Monthly Archives: March 2022

We Don’t Talk About Abruzzo … But We Should!

March 29, 2022 By in emerging wine regions, Italian wine, popular culture, wine 1 Comment

The thing about Bruno, a character in the Disney film Encanto, is that everyone talks about not talking about him. Or at least that’s the gist of the wildly popular song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”

The Abruzzo Syndrome

For a long time this situation kind of applied to Abruzzo, the under-appreciated Italian region you reach by flying to Rome and driving east over the Apennine mountains to the Adriatic. My well-worn 1998 Knopf Guide to Italy, for example, devotes more than 500 colorful pages to tourist Italy, but gives poor Abruzzo precisely 2 pages of text.

The Abruzzo syndrome, as illustrated by the Knopf guide treatment, is that the Itay is full of the best of the best of tourist sights and attractions. Abruzzo’s natural beauty and modest charm is undeniable, but it struggles for the spotlight that is focused elsewhere.

Sue and I can appreciate this situation from our experience living in Bologna some years ago. For the most part foreign visitors only knew Bologna from changing trains at the station or attending conferences at the big convention center outside of town. Bologna was a place you passed through on your way to somewhere else. Abruzzo’s location makes it ever less of a destination point.

Abruzzo Wine Syndrome

The Abruzzo syndrome plagued the region’s wines, too. Take the usually-generous Burton Anderson’s Wine Atlas of Italy, for example. Anderson gives 3 pages out of 300 to Abruzzo in my 1990 edition of this classic volume, disappointed by what he saw as a lack of interest in quality.

… the growing of grapes in abundance as just another fruit crop still offers more attractive prospects than does the making of premium wine. The shame of it is that the Abruzzi’s sunny hills could make outstanding wines, not only from the native Montepulciano but from many other noble vines.

A few producers stubbornly swam against the tide — Anderson cites Edoardo Valentini in particular — but it was a difficult task given the region’s lack-luster reputation. Abruzzo’s reputation was nothing much to talk about even though the potential was clear.

Abruzzo Fast Forward

Fast forward to 2022. Sue and I hadn’t talked much about Abruzzo over the years, but an unexpected invitation to visit later this year was enough to make us circle back to see how Abruzzo has changed and it is clear that the region is getting some of the respect it was previously denied.

Travel and Leisure magazine, for example, named Abruzzo to its list of the 50 best places to travel in 2022.  Abruzzo has changed, as the article suggests, but perhaps travelers have changed, too, and now appreciate local charm and character more than before. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

Stretching from the heart of the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea on the peninsula’s southeastern side, Abruzzo, Italy has long been one of the country’s most overlooked destinations despite its unspoiled villages, picturesque Trabocchi Coast, and stunning natural escapes. Over the past few years, however, it has gone from a sleepy underdog to an ambitious harbinger of slow travel, sustainable gastronomy, and conscious hospitality.

Reality vs Reputation

Reality has moved faster than reputation on the wine front, too. Abruzzo is still noteworthy for the quantity of wine it produces. Abruzzo ranked #5 among Italian wine regions in 2020 for volume of production. Veneto and Apulia topped the table followed by Emili-Romagna and Sicily. Abruzzo was followed by Piedmonte and Tuscany. But quantity is no longer the only game in town.

My battered copy of Slow Wine Guide 2014, for example, highlighted the growing number of premium producers who were able to meet the guide’s high standards.

It is a mistake to speak about the Abruzzo as an emerging winegrowing region. Consistent quality has now become more general, no longer the prerogative of a handful of historic cellars plowing the furrow of tradition, but also a characteristic of the work of both small wineries and large cooperatives.  … All in all, the Abruzzo wine world is in good health, working the land more sustainably than in the past and affording consumer enjoyment with very reasonably priced labels.

Clearly Abruzzo has turned a corner, a fact underlined by the evaluation I found in my copy of the Gambero Rosso 2019 guide to Italian wines. “Abruzzo’s wine industry is in many ways a kind of microcosm of the nation as a whole,” the analysis begins, “… leaving behind an age in which it was dominated by large quantities of generic bulk wine used outside of the region.”

Slowly Then Suddenly

The wines today (and the people who make them) are a better reflection of the remarkable diversity found within the region. “And they won’t cost you an arm and a leg either,” the report suggests, “(it’s not a coincidence that once again a number of Tre Bicchieri come at a price that would allow for daily consumption).”

Slowly — and then suddenly — Abruzzo is a topic of conversation. Just last week, for example, the region was highlighted in two news stories. The Drinks Business reported that Italy’s National Wine Committee and Agricultural Ministry agreed to consolidate the central Italian region’s wines under a single IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica), Terre d’Abruzzo. IGT wines are an important category where innovation is encouraged and the new designation will raise Abruzzo’s visibility. The hope is that Terre d’Abruzzo  IGT will do for Abruzzo was “Terre Siciliane” did for Sicilian wine identity when the designation was introduced a few years ago.

