Category Archives: wine history

Wine Book Review: History on a Plate (and in a Glass?)

January 17, 2023 By in book reviews, Italian wine, wine, wine history 1 Comment

Andreas Viestad, Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal. Reaktion Books, 2022.

All roads lead to Rome, they say, so the idea of a history of the world centered in Rome is not ridiculous. And, for food writer and activist Andreas Viestad, all pathways in Rome lead to his favorite restaurant, La Carbonara, so it is the only logical place to begin.

When in Rome …

Viestad (a favorite in the Wine Economist household for his television series New Scandinavian Cooking), takes us through a meal at La Carbonara, reflecting upon the experience as the courses follow their traditional sequence.

Viestad’s stories are not as intentionally global as the “history of the world in one meal” subtitle might lead you to expect (note that this is “a” history, not “the” history). Instead he talks mainly about Rome and Romans, and then Italy and Italians, leaving it mainly to the reader to connect dots to the world-wide implications and insights.  It’s fun! You learn a lot reading this book. And you get hungry, too.

The chapters are organized around the familiar elements of the Italy meal. Bread, antipasto, oil, and salt. Pasta, pepper, meat, fire, and lemon. And wine, of course, because this is dinner and this is Italy, so of course there is wine.

The best thing I can imagine would be to share a table at La Carbonara with Viestad and work through the  phases of the meal with him, listening to the stories he tells. (There would be room for a guest — in the book he dines alone!) And then, stuffed with pleasure, we would take the stroll around Rome he describes in the final chapter, ending with a soothing/shocking scoop of intense lemon sorbetto (lemons being the last topic discussed).

Since this first-person experience is unlikely to take place, I guess the second best thing is to take up the opportunity to read this creative and interesting book.

The Problem with Wine

But there’s a problem. Taken as a food book or a history book or a cultural guide for anyone who loves Italy or Rome, it is hard to deny Dinner in Rome‘s charm. But from a wine perspective it is hard not to be disappointed.

This may be because, as I read other parts of the book, I was mentally writing the chapter I hoped Viestad would write about wine. That chapter, I thought, might mirror in some ways the chapter on pasta, which invokes the Italian idea of “the civilization of the table” that Viestad suggests might easily be confused with the idea of civilization itself.

Is there a civilization of the glass that we might raise up along with the civilization of the table? Some think so, I believe, and there is even an Italian journal devoted to the idea. It is called Civilta del Bere (the civilization of drinking). So, you see, I was thinking about a chapter that might stress the ways that wine brings people together and both shapes and reflects relationships, both at the table and in other ways.

While the chapter that Viestad writes addresses many aspects of wine, his main point is that wine is alcohol and the point of alcohol is inebriation much of the time. The idea that wine is just the local alcohol makes me sad, since I think wine has much more to offer than that, but it is a problem since there are many who have this view.  My latest book Wine Wars II finishes with a section on “Wine’s Triple Crisis,” which examines the wine = alcohol syndrome and concludes that it is a threat to the future of wine as we know it. If wine is just alcohol, who needs it? There are cheaper ways to get numb!

Civilization of the Glass

Would it be possible to write a history of the world that framed wine and the civilization of the glass in a different way? Yes, I know it is possible because it has already been done. Economist editor Tom Standage’s 2005 book A History of the World in 6 Glasses uses beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola to trace an outline of global history.

It is interesting that Standage and Viestad focus on the same places and periods when it comes to wine: ancient Greece and Rome. But Standage tells very different stories. The Greek symposium, which in Viestad is all about getting drunk, is for Standage all about philosophy and, if the alcoholic temptation of drink is there (and it is), it is a passion to be resisted and controlled — a process that we might call civilization.

As Greek trade took wine throughout the Mediterranean, Greek culture and civilization tagged along. The civilization of wine and civilization — hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Wine in Rome, in Standage’s telling, has many layers. Taste, class, power, and empire all appear. If wine were just its alcoholic component it would not have been so important. I guess I stand with Standage in my thinking about the civilization of the glass and I feel a little bit sorry for Viestad that he doesn’t find more interesting stories in his half-full glass.

Highly Recommended

I wonder — would it be possible to write a book that tried to tell a history of the world in one wineglass the way that Viestad has done with one meal? Yes, I think it might work, although you’d need to break things down a bit so that the grapes, glass, bottle, cork, and the forces that spread them around the world and then brought them all back together wineglass could tell their stories.

But deconstructing your glass of wine wouldn’t be enough, as Viestad demonstrates with his Roman dinner. You also have to consider the whole and its significance. The civilizations of the table … and the glass.

Dinner in Rome by Andreas Viestad is highly recommended. A fine addition to your food and wine bookshelf.

Rioja to Walla Walla: Celebrating Tempranillo Day

November 8, 2022 By in wine, wine history, wine markets 1 Comment

There are a lot of holidays that are centered around wine. The one that we most often celebrate here at Wine Economist world headquarters is Open That Bottle Night — the excuse to open special bottles for no particular reason other than to enjoy them. It comes around every year on the last Saturday in February, although you really don’t need to wait if you don’t want to.

This year we are adding Tempranillo Day to our holiday list. It’s coming right up — Thursday, November 10, 2022 — so get your corkscrews out and ready to go!

Tempranillo World on the Rise

Tempranillo is most closely associate with Spain and its famouos Rioja wines, of course, but it has become a global phenomenon according to the 2022 edition of Which Winegrape Varieties are Grown Where? by Kym Anderson and Signe Nelgen.   Tempranillo was the grape variety with largest expanded plantings during the 2000 to 2016 period of their study (see table above taken from the Anderson-Nelgen report).

The new Tempranillo plantings are concentrated in Spain, where it has become even more important than in previous years as winegrowers have upgraded their vineyards, but also Portugal and Argentina.  Australia, the United States, Chile, and even France have seen significant new plantings of this popular grape variety.

