Tag Archives: wine news

Winebits 829: Chenin blanc, expensive wine, ingredient labels

man showing woman a bottle of wine
“Is that the Ken Forrester chenin blanc that the WC likes?”

This week’s wine news: High praise for cheap chenin blanc, plus the BBC explains high wine prices and a possible setback for ingredient labels

• Cheap chenin blanc: Lettie Teague, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offers an homage to chenin blanc, one of the WC’s favorite white grapes. Most of the wines in the piece cost as much as you’d expect wines touted in the Journal to cost, but two didn’t — the Ken Forrester and the MAN, both from South Africa and both long-time blog stalwarts. The MAN was the Turner winner as cheap wine of the year in 2021 and is widely available. The Forrester’s availability, despite its quality, has always been a problem. Hopefully, this notice in the Journal will help the Forrester get more retail outlets.

• High prices: The BBC takes a look at what it calls “sticker shock for domestic wines. How did US bottles get so expensive?” Needless to say, the WC got a giggle out of the story. My favorite bit? That consumers are less likely to buy cheaper wine, since a lower price is a mark of lower quality. Hence, wine should cost more money. And some people still wonder why I’m giving up the blog.

• Ingredient label changes: Not good news on the ingredient label front, as the EU has changed the requirements for the UPC code that will link to wine ingredients. The article is a bit confusing, but as near as I can tell, the new rules will force producers to make significant changes to the labels ahead of this week’s deadline. Many wineries that sell wine in the EU have already printed the labels, so if they have to print new ones, this could be a huge and expensive setback for ingredient transparency. Still, as the author notes, “We hope that the European Commission reevaluates its position and allows industry members more time to adjust to this change or at least provides a grace period for any QR codes that may be deemed non-compliant.”

Winebits 828: Carolyn Wente, wine’s woes, winery waste

This week’s wine news: Carolyn Wente becomes a legend, plus the Mainstream Media takes note of wine’s problems, and turning winery waste into jelly

Carolyn Wente
Carolyn Wente

• Carolyn Wente: Carolyn Wente, who has worked for her family’s winery for 42 years — most recently as the board chair — has been named an American Wine Legend by the Wine Enthusiast. She’s the first woman to be honored in the 24-year history of the award. Wente, who I know professionally, has helped steer her family’s fourth-generation, 140-year California winery through some of the most difficult times in recent wine history. Wente still makes quality wine that offers value. And — praise like this doesn’t come much higher from a cranky ex-newspaperman — she returns calls and emails.

• CNN on wine’s woes: People “around the world are drinking less wine than in previous years, opting for beer or spirits instead, or ditching alcohol altogether. Globally, wine consumption has fallen about 6% between 2017 and 2022. …  That means nearly 1.9 billion fewer wine bottles were drunk last year than in 2017.” That’s CNN’s take on wine’s crisis, and (though too long), it’s spot on. I wish it has talked specifically about neo-Prohbitionism, but it says a lot that CNN has noticed what’s happening. Now, if only more in wine would notice.

• Turn to jelly? Researchers in Turkey may found a way to turn winery waste into gelatine-based sweets. A study published in SCI’s Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture details how to use wine lees (residue left over after fermentation in the winemaking process)  to color jellies. The lees improved the texture of the jellies and improving the flavor. The author of the study said that given consumer demand for more natural products, using wine lees is an “attractive option.: In addition, wine lees are cheaper than the commercial alternatives.

Winebits 827: Restaurant wine, Aussie wine, Napa Valley

Woman drinking wine
“$60 or less?”

This week’s wine news: Diners don’t want to overpay for restaurant wine, plus less shiraz down under and Napa’s preponderance

• No kidding: A majority of diners want the average price of restaurant wine to be less than $60, according to a recent survey. To which the WC has nothing to offer but a sigh. The report, paid for by a restaurant trade magazine, offers few surprises and reinforces the idea that restaurant wine still has not recovered from its decades-long malaise. How about fewer than 10 percent saying the wine list “is important” when choosing a restaurant? Or that less complicated wine lists are better? The release doesn’t discuss the methodology, so I can’t vouch for the results. But it strikes me that a survey taken by a trade magazine would tend to be more favorable to the industry, so these results — as bad as they are for eestaurant wine — might actually mean something.

