Mini-reviews 93: Barefoot bubbly, red Loire, Ridge, red Cahors

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Barefoot bubblyReviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month

• Barefoot Bubbly Brut Cuvee NV ($10, sample, 11.5%): One of the most frustrating things about reviewing wine is consistency of the product. I’ve written glowing reviews of this wine, but when I tasted the most recent sample, it was almost flat and devoid of flavor and character. Is this a flaw with this specific bottle of wine? Is it a problem with the current “vintage?” Or is it a problem in the supply chain, where the wine sat in a warehouse or delivery truck? I think the last, since I’ve had this problem with sparkling wine from many producers at many prices over the past 18 months. This is one of the disadvantages of non-vintage ones; you don’t know how long it has been sitting and getting worse.

• Domaine de la Chanteleuserie Cuvée Alouettes ($17, purchased, 12%): This red wine, from the French region of Loire, is an excellent example of what the Loire can do with cabernet franc – red berry fruit, freshness, graphite, spice, and length. It’s clean through the palate with surprisingly soft tannins. Highly recommended.

• Ridge Geyserville 2014 ($35, purchased, 14.5%): This California zinfandel red blend isn’t anywhere near ready to drink, and needs at least another year (if not longer). Until then, look for ripe black fruit and a lot less of the style and elegance that Ridge is known for.

• Château Lafleur de Haute-Serre 2014 ($10, purchased, 13%): This French red, made with malbec from the Cahors region, is not what I’d hoped given that it’s from Georges Vigouroux, a fine producer. It’s just ordinary, 1970s style wine with too much unripe fruit and a rusticity that isn’t as much charming as annoying.

The premiumization backlash

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premiumization

“Why am I spending more money and getting less wine?”

Is the U.S. wine business finally noticing that premiumization may be good for producers, but not so good for consumers or the industry?

Consider these three items, all of which sound like something the Wine Curmudgeon would say during one of his premiumization rants:

• Wineries should try to democratize wine instead of focusing on premium brands from California’s higher-priced North Coast.

• The wine industry is dominated by elitists who dismiss sweet wines and insist that real wine drinkers should like drier, more correct wines. Isn’t it time the rest of us put a stop to that kind of arrogance?

• The upward spiral in wine prices, as well as the continued growth in producers, may be unsustainable and could inflict long-term damage on wine’s popularity.

In fact, I didn’t say any of those things. They were made by industry leaders, the kind of people who speak at trade shows, are ranked on most influential lists, and get paid lots of money for their wisdom. Stephanie Gallo, the vice president of marketing for E&J Gallo, the largest producer in the world, said the first. Tim Hanni, one of the first two Americans to become a Master of Wine, said the second. And the third was part of this year’s much-respected Silicon Valley Bank state of the wine industry report.

How can that be? Why are wine insiders saying things usually associated with cranks like me – the kind of people who don’t show up on lists, aren’t asked to speak, and who are noticed, if at all, as voices in the wilderness?

Because the U.S. wine business is somewhere it hasn’t been in 40 years – flat growth, higher prices, skyrocketing land values, and Neo-Prohibitionism. And the smart people, who aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen next, are worried.

This is much different than the all too common wine industry approach, described to me by one Napa wine marketer as “My wine is special, and you should buy it because it’s special.” Which, of course, is about as practical as jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. You’re OK until the bottom, and then you wish you had approached the problem differently.

And I’m convinced the key to this soul searching is premiumization. Again, it’s not that higher-priced wine is a bad thing and that all high-priced wine is a scam. Even I buy expensive wine, but that doesn’t mean I throw out all considerations of value and quality when I do.

But those considerations don’t seem to matter to too many producers. They’re happy to sell less wine as long as it costs more, regardless of whether it’s worth the extra price. As in: “Wine at $15 is trending now. What can we make to sell at $15 that will be popular but doesn’t cost us as much to make as the other company’s $15 wine? And make sure it has a cute label.”

The other concern, which Gallo noted in her speech to a major industry trade show: Higher prices are limiting the number of frequent wine drinkers, those of us who drink more than the national average of one bottle a month. We matter because we drive industry growth, and without us, wine wouldn’t be as profitable.

How do higher prices do that? It’s math – if I buy 6 or 7 bottles a month (one way to define a frequent wine drinker), I’m going to buy less wine if I buy more expensive wine. Which, in the long run for the wine business, is like jumping out of the plane without a parachute.

And no one who cares about wine, including the cranks in the wilderness, want that.

Wine of the week: Château Michel Cazevieille 2014

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Château Michel CazevieilleHow about Château Michel Cazevieille, a $9 French wine to solve those midweek what to drink with dinner blues?

One of the most significant changes in U.S. wine over the past decade has been the difficulty in finding weeknight wines, the sort of thing to open on Tuesday night that is well made and doesn’t cost too much. Fortunately, the French haven’t suffered through this, and there are still countless wines like the Château Michel Cazevieille that do the job for a midweek dinner.