Tempranillo #1 — ahead of Cabernet, Syrah, and Sauvignon Blanc in the new-planting league table. Incredible. But maybe it really shouldn’t be a surprise. Tempranillo is a very versatile wine grape that can take on a number of guises depending upon where it is grown and how the wine is made.

New World Tempranillo

Tempranillo has a history in California, according to the standard reference, Wine Grapes. It was planted in the Central Valley alongside (and sometimes inter-mingled with) heat loving Zinfandel. Artesa Winery (owned by Spain’s famous Raventós Codorníu family) has recently planted Tempranillo vines in its higher-elevation estate vineyard. Sue and I are looking forward to tasting this wine when it is released.

Tempranillo gets a lot of attention here in the Pacific Northwest. Walla Walla’s cult winemaker Cayuse Vineyards has made a Tempranillo called Impulsivo since 2002 and it gets consistently rave reviews. Critic Jeb Dunnock says of the 2019 vintage that “You’re not going to find a better Tempranillo in the US, and it will stand toe to toe with the best out there,” by which I think he invites comparison with the best of Spain.  That’s quite a challenge.

The Cayuse team also makes a remarkably delicious and well-balanced Tempranillo for their No Girls label, which Sue declared to be even better than  the Impulsivo at this stage of development when we tasted them both. The Impulsivo was very good, she said, but the No Girls was great — very memorable.

There are several others you will find in the Walla Walla, many making good use of grapes from The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. One that we found particularly interesting on our last visit was The Walls winery’s Wonderful Nightmare.

Oregon’s Other Signature Grape?

If you are telling the story of premium Tempranillo in America, a good place to start is about 40 years ago when Earl Jones began his quest to make quality Tempranillo on U.S. soil. He considered Washington and Idaho but was discouraged by the (very real) possibility of vine-killing freezing temperatures.  Jones’s path ended in an unexpected place: south-west Oregon’s Umpqua Valley and his Abacela Winery.

Abacela’s success with Spanish wine grape varieties clearly demonstrates the folly of the idea that a state or region must be defined by a particular signature grape. Oregon may be Pinot Noir to many wine enthusiasts, but that’s far from the whole story. Taste the Abacela wines and you will know what I mean.

And then there is Idaho Tempranillo. If you visit Boise, Idaho you will probably be directed to the Basque Block, a downtown area that honors the state’s active Basque community (food tip: Bar Gernika for the Solomo sandwich). Maybe that Iberian connection is one reason Tempranillo was planted some years ago in the Skyline vineyard and several wineries make a Tempranillo wine today. Look for award-winning Cinder Tempranillo and for  Fujishin Family Cellars Tempranillo, too, both from the Snake River Valley AVA.

The Tempranillo boom extends to Texas, according to Wine Grapes, and also includes regions Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, Turkey, and Malta.  Winegrowers and wine-drinkers around the world can’t seem to resist it. Tempranillo is one of global wine’s success stories, so it is worth pulling a cork on Thursday and celebrating Tempranillo Day!

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Thanks to the crew at Bionic Wines for samples of the Cayuse and No Girls Tempranillo wines. Special thanks to Jim Thomssen for information about Tempranillo in Idaho.

The Judgment of Paris and Napa Valley’s Road Not Taken

September 13, 2022 By in wine, wine history, wine markets 4 Comments

A journalist recently asked me to comment on the impact of the famous 1976 “Judgment of Paris” tasting of California and French wines. The California wines were very competitive, according to the scores given by the panel of French judges, and wines from the Napa Valley actually topped both the Cabernet and Chardonnay lists. Amazing.

Time magazine reporter George M. Taber was the only journalist in attendance and his exclusive story about the unexpected American victory was a shot heard round the world. His 2005 book, Judgment of Paris is worth reading and even re-reading today.

What if … ?

Would Napa Valley have grown and developed if the Judgment of Paris had not taken place? Well, yes, I answered, there was already a good deal of momentum stimulated by, among other things, the successful opening in 1966 of the Robert Mondavi Winery, the first major new winery in the valley since Prohibition.

In fact, local residents were already concerned about the masses of wine tourists clogging local roads and highways and over-whelming winery facilities back in 1972 when a KPIX Eyewitness News reporter paid a visit to see what was happening. Click here or on the image below to watch the vintage video report.

And there was already international attention, too. Domaine Chandon, the Yountville outpost of the famous French Champagne house Môet Chandon, opened in 1973, three years before the famous Paris tasting.

On the Road Again

So the Napa Valley was already on the road to big things even before the Paris tasting. But just about everyone agrees that the international recognition changed things.

It changed things for Napa and for California, but the impact didn’t stop there. Towards the end of his book, George Taber takes a bit of a global tour, showing us how the world of wine broadened as the result of a number of forces including, of course, the new perspective on New World wine that the 1976 tasting provoked.

Second Thoughts?

Revisiting the Napa Valley years after the Paris tasting, to gather insights for his 2005 book, Taber could see the result of the intense focus that his astute reporting helped create. There was growth, for sure, and lots of new investment, both domestic and by a long list of international wine luminaries including, of course, the Rothschilds who partnered with Robert Mondavi in 1978, just two years after the Judgment, to build Opus One.

Taber was concerned about how the boom was unfolding. Enormous wealth, vanity vineyards, trophy wines. “The Napa Valley unfortunately became another proof of the maxim that nothing succeeds like excess.” And a good indicator of excess, he proposed, was the price of vineyard land. Warren Winiarski paid about $2000 per acre in 1970 for the first Stag’s Leap vineyard, Taber reported.  In 1999 the owner of Far Niente winery paid $100,000 an acre for a 42-acres vineyard, which seemed like a lot. Francis Ford Coppola raised the stakes just a few years later, paying $300,000 an acre, a jaw-dropping price at the time.

Now, of course, $300,000 an acre for Napa Valley vineyards is not noteworthy or exceptional. $300,000 to $500,000 per vineyard acre (adjusting for the value of any production or housing assets) seems to be the norm, with some particular parcels going for even more.  The excess that Taber saw 20 years ago has not diminished.