• Less shiraz? The headline on this story is a bit exaggerated, given what the story actually says. But anything that says Australian growers and producers are looking at making less shiraz — their national grape — is worth a notice. The reason, says the piece, is changing consumer tastes. We want lighter red wines than the 14.5 and 15 percent shirazes that Australia is known for. To which the WC can only sigh again.

• A preponderance of Napa: Is it possible that more than one-quarter of California’s wineries are in Napa, even though it produces just four percent of the state’s wine? That’s what Tim Carl writes on his Substack, which looks at Napa’s role in the California wine business. The story needs some editing, but that doesn’t take away from its point: Something is not right with the wine business if those numbers are correct. Which doesn’t surprise the WC at all.

Winebits 826: Happy 16th birthday to the blog

CCTV camera on stoplight pole
Apparently, the criminals didn’t notice the CCTV cameras.

This week’s wine news: More crime, books, and bad harvests as we celebrate the blog’s 16th birthday

• Crime really doesn’t pay: An English man who was part of a gang that stole £3.5 million (US$4.29 million) worth of Jack Daniels is not only going to jail for three years, but must repay £75 ,000. The irony here is not that James Barr was sentenced to three years in prison and must repay the equivalent of about US$92,000, but that the gang ever thought they would get away with it. Decanter reports that “CCTV footage showed Barr aiding six unauthorised loads with a total 156 pallets to leave the warehouse site on lorries between July 2019 and June 2020.” The WC, of course, likes these sorts of crime stories, and should add that, in the states, most hijackers try not to be seen by surveillance cameras.

• 30 years of the Oxford Companion to Wine: Which, to be honest, is even more impressive than the cheap wine book. The book’s editor, Jancis Robinson, MW, tells SevenFiftyDaily that “My literary agent of 45 years, Caradoc King, apparently proposed it to the publishers at the OUP [Oxford University Press], unbeknown to me.” The WC, who has had a few experiences with book agents over the years, isn’t surprised by that at all. I can also appreciate that Robinson had to print the entire version of the first edition on paper — “You can imagine how long it took to print,” she said.

• Terrible harvest: Poor weather around the world is likely to cause global wine production to drop to a six-decade low this year. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine, OIV, reports that it will decline about seven percent from 2022. According to the BBC, “Such a yield would be the worst since 1961.” Which raises the question: “What about prices?” The story doesn’t go into that, but given that much of the loss was in countries with overproduction — and that France had a normal harvest — there may still be enough grapes to supply the world’s current level of demand. But, no doubt, prices will increase anyway.

Photo: “03.MPDC.CCTV.14W.NW.WDC.25sep06” by Elvert Barnes is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Why are young people drinking less?

Man lecturing to college class
If these college students had asked, the WC would have been happy to explain how wine fits into a healthier lifestyle.

New insights focus on “healthy lifestyles” and what that means

The great question facing wine — as well as the rest of the booze business — is not so much that younger consumers are drinking less, but why they are.

A recent article in the Cleveland Clinic’s “Health Essentials” sheds light on the latter, offering insight into the catchall called “healthier lifestyles” that gets the credit (or blame) for the change. In this, it offers ways wine can tap into the healthier lifestyles mantra — if, of course, it’s really interested in doing so. Because wine, in moderation, can be part of a healthier lifestyle.

The story focuses on Gen Z, the demographic after the Millennials (whose older members are approaching their 30s). It quotes Cleveland Clinic addiction psychologist Akhil Anand, MD, and though some of what he says seems to be the usual “anyone who drinks will die” stuff, some of it does make sense.

First, younger people are more likely to talk about their problems instead of drowning them in a six-pack, as their parents or grandparents might have done. “Alcohol is a depressant and never the answer to a bad day,” says Dr. Anand. “Gen Z seems to understand that concept and they’ve moved in a different direction.”

Second, education. The Gen Zs have been taught since their earliest school days that alcohol is dangerous. “The message may be getting through,” says Dr. Anand.