The Château Michel Cazevieille ($9, purchased, 13.5%) is not elegant or sophisticated, and it almost certainly won’t show up in top 100 lists. Rather, it’s a red blend (mostly syrah with some grenache) from France’s Languedoc, a simple and sturdy wine that pairs with meat loaf, hamburgers and gooey cheese and sausage pizza.

Look for lots of red fruit and some of the earthiness that French syrah brings to wine. This is not a subtle wine, but in an Old World way – none of that shiraz flashiness (though the the tannins don’t get in the way, oddly enough). It’s almost heavy, which is why it’s a red meat wine.

Winebits 475: Italian wine and sparkling wine

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This week’s wine news: The Italians regained the top spot as the word’s biggest wine producing country in 2016, plus sparkling wine in France and England

• No. 1: Italy became the world leader in wine production during 2016, according to the Italian farmers association Coldiretti. Italy, Spain, and France take turns producing the most wine in the world; the Spanish have been first the past couple of year. Also worth noting: Italian wine exports to the Champagne region of France grew 57 percent last year. If the story in the link is correct, this meant that people in Champagne were buying Prosecco, the Italian sparkling wine. This raises all sorts of Python-esque questions, especially given the Champagne region’s take no prisoners attitude toward other sparkling wine.

• Sparkling legal battle: What happens when two French wine regions disagree about who should be allowed to make sparkling wine (and neither of them is Champagne, to continue our Python theme)? There is a lawsuit, of course. Wink Lorch at Wine-Searcher.com reports that the Clairette de Die appellation has been given permission to make rose sparkling wine using a little known technique called methode ancestrale. This has drawn the ire of the Bugey-Cerdon appellation, which is currently the only region allowed to make rose sparkling using methode ancestrale. Not to worry if you’ve never heard of methode ancestrale or either region; Lorcher says very people in France have. The dispute, in fact, may not be about those regions or the technique as much as it is about establishing a precedent to allow better known appellations, like Beaujolais, to make methode ancestral rose sparkling.

• It’s good to be the queen: The Queen of England has sold out her winery’s first release of sparkling wine. This is newsworthy because it’s English wine, and there isn’t that much of it; second, because it shows English bubbly has overcome many of the obstacles facing regional wine regardless of where it’s from; and third, because the article includes a quote from someone who didn’t taste the wine saying how wonderful it is. And people wonder why there will always be an England.

The future of wine packaging

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wine packagingCan the idea that canned wine is the next big thing in wine packaging

People who are supposed to know these things insist that wine packaging is about to undergo a revolution – specifically, that canned wine is the next big thing and will sooner rather than later compete with bottles as the package of choice.

In this, they are wrong. Wine packaging has remained the same for centuries – a bottle with a cork – and there is absolutely no reason to believe that canned wine’s future is any different than screwcaps or boxes. It will occupy a niche, and lots of people will like it. But most of us won’t even notice it. The wine business in the U.S. has spent almost 100 years teaching us that we have to buy wine in a 750 ml bottle with a cork, and you don’t undo that overnight.

Or, as one of the more clear-sighted analysts wrote: “In most countries, that packaging (whether it’s a $5 or $5,000 wine) is going to be a glass bottle, even though any number of containers can be used.”

So why the enthusiasm for canned wine? First, because it has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, up 125 percent in the year through the middle of 2016. Second, it’s something that should appeal to the two generations of wine drinkers younger than the Baby Boomers, who grew up on canned soft drinks and juice boxes and who aren’t supposed to be as fussy about bottles as the rest of us. Third, because the people who do trend analysis wouldn’t have anything to write about if they didn’t find a trend, and it isn’t easy to find trends in an industry as old-fashioned as wine.

In fact, here’s what the prognosticators don’t tell you about canned wine:

• “After years of packaging innovations, the traditional 750 ml wine bottle is more important to the domestic wine industry than ever.” The number of 750ml bottles sold increased 41 percent from 2010 to 2014, which is the same period that overall wine sales in the U.S., as measured by bottles sold, was up just 11 percent. This is premiumization’s work; who is going to pay $25 for a bottle of wine in can or box? Meanwhile, sales have fallen dramatically for the very cheapest wines, which lend themselves best to cans.

• That 125 percent growth was from a very tiny base. All told, canned wine accounted for $6.4 million in a $55 billion business, or about one-tenth of one percent.

• Retailers don’t like canned wine. Store shelves are designed to sell 750 ml bottles, and canned wine doesn’t fit on the shelves. That’s what happened to boxed wine, which was supposed to be the next big thing a decade ago. Retailers could never figure out how to display it, and so they shoved it to the back of the store.

