We don't need no education!

At the risk of sounding presumputous, I believe that I may have the answer to a long list of the problems that assail the world today, from Islamic extremism to teenage pregnancy, smoking, gun crime, gang warfare, drug and alcohol abuse... You name the issue and my solution stands a sporting chance of solving it. All we need to do in any of these cases is... to sprinkle it with a little pixie dust.

Ok, so I was being facetious. I shouldn't have said pixie dust. What I ought to have said was "education". There, now that makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? And unlike pixie dust, education really is the perfect word to utter when confronted with an intractable social issue. The second best thing about proposing education as a solution to the woes of the world is that almost no-one is going to disagree with you. Even professional contrarians like me are forced to nod sagely and acknowledge that yes, if everyone has been educated in the appropriate way, most of them will probably behave rather better. But that, as I say is only the second best thing. By far the best thing is that saying "education" is gloriously cheap in terms of money and effort. After all, much of the responsibility of actually cramming new ideas into possibly unwilling heads is always shunted along to someone else.

Which leaves the people who make and sell wine to go on making and selling wine, and the people who write about it to go on sharing their thoughts with the minority of the population that has already taken the trouble to listen to them. Education, for the wine industry, generally consists of holding tastings - for relatively small numbers of interested people - writing books and articles - generally for the same kind of interested readers - and trying - usually unsuccessfully - to get some mention of wine onto television or radio where it might hit a broader audience. Beyond this, there are efforts by industry-funded groups like Drinkaware in the UK to help parents and schools spread the word of moderation amongst the impressionable young. Though not, obviously, among their less impressionable parents, an apparently growing number of whom are doing irreversible damage to their their livers by drinking a bottle or so of wine every evening. (Some of you may have tripped over those words "apparently growing", but it's an inconvenient truth that alcohol-related liver disease has grown over fourfold in recent years in the UK, while the number of sufferers from all other major conditions is falling.)

Drinkaware does its best, producing packs that help schools and parents talk to children about alcohol and handing out grants to theatre companies to mount performances that encourage moderation. But even if/when Drinkaware gets the £5m annual budget it is projecting, this is a drop in the ocean when it comes to educating the public - especially when set against the drinks industry's £600-800m marketing budget. Now, it might not seem unreasonable to imagine that responsible adults who take the trouble to access the Drinkaware website to downoads that material might not be the ones in greatest need of help. But one might be wrong. While writing this, I have just talked to a French friend who lives in the UK and has worked in the wine industry. Last weekend she collected her 16 year old daughter from a party at which she and her friends were almost all too drunk to stand. Most, as she graphically described it, were lying in their own vomit.

These well brought up, middle class kids had all been "educated" by responsible parents about how to handle alcohol sensibly. Unfortunately, the vodka apparently trumped the education. But at least, when they sober up, my friend's daughter and her privately educated friends can read, write, divide and multiply reasonably proficiently. Unlike a frightening number of the young people who are currently on the job market. According to a 2011 survey of 500 of its members by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) over a third fail to meet basic mathematical skills and a terrifying 42% have inadequate literacy. These, don't forget, are young people who have recently emerged from being involuntarily educated on a daily basis.

When I raised the issue of wine-drinking middle class alcoholics last week and suggested that it might be a good idea for pubs to stop selling wine by the third-of-a-bottle, several people disagreed, saying that it was a "society" problem that needed a healthy dose of the "E" word. When I challenged one of these would-be educationalists to describe precisely how he would go about "educating" middle-aged, middle class men and women, he said that wasn't his job; he'd made a positive proposal. It was up to others to come up with ways to make it work.

Obviously, for reasons I've already explained, I'm not saying that education isn't a good idea; I'm merely pointing out that it's far, far easier to say than to implement with any success. And until someone proves that they really are using it as a remedy rather than a paliative, I think I'll go on making concrete suggestions for ways that the wine industry might try to address the problem rather than wait for the government to do so. Inconveniently, for people like me who don't like government regulation, there is some evidence that it can be rather more effective than the alternatives. In 2007, despite all the efforts of a broad array of well-meaning people (and quite a lot of education), 24% of under-18-year olds in the UK still opted to smoke. In that year, the government raised the legal age at which tobacco can be bought from 16 to 18. In 2010, according to a study by University College London, the proportion of young smokers had fallen to 17%. But then, I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll deny the existence of a connection between the two.

On reflection, I was wrong to pick on pixie dust as my solution to problems like alcohol abuse. Actually, cake would be a far better choice. I can see Marie Antoinette looking out at the revolting populace and uttering the words "let them be educated!"

Stop supersizing wine

"What can I do? It's up to society to deal with alcohol abuse. It's not the responsibility of the wine industry..." That was the response (through social media) of many wine professionals to my post on the Alastair Campbell "Britain's hidden alcoholics" programme. I did my best to point out that saying "If people use my product irresponsibly, it's not my concern" is precisely the argument put forward by gun manufacturers: hundreds of millions of US gun owners do themselves and others no harm with their weapons. But that hasn't stopped governments in most of the rest of the world from effectively preventing gun manufacturers from selling their wares. If industries don't self-regulate, they tend to find others will do the job for them. Often in ways they find distasteful.

Which brings me to a campaign I've just kicked off to encourage a bit of self regulation in the UK and Australia - against the 250ml serving in bars and pubs. The idea of putting a third of a bottle of wine into a glass is a recent notion, with no tradition in the UK or elsewhere. When it's part of a round-buying culture, unlike the sale of bottles or carafes, it actually encourages excessive drinking . How many people drinking their big glass of red or white know that they're actually consuming 50% more alcohol than their beer-drinking companion? (Which is ironic when one considers that the beer drinker is more likely to be male and the wine drinker female).

This is most emphatically not a spoilsport, "wowser" (to use the Australian expression), anti-alcohol move. When I'm in a bar or pub, I usually buy a bottle or carafe and a few glasses and may well end up drinking much more than the two or three units my doctor would advise. But I'm not putting any pressure on anyone else to drink at my speed. Conversely I'm not pressured to drink at theirs.

