European Union Looks to Deepen Its Wine Lake

This morning, over coffee and a wonderfully crisp apple, I read through the headlines from the various RSS feeds that come through my inbox.  Among the articles that caught my eye was a piece posted by Decanter this past Sunday.  The short article, Wine Regions Oppose ‘Catastrophic’ EU Expansion Plans, highlights efforts from within the European Union to expand vineyard areas throughout the continent – even into regions and countries that do not currently produce wine.

Producers in prominent winemaking countries are crying foul over the plans.  They believe that expansion of vineyard areas will drive grape prices even lower than current levels.  Many winemakers are still suffering depressed crop prices from the Great Recession.  And for those winemakers with products in the lower end of the pricing spectrum, their brands would be most hurt by the competition.  Though I am no defender of $7 table wine from France or Spain, I can’t help but side with those who are against the proposed expansion for a very simple reason – wine shops and restaurant wine lists are already full of substandard, mass produced wine-like products.  Do we really need to add to the overflowing wine lake that’s full of the likes of Red Bicylette, Lulu and Blue Nun?

For those unaware of how much wine is really in the market, consider this tidbit – each year, Europe distills an eye opening amount of wine into neutral spirits as these grapes do not measure up to the quality standards for even the factory assembled brands stacked in your neighborhood discounter.  And the EU thinks adding vines will enhance their competitiveness in the market?  We need less wine, not more wine!  Unless I am missing something, I can’t help but shake my head and suggest that the EU decreases the quantity of vines already planted and increase the quality of winemaking through less expensive and more efficient methods.  They already have the raw materials for competing with the sugar-laden schlock from other behemoths like Yellowtail and Woodbridge, they simply need to learn how to make their assembly line more efficient.

As for a sense of place, it’s unclear if new vineyards planted in regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rioja and the Mosel will be allowed to use those appellations on their labels.  I certainly hope not as there are already enough backwater vineyard sites within the best wine regions.  Many offerings coming from these inferior sites are already clogging the market and misleading the consumers into buying wines that lack any semblance of personality and character.  With any luck, officials in the EU will come to their senses and abandon this expansion proposal, but based on the ineffectiveness of European leaders to stem the current financial crisis on the other side of the pond, I wouldn’t count on it.

Teaching Sense of Place – Associating Wine with Colors

Recently I found myself pushing Riesling and various offerings from the Rhone on the mean streets of Staten Island.  Well, not really that mean, but certainly crowded with potholes and traffic jams.  As I visited my friends Deb and Alex at Mission Fine Wines, Deb mentioned that she was beginning an introductory course on wine tasting in January.  She mentioned that she often compares the components of wine to music.  The better the wine, the more the components – acid, sugar, oak, fruit, tannin and earth – harmonize together to produce a balanced and approachable wine.  I offered, and Deb agreed, that a great piece or song is produced in a similar manner.  Whether it’s Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, Black Flag or Blind Melon, their greatest works, though they are quite distinctive from each other, are balanced, expressive and a delight for the ears.  We concluded that great wines, no matter the price point, offer similar satisfaction for the drinker.

As we tasted through a few wines, I explained to Deb that I often use colors in helping novice wine drinkers understand flavor profiles.  Perhaps the biggest obstacle in teaching newbies about getting their heads around what’s in the glass is building their vocabulary and frame of reference.  For those who often drink Pinot Noir, cherry is a descriptor that pops into their heads because of their tasting experience.  And advanced tasters can identify which region their Pinot Noir comes from by breaking down cherry into sour cherry, bing cherry, red cherry, fresh, dried, stewed, under- ripe and so on and so forth.  How can we get the novice drink to that point?  Perhaps we can teach wine drinkers to differentiate among a group of wines made with the same grape (or similar blends) by associating their places of origins with colors.  This first technique of associating wine with place was introduced to me by my original wine mentor, Francis Schott, proprietor and wine director at Stage Left Restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Most Pinot Noir (excluding sparkling, sweet or white versions) should have some sort a cherry of some sort in their flavor profile.  Now, let’s think of cherries in terms of the color red – burgundy red more specifically.  We can choose any color for our purposes – blue, yellow, green or even pink.  However, for our purposes today, we will use red  For instance, a bright, fresh and young California Pinot – from the Russian River say, could be associated with purplish maroon.  An Oregon Pinot Noir, with a little less forward fruit, more earth and brighter acidity can be seen as more maroon than purple.  And then a Burgundy of the same age would fall more solidly into the maroon camp.

Is Your Pinot Violet Red or Red Violet?

And in describing the age and winemaking style of these wines, we can apply textural descriptors.  For instance, the wine drinker can associate younger, fresher styles of the above wines in a semi-gloss kind of way.  If Old World wines are made in an overly traditional manner, the maroon color you associate wines from the Cote d’Or in Burgundy would be matted.  As for the super modern and flashy styles out there, associate them with a higher gloss or shinier purple.  And let us not forget wines that have some bottle age – simply remember them with the same color profile as their younger counterparts, but with more faded texture – depending on their age.

Perhaps this is an incredibly complicated way of understanding wine, but I think it makes sense.  As we attempt to instill confidence in wine drinkers by developing their frame of reference and vocabulary, we need to be creative in finding ways to get descriptors to stick.  Remembering how certain wines identify with their region can be a daunting exercise, but once the light goes off in a wine drinker’s head, it normally stays on.  And the more a wine drinker gains confidence in purchasing wines in wine shops and restaurants the greater the chance that they will begin to drink – and understand – wines that are less ordinary while also capturing a sense of place.