Money, Taste, and Wine

Naturally this is reflected in the wine. Not all of it, of course, but it is easy to see a pattern. The focus in Napa is increasingly on its signature grape variety, Cabernet Sauvignon. I am sure this is about taste — the best Napa Cabs I’ve tried are really good — but it is also about money, I think.

Cabernet is the grape of Bordeaux, too, and some people are happy to pay much more for Cabernet than they would for Zinfandel, which was once widely grown in the valley but now not-so-much. Sky-high land prices require high grape prices which mean high bottle prices for the wine. King Cabernet is the surest bet, many believe, and so it increasingly carpets the valley floor.

Many of the wines are really distinctive — Sue and I have tasted some real stunners! — but some of them taste the same to my amateur palate. I call them Napa Valley Red Wine. Maybe this is true of all wine regions, even the great ones? In Napa they often sell for more than $100 a bottle and seem to satisfy the thirst of buyers looking for the taste of Napa.

They Think I’m Bragging

I am not the only one who is concerned about how the wines of Napa Valley have changed and how the flood of tourist dollars and investor wealth has led to excess. But whenever I bemoan certain aspects of the Napa wine industry environment to international audiences, they think that I am just bragging. All those tourists and fancy restaurants! All the celebrities and trophy wines! Such economic success and pure opulence!

Napa Valley is a dream to international wine visitors, and for foreign winery owners who long for their own Napa moment, their own Judgment of Paris. Who can blame them?

But what if the Judgment never happened? If you know the story, you can appreciate that it could easily not have taken place (of the results could have turned out differently).  Napa Valley would still have grown the thrived, I think, but it would be different today. What might it look like? Come back next week to see what might have been … and is.

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Thanks to Tony Correia for his help nailing down vineyard valuations. Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank’s Rob McMillan for his help locating the KPIX video, which was originally featured in a very memorable post on Rob’s blog.

Lessons from Catena & the Argentina Wine Miracle

February 15, 2022 By in Argentina, economic crisis, wine, wine awards, wine history, wine markets 4 Comments

The press release begins this way:

MENDOZA, Argentina – February 8, 2022 – Dr. Nicolás Catena Zapata of Catena Zapata winery received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 22nd Annual Wine Enthusiast Wine Star Awards held last night at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami. This prestigious industry event recognizes individuals and companies for their exceptional contributions to the success of the wine and beverage alcohol industry.

Dr. Catena’s life in wine is indeed worth celebrating. He was a leading protagonist in what I call the Argentina wine miracle. An economist by training, Dr. Catena was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s when he was inspired by what he saw happening in California. These were the exciting days that followed the 1976 Judgement of Paris, so there was energy and confidence in the air.

California Lessons in Argentina

Catena took this vision back to Argentina, where he exchanged academic tweeds for vineyard and winery clothes. The family firm, Bodega Catena Zapata, and Argentina’s wine industry in general, faced a dire crisis.

Sue and I visited the Catena Zapa “Pyramid” winery a few years ago and, because I am an economist like Dr. Catena, we were ushered into his personal library. I recognized many of the books because they were the same ones that I was studying in the 1970s and 1980s, when stagflation was a global problem, and the debt crisis was on everyone’s minds.

These were more than academic issues for the wine business in Argentina at the time. Having evolved in the “old world” style to make inexpensive commodity wine for the domestic market, Argentina wineries were caught in a squeeze when inflation pumped up costs at the same time that domestic recession caused demand to slump. Could the surplus wine be diverted to export? Not likely, because the quality of much of the wine was below international standards. Argentina’s economic crisis was a wine crisis, too.

That Argentina wine found the energy and confidence to turn the corner, to make wines of constantly rising quality in the face of daunting headwinds, is noteworthy indeed and Dr. Catena more than deserves his lifetime achievement award for his role in making Argentina a world-class wine producing nation. A miracle? I don’t think it is wrong to apply this term to Argentina’s dramatic transformation.

I think it is important to keep these past achievements in our minds today because the challenges that wine faces, while different from the past, are not so different that important lessons cannot be gleaned. History may not repeat itself but sometimes, as Mark Twain observed, it rhymes.

Dividends from the Argentina Wine Miracle

Argentina is experiencing economic crisis again today, overwhelmed by external debt and internal inflation. Perhaps the single best indicator of the depth of the crisis is this graph of the Argentina peso against the US dollar for the decade 2011 to 2021. Fewer than 5 pesos were needed to purchase a dollar in 2011. The rate was about 15 pesos per dollar when we visited five years later in 2016 — that’s a very substantial decrease in the currency’s value in such a short period of time.

But the exchange rate today is much worse — it takes more than 100 pesos to buy a dollar now. And that’s the official exchange rate. I’m guessing that the peso is much cheaper on the unofficial market. This is what an (official) inflation rate of over 50% a year (even higher than inflation in Turkey!) will do.

Although Argentina’s economy is bouncing back from its covid-induced decline, domestic economic conditions are very challenging — not as bad as in the 1980s perhaps, but difficult indeed.  The uncertainty about what policies will be result from continuing debt negotiations with the IMF cloud the horizon. Argentina wine is not immune to these problems, but it is much better positioned today to ride out the storm. Exports were up in 2021. The miracle continues to pay dividends.

Lessons for the U.S. and Beyond

But the lessons don’t end there. I think it is important for wine business leaders in the United States and elsewhere to study Argentina’s wine history and remember that sometimes it is necessary to radically re-think arrangements to adapt to changing circumstances. “They say that time changes things,” according to one of my favorite maxims, “but sometimes you have to change them yourself.”

In the US, for example, inflation has returned as an economic concern and, for the wine industry, the fact of stagnant demand cannot be ignored. There is no debt crisis at present, but with gross debt levels at record highs and rising interest rates on the horizon, it is foolish to think that cracks in debt markets will not eventually appear. Small increases in interest rates can translate into trillions of dollars of additional interest obligation very quickly with so much public and private debt in play at high levels of risk.

Foreign debt is especially vulnerable because so much of it is denominated in dollars and the dollar is likely to appreciate as U.S. interest rates rise. That’s double jeopardy.