So, I've set up a Facebook group called stop.supersizing.wine If you agree that there is nothing very civilised about selling wine by the bucket, please join it and, more usefully still, spread the word. My plan is to get a lot of names, including some influential ones, on board and shame the on trade into voluntarily dropping the glasses - before the government forces them to do so.

Japanese miniatures

Water colours or oils? Chamber music or orchestral? Those were the kinds of questions that sprang to mind as I tasted my way through a series of Japan’s best Koshus. For anyone unfamiliar with this Japanese grape (a description that I’d imagine applies to 99.9999% of wine consumers), it is a pink skinned vinifera grown in Yamanashi, a region close to Mount Fuji. It is Japan’s most widely grown wine variety but with less than 500 ha of vineyards, it represents a smaller-than-homeopathic drop in the global bucket. One might imagine that Japan’s 150m population would be able to consume it all over not very many meals, but the producers are evidently keen to export and have taken on a highly respected Master of Wine called Lynne Sherriff to help them develop sales in Europe.

Three years into this process, sales are still tiny (one sommelier says he hand-sold 10 bottles last year) but Ms Sherriff has undeniably created something of a Koshu buzz among the great and good. Last week, Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier, Anthony Rose and the (surprisingly humorous) Japanese ambassador) were among the group at Hibiscus restaurant to sample 13 wines with a set of dishes.

So back to those water colours. Koshu is either delightfully subtle or flavour-challenged, depending on your point of view and taste. At its best, it has a very floral (rose, honeysuckle and violet) nose (arguably its best point) and a creamy flavour that reminds me of a light, apple puree and egg-white pudding my mother used to make called apple snow. Some also have notes of quince and sweet spice, but none is flavour-packed. An oaked version from Suntory illustrated the problem with this grape; to my mind it looked like a fragile beauty caked in (high quality) makeup. A sparkling example was unsuccessful for a different reason: it simply did not have enough flavour for the bubbles.

Even the best of these watery-pale wines are challenging though. Serve them as an aperitif to non wine-buff friends and there’s a high risk of them being swallowed without anyone pausing to think about what’s in their glasses. Put them with any flavoursome dish and they will probably suffer the same fate. Maybe you should save them for the day when you are preparing a very, very plainly cooked flat fish.

My own experience of the variety is actually slightly wider than many of the others at the lunch because eight or so years ago I was one of a pair of overseas judges at the first Japan Wine Competition at which I sipped and spat a long series of examples, often struggling to find words to describe their fleeting flavours. My favourites then were, I discovered, still among my favourites today: Grace (the only one to have overt gingerbread and clove spice) and Rubaiyat (the most quince-like), along with L’Orient (maybe the most complex) and Marquis (which combines lemon rind with the apple).

I have no idea where these wines fit into my or any non-Japanese wine drinker’s repertoire; they are a bit like a subtly-patterned tie that goes very well with a shirt one rarely wears. In this, they are not unlike the best examples of Swiss Chasselas and, like those wines, should definitely be sealed under screwcaps to maintain their freshness

What's the frequency?

“My grandparents drink wine every day. I remember, when I was about 6 years old [15 years ago], my parents used to do that too. Now it’s when they see friends or for more special meals. Once or twice a week. Maybe three times...”

Single conversations should not be accorded undue significance, but when they seem to illustrate statistical trends it’s worth paying them a little attention. The words in the first paragraph were spoken by a bright, wine-enthusiastic 21 year old French girl studying for her wine business Masters at the Dijon Business School. Her parents live in Rasteau where they have a vineyard and are members of the cooperative. Yes, that’s right, 50-something year-olds who grow grapes for a living now drink wine less frequently than many lawyers and doctors in London or New York.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as oddities, but as I say, they seem to illustrate official French statistics that show over a third of the population as officially non-wine-drinkers. (The figure for women is close to 50%). The 21 year old’s comment also reflects research findings that link regular consumption to advanced age. Every time an old Frenchman dies, the average per-capita consumption fractionally drops...

Later in the same conversation, there was another little insight. “When I worked at the cellar door [in Rasteau] pouring wine for visitors, the men liked the [Cotes du Rhone] red and white but the women often said they found it too dry. And when that happened, the men didn’t buy...”

As I say, it’s just an anecdote and easy to dismiss. Especially if you’re an ostrich-minded member of the wine industry (a large proportion of the breed, I fear), or someone who simply enjoys a daily glass or two and wants to see others gain the pleasure you do. Not forgetting the health benefits.

But there’s the rub. Or couple of rubs. Most of the articles I’ve read suggest that those health benefits are actually associated with daily doses of a very small glass – and certainly not the half bottle favoured by many who believe themselves to be moderate wine drinkers. In fact significant risk of serious liver damage apparently begins at four bottles per week. In other words, half a bottle a night and an extra half with your Sunday lunch is not exactly what the doctor ordered.

Then there’s the officially-sanctioned suggestion that we should all take a couple of alcohol-free days per week to avoid becoming dependent. I can think of plenty of my wine industry friends who find the idea almost unimaginable (“I can’t remember the last day I didn’t have at least a glass”). But how many other mind- and body-altering substances would we all feel happy about ingesting every 24 hours? Caffeine is the obvious riposte, and maybe a similar weekly break from that drug would be no bad thing either for those of us who can easily down two or three cups each tea and coffee between dawn and dusk...

So, over to you, dear reader. What’s your frequency? Daily? Once, twice or thrice weekly?

Reaction to Alastair Campbell's BBC Panorama programme: "Britain's hidden alcoholics"

“I wish people would stop going on about binge drinking and the supposed damage caused by alcohol. The anti alcohol lobby simply wants to stop us all from enjoying ourselves. Obviously some people abuse alcohol, but they’re mostly kids over-indulging in spirits, RTDs and beer. Most wine drinkers consume in moderation and with food and wine is actually good for one's health. Get off our backs!”

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“I wish people would stop going on about excessive bonuses and the damage they do to our social structure. The banker-bashing lobby simply wants to stop us all making a bit of money. Obviously some people get bonuses that are a bit too big, but they’re just the chief execs who pocket a few million every year. Most bankers are like me. We work hard and earn our £250k bonuses and without banking, where would our economy be? Get off our backs!“

Reading and listening to wine industry reaction to efforts by the medical profession to reduce consumption is remarkably reminiscent of the bankers' response to any suggestion that their bonuses are abusive.