Meanwhile, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov featured two indigenous Abruzzo wine grape varieties in his column on “Ten Grapes Worth Knowing Better.”  Pecorino and Trebbiano d”Abruzzese — and recommended Abruzzo producers — made the list of wines worth discovering.

So apparently we are talking about Abruzzo now for the quality, value, and character of its wines. And it is good to keep the conversation going because it will take some time for Abruzzo’s reputation to catch up to reality. And it will not be easy to get attention in the crowded market for Italian wines, where famous names abound.

Wine Book Review: Grassroots Perspectives on Portuguese Wine

March 22, 2022 By in book reviews, Portuguese wine Leave a comment

Simon J. Woolf and Ryanb Opaz, Foot Trodden, Portugal and the Wines that Time Forgot. Interlink Books, 2021.

Portugal is having a much-deserved moment at present. For a long time Portugal wasn’t really on the radar for most people. The situation was so bad that some folks couldn’t find Portugal on a map — I saw a headline that proclaimed Portugal as a Mediterranean destination! It was enough to make Henry the Navigator cry!

Portugal Discovered

Now Portugal is high on the list of popular destinations for travelers of all stripes. Many of our friends have visited Portugal as tourists, for example, one has bought property there and is moving permanently, and another is seeking Portuguese citizenship.

What is the attraction? The people, their culture, food, wine, climate — the list goes on and on. The question isn’t so much why people love Portugal as what took them so long to discover it!

You can say pretty much the same thing about Portuguese wine.  For a long time the wines of Portugal have been sort of filed away a couple of niches. Port and Madeira? Check! Vinho Verde? Check! Lancers and Mateus? Check! Check!

But the world of Portuguese wines beyond the niche categories was essentially uncharted territory. What would it take for get wine drinkers to try Portuguese wines from unfamiliar regions made with unfamiliar grape varieties? It seemed like an impossible challenge.

Portuguese Charm Prevails

But the challenge is being met these days and Portuguese wine sales have been strong in the United States market, due in part to the popularity of Portugal as a travel destination, but also the rising profile of the country and its people more generally. Portugal has become a little bit like Italy in the sense that warm feelings about the place encourage consumers to give the wines a foot in the door, which is all they really need.

Walking into Costco recently, for example, I was met by a giant haystack wine display right by the entrance featuring colorful bottles of wine labeled simply “Portugal Red Blend” from the Lisboa region. It is an honest red wine, not too complicated, and a very good value. Shoppers happily filled their giant shopping carts. Would that have happened five years ago?

Grassroots Portugal

Foot Trodden, the recent book by Simon J. Woolf and Ryan Opaz, comes at an opportune moment when many wine enthusiasts are thirsty to learn more about Portugal. The book is appealing in part because it approaches Portuguese wine from a different angle than many wine books.

The standard format of “Wines of XXX” books is to survey the landscape from the perspective of the grape varieties, the wines they produce, the regions where they are made, and the wineries that make them. It is essentially a top-down approach, which is appropriate for a survey volume. Richard Mayson’s The Wines of Portugal, for example, applies this template to Portugal very successfully.

Foot Trodden breaks the mold a bit by focusing on the people and their stories, letting the other elements appear as part of the human tale. This is a bottom=-up perspective, which I find especially appropriate in this case because, as I noted above, so many of the sources of Portugal’s current success are essentially grassroots characteristics.

The book is well written, the stories, which mainly focus on family wineries, are well chosen and told, and the result a feeling of the place and the challenges that wine makers faced in the past and confront today, too. Excellent book. It deserves the success and recognition it has received.

All in the Family

Because stories are the driving force here, breadth is sometimes sacrificed for depth. So, for example, we are introduced to far fewer wine makers than in the survey books and these tend to be smaller multi-generation family affairs. The big wine producing houses are mentioned, but the focus is elsewhere.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on the Alentejo, which was organized around the tradition of making wines in large clay pots called Talha.  The rise, fall, and now rise again of this tradition is very interesting and deftly connects several family wine stories. These wines certainly honor the book’s sub-title.

I was also pleased to see so much Portuguese history woven into the book’s tapestry.  It seems to me that it is impossible to understand Portuguese wine today, for example, without taking into account the long shadow case by Prime Minister Salazar’s policies and the reaction to the Carnation Revolution.

The book features many colorful photographs, which support the grassroot perspective by highlighting the families, their land, and work. There are a few missed opportunities. The one map included in the book is pretty, but doesn’t answer many questions. More is more when it comes to maps, especially in this case because they can help connect the top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

Which is the better approach — survey or grassroots? Each is useful and interesting. Why choose? More is more when it comes to perspectives on Portugal and its wine!