For the wine industry, stagnant demand is a problem that is on the minds of many, just as it was in Argentina four decades ago. The Argentina miracle was to shift from low- to high-quality to escape a race-to-the-bottom scenario. For the U.S., the challenge may well be to produce good quality but more affordable wines to appeal to potential consumers who are put off by wine’s relatively high price compared with other beverages.

I note without comment that Wall Street Journal wine columnist Lettie Teague’s recent column on good $10 wines did not include any U.S. product recommendation. “Sadly,” Teague writes, “I couldn’t find any wines made in the U.S. that fit all my criteria.” That’s pretty much the flip side of Argentina back in the day.

I believe in miracles and in wine’s ability to transform itself without losing its soul. And so I offer a toast to Dr. Nicolás Catena Zapata, the economics professor who became a transformational winemaker and whose miracle offers lessons that are relevant today.

Scratching the Surface of Sicilian Wine

January 11, 2022 By in cooperatives, Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets Leave a comment

I was intrigued when we were asked if we’d like to sample wines from a Sicilian cooperative winery. The history of Sicily’s wine industry — and the role of cooperatives within it — is a roller-coaster tale and such sagas in wine do not always have happy endings. I was thirsty to learn more about the situation today.

I learned about the history of Sicily’s wine sector from The World of Sicilian Wine by Bill Nesto MW and Frances Di Savio (see the Wine Economist review here). Wine in Sicily has been buffeted by a combination of shifts in the external markets and changing domestic incentives. It is no wonder that cooperatives arose to help growers navigate the ups and downs and gain a measure of control over their own destinies.  Cooperatives spring up in times of crisis, but it is their ability to adapt when conditions change that is most important.

Incentives Matter

Sometimes the economic incentives the cooperatives and other wine actors faced favored quality, but all too often quantity was the dominant strategy. This was particularly true during the years when EU wine policy unintentionally encouraged over-production of low-quality wines with no obvious market potential. These unsalable wines, the source of the famous EU “wine lake,” were bought up and distilled into industrial alcohol, a process that was not sustainable in economic, political, or environmental terms.

The wine lake days are gone — EU incentives now favor market-driven wine production — and the wines have changed faster than their reputations in many cases. Not all wineries have raised their game, however, and that inconsistency is a headwind.

The wines we sampled were from the Cantine Ermes cooperative, which was founded in 1998 in the Belice Valley in northwest Sicily. The cooperative is very large with 2373 members farming more than 12,000 hectares and operating 11 winemaking facilities.  In total Cantine Ermes produces 11.5 million bottles annually, which are sold in 29 countries around the world. Does this surprise you? Cooperatives are important in Italian wine, more important than most people realize.

Beyond Low-Hanging Fruit

One criticism I have heard of many Italian cooperatives is that they cut their own throats by focusing too much on bulk wine and private label products — they take this low-hanging fruit and fail to build the brands that might yield higher margins that would improve their economic sustainability.

Some of the deep dark red wine made in Sicily, for example, is sold off to be blended with lighter Italian reds to give the result more body, color, and alcohol — a practice that has been going on for a long time. Cantine Ermes gives attention to several brands, however, including the Vento di Mare wines that we sampled.

Vento di Mare means sea winds and so it was inevitable that we would ask our friends R and M to sample the wines with us. Their visit to Sicily was punctuated by gale force sea winds that nearly blew them off the island and caused sea foam to pile up on the shoreline like drifts of snow.

The three wines we tasted were screwcap-topped bottles of Grillo DOC, Nerello Mascalese IGT, and Moscato Frizzante that retail for about $12 here in the US — right about the center of the retail wine wall in today’s market.  The Grillo had nice varietal flavor and good balance. It seemed very versatile and would pair with many dishes as well as on its own. It was probably our favorite wine.

The red Nerello Mascalese was more intense and called out for a bold food pairing. Nerello Mascalese is the most-planted red winegrape in Sicilty according to my sources, and it was easy to see how it could be the foundation of a number of interesting blends as well as a single-variety wine.

The Moscato was fizzy and slightly sweet. Just 10.5% abv, the wine has a secondary fermentation for two months in an autoclave and then ages another two months on its lees. Aromatic (think orange blossoms) and nicely balanced. Like the Grillo it would work in a number of situations. Very pleasant indeed.

Sicilian Wine Ambassadors

We were impressed with the Vento di Mare wines and a bit surprised at the affordable entry-level price point. Other Cantine Ermes brands probe the higher reaches of the wine wall. I hope the attractive packaging and price point encourage consumers to give these wines a try (and that some restaurants see the potential for wine-by-the-glass sales). These wines are good ambassadors for Sicily and its cooperative wineries.

Since we aren’t able to travel to explore the wine world these days as we did in pre-pandemic times, we find it useful to focus on invitations like the one we received from Cantina Ermes. Clearly we have just scratched the surface of the wines of Sicily and the progress of Sicilian cooperatives, but we are encouraged, nonetheless. These are good wines that chart a path out of Sicily’s quantity-driven past towards a more sustainable future.

A Keynesian Theory of Investing in Fine Wine

December 21, 2021 By in wine, wine history, wine investment 2 Comments

Fine wine has been a hot alternative investment category this year, as Blake Gray recently reported in his Wine-Searcher column. Fine wine investment is a very specialized field and anyone who is interested in taking the plunge is advised to get acquainted with research on the topic, especially including the reports from Liv-Ex, a leading fine wine trading platform.

Drinkers, Collectors, Investors

I divide the world of fine wine buyers into three over-lapping groups: drinkers, collectors, and investors. It is important to “know thyself” in this taxonomy. We are drinkers here at the Wine Economist household and, although we have a few special bottles squirreled away to share with friends at the right moment, it isn’t a collection or investment.

I have only a few friends who are really fine wine investors, although many of the collectors I know sometimes speak about their collections in investment terms. The key is what you do when a particular wine has reached its market peak. Do you drink, sell, or hold?

