The London International Wine & Spirits Fair (once merely the London Wine Fair) is only 22 years old but has become an annual ritual for thousands of wine producers, merchants and communicators from all five wine-producing continents – not least because the UK is the only substantial market for wine which continues to grow.
I spend one exhausting day there each year inhaling both the zeitgeist and as many obscure wines as I can find. (This year there was even a winery from Bali, which attracted the Indonesian ambassador to the air-conditioned climes of ExCel last week).
Producers versus retailers
It was rather dispiriting to ask an innocent young Moldovan trying to sell his wine in Britain how much it would sell for. '£3.99, £2.99 on promotion' was his stock response. Is it too naïve to ask for wines to be sold at a constant price that makes producers, retailers and consumers happy?
There was much talk at the Fair of the ongoing battle between producers which have got themselves into pickle by discounting their wines so much and so regularly and the big British supermarkets which have lured them into this trap – one that is far from unique to wine. The once dominant Australian wine company Southcorp (Rosemount, Penfolds, Lindemans, Seppelt, Wynns, et al) has been the most obvious casualty and, despite a new CEO, has for the last year or so provided unequalled opportunities for schadenfreude throughout the international wine trade. And the likely effects for consumers? Giant Californian wine producer Gallo has publicly admonished its Australian counterparts for their heavy discounting. Expect to pay a bit more for your favourite brand – not least because its owner will be finding other, more costly, ways of persuading you to buy it.
Eastern European promise
Like Lebanon, Moldova took a generic stand at the Fair for the first time this year. My young Moldovan friend's wines were delightful. There is a fresh purity of fruit here that is aching to find its way to the world's wine drinkers. The aforementioned Southcorp's disastrous winemaking venture in Moldova in the 1990s, soon stymied by a lack of infrastructure, may have put many potential importers off. But British mail order specialist Direct Wines of Theale (Laithwaites, the Sunday Times Wine Club and just about any British wine offer ever advertised) has recently been importing a range of varietals from Cricova Acorex. Direct Wines' Albastrele Pinot Grigio 2002 is extremely good, but the price of £5.69 a bottle suggests a stiff profit margin. Cricova Acorex is also launching a label of its own, Corten, as stark, modern, graphics-driven and geographically inscrutable as the great majority of new labels being launched at the Fair. (Black Peak was a typical Romanian brand name, Eagle Crest a South African one.) The Corten Cabernet-Merlot 2002 is particularly promising and will be offered for a song.
Another Moldovan producer Doina was also showing an attractive range of varietals, of which the Pinot Blanc was really rather fine – though it, like the rest of the range, tasted far, far younger than the 1999 vintage emblazoned on all the labels. Oh no, they're all 2002s, I was blithely told. Perhaps it had been three years since the poor things had managed to summon up an export order.
Cheap Californian wine – an oxymoron no longer
Continuing a trend evident at its recent generic wine tasting in London, California is now a serious source of inexpensive wine for the first time for two decades. Dot.com crashes, a sluggish economy and over-enthusiastic vine planting have all resulted in a glut of Californian wine, which means that there is no shortage of wine available for own-label bottlings at the same price (or less) as direct counterparts from Chile (fourth biggest exhibitor at the Fair after France, Spain and Italy).
Making its appearance on this side of the Atlantic for the first time was Bronco's hugely successful new brand Two Buck Chuck, so popular a purchase at $1.99 that many an American home must have stacks of the stuff racing past its peak (yesterday).
The glut is so marked that many grapes in California's Central Valley were left on the vine last vintage time. Even some of the cheaper brands such as Corbett Canyon and Delicato were able to blend some fruit from relatively superior regions last year, thus improving quality. And the American market is currently so competitive that there is no shortage of producers trying to buy their way into Europe, even with varietals as smart as Pinot Noir, Syrah and Viognier. All good news for consumers.
Meanwhile California producers at the other end of the spectrum have the interesting challenge of trying to sell their wines, which by any normal standards have been overpriced for years (not that the California economy has known normality for some time), without losing face over price cuts.
The wine world has no national boundaries – official
It is now almost impossible to find a wine producer anywhere in the world who is untouched by any other national influence. Winemakers, who are seriously busy for only a small proportion of the year after all, have become some of the most inveterate travellers. Virtually all the young ones have worked at least one vintage and often dozens in foreign vineyards, cellars and wineries.
One obvious result of this, apart from a dangerous creeping homogeneity in the wines themselves, is a rash of wines made by outsiders and joint ventures. Cypriot brewers KEO, for example, signed up Angela Muir of Cellarworld International (winemaking gun for hire profiled on these pages some years ago) to fashion 300 cases of really extremely acceptable wine from Cabernet and the native Lefkada grape for display in the fanciest Cypriot restaurants and Fairs like this.
One of the more striking joint ventures in evidence at the Fair was Viña Progreso, the result of a collaboration between Boisset of Burgundy, self-styled 'viniculteur' (a new word preferred to their old image as 'négociant', or merchant-bottler), and Uruguay's leading wine producers, the Pisano family. This involves harnessing the winemaking expertise of Canadian Pascal Marchand, recruited by Boisset from Pommard's posh Domaine Comte Armand, to Uruguay's stubbornly tough Tannat grape. The results are quite impressive, though I put my foot in it when a price of 17 or 18 dollars was mooted. They apparently meant per bottle retail, not per case ex-cellars.