And no, that’s not a bad thing.

Two other items worth noting: The story reports that concert alcohol sales among Gen Zs have been declining “significantly,” which hasn’t been the case for older concert-goers. At first glance, this makes perfect sense given “healthier lifestyles,” but it misses another possibility. Older people have more money and can more easily afford inflated concert booze prices.

The other? That Gen Z is choosing marijuana instead of alcohol, something that has been repeated so much that it’s accepted as fact — even though I haven’t seen any sort of definitive study that backs up the assertion. It also overlooks that legal weed has mostly been a financial failure, thanks to its high prices.

And, as the WC must note, do we see a common thread here with pricing?

Winebits 825: Tempranillo Day, Prosecco, $1 billion

three people drinking wine
“Yes, $1 billion.”

This week’s wine news: Tempranillo Day, plus the Aussies get to keep their Prosecco, and Treasury Wine Estates spends $1 billion

• Tempranillo Day: Dan Fredman, a fine person and top-flight marketer, wants me to remind readers that Thursday is Tempranillo Day, celebrating the red grape that Spain made famous but is grown in unlikely places, Texas and Oregon included. His suggestion: Tempranillo from Spain’s Ribera del Duero, a bit fruitier than those from its colleague Rioja and which can cost as little as $15. How often do wine marketers take the WC’s pricing into account?

• Nuts to the EU: The Australians and the European Union have been wrangling for years over a free trade agreement, and one of the sticking points has been an Aussie sparkling wine called Prosecco. The EU wants to end that practice to protect what it considers the only Prosecco, the one from Italy. The U.S. has that sort of agreement with Europe, which is why we can’t call our wines Chablis and they can’t call their hams Virginia. But Australia keeps balking, and it did so again last week when the country’s trade minister backed out, calling the EU’s latest offer “still not good enough.” No word on when, or if, talks will resume.

• $1 billion: That’s the potential cost of Treasury Wine Estate’s newest acquisition, Paso Robles’ Daou Vineyards. The deal has been extensively reported since it was announced last week, and much of the reaction — not surprisingly — was shock and bewilderment. I mention it here so we can all say — together now — “Is it any wonder that we worry about the future of the wine business?”

 

Winebits 824: Napa train, lawsuits, Gallo

Cartoon man with list and pencil
“Let’s see.. Cristal or Crystal?”

This week’s wine news: The Napa wine train takes a hit, plus another bubbly lawsuit and Gallo makes more cuts

• Wine train: The Napa wine train, about as much a symbol of the California’s region as there is, has gotten bad marks. A study calls it the 13th most overpriced attraction in the world and 53rd biggest tourist trap (just behind North Carolina’s Biltmore Estates for overpriced). The report, from USA Today and a credit card rating company, analyzed more than 23.2 million Google reviews of the 500 most popular tourist attractions in the world, looking for terms like tourist trap, overrated, or expensive. To be fair, though, Elvis Presley’s Graceland was ranked No. 25 for tourist traps, which seems harsh. Yes, it’s expensive, as well as surreal, Kafkaesque and even corny, but hardly a tourist trap.

• More lawyers! The WC’s favorite Champagne litigator is at it again. Louis Roederer, which sued $7 Spanish cava Cristalino for infringing on its high-end Cristal bubbly, is suing a small London winery that uses “Crystal” on its bottles of pet nat pink wine. thedrinksbusiness reports that Renegade Urban Winery sells a £28 bottle of Crystal Pet Nat Pink wine, named after customer Crystal Lai (whose picture appears on a tag and bottle label). That was entirely unacceptable to Roederer, which says the product infringes on the trademark of its £300 Cristal. Is it any wonder I worry about the future of the wine business?

• Hail Columbia? E&J Gallo, the largest wine company in the U.S., has closed its Columbia Winery wine club. This follows Gallo closing the winery’s Woodinville tasting room less than a year ago. Sean Sullivan reports that there is no indication that Gallo is closing the Washington state winery, which it bought in 2012. But the company did eventually close Covey Run, which it bought with Columbia, and laid off 355 employees in California earlier this year.