Shattering Stereotypes: High-Elevation California Wines

January 7, 2025 By in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Stereotypes are powerful things because they shape the way we perceive reality even when we know they differ from what we see with our own eyes. That was the message of Saul Steinberg’s famous 1976 New Yorker magazine cover, “The View of the World from 9th Avenue.” It is important to have occasional attitude checks to make sure that stereotypes and prejudices haven’t seized control.

It is pretty easy to stereotype California wines. The Saul Steinburg picture (you might call it “The View from Highway 29”) would feature Napa Valley up front and in detail. And you know what the wines would be: bottles of big, bold Cabernet Sauvignon. Sonoma would be visible in the middle distance, but most of the other wine regions and most of their wines would pretty much disappear except for a few famous landmarks, the way that the rest of America disappears in the 9th Avenue view.

Steinberg’s image suggests that New Yorkers of his day didn’t understand America and probably didn’t understand New York, either. That’s how stereotypes work. The same rule holds for California and wine. So here are two California wineries that break the imaginary mold. What do they have in common? High elevation is one factor, but not the only one. We hope their stories will encourage us all to rethink the shorthand stereotypes we assign to California wines and to wines from everywhere else, too.

Mt. Veeder Renaissance: Sky Vineyards

If you’ve visited Napa Valley more than once there is a good chance you’ve driven up one of the winding roads on Mt. Veeder, probably to visit the historic Hess Collection winery (a top Napa tourist destination). You know that it is rugged territory and not the most obvious place to plant grapevines. The best locations are high enough up the mountainside to be above the fog line. Although it is the largest Napa sub-AVA by total area, the vineyard acreage and wine production numbers are small.

It is almost a miracle that someone could look at this region back in the 1970s (early days in modern Napa history) and imagine vineyards and a winery, but that’s what happened at Sky Vineyards, specializing in dry-framed Zinfandel and Syrah. It was an even bigger miracle that that vision survived the 2017 wildfires. But the Olds family rebuilt their home, replanted vineyards, and resolved to come back both stronger and also different (with Grenache, Riesling, and Chenin Blanc as well as signature Zinfandel).

We were fortunate to be able to sample both the new from Sky Vineyards (their 2022 Riesling) and the old (the Zinfandel from that 2017 vintage).  Sue was surprised and impressed by the Riesling. This is the pure essence of Riesling, she said. A wonderful treat. But the Zinfandel was even better. So bright and complex and full of life. It was one of the most memorable wines we tasted in 2024.

A miracle that a wine like this could come from the vintage of the dreadful wildfires. The image of a phoenix rising from the ashes is a cliché, I know, but it really does seem to apply to Sky Vineyards and its wines.

Sky Vineyards shatters the stereotype you might have of Napa Valley and its wines. The view from Mt. Veeder looks a lot different than that Highway 29 perspective you might know best.

Lake County Surprise: Brassfield Estate

Lake County is a bit of a puzzle. Winegrowing is important, but the area might be better known to many for Clear Lake and its recreational appeal. You can find Clear Lake AVA on wine labels if you look closely, but a lot of the grapes disappear into California appellation blends. Quantity was the path to profits for many years simply because grape prices were low. Now it seems that rising quality is key. But it is hard to establish a reputation when you have famous wine neighbors such as Napa and Sonoma a short distance away.

Brassfield Estate winery is located in the High Valley AVA, a  Lake County sub-appellation. High elevation and volcanic soils define the region, producing wines of power and elegance that demand close attention. The Cabernet Sauvignon, a multi-vineyard blend, was deep and complex and a terrific value, too.

The star of the tasting was the Brassfield Estate Pinot Noir, which came as a complete surprise to us. The winery describes the terroir this way:

These grapes are sourced from four vineyard blocks nestled within a westward-facing box canyon. Strategically positioned beneath a saddle in the ridge, the descent of cool coastal air from the west makes this the coolest vineyard site in High Valley. This vineyard thrives on soil formed from ancient lakeshore and alluvial deposits.

The wine tasted of rhubarb and pomegranate, with the balance of fruit and acidity that the description suggests. It wasn’t a Sonoma Pinot Noir and it wasn’t a Willamette Valley Pinot either. It was itself. That’s what we are always looking for. What a nice surprise to find it and in Lake County, of all places.

The Sky Vineyards and Brassfield Estate wines we tasted forced us to rethink stereotypes, which is always a good thing. If you think of Napa as the California standard, for example, Brassfield Estate will make you realize that wines of high quality can come from other parts of the state (and be purchased for much more affordable prices). And Sky Vineyards will make you question what you even mean by a Napa wine.

There’s a lot of research left to do if you want to shatter the stereotypes of California wine. Get started now!

What Are Your Holiday Wines This Year?

December 24, 2024 By in wine 6 Comments

The Wine Economist will pause for a few days and return in early 2025. Sue and I wish all our reader friends a warm holiday season and a bright new year.

Sue is curious about what wines you are serving for the holidays. Are you willing to share your selections — or those you are considering — in the Comments section below? We are always looking for good ideas!

We haven’t finalized our choices yet, but some will be Italian wines to pair with Brodetto on Christmas Eve and Tagliatelle al Ragù on Christmas Day. Stilton and Vintage Port will appear along with Sue’s delicious panforte and pampepato treats. And something with bubbles, too, don’t you think? Lots of possibilities!

Cheers to the new year. See you in 2025.

>>><<<

About the Luca Ferraris Ruchè in the photo above in the festive santa hat. We were fortunate to receive Ruchè samples recently (thank you, Mallard Libations). This is a unique wine so we are giving some thoought to food pairings. I have called Ruchè one of Italy’s “invisible wines.” Sue and I look forward to enjoying these examples and we hope to see more of the wines in shops and restaurants in the new year!

