A glut of wine round the world: doesn’t it sound like the prelude to the party
to end all parties? The glut is there all right: Bordeaux is awash with
unsold wine; Beaujolais has distilled great batches; farmers are driving
around south Australia trying to unload shiraz as though it were nuclear
waste. Gluts, though, harm the producer more than they help the consumer. It
is never the good stuff going begging.
We are getting adept at finding the good stuff in this country. We have the
world’s most sophisticated wine trade. The people who buy on our behalf are
professionals as qualified in their field as doctors. The London-based Wine &
Spirit Education Trust has 15,000 students round the world. If there is a
fine wine being made anywhere on earth you can find it in London. And
average prices have been sinking in relation to disposable incomes for
years.
A better time to be a consumer, you might say, than a producer. You would be
right. With a proviso. Producers under pressure play safe. Playing safe
gives anodyne results. There are battery wines out there to wash down
battery chickens; more and more of them.
Do we buy them out of parsimony? More often, I suspect, out of confusion.
There are hundreds of labels clamouring for your attention. The simple
answer is the Bogof (buy one, get one free) in the dump-bin. Now, where are
those handmade Belgian chocolates... what was their name? Choosing wine has
never been more of a challenge. The hyperbole of descriptions and the
technocratic chatter of back-labels only make it harder. We are polarising
into hobbyists and sceptics, appellation anoraks and plain folk who just
want a bottle to take home. There is a view of the wine market that says
romantics buy French or Italian, anything from the old world; realists go
for the new. Romantics look for a cultural experience, realists for a drink.
The pulse-takers of the industry can tell you just who is up in the polls and
who is down. When Australia overtook France as Britain’s biggest wine
supplier two years ago, it seemed a wineshed had been passed. France is on
the way out, they all said (many with glee): who needs French wines with
pretentious names when they can find satisfaction in countries that speak
English? All you need to know is the name of the grape.
Speaking English, of course, has always been a prime attraction of Australian,
Californian and South African wines (and in practice South American ones,
too). Given our national aversion to foreign tongues, they certainly have an
advantage. Is that it, then? Are appellations an irrelevance in a world that
speaks shiraz? Is this what drives the world of wine as the new century gets
into its stride? Variety versus appellation, grapes versus places, is still
a lively debate. Ten years ago it seemed that grapes were winning. How
simple it seemed to know the taste of cabernet and the price you were
prepared to pay; then never mind whether it came from this part of Australia
or that (they mix them anyway), or Italy, Chile or Spain. Beware French,
though, make inquiries, they said: they don’t scruple to blend it. For
Bordeaux you’ll be paying a premium for this obfuscation.
Cheaper and easier to do the modern thing.
Bit by bit, though, it becomes less simple. There is no future for all the
world’s producers competing to sell the same varietal names, with price the
one decider. They have to find identities, unique selling points, where they
can — which, inevitably, is where they come from. Each one claims a special
quality in the soil and climate of this valley or that. In no time another
appellation system, more or less, in embryo. It’s how you separate the swans
from the geese.
Bordeaux was a swan all the time.
Oak or no oak is another hot topic. The foresters of France have been doing
well for the past 20 years supplying wine regions round the world with
barrels to disguise their wines as French — or at least to give them a smell
with French origins. A generation of new wine drinkers grew up thinking the
smell of oak — from vanilla to toast, coffee and even caramel — was the
smell of good wine. Then the smell of bad wine, all too often, as wine
makers found they didn’t need barrels to get the effect: just oak sawdust,
or even oak essence added from a drum. Good wine makers have since scaled
their use of oak right back; they have learned that barrels preserve, polish
and faintly season fine wines rather than flavouring them. Now wineries,
especially Australian, advertise good wines as “unoaked”. So the wheel
turns.
