocos in other ways. There are more than 35,000 hectares of vines today (data from the Oxford Companion to Wine), but that’s after a couple of decades of rapid growth. Flash back twenty years and Sardinia had more grape vines than New Zealand and produced more wine.

I think the first Kiwi producers to take their wines to international markets (people like Ernie Hunter, who I wrote about in Wine Wars) must have been more than a little nuts to think that wine from a tiny faraway island could ever make an impact. But they brought their distinctive wines first to the UK and then the world and they found a ready audience. Now New Zealand is a wine export machine with market growth every year at premium price points. Being small and crazy worked for the Kiwis.

Is Sardinian Vermentino the next Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Well, as I suggested last week, the wines are excellent and distinctive, too. They deserve to be better known than they are. The next New Zealand? No, that’s too big an ask if only because times have changed and that gap in the market has been filled. But there is certainly potential for Sardinia to grow.

surrauVigne Surrau Case Study

Sue and I learned first hand about Sardinia’s potential when we visited Vigne Surrau, an ambitious 400,000 bottle producer located just outside of Porto Cervo in northeast Sardinia.

Surrau’s first vintage was 2004-2005 and it has been part of the recent move from quantity to quality in Sardinian wine. Growth has been so fast they they are now operating in their second-generation winery and tasting facility with room to grow to perhaps 700,000 bottles in the future. Sardinia itself (60%) and the rest of Italy (20%) are the biggest markets, with 20% exported. Demand is strong and export sales are carefully allocated so that the home market can be accommodated.

Wine tourism is a significant focus at Surrau with about 12,000 visitors per year. The beautiful tasting area, which looks out over the vineyards and the mountains beyond, has room for seated tastings, with food pairing if you wish, as well space for local food and crafts and an art gallery. A small conference center provides space for corporate events. Very well designed. Nothing remotely locos about it.

Vermentino di Gallura DOCG, elegant and complex, accounts for 65% of production. Red wines, especially Cannonou but also some Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, fill out the line.  Tasting the Branu (Vertmetino di Gallura DOCG), Sciala (Vermentino di Gallura DOCG Superiore from a different terroir than Branu) and Sciala VT (late harvest, but not a sweet wine with only 4 grams per liter of residual sugar) was a delightful introduction to the potential of Vermentino in this part of Sardinia.

Surrau highlighted the positive qualities we found in many of the best wines we tasted in Sardinia. Focus and commitment to quality on the business side. Balance, finesse, and distinction in the glass. They may be small and crazy, but there is great potential here. What could hold them back?

The Mal Unidos Syndrome

That’s where Mal Unidos comes in.  Almost everyone we talked with bemoaned the lack of unity and teamwork in Sardinia. Sue and I were skeptical. Disfunctional wine sectors are not that unusual. We see them all the time in our wine  travels.

No, you don’t understand, people told us. It is much worse here. It’s not just wine. It’s everything. Factions. Dialects. Everything. We have met the enemy and it is us. It is a real problem.  Regional consortio organizations are weak, they say, which is unfortunate since they are one way that reputation is built and sustained, and cooperation of all sorts is limited.

Small and crazy — that’s not necessarily a problem in wine. But discord and fragmentation can be barrier to greater success. Sardinia might not be able to match New Zealand’s tremendous growth, but it has unrealized potential that it would be great to see unlocked.

The new world of quality Sardinian wine has yet to be discovered in many markets. I hope the people who complained to us about the lack of cooperation are either exaggerating the situation or will find a way to work together to solve this problem and raise both regional reputation and the quality standard even higher.

In the meantime, put Sardinia and its wines on your personal radar. You would be locos to pass them by.

First Impressions of Sardinian Wine

June 11, 2019 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 1 Comment

porscheSue and I travelled to Sardinia at the invitation of Alessandro Torcoli, editor of the quarterly journal Civilta del Bere (where Wine Economist columns, translated into Italian, sometimes appear). Alessandro organized a series of trade and press workshops and a wine competition to accompany the Porto Cervo Wine & Food Festival this year.

We were delighted to attend to speak about global trends and opportunities, help with the judging,  and to learn more about Sardinia and its wine sector.

Porto Cervo, on the beautiful Costa Smeralda in the northeast of the island, is more luxury resort than sleepy village, so there was a lot going on besides the wine, including an international press launch event for the new Porsche 911 Speedster sports car. I’ll bet the corkscrew island roads made for exciting driving. I admit that I was distracted a bit by that blue Porsche pictured here.