 

 

Understudy to Center Stage: The Unexpected Rise of Cabernet Franc

December 17, 2024 By in globalization, The Next Big Thing, wine, wine markets 9 Comments

Wine made from Cabernet Franc is generally paler, lighter, crisper, softer, and more obviously aromatic than that of its progeny, Cabernet Sauvignon.

This is how the authors of Wine Grapes, my standard reference, describe Cabernet Franc. Sounds great, doesn’t it? So it is a bit of a surprise that Cabernet Franc’s place in French wine is relatively limited.

France: Two Faces of Cab Franc

Cabernet Franc is the headline red wine grape in the Loire Valley, but in Bordeaux (and most other places) it is best known as a blending grape (or an insurance grape, I am told, because it buds and blossoms earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon and so helps winegrowers hedge their bets against unfavorable weather). Apart from Chateau Cheval Blanc and a few other BDX wines, Cab Franc is a backup singer behind Cabernet Sauvignon.

I think I first began to pay attention to Cabernet Franc about 15 years ago when I found myself helping Mike and Karen Wade on the bottling line at their Fielding Hills Winery (my report on the experience was the very first Wine Economist newsletter post). All the wines, made with grapes sourced from their Riverbend Vineyard on the Wahluke Slope, were great. But the Cab Franc really blew me away. It was then and remains now my favorite FHW wine.

Cab Franc was suddenly a thing to us and Sue and I started to wonder if maybe it was a Washington state wine thing. We got this idea from Chris Carmada, winemaker and proprietor at the Andrew Will Winery on nearby Vashon Island. Carmada said that Cab Franc might be Washington’s best red wine grape variety and Andrew Will makes the most of its exceptional quality in both their varietal wines and in the vineyard-specific blends.

This video tells the story of Andrew Will Winery and its particular affinity with Cabernet Franc. We also admire the elegant Cab Franc that Robin Pollard makes from her vineyard in the Rattlesnake Hills (a.k.a. “The Hills”) area.

Once we started looking for northwest Cabernet Franc we began to find it in unexpected places. The Rocks of Milton-Freewater is a famous AVA on the Washington-Oregon border. It is best known for the Syrah and Grenache wines that wineries such as Cayuse and Reynvaan make from the vines there. So we were surprised to find that Watermill Winery makes a terrific “Hallowed Stones” Cabernet Franc from their rocky estate vineyard, very different from Andrew Will, Pollard, or Fielding Hills. Distinctive.

Many Faces of Cabernet Franc

Looking further afield we stumbled across our first Napa Valley Cab Franc, the Ehlers Estate Cabernet Franc St. Helena, Napa Valley. Cab is King in Napa Valley, but Cabernet Franc is an unexpected discovery. This wine had the power and depth that you expect from Napa (15% abv, 18 months in oak) with the slight green edge that said Cab Franc not Cab Sauvignon. Sue liked it but said that the Napa style almost dominated the Cab Franc character.

Recently we’ve been learning more about the wine industries in Virginia and the Niagara Peninsula in Canada and discovered that Cab Franc plays important roles in both places. Barboursville Vineyards is probably our favorite Virginia winery (it was featured in my book Around the World in Eighty Wines) and its Barboursville Cabernet Franc Reserve is both great quality and great value.

Cabernet Franc is one of the most important red grape varieties for Niagara producers. We visited the region earlier this year and enjoyed tasting wines at Leaning Post Wines and Westcott Vineyards. Both focus on Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which do very well in that region, but both wineries also make exceptional Cab Franc wines inspired by the grape’s ability to express the character of particular sites.

The idea that Cabernet Franc is or could be a terroir wine — a wine that reflects its particular vineyard characteristics — comes as a surprise if you are used to thinking about it as a useful but secondary blending grape. Further study is required to explore this idea.

So we are starting to look for Cabernet Franc wines from Argentina. We know from our visits there that the differences in terroir, especially elevation, can be important. Malbec from Lujan de Cuyo can be very different from Malbec from the higher-elevation Uco Valley. So we are excited to taste the Durigutti Proyecto Las Compuertas Cabernet France (from Lujan de Cuyo) alongside the Bodega Andeluna Pasionado Cabernet Franc from Uco Valley vineyards situated at an even higher elevation 1300 meters above sea level.

Cab Franc World

It seems to me that Cabernet Franc has quietly exploded on the wine scene. Maybe it was always there and I just overlooked it. But maybe those qualities I found in Wine Grapes have become more important to wine drinkers. According to Wine Grapes, Cab Franc can be found almost everywhere: Northeast Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Argentina, and Chile have significant plantings of the grape variety and there are patches of Cab Franc vines almost everywhere else. Even on Malta!

There is clearly a lot of work to be done to chart the Cab Franc universe. Once upon a time, Cabernet Franc was Cabernet Sauvignon’s shy understudy that has now taken center stage, at least some of the time. Either way, let’s celebrate Cabernet Franc.

From Sharecroppers to Superstars: Family Wineries in Italy

December 10, 2024 By in Antiinori, Family Wineries, Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets 1 Comment

The arc of the Italian wine industry bends towards quality in the 21st century, something that has become increasingly clear to Sue and me as we have visited many of Italy’s important wine regions in recent years.

Quality has not always been Italian wine’s guiding star, however. Piero Antinori’s 2014 book The Hills of Chianti traces the 20th-century transformation of Italian wine from quantity to quality that continues today. The role of forward-thinking family wineries and their intense focus on quality from the vineyard to the cellar and beyond comes through on every page.