Alastair Campbell's programme was thoughtful and thought-provoking. People who hate its presenter's role in the lead up the the Iraq war (and possibly his role as Tony Blair's right-hand-man) can use that hatred to dismiss everything he said - and his frank description of his experience as an alcoholic. Some of those same people may also dislike Anne Robinson enough to sidestep the Weakest Link presenter's account of her alcoholism. But what about the middle class company director who described how his wine drinking had almost destroyed his liver? And the 30-year-old designer who talked about how she had switched from vodka to wine, and lost all control of her life?

It's harder too, to shut one's mind to the ambulance men revealing that the majority of the alcohol-damaged people they are scraping off the street are business people in suits. harder too to dismiss the doctors who point out that liver disease (at which the significant risk begins at around half a bottle of wine per per day) is the only medical condition to be on the rise in the UK (by 4-500% in recent years).

As one of the doctors insightfully commented: in Britain, we've adopted the European habit of drinking wine with our meals but we haven't dropped our tradition of boozing without food. So we do both - and end up with the worst of all worlds.

Even assuming that we can honestly say that we don't need that half a bottle of wine (or so) we routinely enjoy every day, we should pause before ignoring the huge incidence of quiet wine-driven alcohol abuse to be found in suburban streets around the country, or pretending that it isn't there. Unless we want to behave like those bankers...

Dinner priorities

Imagine for a moment, you are joining five of your friends who are already sitting at a restaurant table. They are all tucking into plates of the same delicious roast chicken but the contents of their glasses differ. Al is drinking Cotes du Rhone; Bea is sipping at a Riesling; Carl’s tankard is full of Guiness; Dee is on water and Ed has a Coke.

Ok, let’s change the picture. The same five friends are sitting at the same table. This time, they all have glasses of a delicious Cotes du Rhone (probably the one Al was drinking in the other scenario) but as you’ll have guessed, it’s the food that’s diverse. Al is eating the same chicken as before, Bea is relishing a prawn curry, Carl is enjoying a slice of rare roast beef, Dee has decided to pass and Ed has a slice of chocolate cake.

Setting aside the deliberate exaggeration, the first picture is one you might be more likely to encounter in the US, where restaurants have more dynamic wine-by-the-glass programmes; the second reflects the European tradition of diners tending to compromise over which bottle of wine they will all drink with their varied dishes.

My question is “given the fact that you are going to be sitting at these tables with your friends, does one of the scenarios appeal to you more than the other. If so, which would it be? And why?

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that if it’s a dinner with friends, I’d be equally happy with either. And yes, I do have friends who drink Coke with their chicken and wouldn’t mind washing their chocolate cake down with a glass of red.

People are fascinated by potatoes

Whenever I tell people that I know a little about potatoes, there's a brief pause while - as I now appreciate - they privately relish the prospect of being able to broaden their knowledge of a subject in which so many of them are fascinated. I tell them about the 4,000 varieties of potato, all of which probably come from one place in Peru. I remind them that the roast potato on our plate is of the same family as the deadly nightshade, and that man domesticated potatoes 8,000 years ago and that they first arrived in Asia in around 1600, a few decades before they were introduced to Europe. Then I go on to list some of my favourite types of potato - Désirée, King Edward, Maris Piper and Highland Burgundy Red - and the best ways to cook them.

Of course there are some - you might be among them - who are surprised to learn about the depth of general interest in potatoes. But just think how many we all eat, and the range of potatoes that are now on offer in supermarkets. Just consider the evidence: the popularity of websites like lovepotatoes, and the number of online references to potatoes. Try googling "potatoes" and you'll find there are a staggering 377,000,000 results.

I'm joking of course (though not about that google statistic). I actually know very little about potatoes. Like most other humans, I enjoy eating them in a number of forms and could, if tortured, list a maximum of half a dozen varieties (a list that wouldn't include Highland Burgundy Red by the way). You may have read my first paragraph with a growing hunger for a lot more information - or you may have thought "that's enough for the moment thank you..." And you might actually have even questioned the title of this post. "No", you might have thought, "people may have a passing curiosity about potatoes, but they're not really that interested in them".

Which is precisely what I'd say about wine. At best, to judge by the number of sites on offer by Google (919,000,000), they are more than a third as interested in wine, with its myriad varieties and place in western culture as in the humble spud.

People who are interested in anything tend to imagine that large numbers of other people share their enthusiasm - or would if given the chance and the encouragement. In a few cases they can justify that belief. Tens of millions of viewers do tune into watch soccer matches. These sorts of numbers do not show any visible signs of a fascination with wine. They don't buy large numbers of books or magazines or read blogs. When newspapers drop their wine columns or columnists, the protests are audible but limited.

The he enthusiasts blame negative forces. We would, they claim, have lots more wine columns in newspapers and wine programmes on television if it weren't for narrow-minded publishers and tv companies who won't let people have them. It's only a lack of advertising, they say, that explains the lack of wine columns - while conveniently overlooking the absence of regular articles on watches in publications that are full of Rolex ads.

The point behind this post is that a misplaced belief in a widespread interest in wine handily removes the need for wine producers to make an effort to engage with potential buyers. When these enthusiasts say things like "surely there is a difficulty that's inherent in the complexity that we most like about wine?" and "I look for information on the internet first, then I buy" (both direct quotes), they reveal the gulf that lies between them and the vast majority of normal potato eaters and wine drinkers.

Why do you do what you do? (a question for professionals)

Why do you make wine - and make it in the way you do? Or choose and sell wine that somebody else has made? Beyond doing so as a way to pay your bills? (Please ponder your answer and scroll down)
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Okay, to my mind, there's only one top level answer:

"to give somebody something they - and possibly their friends/family around them - are going to enjoy drinking, and for a price they think reasonable".

Everything beyond that - thoughts such as "expressing the terroir of my region" should be secondary. Because, if it isn't a pleasurable drink, why should anyone but the most obsessive wine geek, care about the terroir?