Wine on the Nile: Wine Goes to the Movies (and TV)

March 15, 2022 By in popular culture, wine, wine education, wine markets 2 Comments

One of my pet peeves is wine’s lack of impact in popular culture. Celebrity chefs get lots of traction — even fictional cartoon rodent chefs (have you seen the Disney film Ratatouille?). Celebrity winemakers? Not so much.

Wine shouldn’t try to simply imitate food, of course, Watching Michel Rolland micro-oxygenate a tank of Merlot will never be as much fun as watching Julia Child throw together a pot of Boeuf Bourguignon.  If we want to reach potential newbie wine drinkers, I think wine needs to go where they are and to connect in as many ways as possible.

Wine is so often an afterthought. I bemoaned the fact that wine had no particular pride of place in Stanley Tucci’s hit television series Searching for Italy, for example. A wasted opportunity for sure!

Bordeaux on the Nile?

So I am pleased to see the efforts that Bordeaux producer Chateau Malartic-Lagravière, which is working very hard to position its fine wine where it can be seen and appreciated by a diverse audience.  The white wine, for example, appears in the second season of the Netflix series Emily in Paris.  And the red wine is featured in the recently released big-budget 20th Century Studio version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

Why Death on the Nile? A press release suggests that the Bonnie family that owns the Chateau connects with the film’s chief protagonist, fellow Belgian countryman Hercule Poirot. Perhaps. But I have to think the luxury setting in which the film’s action unfolds is an appealing frame for a luxury Bordeaux wine.

Consumers need a nudge to put wine on their minds and I congratulate Chateau Malartic-Lagravière for taking the initiative.  Product placement, however, is just one element of a potential initiative to connect wine culture with the interests and lifestyles of today’s consumers.

Wine First, Please!

Sue and I have been impressed for the early efforts of a group producing a public television series called Wine First, for example. The idea, I think, is that when most people go to a restaurant they pick their meals first and then choose a wine. But when YOU dine out, I’ll bet, at least some of you study the wine list first, choose the wine you want, and they pick food to go with it. Wine First.

The series format takes a wine first approach. The hosts visit a wine region (the Mosel, for example), stopping at three wineries to choose wines that captures the essence of each place — plus a regional food ingredient. A local restaurant chef is then challenged to prepare dishes that will highlight the wines — the wines are the star. The local wine producers evaluate the imaginative pairings that result and render a wine first verdict. Sue and I really enjoyed the programs and hope the multinational series comes back for a second season.

So far so good. But there is a lot more work to be done to get wine more clearly on the radar of the next consumer generation. In the meantime, remember that it is not telling the world how wine tastes (or is made) that will be the key to future growth. What’s important is how it makes you feel.

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I thought you might enjoy viewing the trailer for Death on the Nile.

Wine Book Review: Rethinking Wine Market Perspectives

March 8, 2022 By in book reviews, wine markets 2 Comments

Giacomo Negro and Michael T Hannan with Susan Olzak, Wine Markets: Genres & Identities. Columbia University Press, 2022.

What would you think if you stumbled upon a tasting note for a familiar wine that was written by someone from a very different culture, using different terms and concepts, and set in a different frame of reference? Think of an extreme version of the Chinese wine tasting notes described in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article.

At first you might just be puzzled and scratch your head (being careful not to spill any wine), but then — if the tasting note is a good one — you’d find yourself thinking, questioning what you thought you knew about the wine, and maybe considering it in a whole new way. That was my experience in reading Wine Markets: Genres & Identities.

I come from Planet Economics, so for me a book about wine markets is a book that is rooted in supply and demand. Producers, consumers, price and quantity — these are the fundamental building blocks.

The authors of Wine Markets come from Planet Sociology, so they think about the people and their relationships as much as — or maybe more than — the wine itself. Hence the book’s subtitle: Genres & Identities. A tasting note from Planet Sociology contemplates the same reality but analyzes it in very different ways.

Chapters at the beginning and end of the book lay out the theoretical elements and the terms that go with them. Different readers will react to this material in different ways. The core of the book is a set of three case studies that all readers will agree are interesting both for their stories and for the conflicts they reveal.

The first case study is Barolo, where modernist producers confront those who follow traditional practices, creating two genres within the one appellation. One element of tension is the use of small oak barriques versus large neutral botti grandi, although it a distortion to oversimplify in this way because some noteworthy producers — including iconic modernist Angelo Gaja — use both to good effect.

Brunello is the second case study, where tension arises between those who follow tradition in using 100% Sangiovese grapes and those who favor “super Tuscan” blends that include international varieties. Finally, the authors visit Alsace, where producer identities are at least in part defined along a biodynamic – organic – sustainable – conventional viticulture spectrum. The research proceeds mainly through interviews with the producers, although there is also statistical analysis of some issues.