We recently sampled wines from two of our favorite regions — Romagna and Piemonte — that illustrate Antinori’s hypothesis about the link between quality and family-owned wineries.

>>><<<

Rediscovering Romagna

I was reminded of Antinori’s book recently when we were invited to taste wines from Romagna, a region that extends from the Adriatic coast inward toward Bologna. We enjoyed these wines, mainly Sangiovese di Romagna and Albana di Romagna, when we lived in Bologna years ago (I was a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins center there).

The wines were perfect with the city’s rich cuisine. We look for them here in America, but they are hard to find. I once asked one of the Colli Bolognesi winemakers about the problem and he just pointed over the hill. Tuscany, he said. Tuscany (and Antinori, I guess) get all the attention. We mostly sell our wines at home.

But the bending arc can have many effects and it seems to me that the rising quality of Italian wine offers wine drinkers around the world new opportunities, both within Tuscany (as Antinori’s book suggests) and in other parts of Italy, too.

All in the Family

So we were excited to taste the Romagna wines of Poggio della Dogana and Ronchi di Castelluccio, wineries owned by the brothers Aldo and Paolo Rametta. The Rametta family does not have centuries of history in the wine business like the Antinori family, but they are firmly rooted in the Romagna region. After working in other industries (finance and renewable energy), Aldo and Paolo Rametta found it impossible to resist scratching the itch to return home to work with the land. Wine, of course, but not just wine. They are interested in agriculture and bring family business values to their work.

Poggio della Dogana was their first investment in 2016; then an unexpected opportunity appeared in 2020 to purchase Ronchi di Castelluccio, the very well-known maker of Sangiovese di Romagna. We know the latter winery because their Le More Sangiovese di Romagna is a wine we can sometimes find here at home to pair with Sue’s authentic Bolognese ragu.

Everybody and Nobody

We couldn’t resist sampling the Ronchi di Castelluccio Buco del Prete Romagna DOC Sangiovese Modigliana, made with grapes from a vineyard carved into a forest clearing in 1989. We paired the wine with roast chicken (which we often have with Pinot Noir) and I think the combination made us appreciate the elegance of the medium-bodied wine and the complexity that lingered on the finish. An excellent wine. We can’t wait to try the Ronco della Simia, made with grapes from an even older vineyard.

We loved the Sangiovese, but I admit that the Poggio della Dogana Belladamaa Romagna DOCG Albana Secco stole our hearts. Why? Quality was part of the answer, of course. Albana is a white wine that thinks it is red, with good body and memorable herby notes on the finish in the case of the Belladama.

We often enjoyed Albana wines when we lived in Bologna, but we always thought of it as a simple, easy wine, not something that can be serious. So tasting a next-level Albana got our attention.

But, if I am honest, it is also something that Aldo Rametta said on a Zoom call. Everyone drinks Albana in Romagna, he said, but no one drinks it anywhere else. And it is true. But maybe a wine like this at a time like this can change things. In fact, quality white wines from up and down Italy are now finally getting attention and developing followings in export markets.

>>><<<

Tenuta Carretta was founded in 1467 when sharecropping arrangements were formalized for the estate north of the city of Alba. As Antinori’s book explains, sharecropping remained the dominant organization for Italian agriculture into the mid-20th century and in wine the turn towards quality only gained strength when the difficult transition from sharecropping was complete. In all its long history the Carretta estate has changed hands only a few times. The winery’s website explains that

In 1811, after 350 years, the property passed from the Marquis Damiano to the Count of Roero, who cultivated it for 120 years. In 1932, he gave the estate to the Veglia family of Turin. In 1985, the property finally passed to the Miroglio family from Alba, founders and owners of the textile group with the same name.

The Miroglio family’s commitment to the winery strikes me as very much fitting into Antinori’s ethos and the Rametta brothers’ work in Romagna. The Miroglio family have roots in the Langhe. Their apparel empire began there before expanding around the world. Their purchase of Tenuta Carretta almost 40 years ago seems to have been about family and tradition and they have invested considerable time and effort to develop distinctive wines that reflect the particular terroirs of Roero and the Alta Langa. Each wine is meant to be unique to its time and place, to bend the arc even more toward the quality pole.

Tenuta Carretta makes the great red wine varieties of  Piedmont, so it is noteworthy that the samples they sent us were white wines: the Roero Arneis DOCG Riserva “Alteno della Fontana” and the Langhe DOC Riesling “Campofranco.”  Interest is rising in white wines these days and many consumers are searching for distinctive wines, so we welcomed the opportunity to taste these wines.

The Roero Arneis DOCG Riserva was a wonderful wine, refined and elegant. It is a proper reserve wine having spent 24 months aging on lees and a further year resting in bottle. The Riesling was a completely different experience, however.

You might be surprised to see a Riesling from Piemonte, but we know a few other Piemonte winemakers who produce Riesling because they just love this noble grape variety and cannot resist the temptation to see what it will produce here. It seems that a great deal of effort was necessary to make this Riesling a reality. A special terroir was discovered in a long-abandoned vineyard area (“franco” in the name “Campofranco” means “unused”). It is kind of extreme terroir and the cellar treatment is distinctive, too. The result is a wine that Sue said she wouldn’t have guessed to be a Riesling. Lots of minerality, a whiff of petrol that quickly disappeared. Fascinating and delicious. Kinda wild, too. Worth seeking out as are all the Tenuta Carretta wines we have tried.