Alcohol is today’s other big issue. Wines from hot countries always tend to be
stronger than the classic wines of the past, which all came from relatively
cool places. Recently, though, alcoholic degrees have been climbing,
alarmingly, to levels that change the whole experience. A good red used to
contain 12.5% of alcohol. Today 14% is standard, and 15% common. Only an
extra mouthful, you might say, but it is like adding a stiff tot of vodka to
a bottle. It throws out the balance. Worse, it takes over the flavour: good
wines taste appreciably sweeter; thin ones just burn your tongue. What is
going on? Nobody is sure. Global warming is one obvious culprit. Better-run,
healthier vineyards produce riper grapes. Yeasts are being bred to convert
more of their sugar to alcohol. One certain contributor, though, is fashion.
Hunky, dense, mouth-filling wines are America’s choice. America, or rather
Robert Parker, America’s wine guru, calls the shots. A country that likes
its food sweet and spicy, likes its wine that way, too. If you judge wines,
as Parker does, by lining them all up and giving them marks out of 100, the
most potent, in flavour and alcohol, are going to stand out. The palate is a
sensitive organ: alcohol, acidity and tannin desensitise it. Too potent? Too
much tannin? Wine makers are learning to polish their products to a glossy
sheen. Even Bordeaux is learning from California that maximum fruit content,
smooth, ripe tannins and high alcohol are what you need to score Parker
points.
A Californian consultant has even analysed the chemistry of wines that score
100 or close on Parker’s scale and offers his clients the same result: a
wine on steroids. It can be like having Arnold Schwarzenegger to dinner. And
it can reduce your consumption to a single glass: these are not wines for
gliding down gracefully with your food. The art of the French was to devise
wines for food, wines that flow harmoniously, no more emphatic than they
need be to whet the appetite and aid digestion. Are these products of high
civilisation in danger of being outgunned? Certainly recent trends show
France the loser to Australia. What else do they tell us? The film Sideways
shifted the fickle American palate away from merlot (sweet, smooth, dense)
towards pinot noir (sweet, lighter, fruitier). Pinot noir is on the way up
in Britain, too. Better wine making in Burgundy is helping; so are the rich
and easy-to-understand versions from New Zealand. Shiraz is steadily
popular, whether from Australia or southern France. Cabernet seems to be
past its crest — though it is such a universal presence, everywhere from
Bordeaux to Chile, California to Australia, that it will always be the red
leader.
Chardonnay is no longer on everyone’s lips. Sauvignon blanc is stronger than
ever. The challenger, surprisingly, is pinot grigio — which proves that not
everyone likes wine that tastes of fruit. Riesling remains the connoisseur’s
white variety, battling to be heard by anybody else. And rosé is at last
back in fashion.
France continues to supply about 30% of all our wine; Italy and Spain together
about the same. Spain is the popular entry point to Europe, in wine as in
holidays. A buyer tells me that its reds “have the heat but not the jammy
sweetness of Australia’s”. It’s a point of view.
Spain and Portugal also offer that rare thing these days, mature reds, with
the faint gaminess only age can give them. Italy has the right image, but is
as complicated as France to understand. South America is firmly on board and
becoming more ambitious, though so far few seem to find its expensive
offerings worth the premium. South Africa is better liked for white wines
than red. New Zealand has a niche market as a would-be France. Australia
goes roaring on with its ambition of world domination. How far its sales are
fuelled by discounting is not clear, but what it offers — burly wines from
people who play cricket — can hardly go wrong in this country.
Where do the values lie? Never at the bottom, is the answer, where the tax and
the packaging are all you pay for. Somewhere over a fiver, usually, and in
places with old vineyards but reputations that, for one reason or another,
are dim.
Beaujolais is the prime example, Muscadet another (if you like dry wine). So
is Bordeaux between £6 and £16. Sicily and the south of Italy are exciting
in all categories. Spain and Portugal both have more to offer than meets the
eye. Germany is a steal. You may have to pay more for wine as good from the
new world, but if big fruit is what you like, you’ll have no problem finding
it.
A glut has another advantage, too: if the supply-line backs up we may find red
wines available with some of the bottle-age they so badly need.
Hugh Johnson is the president of the Sunday Times Wine Club.
His latest book, Wine — A Life Uncorked, is available from The Sunday
Times Books First for £16 (rrp £20) with free p&p.
Call 0870 165 8585 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst.
Cover photograph of Raymond Blanc by Colin Bell