We only visited this one corner of Sardinia over just a few days, so a comprehensive report is impossible. But we met many winemakers and tasted their wines both at the festival and the dinners, so we have some strong first impressions to share. Here they are.

Sardinia at a Crossroads

The idea of a crossroads applies to Sardinia in several ways. As the second largest island in the Mediterranean (after Sicily) it has been an important economic and political crossroads for centuries and the local culture and even the cuisine reflect this fact.

torbatoSardinian wine features a treasure house of native grapes plus many international varieties that have been grown here so long that they are firmly part of the tradition. Sue and I enjoyed tasting wines that we will probably never find outside of Sardinia, such as the Torbato from Sella & Mosca. The origins of Tobato are controversial, with some arguing that it was introduced from Spain in the 14th or 15th century and others insisting just the opposite. It’s that crossroad thing.

The most important red varietal is Cannonau, which you probably know as Garnacha. Sardinians claim ownership of this varietal and we tasted many fine examples. I am not going to wade into the debate as to whether it is native or introduced by the Spanish, but I will say that it is a shame that people don’t take more of an interest in these wines.

Garnacha and Grenache are having a well-deserved moment and Cannonau should share the love. But, one winemaker said with a deep sigh, Cannonau isn’t generally included when Garnacha and Grenache wines are put in the spotlight. That needs to change.

Very Vermentino (and a Surprise)

Vermentino, the most important white grape variety, makes a lovely wine in Sardinia and I think this might be the island’s best opportunity for attention on international markets. Vermentino di Sardegna is pretty much consistently tangy and delicious, with some outstanding examples such as the wines from Pala. Sauvignon Blanc drinkers should give Sardinian Vermentino a try — I think they will be surprised and delighted.

jankaraVermintino di Gallura DOCG, from the northern region near our location in Porto Cervo, takes the quality up a notch, adding complexity driven by terroir. We tasted wines from sandy zones near the beach and rocky soils at higher altitude. We even tasted a vertical that showed the influence of different vintages and an ability to age.

Such an interesting wine with so much to offer! Favorites included Surrau, Siddura, and Jankara. Worth searching out.

Every wine region holds a surprise and for me Sardinia’s surprise wine is its Carignano di Sulcis DOC — Carignan grapes grown on sandy soils on the island’s south-west coast. The best of these wines are simply fantastic, with impressive body, balance, and flavor.

We tasted outstanding Carignano di Sulcis wines from several makers including Cantina Santadi, Cantina Mesa, and Cantina Giba.  The Sulcis region is high on my list of places to visit if/when we return to Sardinia.

Another Crossroads

Sardinia is at a crossroads in another way.  It has long produced wines for export and been whip-lashed by shifting market conditions much like its sister island Sicily (with which is it often confused by the geographically challenged). (See The World of Sicilian Wine by Bill Nesto MW and Frances Di Savio for a comprehensive analysis of Sicilian wine market twists and turns.)

Twenty years ago Sardinia was more or less defined by the commercial quality bulk wine production of large cooperatives. As demand has shifted and new competitors appeared, the market for these wines has suffered. Sardinian wine grape acreage has fallen dramatically and the momentum has shifted from quantity to quality.  That’s a difficult transition to make, especially since reputation generally lags the reality.

As you can tell from this quick report, we were looking for quality in Sardinia, which is the key to success today, and we found plenty of it. But there is still a lot of work to be done before Sardinia can confidently put this crossroads behind it and move forward into the future.

Come back next week for a case study of success and analysis of headwinds.

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Thanks to Alessandro for inviting us to Porto Cervo and to everyone we met there for their help and hospitality. Special thanks to the staff at Cervo Hotel for making our stay so enjoyable. Now if only I had found a way to disguise myself as an auto journalist to get a shot at driving the new Speedster!

The Beginning of the End of the Old World Appellation System?

June 4, 2019 By in climate change, EU wine market reforms, wine, wine history, wine markets 7 Comments

“Some New World regions are adopting European-style AOC rules,” the Italian journalist I met in Sardinia explained, “Do you think this is an important trend?”

“No. Just the opposite. I think the Old World appellation system is under attack and will need to change to survive.”

He looked at me like I had dropped down from Mars. This was clearly not the answer he was looking for, but I think it is true. I wasn’t able to explain my logic very well in the rush of the interview, so let me try to explain here.

We Have Met the Enemy …

New World wine appellations are geographical indicators that specify a wine’s origin and help differentiate a region’s products. Some of these designations are very valuable (Napa and Sonoma, for example) in terms of price premium. Others are of little economic value, but can sometimes be useful in other ways that I don’t have time to explain here.