>>><<<

At the end of Piero Antinori’s book, he peers into the future and sees the outlines of what is recognizably the wine world of today, where consumption quantities are falling, wine quality is rising, the family wine firms are stronger than ever. He was right about quality and about the challenges he saw ahead for the wine market generally. Time will tell how family wineries fare in the global and local market adjustments that lie ahead. These seem like just the sort of challenges that family wineries are built for.

100 Years of Wine Industry Ups & Downs: Highlights of the OIV Centennial Report

December 3, 2024 By in Uncategorized 4 Comments

The International Organization of Wine & Vine (OIV) is  celebrating its 100th year in 2024. I like to think of the OIV as the United Nations of the wine world although its purpose is scientific and technical, not political. Membership includes most of the world’s most important wine-producing nations with the noteworthy exception of the United States.

To mark its first one hundred years, the OIV  released a report last week on 100 years of evolution of the global wine and vine sector. The report’s perspective differs from most studies in that it is both global and long-term. I have selected three figures from the report that I think are useful to consider as the new wine year begins and we think about where wine is headed in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#1 The Rise of the International Wine Trade

Wine was mainly multi-local (not really global) 100 years ago. Most French wine was sold in France. Ditto Spain, Italy, and most other places. Only about 10% of wine crossed a national border on its way from producer to consumer.

Now, as the figure above shows, international trade is a much more important factor in wine. Trade is even more significant than the figure above suggests because these are just shipments of wine. The international movements of equipment and supplies, workers (including flying winemakers and flying interns), and technology add to the global web that is wine today.

The surge in international wine trade started in the 1970s and was accelerated by the combined effects of trade agreements that removed political barriers to wine shipments, transportation technology improvements that made shipping more efficient, and domestic retail liberalization in many markets that stimulated demand for imported wine.

But, as you will see in the next section, there was another and perhaps more important reason for the rise of the international wine trade. As domestic wine consumption fell in many countries, exports became a crucial business strategy. Soon big wine countries like Spain were exporting more than they sold at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#2 1984 and All That

Global wine consumption increased starting in the 1950s powered by Europe’s rising post-war economies. But global consumption, measured by volume not value, peaked about 40 years ago. European wine sales fell and were not entirely offset by rising consumption in North America and elsewhere.

There are a number of factors that contributed to the slump in European wine sales. One of them is surely an economic transition where consumers substituted quality for quality as their economic security improved. Health issues may also have become more important. The levels of per capita wine consumption in some European regions 100 years ago were unsustainable by today’s standards.

Rising ROW (rest-of-world) wine consumption offset European decline, but only for a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#3 Supply-Side Jitters

It is hard to know exactly what is going on with wine production in real time because cyclical and structural changes tend to happen at the same time, frequently punctuated by wild card events such as freak weather. Looking back, however, this accounts for the jittery pattern seen in the figure above.

It is clear that global wine production by volume actually peaked in 1979. (Global area given to vineyards for all purposes peaked in 1978.) Wine production has its ups and downs, but the overall trend is to lower quantities of wine, albeit at rising average prices. The decrease was especially significant in Europe. Rising production elsewhere is not enough to make up the difference.

Rise and Fall

The OIV report makes fascinating reading with more detail than I have room for here (click here to view the pdf of the presentation).

The overall pattern of rise and fall invites the obvious questions: What about the future? Is wine headed toward further decline? Or is an up-swing around the corner?

The OIV report’s conclusions balance optimisism with realism:

Change is a constant
The wine sector is highly resilient
Science and learning make a huge difference
Production and consumption are in constant evolution
The impacts of climate change are accumulating
International trade is integral to the sector
The wine sector is a long-term sector

It is hard to sum up 100 years of wine industry history in a few words, but I think the OIV has done a good job. Wine and the wine business have always changed and evolved and always will do so. A long-term perspective is needed to successfully navigate the shifting currents.

Maybe this isn’t the detailed recipe for future success that you were hoping to find, but it seems like good advice to me.

Wine Book Reviews: Luxury in Italy, Hunger & Thirst in Minneapolis

November 26, 2024 By in book reviews, wine, wine education Leave a comment

Reviews of two books that provide very different lessons about wine today.

Enrico Bernardo, Wine & Travel Italy (Assouline, 2024).

And now for something completely different. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Pascaline Lepeltier’s new book, One Thousand Vines. It is a big, beautiful book that is really about thinking (and maybe sometimes almost overthinking) the idea of wine. It is challenging and exciting and I recommend it highly.

This week’s first book is almost but not completely different. It is, first of all, big and beautiful, too. In fact, it is even bigger and more beautiful than Lepeltier’s book. Full of gorgeous photos, the Amazon.com page describes it as a five-pound coffee table book with a list price north of $200. (The book is available for $120 on Assouline’s website: https://www.assouline.com/products/wine-travel-italy.)

Enrico Bernardo, like Lepeltier, is a famous sommelier. He made his name at the Four Season George V in Paris and was named Best Sommelier in the World in 2004. He is writing a series of wine and travel books for the publishing house Assouline. Italy and France have already been released, California is next in line.

This is a luxurious book, which is what Assouline specializes in. It is sort of the Birkin bag of wine books if you know what I mean. It is not too concerned about how you think about wine in Italy and much more interested in how Italy and wine make you feel.

Or at least that’s the conclusion you get from counting pages. The book’s 300 pages divide Italy into 12 wine regions, each of which gets just three pages of text. Beautiful photos fill the rest of the chapter’s pages and I have to admit that it is very pleasant to sit in a chair with this book on your lap and page through the beautiful scenes. I wish there were better captions, so that I knew for sure what I was looking at, but the armchair trip through Italian wine is otherwise very enjoyable.