• Canned wine hasn’t solved the value/price problem. Much of it is more expensive than bottled wine, since we’re paying for convenience. But the quality of the wine usually isn’t worth the added cost. Much of the canned wine I’ve tasted was junk that would cost $4 or $5 for a 25-ounce bottle, not $5 for a 12-ounce can. Compare this to boxed wine, which has improved in quality and does offer value – and still remains a small part of the market, about three percent.

In the end, know that screw caps, which offer as much convenience as a can without any added cost to the consumer, have been around for decades. And they still account for just 20 percent of the market. How are cans going to do better than that?

Image courtesy of Whitney Anderson, using a Creative Commons license

2017 Virginia Governor’s Cup

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2017 Virginia Governor’s CupThe 2017 Virginia Governor’s Cup: Lots of quality and very few lousy wines

Seven things to ponder after judging the 2017 Virginia Governor’s Cup wine competition last week:

1. The quality of the wine was the best it has been since I started judging here almost 10 years ago. As I said to several panel members: “This was mostly like judging a California competition – no stupidly made wines, no obvious flaws, just competent and professional wine.” This is not often the case when judging regional wine, and shows again how far Virginia has come. Equally important: We did 100 wines over the two days, about 20 percent of the entries, so this wasn’t necessarily a small sample size. Are you paying attention, Texas?

2. The viogniers were amazing, as Virginia viognier usually is. I gave two gold medals in a flight of six, and all six were worth buying.

3. I was also impressed with the six roses – one gold, and the rest also worth drinking. This is quite a change from just a couple of years ago, when most regional pink wine was sweet and nothing else.

4. Virginia, like other regional states, is still grappling with the price/value dilemma. How can it make and sell wine and be competitive, given that it doesn’t have the economies of scale that California and Europe does? We didn’t know the prices when we judged the wines, but given that red blends and red varietals are usually the most expensive, most of the ones I tasted probably cost more than they were worth. This is not to say they weren’t well made, but that a similar wine made in a more established part of the world would be a better value.

5. There was a noticeable absence of oak, even in the wines that needed it. Was this because winemakers were – hopefully – embracing the idea of less oak and more balanced wine, or was it because oak is so expensive (as much as $1,000 a barrel) and they were forced to use less of it?

6. I’ve made my peace with giving scores. I still think it’s stupid, but if the competition requires it, I’ll do it. Having said that, I was generous with the best wines, and penalized the wines that weren’t very good. What’s the point of giving an 80-point bronze medal to a wine that I didn’t like?

7. Why do hotels ask you to save water by using the towels more than once, but then replace the towels after you have hung them up so you can re-use them?

SVB wine industry report 2017

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SVB wine industry reportDoes the SVB wine industry report show the next stage in the evolution of the U.S. wine business?

Are we watching the next phase in the evolution of the U.S. wine business? Perhaps, if Rob McMillan is spot on with his analysis in the annual SVB wine industry report.

As he usually is.

“Why is growth slowing?” McMillan asked during the report’s webcast on Wednesday. “It’s changing consumer demographics and patterns.”

In this, the Baby Boomers – who have fueled the unprecedented growth in the U.S. wine business over the past four decades – are officially on the wane. Though they still control some 40 percent of the U.S. market, their clout is being passed to the two younger generations. Both Gen X and Millennials are showing market share increases, and their 50 percent total has passed the Boomers (though, in wonderful irony, the vaunted Millenials drink about half as much wine as the Gen Xers). That’s the chart at the top of the post; click on it to make it bigger.

And they don’t drink the same things that their parents and grandparents do, focusing on red blends and, surprisingly, sauvignon blanc, as opposed to the traditional varietals. The red blends, which I’ve written about extensively, were the subject of much discussion and consternation during the webcast; no one was quite sure whether these younger wine drinkers would stay with red blends or switch to the traditional varietals.

The report also outlined:

• The continued bifurcation of the U.S. wine market, with the annual decline in sales for wines costing less than $9 and growth in wine costing more than $12. The study expects significant growth in U.S. wine costing more than $15.

• Increasing costs for U.S. producers – land, certainly, but also labor. How this will affect the business remains unclear, although it is one of the factors driving the bifurcation. Producers with more expensive wines can better afford to deal with higher costs.

• Increased competition for wine from craft beer and legal marijuana, and especially among younger drinkers.

• The increasing popularity of low-priced imports, and not just because of the stronger dollar. For example, there is little $10 California rose, mostly because of higher costs, but lots and lots of $10 French and Spanish rose.

Hanging over the entire discussion during the webcast was where Big Wine fits into California’s future. The report expects winery mergers to continue (and the chart in on page 39 detailing winery mergers was as depressing as it was lengthy), but didn’t go much further than that. The webcast’s participants, including several comments from the audience, seemed to imply that Big Wine would define trends in style and that it was up to smaller producers to fill in the areas that were too small or too expensive for Big Wine to worry about. Which is also depressing — letting multi-national companies decided what wine would be made.