The Old World appellation system starts with designation of origin and adds to that a system of rules that restrict grape choices, blend components and ratios, viticultural practices, and other factors. AOC rules can literally fill a book as Jancis Robinson shows us in the classic video above.

AOCs (and Italian DOCs, Spanish DOs, etc.) evolved as essentially protective structures based on the experience in Champagne, which was the model for the current system. (I wrote about this in my book Money, Taste, and Wine). The first goal was to protect regional reproducers from fraud by outsiders passing off their imitation wines as the real thing.

The second goal (and the reason for such detailed regulation) was to protect quality producers in the region from neighbors inside the region who might cut corners and sacrifice quality to increase profit while benefiting from the regional “brand”.

Very high yields, for example, might increase a particular winery’s profit, but the lower quality dilutes the value of the appellation to all others. It is a cut-throat situation. “We have met the enemy and he is us” describes this element of the AOC program.

So AOCs seek to defend the regional brand from threats from the unscrupulous both outside and inside the region. Today, however, there are two powerful forces that threaten this system and will force it to change. Indeed it is already changing.

Shifting Center of Gravity

The first force is the global market, where the fastest-growing segments and categories are not closely aligned with the AOC system and where the premiumization syndrome is strongest. American consumers have shifted their market’s center of gravity to higher price points, but not higher prices for the same products. They will pay more than before but the product has to be differentiated and appealing. So innovation, which is not a strong point of the AOC system, is increasingly important.

Sue and I saw this when we visited the Valpolicella region a few years ago. The AOC system basically provides opportunities for Valpolicella wines, Ripasso, and Amarone in ascending order of retail price (I am leaving out details to simply, but you get my drift).

We met producer after producer who responded to this situation by creating proprietary blends of grapes that were “downgraded” to IGT status (because the blends don’t strictly adhere to the rule book), but upgraded in terms of price because of their effective branding and high quality. These new IGT wines were designed to fit price points created by premiumization that were not easily attainable with existing AOC products.

There is nothing new about the IGT movement — remember when super-Tuscans were controversial, which feels like a very long time ago? But the IGT trend, which basically slips out of the AOC handcuffs, has gathered unstoppable momentum. We see these wines everywhere now — France, Italy, Spain, everywhere. And some of them of fantastic. AOC? We don’t need no stinkin’ AOC?

In a sense the rise of these “super-” wines represents a shift in mentality that is worth noting. If the AOC system if defensive at its core, the IGT movement is entrepreneurial, seeking out new opportunities and breaking rules to get them.

Climate Change Challenges

The AOC system can withstand these market forces, although some regions will find it in their interests to adapt as Chianti did in the face of super-Tuscan success. But a second force is harder to ignore and will be even more threatening in the long run: climate change.

AOC rules are often promoted as an evolutionary pinnacle. We’ve had hundreds of years to figure out what grapes and blends are the very best for our terroir and here they are laid out in the rule book! Best of the best. You cannot improve upon the AOC rules.

It is a nice argument, but what happens when the terroir changes due to new climate patterns? The answer is that the wines need to adapt and evolve to remain at the peak, which is hard to do if the rule book doesn’t change. AOC standards need to evolve with the climate or become irrelevant or, worse, counter-productive.

Bordeaux Adapts

Some Old World regions already see the writing on the wall, as Jane Anson reported in Decanter earlier this year. Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur producers now are able to experiment with “accessory grape” varieties that may better withstand climate change than the traditional (and designated) grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

“The red grapes for trial,” Anson reports, “will be Marselan, Syrah, Zinfandel and Arinarnoa. In white, Liliorila, Chardonnay, Petit Manseng Blanc and Chenin Blanc will be tested.” A recent VinePair article called this “a small revolution,” but I see it as something bigger and this is just the start.

Anson’s article continues,

Veronique Barthe of Chateau la Freynelle, who is working on the project with the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur Union, told decanter.com this was not a form of sacrilege.

‘We are not trying to make 100% Syrah in Bordeaux, but to test which grapes work best on which terroir in the region with the intention of introducing them only if they offer real quality,’ she said.

This sounds like exactly what a winemaker should be doing, don’t you think? “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do?” according to Keynes. When the climate changes, what will the AOCs do?

So the AOC system is under attack from the inside by IGT wines and from the outside by climate change. The system will adapt, but it won’t be the same. We can debate whether this is a good thing or not (I’m on the good thing side), but it is going to happen. And that’s what I wish I had time to explain to that Italian wine journalist.