This isn’t the sort of wine book that I usually read or review (I learned about it in a Financial Times article and couldn’t resist checking it out), but I think that it makes a point that is worth considering. This book is about feeling more than thinking; sometimes in life and in wine, feelings are what really matter. That may be obvious, but it is easy to forget.

We often try to draw people into wine by telling them facts and challenging them to break down the wine-drinking experience into a list of sensory characteristics. But sometimes the most important thing about wine is how it makes you feel, don’t you think? It’s that feeling that you remember and that draws you back.

If you’ve visited Italy and love wine, this book will help you remember and relive the feeling. If you haven’t, then it will rev up your imagination.

>>><<<

George Sorensen, Hot Dish Confidential: That Year My Friends Taught Me How to Cook.

George Sorensen has written a charming memoir about how he and a bunch of friends and acquaintances taught themselves to cook and eat foods from around the world. Wine is part of the story, of course, but in more ways than I initially expected.

Living in an Analog World …

The story is set back in the analog world before TikTok, YouTube, and email.  Sorenson and his Minnesota neighbors seek culinary enlightenment. They want to learn to cook and appreciate “gourmet” cuisine, which means foods that are more or less foreign to the American midwest table in those days, which is a long list of the items we take for granted today. (I remember visiting a Mexican restaurant in Lafayette, Indiana, back in that era where the menu helpfully explained how to pronounce the very foreign word “tah-co.”)

Sorensen and his frieds go about their task in a very analog way. He calls them together about once a month to a communal meal, where everyone brings a dish on a designated theme and chips in for wine, about which everyone complains (of course).

Sorensen is a wonderful storyteller and he has good stories to tell, so Hot Dish Confidential is a pleasure to read. He even weaves in some of the recipes he learned to cook along the way. By the end of the book, Sorensen finds that he has become a confident cook and that he has met the love of his life, with whom he can share these and other adventures. A happy ending!

One particular thought haunted me as I read through the book. Is this how someone would go about learning to make gourmet cuisine today? In today’s digital world, the first place to look for knowledge is online sources like YouTube and TikTok. Getting a bunch of friends together (at the same time and in the same place) is very analog-world inconvenient compared with the digital alternative.

Learning still takes place in digital world, and sharing, too. But it is different, don’t you think? And it is kind of a shame that the conviviality of Sorensen’s hot dish gatherings are replaced to a certain extent by Instagram likes.

Analog Wine in a Digital World?

So this, like almost everything else in life, got me thinking about wine. Back in the analog days when I was learning about wine, one of the best and most popular ways to develop wine knowledge was for a group of friends to get together once a week or once a month and to share and talk about the wines they brought with them. Like Sorensen’s dinners, these wine clubs were both fun and informative communal experiences.

I wonder if young people peering into the wine world from outside still form ad hoc analog wine groups? Or do they look instead to formal classes or scroll through YouTube and TikTok videos? The digital world is very efficient if you want information or entertainment, but the experience (and I think the impact) just isn’t the same.

I do think there is a thirst for the analog wine world. Winery friends tell me that tasting room guests these days are looking for more than tastings; they want experiences of various kinds that they can share with others. This probably strains both the resources and creativity of tasting room operators, but opens up possibilities, too. Sue points out that the recently completed Come Over October movement is an exercise in highlighting the values and benefits of analog wine gatherings.

George Sorensen’s Hot Dish Confidential is a pleasure to read and a valuable tool to help us think about what has changed in our food and wine culture and what endures, too, and why. Highly recommended.

NA Wine & the Second Glass Test: Bolle Bubbles, LVMH’s Bet, South African Spritz

November 19, 2024 By in wine, wine markets Leave a comment

“LVMH Bets on Booze-Free Bubbles at $100-Plus a Bottle” was the Wall Street Journal headline. The story, which you may have read when it came out last month, is that luxury goods conglomerate LVMH was buying a 30 percent stake in a (luxury) non-alcoholic wine start-up called French Bloom. The new NA wine boasts both good DNA (one of the founders and the winemaker are members of the Taittinger Champagne clan) and a bold business plan. The WSJ reports that

The brand sells bottles of sparkling white for $39 and sparkling rosé for $44, mostly in high-end bars and restaurants, or through luxury retailers. Its latest nonalcoholic fizz, La Cuvée Vintage 2022, which accounts for a small percentage of its production, sets consumers back $119 a bottle.

While the brand initially expected customers would mostly be pregnant women and nondrinkers, it estimates that about 80% of its clients drink alcohol.

NA Wine Challenges and Opportunities

I think the logic of the investment was pretty simple for LVMH. Someone is going to develop a non-alcoholic luxury sparkling wine brand, so they might as well do it themselves and capture the high end of the market. The acquisition is driven, at least in part, by the same logic that led Moet Hennessy to create an international network of wineries to satisfy the local thirst for sparkling wine. Argentina, California, Australia, China, and India. And now in NA-land, too.

What I found particularly interesting about the French Bloom article was the discussion of winemaking challenges. Making quality NA wine or beer is not as easy as just taking the alcohol out. Millions of dollars are being invested in innovative processes to make the NA products as appealing as their alcoholic shelf-mates. The WSJ reports that,

When a wine is dealcoholized, it loses about 60% of the aromas. “We have to start with something that has, we like to say, wider shoulders, versus if you dealcoholized a Chardonnay from Burgundy, you’re not left with a lot,” …

French Bloom sources its grapes from the Languedoc region of southern France, where the sunny climate results in grapes with naturally high alcohol content and sugar levels. They also harvest the grapes two to three weeks early, depending on the year, to have maximum acidity. They then age the wines in new oak barrels from Burgundy. … The wine is “undrinkable before the dealcoholization process,” said Frerejean-Taittinger. “It’s so overpowering.”