If this seems a little simplistic to you, I'm sorry, but I think it raises some pretty fundamental questions. If you're faced with a rainy, cold vintage, do you avail yourself of the 15% allowance to make your wine prettier? If you've made your first pure Sangiovese or Gruner Veltliner in a place where it's never been grown before, and it's pleasant enough but one-dimensional, do you simply bottle it and sell it for a (relatively high) price that reflects your costs of production, or do you decide not to sell this vintage (blending it instead into something else)? Or improve it by adding a small dose of something else?

Most winemakers I know prefer to follow the purist line, allowing their customers to experience the unripe grapes or simple flavours. But why? If they were cooks they would be a lot less happy to send out a dish they knew to be sub-standard. There aren't many restaurants where waiters say "Sorry if the steak's tough, but that was the best the butcher could provide".

In the old days, when there were far fewer regions and far fewer decent vintages, second-rate wine was something people often had to put up with. Today, no one needs to drink - or eat - anything they don't enjoy.

Food - and drink - for thought.

Sweet baby roo

Following up on my post about Moscato, here's the latest baby from Yellow Tail, along with a link to the press release

The next big thing

They say there’s nothing you can bet on with a cast-iron guarantee of being right - apart from the inexorability of death and taxes. Well, here’s my best shot at a sure-fire winner for the wine industry. The next big thing - the thing that ’s going to make Pinot Grigio look like an unusually small Smurf, is going to be… Moscato.

Now, you may possibly have read those last few words without letting forth as much as a silent groan, but if you didn’t even wince, you’re probably in a minority. I know, because I’ve had a fair few conversations with all sorts of wine people over the last few weeks, and the ones that have have accepted my prediction with any kind of equanimity are the exceptions to the rule. By far the most bothered have probably been the winemakers, and most especially the winemakers who suspect that a likely result of any kind of Moscato boom will include their actually having to turn Muscat grapes into a sweet, grapey beverage.

Before considering why the wine world is likely to treat a global Moscato Moment as though it were the next worst thing to the emergence of a virulent breed of resistant phylloxera, perhaps it’s time for me to explain why I’m so sure I’m right. And why I’d go as far as to say that if Muscat didn’t exist, some clever people would be currently working flat out to invent it.

Just consider the way most red, white and pink wines taste, and the way Moscato tastes. Which of these most closely resembles most of the stuff most people most enjoy drinking? Fruit juice, Coca Cola, Red Bull, tonic water and every other kind of non alcoholic beverage… they’re all sweet. As is a Starbucks Grande Latte, by the way, which, at 17g of sugar, has one and three quarters as much sweetness as a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. All of these drinks have helped lay the foundations for Moscato, but so have a fair few bottles of wine. A litre of average Pinot Grigio may easily have five or six grams of sugar; Yellow Tail Merlot and a wide range of reds have weighed in at 10g/l or more, while Extra Dry Prosecco can be up at 17g/litre. Just behind White Zinfandel at 20g.

For most modern purists, the very idea of semi-sweet and frankly sweet wine - unless it has been blessed by botrytis - is anathema. Even Germany, historically home of some of the most glorious naturally sweet Kabinetts, is now marching to the beat of the dry, dry drum. But Germany is far from the only place that has turned its back on sweet wine.

Bordeaux once produced an ocean of - pretty filthy, it must be said - sugary white wine. Until a Frenchman called Louis Oudart was invited to Piedmont by the Marchesa di Barolo, the most famous wine of her region would have often been sweet. In those days, Champagne was often also lusciously sweet, making it a far better partner for pudding than the brut that is often wasted on this stage of the meal today.

Sweet wines have crept back onto the shelves over the last few years. In some countries, this has been in the shape of frankly sugary pinks - one of the huge successes of the last few years - while in others it has been in the form of reds that have been sweetened after fermentation. In the US, the latest trend has been the arrival of smartly packaged wines such as Sweet Bliss White (90g/l) and Adler Fels’ recently launched Totally Random Sweet Red. Sales of frankly labeled sweet wines in the US are currently up to 500,000 cases. Not a huge amount when viewed in the context of the market as a whole, but still pretty significant, given the fact that this was acategory thar did not exist at all a few years ago.

If unashamedly sweet reds and whites are now becoming socially acceptable, the stage seems to be perfectly set for the entrance of a grape with a sexy-sounding Italian name and a deliciously grapey flavour. In the US, Moscato is already on a roll. According to the August 18 2011 edition of Market Watch, it was the fastest growing varietal in America with brands like Gallo’s Barefoot and Woodbridge seeing a tenfold increase in sales over the last three years.

If the US loves Moscato, there are plenty of other markets that are likely to share its enthusiasm. At DoILikeIt? we carried out some research before Christmas in the UK that involved giving Moscato to food and wine enthusiasts as part of a blind line-up. While there were plenty who dismissed it as being too sweet for their taste, over half embraced it. Less formal research with Chinese female wine drinkers revealed even greater potential for the style.

For wine purists, who rarely imagine drinking this kind of drink themselves, the trend smacks of barbarism. I choose to differ. I happen to love fresh, good examples of Moscato and would much rather be offered a well chilled glass on a hot day sitting by a swimming pool than a long list of great dry reds and whites. But that’s not my point. I can also easily understand why a large number of people whose other favourite drinks include Coke, latte, gin-and-tonic and orange juice might also prefer a frankly grapey beverage to a tannic, weedily unripe-tasting basic red or white with an authentically earthy gout de terroir.

Disclosure. I'm putting my own money where my mouth is, by speculatively shipping a few cases of le Grand Noir Languedoc Moscato to the US and launching a study into Chinese reactions to the style. Watch this space.

If alcohol labels told the truth

Not a lot to say about these, except that they raised a smile on a monday morning.

All courtesy of The Chive

That's quite enough about me. Let's talk about you. How did you enjoy my show..?

A column that appears in the December 2011 edition of Meininger's Wine Business International

“Hello, my name’s George. I’d like to tell you all about my parents, the place where I grew up and the school I went to and the exams I passed. When I’ve done all that, I’m sure you’ll want me to be your friend”.

If George, or anyone like him introduced himself in those terms at a party, even the most polite among us would be desperately looking over his shoulder for someone else to talk to; the rest of us would already have made our excuses and be heading straight for the door.