An investor sells, of course, and takes the profit if there is one. A collector holds because now the wine is ever more precious as a collectable.  A drinker has no decision to make — the wine is already gone. What do you do?

I was introduced years ago to a wealthy man who generously endowed scholarships at my university. He liked to talk about wine and economics, so we got along very well. “I never pay for my wine,” he once told me. For every case of fine wine he bought to drink he also bought one with the clear intention to sell for profit. The investment gains paid for the wines he drank and, since he sometimes shared bottles with us, I cannot criticize his logic!

Drinkers buy what they want to drink, obviously, which is a matter of personal taste. Collectors buy what they want to hold, which can be influenced by many factors including status and rarity (with a nod to economist Thorsetin Veblen, I have called this “conspicuous non-consumption”). What should investors buy? This got me thinking about John Maynard Keynes, one of the 20th century’s most influential economists.

Keynes and the Beauty Contest Dilemma

Keynes was an investor and a wine lover as well as an economic thinker, but I can’t find evidence that he invested in fine wine. From what I know he was more of a drinker, like me. When asked late in life if he had any regrets, he replied that he regretted that he did not drink more Champagne.

It is possible Keynes’s advice about investment in general can provide some useful insights into fine wine investment. Keynes once compared investment in the stock market to a kind of contest that was popular in the Sunday newspapers of his time. The newspapers printed pictures of a number of women and asked readers to rank them according to their attractiveness — a classic “beauty contest.” Times were clearly different — I cannot imagine such a contest today, can you?

The winner of the reader contest wasn’t the entrant who got the answer right — because there was no right answer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or, as an economist would say, de gustibus non est disputandum. No, the winner was the person whose choices came closest to the choices of all who entered. The wisdom of crowds in action!

So, Keynes noted, while a naive person would just choose the photo that seemed the prettiest, a clever person would try to guess what others would do and rank them accordingly regardless of personal preference. And a strategic person would assume that others were clever and so take this into account.

The winner, according to Keynes, is the person who best guesses what other people will think other people will do. And that, my friends, was the foundation of Keynes’s investment strategy, or at least the part that he discussed in one of his books. You don’t buy shares in the company you think will be most successful, you look for the stock that other people (the ones who will buy the shares from you at a profit) will think other people (the ones who they hope will buy the shares from them) will favor.

Other People’s Money

Do you see how this analysis applies to fine wine investment? Wine drinkers buy what they like and so are likely to make wide-ranging purchases since wine offers such great variety.

Wine collectors sometimes buy what will impress their friends and try to guess what they might be and so their purchases are likely to have a much narrower range.  Wine investors, however, make purchases based on what they think other people will think other people will do with their money and so are likely to focus on a relatively small number of “blue chip” wines — those that are most likely to meet the “other people – other people” criterion.

Many have noted that the range of investment wines seems to have broadened to include some American and Italian wines in addition to top tier Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne. That is a good thing, since investment markets should be broad and deep if they are to serve real investment needs by providing liquidity and the opportunity for diversification.

Otherwise investing in wine or anything else is a little bit like investing in emerging economy stock markets, which are often dominated by a small number of equities and experience boom-bust price behavior driven by liquidity dynamics.  If your 401K account includes investments on the Turkish stock market, you know what I am talking about.

Bottom line: I am not going to advise you whether to invest in fine wine or not or which bottles are most likely to pay off. But this advice I give freely: wine investor, know thyself!

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Sue and I wish all Wine Economist readers a happy holiday season!

Wine Book Review: Ch’ Ch’ Changing California

November 2, 2021 By in book reviews, wine, wine history 1 Comment

On California: From Napa to Nebbiolo … Wine Tales from the Golden State edited by Susan Keevil. Académie du Vin Library, 2021.

Steven Spurrier, through both word and action, has left a remarkable enduring legacy to the world of wine, including the wine book publisher Académie du Vin Library. The Library’s very ambitious wine book list collects both classic works and new contributions (including Spurrier’s own A Life in Wine) that break from the typical “Wines of ____” (fill in the country or region) mold to address a variety of topics from many personal and professional perspective.

From Bordeaux to California

On Bordeaux, a collection of essays about that famous wine region, appeared last year. Given Spurrier’s central role in the famous 1976 France vs California “Judgement of Paris” tasting, On California seems like a natural next step, officially released last week and available directly from the publisher  and via the usual sources including Amazon.com.

Much like the Library itself, On California collects classic and new perspectives on the Golden State’s wine industry. Unevenness is the typical fault of edited volumes like this one, but I have to say that the 39 essays and excerpts by 35 different authors hang together very well and make informative and enjoyable reading.

Perhaps that’s because of the strong thematic thread that runs through the volume: change. And change is everywhere here. The wine, the industry, the climate, even the history, which although quite short is now long enough that a certain amount of revision is needed. What fun to read excerpts from early essays by the likes of Hugh Johnson, Gerald Asher,  and Harry Waugh alongside some of the pioneers and shapers including Warren Winniarski, Paul Draper, and Randall Grahm. Mix in Elin McCoy, Elaine-Chukan Brown, and many others and you have a complex, balanced blend indeed.

Change and resilience — two key California characteristics — are everywhere in this book, but perhaps especially in a series of chapters that trace the challenges that California wine has faced over the years. Hugh Johnson writes about Prohibition years, Jon Bonné examines the New California that emerged from the ashes, Norm Roby charts the return of Phylloxera, Elaine Chukan Brown addresses drought, wild fire, and environmental change, and finally Clare Tooley MW tackles the threat to California wines form the rising  marijuana industry. Fascinating reading.

Here Comes The Judge  (ment)

If you connect the dots of California + Steven Spurrier + Change you inevitably arrive at the 1976 Judgement of Paris and so it is inevitable that the famous tasting appears here with both an excerpt from George Taber’s excellent book on the subject the commentary from Spurrier and others who had a hand in the wines and the event itself.