The goal, as we here at The Wine Economist have proposed, is for NA wine to pass the “Second Glass Test.” An NA wine should remind us of the type of wine it represents (an NA Sauvignon Blanc should remind us of a Sauvignon Blanc) and it should be good enough that you ask for a second glass. It is a simple test but, as we reported last year, one that many wines seem to fail. Either they don’t really taste like the wines they mimic or they just aren’t that fun to drink. Sad!

Bolle Sparkling Wine Passes the Test

LVMH’s investment in French Bloom provides evidence, if any is needed, that NA wine is a thing. We haven’t had an opportunity to put French Bloom to the Second Glass Test yet, but we could not resist an invitation from the makers of Bolle Non-Alcoholic Sparkling Wines to give their wines a test drive.

I was intrigued by the innovative production process. There are several ways to remove alcohol (French Bloom uses a process called vacuum distillation). The Bolle method first ferments the grape juice in the usual way, removes the alcohol, then adds a little grape juice, and allows a second fermentation to replace some of the characteristics that were lost earlier in the previous process. It is a clever idea, don’t you think?

The resulting wine has less than 0.5 percent ABV, which is within the “non-alcoholic” range. Does the second fermentation put the magic back in the bottle?  Does Bolle pass the Second Glass test? There was only one way to find out.

We tried the Bolle sparkling Rosé and were quickly convinced: this is probably the best NA wine we have tasted so far. Did it remind us of Blanc de Noir sparkling wine? Yes. Would we accept a second glass? Absolutely. The wine was nicely balanced, dry, but with some of the fruit that we have found missing in earlier “second glass” trials. Whatever they are doing at Bolle the results are excellent.

The Bolle sparkling Rosé is made with a combination of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines. We are looking forward to trying the Bolle sparkling Blanc de Blanc, which is Chardonnay blended with Sylvaner. The grapes are from Spain and the NA wine process happens in Germany. Production is still quite limited, so the best way to purchase Bolle is probably directly from the winery website.

Abstinence NA Spirits

As long as Sue and I were testing NA wines we could not resist an invitation to expand our experiments to include a NA spritz product. One of the best things about a trip to Italy is the excuse it provides to enjoy an Aperol or Campari spritz. We make them at home, too, and they bring back that warm Italian feeling.

Abstinence Spirits sells a range of non-alcoholic spirits products that are made in South Africa using the distilled essence of botanicals of the Cape Floral Kingdom. There are a variety of interesting NA spirits both bottled straight and used in NA RTD spritz beverages. We were tempted by the lemon spirits (I was thinking lemoncello), but could not pass up the Abstinence Blood Orange Aperitif, which is flavored with African wormwood, cinchona bark, allspice, clove, blood orange, and spice distillate.

We tried the spritz as directed with both tonic water and soda and the result was a split decision. I liked the tonic spritz because it reminded me of an Aperol spritz, and I’d definitely take a second glass if offered. Sue admitted the resemblance to Aperol but found the drink just too sweet (both the NA spirits and the tonic are sweetened).  The soda spritz was less sweet but lacked a bit of the bitter punch we were expecting.

Two cheers, not three, for the Abstinence Blood Orange aperitif, but we will keep experimenting. Lots of innovation in the NA beverage category. Watch for our next report in a few weeks.

Wine Book Review: Breaking Down the Barriers to Understanding Wine

November 12, 2024 By in book reviews, wine, wine education Leave a comment

Pascaline Lepeltier, One Thousand Vines: A New Way to Understand Wine (Mitchel Beazley, 2024). Beautifully illustrated by Loan Nguyen Thanh Lan. First published in France in 2022 as Mille Vignes (Hachette Livre).

There are different ways to taste wine depending upon your purpose. There is tasting simply to enjoy the wine, which is different from tasting it for critical review, which is different from technical tasting in search of faults to be corrected.

In the same way, there are different ways of thinking about wine (and reading books about wine) depending on your purpose. If you are new to wine and seek a road map to guide selection, for example, you can’t go wrong with Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World wine course. It is organized like a restaurant wine list with reds here, whites there, and sparkling and fortified wines, too. Zraly’s idea of wine has guided and inspired wine drinkers for years.

The next step for many wine lovers is to drill down into particular regions or types of wines. The goal here is the appreciation that comes with more knowledge as well as enjoyment of the wine itself. My bookshelf is filled with “The Wines of XYZ” sort of books if you know what I mean, and they tend to be organized in a fairly standard way. We learn the grape varieties, the geology and geography of the wine regions, and the wines themselves plus, depending upon the particular book, more or less about history, people, profiles of wineries, and recommended wines.

A Silo-Bashing Approach

It is in this context that Pascaline Lepeltier offers a “new way to understand wine” in her big, beautifully illustrated, comprehensive new book, One Thousand Vines. This is an interdisciplinary idea of wine. Whereas many other books try to facilitate the understanding of wine by sorting them into silos of knowledge, Lepeltier is all about blowing up silos and seeing how the bits and pieces come together. (The Financial Times editor Gillian Tett has written a book called The Silo Effect about silos and their discontents.)

How does silo-bashing work? Here are a couple of examples that feature wine economics, which does not usually show up in general-audience wine books. First, take the topic of terroir. Terroir is a foundational idea in wine and it is usually approached as a combination of geography, geology, climate, and grape varieties. Sometimes (and this is controversial) the people making the wine are included in the mix because they embody certain practices and traditions that can’t be easily explained in other ways.