But George seems to be a very attractive role model for the wine industry. Give many producers the opportunity to express themselves and the first thing they will do is launch into all manner of technical details about the way the stuff in their bottle has been produced. Take this little offering about its Pinot Noir from the website of a large New World winery.

“Harvest commenced 6th April. The grapes were gently destemmed, allowing whole berries to remain intact. After a cold soak, each parcel was fermented separately, with a combination of wild and cultured yeast. Each batch was hand plunged to extract the vibrant colour, flavour and delicate tannin structure. Each parcel was then pressed separately to a mix of new and used French oak barrels or remained in tank. In the spring after completing malolactic fermentation, each parcel and tank was tasted and blended.”

Once the reader has made their way through the jungle of jargon – “destemmed”; “cold soak”; “parcel”, “cultured yeast”, “hand plunged”, “tannin structure”; “malolactic fermentation” – they are belatedly treated to a brief description of the way the wine looks and tastes.

“Garnet red. Deep red fruit notes with a hint of spice. Generous flavours of cherry and currant combine with subtle oak. The silky dry tannins lead to a generous fruitful finish.”

The sense of priorities is all too clear. Just 31 relatively opaque words (what are "silky dry tannins"? one might reasonably ask) about the stuff a consumer might pay for and get to drink, against 82 on the process used to make it. I haven’t named the winery, because to single it out would be unfair: it is far too typical of the way so much of the wine industry thinks. Of course we are not always so fixated on the technicalities of winemaking. Elsewhere, in the Old World, the focus might be on the age of the chateau or the number of generations of the family that have been involved in winemaking, or even the peculiarities of the soil in which the vines are grown. In other words, we’ll talk about almost anything on earth – apart from the flavour of the wine and the way it might best be served.

Most recently, the arrival on the scene of Youtube and of QR codes that can be scanned by anyone with smartphones such as Blackberries and iPhones, have jointly offered wine producers with an exciting new opportunity to behave like George. Scan the code on some bottles and you will be whisked directly to a video in which the winemaker provides a brief presentation while standing among his vines or barrels. In the best of these, he or she will taste their wine and describe the way it tastes, but in others the focus will be on allowing viewers to admire the incline of the vineyards or the pattern formed by the lines of casks in the cellars.

For anyone involved in the business of selling cars, cosmetics or almost anything else, this way of thinking would seem to be bizarre. Canon and Nikon don’t waste their time informing us who designed their cameras or where they were manufactured; they tell us how they will allow us to take better pictures. Jaguar and Toyota want us to know how fast, economical, safe and sexy their latest models are, not how cleverly their engines were constructed.

What these companies understand is that the only time we – and by that I mean a small minority of us - are likely to be interested in the background to a product is once we have already developed an emotional and intellectual attachment to it. Some of the people who have bought Apple’s iPods, iMacs and iPads might, conceivably, be curious about Sir Jonathan Ive, the firm’s brilliant head of design. Women who daily spray themselves with Guerlain perfumes can delve into perfumer’s website to read about Jean Paul Guerlain and Thierry Wasser the firm’s recently-arrived chief perfumer. But the information about both men comes after a brilliant section called “My fragrance consultation” that invites visitors to discover precisely the kind of Guerlain perfume that is most likely to suit them.

Just reread that last sentence. Yes, Guerlain cleverly puts itself into the shoes of the person reading their website. It’s “My” consultation, not “Your” consultation. Unlike George – and too much of the wine world – they know that what interests most of us, is us. And the reason we buy wine has nothing to do with the people who produced it, and everything to do with the way that it might just improve our lives.

Portrait of the Artist as a Winemaker

A column that appears in the September 2010 edition of Meininger's Wine Business International

Are you an artist or an artisan? The question is one that needs to be carefully considered by anyone in almost any kind of business today. The difference
between these two similarly honourable human activities is quite fundamental. Artisans make things like tables, chairs, clocks, glasses and rugs. They may use artistic skills to render these items aesthetically pleasing, or they can adopt utilitarian designs that place function above form. In either case, however, whatever they produce has, to use the modern jargon, to be fit for purpose.

Tables and chairs usually have four legs of equal length because most customers reject wobbly furniture. Another essential quality expected of artisans is consistency. Even when they are blowing glasses by hand, they still have to produce a set of goblets that are almost identical.
Artists march to the beat of a very different drum. Their task is to express themselves and their personal perception of the world around them. An artist might quite legitimately make a chair out of ice cream cones on which no one could actually sit. Or a clock whose hands never move. Crucially, he or she is rarely expected to explain or defend the artworks they have conceived. These are supposed to speak for themselves - if they have something to say — and it is up to viewers to develop our own understanding of them, possibly with a little help from a well-informed critic.

I’d like to suggest that almost every commercial activity can be more or less pigeonholed into one of these categories. Michelin-starred chefs are artists (though they have to maintain a certain measure of consistency); the cooks in most humbler restaurants are, however, artisans. Most of us would prefer a taxi driver to be an artisan; his job, after all, is to get us from one place to another as efficiently a possible. And the same might be said of authors of factual books, whereas novelists and poets are artists. Journalists are allowed the occasional poetic phrase, but they are as obliged to respect the facts of their stories as carpenters are to create chairs that can withstand the weight of an average human being.

Now let’s look at the world of wine. Most winemakers, even when they are at the helm of enterprises turning out tens of thousands of cases of wine, instinctively consider themselves to be artists, and openly reject many of the characteristics associated with artisanship.

Consistency – unless the wine in question is non-vintage Champagne – is usually treated with disdain. Winemakers take pride in the variation between vintages and, in an astonishing number of cases, are still happy to accept the random oxidation and occasionally mouldy character that inevitably accompany the use of natural corks. The very idea of wanting to iron out vintages is dismissed as “industrial”.

When winemakers talk about the need to “educate” consumers about grapes and regions, it is eerily reminiscent of artists’ calls for more art appreciation courses. European winemakers’ reluctance to provide informative back-labels or main labels that reveal the grape variety used to make the wine, or its sweetness, recall a painter refusing to disclose the meaning of his or her “opus one”.

Art and wine classes are obviously a good thing – for people who choose to take them and absorb their contents. But art, for most people, is probably a mass-produced poster that cheers up an empty bit of wall. And wine is a liquid they enjoy drinking without the expenditure of too much thought.