The Judgement of Paris, where wines from California were rated higher than some famous French wines by a panel of French judges, did it change everything? No, but it changed quite a lot. It certainly made French producers question their hegemony. I have argued that maybe the biggest impact was in the way it changed Americans’ attitudes about their own wines.  Suddenly there was respect after the long dark decades that followed Prohibition. The wine boom that was launched continues today.

It is interesting to speculate what California wine would look like today if France had won the 1976 competition.  I ask this question with a sense of irony because, depending upon how to look at it, the French really did win (or at least didn’t lose)! Talk about revisionist history!

Here are the average scores (out of 20 points) for the red wines. The winner was Stag’s Leap by a nose.  Stag’s Leap won if we add up and average the points, but did California win?

14.14 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973
14.09 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1970
13.64 Chateau Montrose 1970
13.23 Chateau Haut-Brion 1970
12.14 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello 1971
11.18 Chateau Leoville Las Cases 1971
10.36 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard 1970
10.14 Clos Du Val Winery 1972
9.95 Mayacamas Vineyards 1971
9.45 Freemark Abbey Winery 1969

If we judge the Judgement as a team sport and not an individual competition, the conclusion changes a bit. The four French wines scored 2, 3, 4, and 6 while the California wines ranked 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Even if you throw out the two lowest-ranked California wines to make the team’s equal in size, the result seems clear: Team France gets the gold.

The points table was a little different with the white wines. Although a California wine topped the list, I think you’d have to say the team competition was pretty much a dead heat. Still an impressive showing for California.

The situation gets even more interesting, as several studies have shown, if you dig down into the judges’ individual rankings, which varied enormously from one to another in their relative scores.  The final result could have been much different, too,  if the scores were treated as ordinal rankings rather than cardinal measures that can be summed up and averaged.

Does this finding matter? No. Not now. And probably not in 1976, either. The idea that California and France could be put on the same table was radical then, so the fact of Spurrier’s tasting was enough to raise eyebrows. The discovery that some of the French tasters could not tell which was which was quite a shock. That would have been enough to jump-start the changes that were already on the way.

Thanks to Académie du Vin Library and the many authors for their hard work and insights. Change is still in the air in California and On California connects the past and present with the emerging future. Well done!

Thinking About Laura Catena’s Grand Cru Project

September 28, 2021 By in Argentina, wine, wine history 2 Comments

Laura Catena believes we need to think about the concept of Grand Cru vineyards and wines, so she organized a series of Zoom events for trade and media participants built around the idea of the Grand Cru.

Sue and I recently participated in one of the sessions and it provided food for thought as well as some delicious wine to sample — Catena Zapata and Winebow generously provided a line-up of wine samples to help us think about Grand Cru-class wines in practice as well as theory. I will paste our wine lineup at the end of this column.

The idea wasn’t to do a blind tasting (can you tell Old World from New World, recognized  Grand Cru from an ambitious pretender?)  or stage a sort of “Judgement of Tupungato” competition, but rather to appreciate some really excellent wines and use them to stimulate thought and discussion.

It took me a while to begin to figure out the point of the discussion. Why talk about Grand Cru now? According to the Oxford Companion to Wine, the concept of a Grand Cru wine is a bit of a moving target. The term, French of course, has a different meaning in Burgundy (where it applies to specific vineyards), in Alsace (where there are Grand Cru appellations), and Bordeaux (it is all about the producers).

New World Grand Crus?

Can (or should) the Grand Cru concept be applied to the New World? And if so, how and where? Much of the discussion focused on practical problems. Grand Cru is a French idea (or ideas) that would seem difficult to translate to foreign soil. Would consumers understand it? Would producers unite around the concept? And could they ever agree on a Grand Cru league table — who’s in and who’s out? Doubtful on all counts, participants suggested.

In any case, several pointed out, there is already a quality-assessing system in place and it is called the market. If you want to know the best vineyards look at grape prices (and the resulting wine prices). The Bordeaux Classification of 1855 was based on price and the market measure endures.

As an economist, I appreciate the power of price to establish hierarchies and find it interesting that the Bordeaux classification is still relevant. But I also understand that markets are very imperfect measures of quality.  It is not for nothing that Oscar Wilde complained of people who know “the price of everything and the value of nothing!”

I am more interested in the way what we say conditions how we think. Language doesn’t simply transmit thought, it also shapes it. Talking about Grand Cru means thinking about wine in a particular subjective way that reflects respect and admiration for the very best that I’d argue is different from measures such as extremely high prices or 100 point scores.

So talking Grand Cru may help us think about wine in a certain way. But American wine history suggests that as difficult as Grand Cru is to achieve, it may sometimes be even harder to maintain. I am thinking about the story of Martin Ray, which I recounted in my book 2011 Wine Wars (and also in the revised new edition that will be released next year) in the chapter titled “Martians vs Wagnerians.”

The Sad Tale of Martin Ray

Martians — a term I borrowed from wine historian Thomas Pinney — are inspired by Martin Ray’s idea of wine. Ray was upset that the standard of US wine was so low in the years following the repeal of Prohibition. He persuaded Paul Masson to sell him his once great winery in 1935 and proceeded to try to restore its quality with a personal drive that Pinney terms fanatical.

He did it, too, making wines of true distinction—wines that earned the highest prices in California at the time. His achievement was short-lived, however. A winery fire slowed Ray’s momentum and he finally sold out to Seagram’s, which used a loophole in wartime price control regulations to make a fortune from the Paul Masson brand and its premium price points, starting a trend of destructive corporate exploitation that forms a central theme in Pinney’s book on American wine history.

Ray’s history is therefore especially tragic since his attempt to take California wine to the heights through Paul Masson ended so badly. Paul Masson degenerated into an undistinguished mass-market wine brand that was sold to Constellation Brands, which eventually passed it along to The Wine Group (makers of Franzia bag-in-box wines among other products), which quietly withdrew the spent brand from the market. Paul Masson brandy still exists as part of the Gallo portfolio.

So in the end Martin Ray’s high Grand Cru values degenerated into the market prices they yielded and then degenerated again and again until nothing was left of them. How sad!

