France battered from inside and out
SALLY EASTON
BY THE TIME you read this, European harvests will be done and dusted, but they're in full swing as I write. And even the weather is giving the French a tough time. French wine, apart from classic properties in classic appellations such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone, gets bashed and beaten in Europe as the country continues, for the most part, to fail to get to grips with global competition.
Everyday Bordeaux wines, southern and south-western French wines, and many Vin de Pays wines (which have less strict production codes than appellation wines), simply don't meet the demands of UK consumers for soft, fruity, approachable, easy-drinking wine. And even when these styles are made, all too often the French lack the marketing nous of countries such as Australia and Chile. The French are taking a long time to learn this lesson.
And the 2008 vintage doesn't look like it will help them. It's expected to come in at just over 45 million hectolitres (mhl), down more than 15 per cent on the five-year average. The temptation in small harvests is to increase prices to cover the shortfall in volume, even where the quality is not deemed overall to be that exciting. But in a global credit crunch, should the French choose this route, it would indeed be another example of their wine production lacking realism.
Further damage is being perpetuated by the French government, which allegedly wants to classify wine advertising and publicity on the Internet in the same bracket as pornography. It all dates to the 1991 Evin law, which effectively banned drinks advertising other than in specifically listed media. Of course, the Internet barely existed back then, and no one thought to amend the law to allow Internet publicity. And according to one report, the group discussing a framework for drinks publicity on the web collapsed in September.
Harvests elsewhere in Europe suggest Italy has overtaken France to be the top European producer in 2008, with 46mhl, up nearly 10 per cent on the previous vintage. Italy's vintages are rarely homogenous. Like New Zealand, it is roughly 1000km long, with the north embedded in cool alpine hills and the south dipping more than its toe in the warm Mediterranean sea. In 2008, the south had better weather, with the island of Sicily seeing a significant uplift in volumes. A lot of this fruit goes to price-fighting wine styles. The north has fared less well, with periods of rain, hail and lower temperatures. Even in central Italy's famed Chianti Classico territory, the vintage was challenging, throwing almost every weather possibility at the vineyards: cold and late flowering, followed by heat and drought, as well as hail. But the vintage was saved by the latter part of September, when much cooler nights than usual helped to preserve acidity and aromas in the fruit. One producer went so far as to say it would be a vintage for long cellaring.
In Spain, the world's other top three producer country, the harvest looks to be similarly sized to 2007, at around 34mhl. All this compares quite dramatically with the Australian 2008 vintage, which came in around 13mhl, which was below the record 14mhl of 2005 but will enable Australia to hold its own as the world's sixth biggest producer, behind the US and Argentina. But given the state of the world economy, and notwithstanding France's low harvest figures, global glut looks like being a theme for 2009.
Despite the disparity in harvest sizes, something Spain does have in common with Australia is the need to control escalating alcohol levels in wine. Virtually all Spanish vineyards lie in a warm to hot Mediterranean climate, with those on the central meseta having a continental climate with very hot summers and cold winters - all ideal conditions for producing wines with high and very high alcohol levels. Combine this with some climate change warming, and some producers, notably Miguel Torres, are already planting vineyards in the southern foothills of the Pyrenees to gain a little coolness with the increased altitude - much like Aussie cooler climate producers in areas such as the Adelaide Hills and Macedon Ranges. But there aren't so many opportunities in Europe to run up that hill for a cooler climate. After the Pyrenees, there's the Alps, then you're looking at the Carpathian mountains in Eastern Europe.
The high alcohol issue is a serious one. Governments across the world are targeting alcoholic drinks to reduce harm done by alcohol abuse. Both Australia and the UK know all too well the challenges of binge drinking and trying to change people's behaviour to reduce excessive consumption in single occasions. High alcohol in wine exacerbates the issues.
Taking some of the alcohol out of wine using whizzy bits of space-age equipment is one option. But the European Union, being the European Union, has a very specific definition of what constitutes wine. So ‘reduced alcohol' wines in the EU fall foul of legislation that means they cannot be called wine if the alcohol by volume is less than 8.5 per cent - which means branding is especially important for products such as Brown Brothers' Cienna, which must legally be known as products derived from ‘partially fermented grape must'. Bottled like wine, tastes like wine, but can't be called wine. And Miguel Torres has labelled a new product with just 0.5 per cent alcohol by volume as a ‘drink derived from de-alcoholised wine'. Not so sexy, huh?
Several UK supermarkets have introduced ‘lighter alcohol' products this year, but the jury is out on flavour profile. One of the unique things about wine is the vinosity and structural enhancement offered by alcohol, which drinks without alcohol don't have. And bits of Europe - the genuinely cooler bits - already offer wines which are naturally light in alcohol - Mosel and Saar rieslings in Germany and Vinho Verde in Portugal, for example. Many Cava sparking wines come in naturally at 11.5 per cent, and this from a warmer climate. Admittedly all these examples are white. Can you get a dry, flavoursome red without high alcohol? Thirty years ago, Bordeaux reds were about 11.5 per cent but then, 30 years ago, only a few vintages in 10 achieved proper ripeness.