Winemakers who look down on this kind of attitude should perhaps take the time to look around their own homes. How many of the things by which they are surrounded are the work of artists, and how many conform to more artisan rules?

Does the hand-knitted sweater in the cupboard reveal the nature of the fabric from which it has been made and how ir should be washed? Does the single-estate oliveoil come with recommendations of how long it should be kept? Do the covers of the book on the bedside table include a description of the nature of the story within and a few words about the author?
Someone once bluntly said in response to the suggestion that a bottle of wine was an artistic masterpiece, “If I want art, I’ll buy a painting”. Maybe that was going a little too far, but is it too much to ask for winemakers to accept that they might possibly have more in common with a chair maker or a cheese maker than a sculptor.

Is the UK the wine world's Afghanistan?

A column that appears in the December 2010 edition of Meininger's Wine Business International

The notion of the unwinnable war is far from new. The difference today, since the later days of the Vietnam war and the beginning of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that it has become acceptable to talk about unwinnability without automatically being accused of wanting to demoralise the troops. There is a parallel with business. In wars and sporting encounters, it is customary to grit one’s teeth and fight until the bitter end. In the world of making, buying and selling, however, it is acknowledged that, when the numbers cease to add up it is quite proper to sell up or close down. In recent weeks, the biggest example of this kind of acknowledgment has been the decision by Constellation Brands to sell its Australian and UK operations to a Sydney-based private equity group. The sale, and its financial implications are significant. The US giant paid AU$1.85bn for these businesses in 2003; today, it is offloading 80% of its shares in them for a mere AU$290.

With admirable understatement, Rob Sands, Constellation’s chief executive described the sale as “tidying up” its portfolio in the face of "challenging market conditions." It is no coincidence that brands like the Canadian Jackson-Triggs, and Inniskillin, New Zealand’s Nobilo and California’s Robert Mondavi and Ravenswood were not subject to this kind of early spring cleaning. These, of course, are labels with a successful record in the US, while the brands that were sold all depended heavily on the UK.

Constellation is far from alone in feeling disenchanted with the British wine market. The renaming by Foster’s of its historically UK-focused wine business as Treasury Wine Estates and its hiving off have widely been seen as a prelude to a sale. Pernod Ricard also set up a separate fine wine division in 2010, giving rise to rumours that it might sell off Jacob’s Creek and Brancott Estate, the New Zealand brand that was formerly known as Montana. The French firm may indeed be intending to hold onto these brands, but there are certainly questions about how committed it is to the UK market. The renaming of Montana, after all, was driven by the need to make the brand more palatable to US consumers who were unready to buy Sauvignon Blanc they thought came from a sparsely-populated state in the north of their country.

If Pernod Ricard is not pulling out of Britain, it is certainly pulling back from the games UK retailers have asked it to play. Along with the similarly disenchanted Gallo Family Estates, it has made it clear that loss-making discounting is not an activity it wishes to pursue. And if this means losing market share, so be it.

Diageo, the other giant of the wine world, has wisely, consistently and revealingly, declined even to try to sell its premium US wines in Britain. Instead, it has restricted its vinous efforts there to Piat d’Or and Blossom Hill: non-regional products with low production costs.

So, is the simple conclusion that the British wine market, for the moment at least, has become the Afghanistan of the wine world? Is it the market where the battles are too costly and thoughts of capturing hearts and minds now seem to be too ambitious?

Or is there a bigger question? Was Philip Bowman right when, as CEO of Allied Domecq, he openly wondered whether ownership in the wine business was really more appropriate for families and cooperatives than for investors looking for short- and even mid-term returns. The spirits business is far from easy, but it ticks many more boxes for anyone watching quarterly and half-yearly results. Scaleable major brands can be launched and built, and value can be added to them in ways that winemakers can rarely dream of. Just think of Hendricks gin and Grey Goose vodka. Of course many fail - as do many films - but the hits succeed so much more dramatically than any wine. The week that brought news of the Constellation sale also brought an announcement from Brown Forman that it was ready to offload its Californian Fetzer and Bonterra wine businesses. These are not Australian brands retreating from being battered by UK retailers; they’re US brands selling in North America.

I wish the private equity buyers of Hardy’s et al well, but I wonder how much fun they are really going to have with the extravagant Christmas present they have bought themselves.

Plus ça change

A column that appears in the October 2010 edition of Meininger's Wine Business International

A lot can happen in two years, and much can change beyond most of our imaginations. 24 months ago, we were all told that politics and the way we spend money had changed for good. A black man had been elected to the Presidency and ushered in a time of hope. Faced with the threat of imminent collapse in the banking, motor and other industries, all the talk was of a permanent end to partisanship and a move towards collective efforts to get America back on track.

On other pages in those same newspapers columnists picked over the bones of one of the most obvious and predictable victims of the recession. Conspicuous consumption, they declared, was dead. At a time when countless people were wondering whether they would still have a job or a house, it was no longer appropriate to be dazzling your entourage with a $10,000 handbag, or a $1,000 bottle of wine. But even when good times returned, we would handle our disposable income differently. Paradigms, we were told, had shifted. We were moving into a period of more considered consumption and of sustainability.

Fast forward to the eve of 2011. Millions of voters seem, for reasons that remain opaque to many beyond their shores, actually to hate their president and see an appeal in some of the undeniably eccentric candidates of the Tea Party.

A similar revival has been seen in the realm of conspicuous spending. Two years ago, many in the publishing world openly wondered how long the Financial Times could continue to publish its glossy international ‘How to Spend It’ supplement. Where would the advertisers come from? Who would want to read about hedonistic ways to spend thousands of dollars?

Today, the magazine is packed with advertising for watches, art, cars and clothes and a digital version was launched this year with the help of a £2m ($2.9m) advertising campaign. The presence of all that advertising is explained by the remarkable recovery in the sales of luxury goods.

A study by US analysts Bain & Co on behalf of Fondazione Altagamma, the Italian association of luxury producers has revealed an extraordinary recovery between 2009 and 2010. Sales of watches, jewelry, leather goods and designer clothes dropped by 8% in 2009 - less than one might have expected - but last year they have surged back by an estimated 10%.