Gold in the Vineyards?

Laura Catena’s interest in Grand Cru vineyards isn’t a new thing. Her 2018 illustrated book Gold in the Vineyards surveyed the world of wine through stories of great wines, the families (and especially the women) behind them, and the great vineyards that are their source. The finally chapter is personal, focusing on Catena Zapata’s “Adrianna Vineyard: the Grand Cru of South America,” which is the source of the quote at the top of this column.

As Laura Catena tells the story, her father Nicholas Catena was determined to create a Grand Cru vineyard in Argentina. Scouring the Uco Valley countryside, he came across a cold, dry area with stony soils high up in the Andean foothills at 1500 meters elevation. The winery viticulturalist said it would be impossible to make anything except perhaps sparkling wines from vines planted in such a unfriendly site. But Catena stubbornly forged ahead with what we now call the Adrianna Vineyard, which produced four of the eight wines in our sample pack.

Re-reading Gold in the Vineyard and connecting the dots, I realized the unstated question at the heart of the Zoom events. Did Nicholas Catena and his Catena Zapata colleagues really do it? Is the Adrianna vineyard what he meant for it to be: Argentina’s Grand Cru vineyard? That’s what will be on my mind as Sue and I work our way through these wines in the coming weeks.

We’ve started with the White Stones and White Bones Chardonnay wines, which I have wanted to taste for a long time. They are fantastic — balanced, elegant, complex. The two Catena wines are very different from each other and different, too, from the Chablis wines including in the tasting, which is important since imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s not what great wine is all about. Grand Cru? Gotta think about it some more before I make up my mind. World-class? Absolutely!

The question of what does Grand Cru mean today is thought-provoking and considering what it might mean in a New World context provokes debate. For me, the idea of the Grand Cru is worth holding on to and using as a source of inspiration — I am on board with Laura Catena’s project — even if the practical realities are messy and problematic.

In the meantime, perhaps it would help if you poured yourself a glass of wine from  your favorite maker or region and pondered  the notion of the Grand Cru.

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WINES

  • Alain Chavy Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières Premier Cru 2018

Catena Zapata Adrianna Vineyard White Stones Chardonnay 2018

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Louis Moreau Les Clos 2017

Catena Zapata Adrianna Vineyard White Bones Chardonnay 2018

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Lingua Franca The Plow Pinot Noir 2019

Catena Zapata Adrianna Vineyard Fortuna Terrae Malbec 2017

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Grattamacco Bolgheri Superiore 2016

Nicolás Catena Zapata 2017

Wine Book Review: Invisible Pignolo Revealed

June 8, 2021 By in book reviews, Italian wine, wine, wine education, wine history Leave a comment

Ben Little, Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible. 2021. Available exclusively from The Morning Claret Shop.

Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible is quite a fantastic multi-media exploration of one of Italy’s (and the world’s) nearly forgotten grape varieties. My first impression of the book was fascination — so playful, so colorful. I just had to thumb through it to discover what was on the next page. Then there was puzzlement, because I would read short passages and it wasn’t really clear what was going on.

First fascination, then puzzlement, then — finally — enlightenment. Ok, that might be too strong, but I went back and read it from the start and it all made sense.

First comes the history of Pignolo in the context of the history of its native region, Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy’s upper right-hand corner. A really interesting explanation of how Pignolo, wine, and the region evolved. Then the history shifts a bit to author Ben Little’s personal experience with Pignolo, which started only a few years ago (2016) but developed quickly and soon involved many others. There is much of a technical nature to learn through Little’s first person reports.

And then there are the lessons that Pignolo teaches us, inspirations, meditations, not sure what to call them. But by the time you get there you are ready to slow down, let the flow carry you, and absorb them, which might not have been the case at the start. Colorful graphics act as signposts along the way.

Little’s notion that Pignolo is an invisible grape variety works. It was always there all along, you just didn’t see it. That’s how it happened for him. At first he thought that there were just a few people in Friuli growing the grapes and making wine. But once word got out that there was interest, more and more plantings and producers began to appear until there were enough to fill a room (which Little did, with a little help from Pignolo’s friends).

Pignolo might be invisible to you, too. That’s how it was for us. Did we ever taste Pignolo during our trips to Friuli? I had to think and use the ample resources of Little’s big book. We might have tasted Pignolo when we visited the Cormons cooperative, but there were so many wines there it is hard to know. Possibly when we stayed at Il Roncal. Bastianich makes an IGT blend called Calabrone, which is includes a splash of Pignolo as a key ingredient. When we didn’t have time to taste it at the winery Wayne Young wrapped up a bottle for us to take home and I’m very glad he did. Amazing.

We staying in one of the rooms at Borgo San Daniele and I remember distinctly the tasting where Mauro Mauri poured his Arbis Ròs Pignolo from magnum. What an amazing wine. I tried to get him to sell me some bottles, but it was all gone. Only that magnum was left. And the memory, too.

Our final taste of Pignolo was at Paolo Rodaro and that’s when we met Ben Little. Little was nice enough to help with some difficult translations, but you could tell even then, not too long after his Pignolo journey had begun, that his focus was on the particular wine and Rodaro’s version was especially intense and interesting. There was another connection that I only learned about by reading this book — like me, Little is a recovering student of economics and can’t resist adding his insights to the blend.

Having read Little’s book, I want to go back to Friuli and visit the small region of Rosazzo, which seems to be Pignolo’s spiritual home. Pignolo was pretty much invisible to me a few days ago, now that I see that it has been there all along, I want to ask it a few questions.

In the meantime, I couldn’t resist trying to track down a bottle of Pignolo here in the U.S. and refresh my memory. I was able to find the 2005 La Viarte Pignolo Riserva at Kermit Lynch‘s online store. We pulled  the cork and paired the wine with Caesar salad and a prime-grade dry-aged steak — clearly this was a special meal. The wine lived up to the occasion. The first glass was a bit wild, but it settled down and developed along several axes over the next two hours. Sue said that the wine really pulled itself together when the food arrived just as it was meant to do, I think.