Lepeltier adds consumers to her idea of terroir. Consumers? The people who drink the wine? Well, she argues, obviously wine doesn’t get made unless there are people who will buy and drink it. So their likes and dislikes clearly shape the region’s wine identity alongside the other factors. It is narrrow-minded (or manybe silo-minded) to think of wine apart from the people for whom it is made.

Wine & Water Revisited

And then, to pick a narrower topic, there is the relationship between water and wine. Grapevines like to look at water, we are often told, and vineyards benefit from proximity to rivers, lakes, and oceans in several important ways. Very true.

But there is also this, Lepeltier suggests: Transportation of wine has been a problem for most of history. Overland transportation was very difficult before railroads. Water was the best way to move wine: oceans, rivers, lakes. Winegrowing regions near water enjoyed natural market pathways that encouraged their wine industries to grow. Wine production was more limited, more localized, where waterborne commerce did not exist.

To be clear, Lepeltier’s purpose isn’t simply to weave economics into the wine narrative where it is important; it is to create a framework, a way of thinking, so that the reader can link everything relevant to everything important. That’s a big task, so the author outlines the process in a brief introduction called “Reading One Thousand Vines.” 

Lepeltier tells us that she was frustrated when she started studying wine because the standard approach seemed to simplify and to encourage rote memorization. She found herself drawing upon her practical knowledge as a sommelièr and her critical thinking training as a student of philosophy. Silos began to tumble and this ambitious and important book is the result.

Everything’s Connected

You might be a little disoriented when you start to read One Thousand Vines because other wine books are quite linear (grapes, regions, wines, etc.). This book is more like the internet. Since everything is connected to everything else in some way, you can start just about anywhere and it will take you on a journey (which won’t be exactly the same as if you started somewhere else). You can dive in and out as I have been doing, too, always ending up with more insights than expected and new questions to explore.

That said, a book like this needs structure. The chapters are organized around the ideas of Reading Vines, Reading Landscapes, and Reading Wines. The topics are familiar enough, but the approach is different from most other books. It is a fascinating way to re-imagine wine, driven by philosophy but rich in real-world examples. I’ve learned a lot so far and look forward to making more unexpected connections.

Wondering about Wine

“I hope that reading this book will be an opportunity for you to experience wonder,” Lepeltier writes at the end of the introduction. Tasting wine can be wonderful. Can thinking about it engage the senses in the same way? Here’s your chance to find out.

One Thousand Vines is an exceptional achievement worthy of a special place on your wine bookshelf.

Strength in Numbers: VITÆVINO and Wine’s Global Battle for Hearts & Minds

November 5, 2024 By in wine, wine markets 1 Comment

There is a lot of work to do to restore wine to the place (in the market, in society) that many of us believe it deserves. Here in America, for example, we have recently concluded the successful launch of Come Over October, a program that seeks to replace the image of wine as dangerous alcohol with the idea of wine as an integral part of healthy and satisfying lifestyles.

What I liked best about Come Over October 2024 was that it provided a broad umbrella that wineries and wine regions big and small used to reach out to their customers. By seizing the opportunity, wineries and others generated a grassroots buzz. It is a very good beginning. The question now is, what next?

The headwinds that wine faces are global, not just local, and come from several points of the compass. So it is a good sign that Come Over October is not an isolated response. I want to draw your attention to two international movements that seek to advance wine’s agenda on different levels and in different ways.

VITÆVINO Declaration

Wine is threatened both from below (diminished consumer appreciation) and above (neo-prohibitionist government policies). Come Over October is meant to address the former problem. In Europe, a movement called VITÆVINO has been mobilized in part to take on the latter. The program is supported from above by powerful European industry groups (Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins, Confédération Européenne des Vignerons Indépendants. Copa-Cogeca and European Federation of Origin Wines), but also seeks to draw support from grassroots advocates.

Wine’s essential identity is under attack, according to VITÆVINO, and it is important to take action.

Wine is facing a significant existential threat as a growing anti-alcohol movement increasingly seeks to demonize alcoholic beverages. The responsible and moderate consumption of wine — which is the way the overwhelming majority of wine consumers enjoy it — is being stigmatised by the removal of the distinction between alcohol abuse and the moderate wine consumption within a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Policy-makers, wine industry professionals, and wine-loving citizens are invited to sign the VITÆVINO Declaration in order to protect and preserve wine’s cultural role, value its socio-economic impact, and to give voice to moderation.

VITÆVINO went live on October 1 (what is it about October?). About 10,000 individuals (some of whom can be seen in this collection of video presentations) have signed the declaration so far, mainly in Europe but around the world, too, including a few in America. Significantly, some of the first to sign were elected members of the European Parliament, where alcohol regulation is an important issue.

The discussions that produced VITÆVINO began several years ago when European wine industry leaders realized that the wine industry was being increasingly attacked by anti-alcohol forces. Ignacio Sánchez Recarte, general secretary of the Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins, determined that an organized two-prong approach was needed, both political action at the national and EU level and also the development of broad-based grassroots support for wine culture and the wine industry.

This campaign invites everyone — from wine producers and exporters to sommeliers, bartenders, policymakers, and wine lovers alike — to unite in support of wine. It encourages participants to defend a product that embodies agricultural heritage, cultural legacy, and a symbol of conviviality. Together, we assert the right to enjoy wine in moderation, preserving its legacy and securing its future.

The next step is to broaden and deepen the movement by encouraging more stakeholders around the world to sign the VITÆVINO declaration, making it a true global movement, and to forge alliances with other groups such as Fondo Vitivinícola Mendoza in Argentina and Come Over October in the United States.