Bain’s figures are supported by the results declared by luxury brand owners such as LVMH and Richemont, owner of brands such as Cartier, Dunhill and Mont Blanc. Sales for the five months until August 31 2010 by the latter company rose by 37 percent. Obviously China accounts for much of this growth, but not as much as you might suppose. Richemont’s sales rose by a dazzling 51% in Asia Pacific - but an even more impressive 52% in the Americas.

Many - probably most - members of the wine world viscerally dislike the notion of a bottle of wine as a luxury item. For them, it is an agricultural artifact - a piece of terroir - or a food or an artwork. Or a combination of these. What it should not be is something people buy in order to show off their wealth. To read the comments by some European wine critics, the very idea of the $1,000 bottle is absurd, if not actually obscene. Chateau Lafite gained little applause from these writers for cannily exploiting its Chinese success by adding a gold figure ‘8’ to the label of its 2008 wine.

Looked at rationally, however, the $1,000 bottle is no more crazy than the $10,000 handbag, the $100,000 watch or the $250,000 car. The only difference is that the makers of humbler cars, watches and bags seem to be rather more comfortable with the situation than their counterparts in the vineyards and cellars. It’s time for the wine industry to wake up to reality. Many of us might balk at paying mad prices for fermented grape juice, just as many of us might shake our heads in disbelief at the readiness of US voters to support political candidates from another planet. But my guess is in some form or other both are here to stay. Some of the wine professionals who learn to give luxury buyers what they want may actually fare better than those who are currently struggling to offer value for money.

Death of the Wine Critic

A column that appears in the July 2010 edition of Meininger's wine Business International

“The incessant whining of… critics as they find themselves jobless and journalistically homeless... sacrificial offerings to the bottom line. There has been a drastic kill-off… during the Great Recession, which has proven to be not a typical cyclical downturn, but a profound reordering of the media universe – the cannibalizing of traditional print by digital”.

Reports of the apparently terminal decline in the prospects of wine criticism will come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in the way our industry communicates with its customers. But the quote with which I opened this column actually had nothing to do with wine. Written by James Wolcott in the July 2010 edition of Vanity Fair, it is concerned with a species I’d have imagined to be far less endangered: the film critic. According to Salt Lake Tribune blogger Sean P. Means, no fewer than 65 critics have lost jobs from publications such as Newsweek, USA Today and The New Republic.

The wine world is very good at examining its own navel and ignoring changes in the landscape beyond its cellar and tasting room doors. But the shrinkage in the role of the traditional critic, almost across the board, is a phenomenon that needs to be taken very, very seriously. For the simple reason that the wine world has an almost ludicrous reliance on people who have historically helped to fill the pages of newspapers and magazines. Setting aside the totemic influence of Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator, a few hundred pen-wielders across the globe constitute many wineries’ only real means of communication. Wineries justify spending tens of thousands of dollars at exhibitions on the basis of the journalists they’ve met. Entire forests are felled to produce glossy brochures and press-packs that, even in journalistically happier times, mostly went straight into the recycling bag.

The movie industry in its US homeland is painfully aware of the power of the pen. Traditionally, the reviews that appear in the Friday print media before a weekend opening can make or break a movie. Which is why producers sometimes decide not to hold screenings for critics, or to open their films midweek, relying on word-of-mouth to build ticket sales. The trouble is that today, word-of-mouth is increasingly driven by “word-of-Social-Media”. Last year, when Bruno, the successor to the highly successful Borat opened, it did so to big audiences, but was hugely criticised on Twitter by people who used their mobile phones to express their disapproval within minutes of leaving the cinema – or even while watching the film. Ticket sales plummeted by 40% on the second day.

But the shift in the balance of power from critics to consumers that social media like Twitter has created is only part of the story. There’s also the crucial question of the all-too visible gulf that separates the two groups. Some of the films and wines that are most hated by critics are among the most successful in delighting audiences. And vice versa. The critics respond to this kind of
criticism by saying that it isn’t their job to reflect consumer taste, but to use their knowledge and experienced to form that taste. It is a totally reasonable view, and one that would probably be echoed by serious writers on art and music. But, what if the publishers’ accountants have discovered that the number of readers who want their tastes to be formed simply fail to add up to a commercially viable group? What if the column has become an irrelevance? In a recent Financial Times interview, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, explains his reason for giving up a job as a television critic. “I realised people who read didn’t watch TV and people who watched TV didn’t read.”

The film industry has a huge advantage over the world of wine. It doesn’t actually need critics to promote its wares. Profiles of the stars – and possibly even the director – can, like those of musicians, be written by journalists with no specialist knowledge. And most importantly, these profiles can appear in a wide variety of places.

Professional wine writers naturally hate being pushed off the perch by unqualified colleagues, but to be brutally frank, the discomfiture of these writers is not the concern of wine producers and distributors. Their challenge lies in finding ways to make their product, the place they make it, and even themselves and their employees sufficiently interesting to warrent writing about for an audience with no intrinsic interest in wine.

Thinking about the land of Oz

Twenty years ago, I annoyed one of the biggest wine producers in California by suggesting that Australia’s winemakers had become the vinous equivalent of the Japanese motor industry. Good at listening to the market and giving it what it wanted.

Today, if some of the loudest voices in the Australian wine firmament are to be believed, the only Japanese comparison to be made is with Toyota, the company that has had to recall nearly 10m of its vehicles and stands accused of causing well over 30 deaths. Before anyone accuses me of hyperbole here, listen to the speech made earlier this year by Brian Croser, founder of Petaluma to the American Association of Wine Economists. In it he talked of the “highly visible current tragedies” of the “fewer than 10 very large, multi-region operators” who were apparently solely responsible “for Australia’s global wine demise and grape and wine surplus…”

Of course, there’s no denying that the Australian wine industry is in trouble, especially when compared to the glory days of just a few years ago when its ascendency seemed to be unstoppable. But it hasn't actually injured or killed anyone and no major company has gone bust, so to my mind, terms like “tragedies” and “demise” do seem to be a little over the top.