Some wine experiences are delicious but not especially interesting — you know what you are getting. Others are interesting, but not necessary delicious — you are happy to stop after the first glass. The Pignolo was both, so it is easy to understand Little’s fascinating with it.

Pignolo: Cultivating the Invisible is a highly personal memoir of and tribute to a very distinctive grape and the people who have nurtured it as it nurtured them. More than a book, it is an experience. Highly Recommended.

Back to the Future of Armenian Wine

March 30, 2021 By in emerging wine regions, wine, wine history, wine markets 1 Comment

The mission of Boston-based Storica Armenian Wines is to introduce U.S. consumers to the pleasures of Armenian wine and they seem to be off to a good start.

Just last week, for example, Wine Bible author Karen MacNeil‘s Instagram #TasteWithKaren webinar featured Vahe Keushguerian, founder of Keush wines, for a tasting of three of his Armenian traditional method sparkling wines. One of them, the Keush Origins, was our Open That Bottle Night 2021 wine. A delightful wine from an unexpected source, made from indigenous grapes that we’d never before experienced. A great introduction to Armenian wine.

Armenia’s Deep Roots

We are only now getting to know Armenian wine a little but, but already I can see that this is a topic full of fascinating puzzles and paradoxes. Wine in Armenia is both very old and very new.  Landlocked Armenia’s latitude is a bit too low, but its high elevation compensates and creates a sort of grape vine Eden. It is impossible to prove, of course, but Armenia just might be the place where Vine Zero was born, the ultimate source of the vitis vinifera grapes that fill most modern wine bottles today. The oldest known evidence of a working winery was found here.

Armenia’s neighbor Georgia shares some of this history and sometimes calls itself “the cradle of wine” (Armenians like to say they are the “birthplace of wine”) and I rather naively assumed that, because we have visited Georgia and tasted many of their wines, that this might give me a head start in understanding Armenia and its wines. But that’s not how it worked out at all.

No Escaping It

Wine is inescapable in Georgia. It is integral to the national identity. Home-production is so important that it has taken a while for commercially produced wine, most of it aimed for export markets in the former Soviet state markets, to attract a critical mass of local consumers.  Georgia is now investing to develop new markets in China, Europe, and North America in order to reduce their dependence on former-Soviet state exports.

Wine grapes are inescapable in Armenia, as near as I can tell from my research, but wine maybe not so much until quite recently. The World Atlas of Wine estimates at more than 80% of wine grape production goes to make brandy, the national drink.

The wine sector is relatively small, according to this source, with about 50 wineries in 2018, 30 of which only appeared in the last ten years, driven in part by investment from members of the vast international Armenian diaspora and technical “flying winemaker” expertise.

Armenia’s wine past is a mixed bag, as I’ll explain below, but its future is simply irresistible according to winemaking superstar Alberto Antonini. He rates his Zorah project in Armenia (along with his Otrona project in Argentine Patagonia) as the most interesting opportunities in today’s wine world.

Stalin Did It

Why was there so little attention to wine in its birthplace? It is complicated, of course, but one line of reasoning traces the situation back to Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Soviet system was all about exploiting the efficiencies of division of labor to generate maximum output with scarce resources. Thus was Georgia (Stalin’s birthplace and source of his favorite wine) selected to supply wine for the Soviet bloc while Armenia was assigned to specialize brandy production despite the fact that good wine was made in both countries.

That Armenian brandy is excellent and has been compared favorably to Cognac might make Stalin’s policy credible, but the impact on Armenia’s wine sector remains. The production and market structures established in the Soviet era have been slow to change, but change they have and the wines that Storica is introducing to the U.S. market is part of the story.

Terroirist’s Territory

Sue and I enjoyed our OTBN selection of Keush Origins sparkling wine, a traditional method blend of indigenous grape varieties: Voskehat, the most-planted white grape, and Khatoun Kharji, a grape variety that is rare even in Armenia. Sourced from 60-100 year old vines planted at 1800 meters above sea level. An extreme wine with character and finesse. It was an impressive start our Armenia research.

Next in line was Zulal Voskehat 2019, a dry white wine with medium body, good balance, and a very interesting finish, which evolved as we enjoyed the wine with pasta primavera. Vineyards planted on volcanic soils at 1400 meters in the Vayots Dzor region near the Azerbaijani border supplied the grapes for this wine.

Zulal, which means “pure” in Armenian, is a project founded in 2017 by Vahe Keushguerian’s daughter, Aimee Keushguerian. The focus is on indigenous grape varieties and own-rooted vines so old that they pre-date the Soviet era. They are, I suppose, a pure expression of Armenia’s wine past but made using modern cellar practices. It is part of a movement to bring wine back to the center of Armenian culture.

Areni, named for its home village in Vayots Dzor where evidence of the world’s oldest known winery facility was discovered, is said to be Armenia’s signature grape variety and, based on our sample bottle of Zulal Areni 2018, it is a sound choice. Grapes from vines at 1400-1750 meters elevation (wow!) were vinified in stainless steel to produce a fresh, medium-bodied red wine that one tasting note placed somewhere between Pinot Noir and Sangiovese, although I think it is something all its own. We enjoyed the spice and plummy flavors, which went especially well with our dinner of chicken and sautéed spinach with peanut sauce. A keeper for sure.

There is a Zulal Areni Reserve, which is aged for a year in used Caucasian and French oak, that we are setting aside to share with our Armenian-American friends Z and G. It will be a great pleasure, when the pandemic clouds have finally passed, to share with them this is wine as well as a Keush Blanc de Blanc traditional method sparkler. I am confident it will be worth the wait.

Armenian wine has a lot to offer and these first tastes are just the beginning. The Keush and Zulal wines are a fascinating introduction to the Armenian wine renaissance.

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WorldWineRegions.com has created a fascinating website with interactive maps of the world’s wine regions. Here is a link to the map of Areni in Vayots Dzor. Zoom in and out to see both the vineyard areas and the overall terrain.