Looking ahead, our plan is to gather as many signatures as possible to amplify the voices of those advocating for wine worldwide and to create a united platform for wine supporters globally.

Beyond our ambition to expand both numerically and geographically, we aim to build a network grounded in shared goals and values. To start, the campaign’s results will be presented at the European Parliament in mid-January 2025, hosted by MEPs. We also encourage everyone in our field to feature VITÆVINO at wine and agricultural events with a dedicated stand or corner. Additionally, we are developing an art-based project to further support our mission, with details to be shared soon through our dedicated channels.

Wine in Moderation

Come Over October and VITÆVINO are both relatively recent initiatives, but Wine in Moderation traces its history back to 2007-2008. Originally focused on Europe to provide a countervailing voice to neo-prohibitionist policies and rhetoric. It is now a global movement, although it has not caught fire here in America yet.

When I mention Wine in Moderation to my friends in California, they seem to roll their eyes (maybe it is just my imagination). I think what they hear is Wine in MODERATION and wonder why in the world they would want to tell people to drink less wine. But the intended message, as I understand it, is WINE in Moderation, promoting wine as a natural element of a healthy lifestyle.

A 2019 Wine Economist column asked, “What Can We Learn from the Wine in Moderation Movement?” The answer, in part, was this.

Wine in Moderation movement members are given the tools they need to spread the word, which is a model that could work here in the U.S. Leadership is needed, of course, but it seems to me that our many regional wine associations and wine companies, too, would benefit from bringing a coordinated message into their diverse communications programs.

I can imagine a program with a general message agreed at a high level, but implemented with creative local twists and turns by the dozens of regional wine associations around the U.S. Such a plan would share the creative energy (and cost) while leveraging wine’s broad and diverse base.

Work together? Is that realistic? Well, what’s the alternative? In Europe, as George Sandeman said, the alternative was being regulated like tobacco. The alternative here in the U.S. might be a  gradual (and then sudden) wine market bust.

Obviously I was skeptical when I wrote those words back in 2019 that the industry could come together to address market challenges, but recent events in the U.S. and across the global wine patch make me more optimistic.

Will Come Over October, the VITÆVINO Declaration, Wine in Moderation, and other initiatives solve the wine world’s problems? Silver bullets are hard to find and hope is not a strategy. Much hard work is required and strength in numbers is welcome, too. It is a good thing that many individuals and groups are tackling the problem on different levels and in different ways.

>>><<<

Thanks to George Sandeman for alerting me to the VITÆVINO Delaration project and to Susana Garcia Dolla for introducing me to Wine in Moderation a few years ago when we were both speakers at a meeting in Porto.  Special thanks to Gaya Ducceschi, Head of Wine & Society and Communication for CEEV for answering my questions about VITÆVINO (some of which are quoted in the text above).

Wine & Value: Push, Pull, Squeeze

October 29, 2024 By in wine, wine markets 6 Comments

A cynic, according to Oscar Wilde, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. For some reason, this characterization is often associated with “dismal science” economists like me. Today’s Wine Economist column hopes to make an exception to Wilde’s rule by focusing on wine’s value problem and how understanding it can help explain recent market trends.

Price versus Value

Inflation is on everyone’s mind these days (both as an election issue and in more general terms), so it is not surprising that there is concern about the high cost of wine. But when I look at other consumer categories (as I did on The Wine Economist several weeks ago), I find that price isn’t as important to consumers today as value.

Consumers seem to recognize that sometimes when you pay less you get less. They are willing to pay more when they believe they get better value. A focus on value and not just price is not new, of course. Although it is easy to imagine that the Two Buck Chuck boom of a few years ago was driven by low price, it was true that there were even cheaper options. Many of the wine drinkers who embraced TBC cited value as the appeal. TBC is a two dollar wine, they’d say, that tastes like a five dollar wine.

Push versus Pull

Many wine consumers have shifted up a shelf or two on the wine wall in recent years in a process called Premiumization. Why have they done this? Did they wake up one morning and think that they just weren’t spending enough on wine? Probably not. Maybe they were pulled up by the higher quality of more expensive wines. I am sure that is the case for many.

But it is also possible that they were pushed up by falling quality and poorer value of the wines they had been drinking before. Did the value proposition of those mainstream wines deteriorate?

The Big Squeeze

Both wine producers and winegrape growers have been squeezed in recent years as costs have risen faster than price. One way that winegrowers have reacted is by increasing vineyard yields. This can be often be done without affecting grape quality, but only up to a point, as I understand it. When growers are squeezed so hard, quality can suffer and this can affect the perceived value of the resulting wine.

I know some growers who believe the value problem comes from a different source. They see wineries, caught in a cost squeeze themselves, substituting cheaper imported bulk wine (there is a lot of it on the market these days) for higher-cost domestic wine. California growers might argue that this dilutes quality.

Whatever the reason, the demand for wines below $10 (and now above $10, too) has been falling for many years. There are certainly many reasons for this phenomenon, but I think the value hypothesis is part of the problem. Value-seeking consumers have reacted to changing circumstances by shifting their wine-buying behavior, pushed by lower value here, pulled by high perceived value there, and squeezed by general economic conditions.

Some Implications

If budget-constrained consumers find themselves forced to move to higher price points in order to find the value that you used to get at lower cost, then it is not surprising that they have reduced the volume of wine they purchase.

If consumers believe that white wines give them the value they seek at lower cost than red wines, this might explain some of the red-to-white wine shift that we are seeing.

If correct, my speculations about value explain some but surely not all of the changes we have seen in the wine industry and raise an interesting question. Are the wine industry’s reactions to the current crisis addressing the cause of the problem or only the symptoms?