Let’s consider the facts. During the 1980s and 1990s, Australia built an export-driven industry from an almost standing start. Like many another successful business, it invested in increased production facilities. Then, as has happened all too frequently in other industries, rivals raised their game, market conditions toughened and the Australian winemakers lost their competitive edge. This was exacerbated by water shortages which raised production costs and then by a global economic crisis. There’s nothing very extraordinary about this story. Last year, Starbucks had to close hundreds of the outlets it had opened over the previous five years; an expanded Christian Lacroix sought protection from bankruptcy and then, of course, there were the US car giants... Examples like this fill the news pages every day.

According the Australia’s doom-mongers, Britain is where everything has gone most wrong – where discounting by the big companies has killed the goose that was laying such tasty golden eggs. So how badly are Australia’s winemakers doing there? Well, according to Stewart Blunt of Nielsen, over the last year, Australia has lost market share, dropping from 21.2% of the market to 20.4%. It’s still the biggest player, but California, South Africa and Italy are all snapping at its heels. And, just as importantly, when you take into account a weakening UK currency and a hike in duty rates, the average price of Australian wine has fallen in real terms. Today, a bottle would set you back £4.51; 12 months ago, it would have been just £0.04 cheaper. France, by comparison has seen the price of its wine climb from £4.64 to £4.97 – which is more or less accounted for by the duty and exchange rates which have had to be absorbed by the Australians.

France’s higher prices came at a significant cost, however: a fall to fifth position on the list of UK imports and a drop in market share from 14.1% to 12.3%. South Africa, one of the countries that has stolen customers from Australia is doing brilliantly – largely on the back of one discounted brand – First Cape – and at an average price of just £3.87. Italy is scoring a lot of runs – with own-label Pinot Grigio, and an average price of £4.10. The US, another winner – thanks to sweet rosé gets a few more pence per bottle – at £4.30, but is still under the market average of £4.35.
Australia remains the biggest player in the UK market, and still commands a higher price per bottle than any of its three biggest competitors. Contrast this with the loss of market share of France, the country, many Australian winemakers would seemingly most like to emulate, with its focus on cool climate regions, small producers and regionality.

Australia has to get its house in order, but its problems are far smaller than those of, say, Spain which last year yet again faced the question of how to dispose of nearly a third of its crop.
Which brings me back to Japanese cars. In March, Toyota sales in the US were 40% higher than in 2008 against a market that generally rose by 23%. My unfashionable guess is that, like the motor manufacturer, Australia may be able to call on a lot more consumer trust and affection than it currently likes to imagine.

Adapt or die

Adapt or die… A harsh choice, I admit, but the reality is there for anyone with eyes that are open to see it. Times will be hard for anyone who imagines that they can get through this decade using a 20th century roadmap. Many other industries have understood this clearly; the world of wine still has to remove its head from the sand.

We all love reading traditionally printed books and newspapers, and many still enjoy listening to a whole album of music by the same musician – and handwriting Christmas cards. But these activities are beginning to look as “quaint” as smoking a pipeful of tobacco and wheeling a baby around in a pram. Last year, the US publisher Random House sold 100,000 copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol as electronic "e-books" in the seven days after its release - an impressive 5% of the total sale, considering that "e-readers" like Amazon’s Kindle were only launched in 2007, cost over $250 and have no other use.

This year, sees the arrival of Apple's and other electronic “tablets” that can be used as computers and allow users to watch movies as well as read books and newspapers. These new products and their successors will change the way we read words as much as the arrival of the mobile phone changed the way we communicate. Random House is not alone in exploiting the new technology: the giant magazine publisher, Conde Nast is busily redesigning its magazines to make them work in digital form. Meanwhile, Hallmark, the huge US greeting card manufacturer has introduced emailable greetings cards, and major record companies are scrambling to find ways of serving an audience that now prefers to buy its music online, one track at a time.

The European wine industry has historically treated change like the bubonic plague: just consider the ructions over switching from corks to screwcaps and the printing of grape variety names on French wine labels. More often than not, evolution has been imposed by circumstances and competition rather than generated from within.

Setting aside the issue of the changes that might be made to the liquid product (Justin Howard Sneyd of the dynamic UK retail chain Waitrose raised many eyebrows and hackles at the Wine Future conference when he talked about drinks that combine wine with other ingredients), the industry can and must consider other forms of evolution. Among these, packaging is the most obvious. The coffee industry has been transformed by the the Nespresso single-serve “pod” which seeks to bring instant coffee simplicity to the process of preparing an espresso or cappuccino. Makers of dark beers were similarly boosted by the “widget” that facilitates the creation of a creamy head of fine bubbles when poured from a can. The wine industry has much to learn.

Changes in distribution are, however, arguably even more important. 350 years ago, a clever Frenchman called François-Auguste de Pontac opened an inn called the Pontac’s Head in London from which he sold his family’s Bordeaux. At a stroke, he created the first branded wine (Ho Bryan is the earliest to be referred to by name rather than region) and created a novel form of distribution for it. Today, wine producers across the globe are complaining at the power of the retailers. They should learn from de Pontac – and from Nestle who sell $2bn of Nespresso pods exclusively online, by phone – or through over 120 Nespresso Boutique shops and bars across the globe.

Torres and Antinori – two unusual innovators in the European wine world – have both opened on-trade outlets, but neither is big enough to match Nespresso. But how long will it be before Constellation or a set of like-minded firms collectively addresses the on-trade distribution of its wines?

Within the off trade, this taking-back of power is already beginning to happen… In the UK, where the supermarket stranglehold is at its strongest, Matthew Clarke, which is partly owned by Constellation, has recently begun to offer its on-trade wines directly to retail customers through an online service called thepurveyor.com. The Symington Group (Dows, Grahams port etc) is similarly launching a direct-to-the-public operation alongside JE Fells, its UK wholesaler.

Seth Godin, the American thinker, recently described how the Marx Brothers began as Vaudeville stars in 1910, and shifted to silent, then sound movies and radio before finally appearing on television. They adapted themselves (and their act) to new forms of distribution as they arrived. The choice confronting many wine producers today lies in embracing change and going into the history books as enduring stars like Groucho Marx, or becoming historical footnotes like all those performers who decided that moving pictures were not for them….