The stories are told in terms of wine genres, producer identities, solidarity (or lack thereof), the audiences (consumers, critics), and the markets where they all come together. A different way of thinking about wine markets indeed.

For me the Barolo case study, which was the most detailed, was also the most interesting. The Alsace case confused me — which is not necessarily a bad thing — because the authors argue in part that biodynamic producers there are driven by the desire to achieve market differentiation. My experience is very limited, of course, but I have never met a biodynamic grower who struck me as doing it for the money.

Much of the research for the book was completed several years ago and I wish that more of it had been updated. I also wish there was room for case studies from the New World, where appellations are more geographic indicators than prescriptive wine genres. I wonder how the social dynamic analysis would be different from Barolo and Brunello?

Finally, I appreciate this book because it has given me some new ways to think about the natural wine movement, a genre of wine where identity is both strong and hotly contested at times. I am not ready to move from Planet Economics to Planet Sociology in terms of wine market analysis, but I think we can all benefit from ideas that challenge and stimulate as this book does.

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Gillian Tett, an anthropologist by training who reports on the world of global finance, is chair of the editorial board of the Financial Times and an advocate of the sort of cross-silo thinking discussed in this book review. You might be interested in her recent book Anthro-vision: a new way to see business and life.

Wine and the British Sunshine Tax

March 1, 2022 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

If you stroll around London for a while you are likely to come across a scene like the one shown here. An old building with its windows bricked up. Sometimes it’s one or two windows.  Sometimes they are all covered over. No sunlight gets in.

Ain’t No Sunshine …

The reason the owners decided to keep the sun out was the window tax, an attempt by 19th-century government in England and then later in Scotland to tax the rich in a manner less invasive than an income tax.

What could be better than a window tax?  Big houses with many windows were indicators of wealth and simply counting the windows (with exemptions for the humble cottages of the poor) an arbitrary straight-forward way to assess tax liability.

This was an era when revenue-craving governments were willing to go to almost any length to raise funds through specific excise taxes — think about the advice to “declare the pennies on your eyes” in the Beatles tune “Taxman” (see below for music video). Rather than one big tax source, dozens of smaller excise taxes were imposed.

The Taxman Cometh

But the tax authorities didn’t count on quite how much the English hated to be taxed and, obviously, many of them were willing to wall-up their windows and contentedly sit in the dark in order to escape the despised taxman’s assessment.

This bit of fiscal history is prompted by what might be considered by some to be a new tax on sun light, but this one collected via wine instead of windows. Galileo famously said that wine is sunlight held together by water, so what better way to tax sunshine than through wine. Or at least that’s what some people are saying, according to a recent article in the Financial Times.

Britain is slowly adjusting to its post-Brexit status and part of that means transitioning away from EU rules on the taxation of alcoholic beverages. Under EU regulations, which are still in effect, still wines and fortified wines are taxed in three bands according to alcohol by volume (abv), with sparkling wines in a further higher-rate band.

Let the Sunshine In?

Britain’s chancellor has proposed a new 27-band system with the rate rising every half percent of abv.  The complexity of the plan suggests high compliance costs, don’t you think, and would seem to invite a certain amount of gaming of the system. The abv of that wine in your glass may or may not be the same as the number of the label — a certain amount of rounding up or down often takes place — and this will matter more if fine-grained tax consequences are at stake.

I’ve heard that the chancellor’s office says that it is really just one band with 27 steps., not 27 bands. Good to know.  I’m sure that makes compliance much simpler!

Some members of the British wine trade go further, asserting that this amounts to a “sunshine tax.” The argument is that producers in sunnier regions like Australia can’t help producing riper grapes that yield higher abv levels while wineries in cooler climates, like the Mosel, naturally produce wines with lower abv.

This is true to a certain extent, although wine producers certainly have their secret ways of increasing abv when they want to and reducing it when that makes sense. No one in California brags about de-alcoholization, for example, but people tell me it happens all the time. Part of a batch of wine goes through a process to extract alcohol, they say, and is then blended back into the tank to bring the percent of abv down.

One winemaker friend talks about using “Jesus units” to accomplish the same end more directly. This process involves water and a hose. The result turns water into lower alcohol wine. A miracle!

Australian producers are particularly upset. Australia and the UK have signed a free trade agreement which will modestly reduce tariffs on Aussie wines exported to Britain. The “Sunshine tax,” which would apply to most wines from Oz, more than offsets any advantage from the new agreement.

Let me know if you see any wineries bricking up their windows. They might do that if they don’t want the world to see how they are lowering the alcohol levels in their wine!

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