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Written by Angela Schmitz
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Thursday, 13 May 2010 20:04 |
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 At a time when recession-pinched Americans are swilling Two Buck Chuck, Sun Xiao thinks nothing of entertaining his friends with $150 bottles of wine at his private club.
"I like wine — very rich wine," Sun, chief executive of a real estate investment firm, said one recent evening as attendants — young women in traditional Chinese gowns — stood nearby, ready to serve up an expensive bottle at his beckon. "It's the perfect example of humanity and nature living in harmony."
Sun's appreciation of foreign wine is increasingly shared by others in China's swelling middle class, many of whom are replacing the long-popular baijiu grain liquor and beer at their dinner tables with French Bordeaux and Napa Valley zinfandels. And that has the California wine industry tipsy with anticipation.
"More and more Chinese want to take good care of their health and are shifting from baijiu (pronounced by-joe) to the grape," said Jimmy Ye, an executive in a Shanghai investment fund and a wine convert.
Opening up an expensive bottle — say, a $4,000 Château Petrus — to seal a business deal signals the seriousness of the relationship, said Wu Jianxin, who owns the Beijing private wine club QingPingHuiGuan, which serves only the most revered French wines. "It shows generosity and indicates you are cultured."
But China's new appreciation of foreign wine also reflects "a nouveau riche mentality that the most expensive must be the best" that is prevalent in China's booming economy, he added.
"People ask me, 'What's the most expensive wine you have?' '' said Gaylen Richardson, vice president of Via Pacifica Exports, a wine exporter started by David Duckhorn, a member of the prominent Napa Valley wine family who set up a Shanghai store about two years ago that replicates a Northern California tasting room. "I'll say, Quintessa, about 2,500 yuan ($366). They'll say, 'That's not expensive enough.' "
Richardson, a former wine buyer at Market restaurant in St. Helena, is among a growing group of pioneers seeking business in China after wine sales for California wineries last year fell for the first time in 16 years, according to wine industry consultants Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates in Woodside.
"I get a call from wineries all the time. They are sitting on inventory," said Christopher Beros, managing director of California-China Wine Trading Co., which has offices in San Francisco and Shanghai. He holds regular wine tastings with his nine-person China staff to educate them on the subtleties of vintages and educate himself about the Chinese palette. One reason Chinese connoisseurs have a strong preference for red wine, he has learned, is that they believe the color signifies good luck.
"China is literally the Wild Wild West of the wine world," said Eric Pope, who overseas international wine programs for the San Francisco-based Wine Institute, a trade group representing more than 1,000 California wineries.
Wine consumption in China, promoted in part by a small but growing domestic wine industry, nearly doubled from 2004 to 2008 to about 900 million bottles, making it the eighth-largest wine market in the world, according to Vinexpo, organizer of one of the world's largest wine and spirits conferences. Over the next three years, consumption is expected to soar 32 percent, to 1.26 billion bottles. The United States, the world's second-largest wine market, consumes about three times as much wine as China.
Much of China's wine market is bipolar — consumers buy cheap bottles for a few dollars or dole out more than $1,000 a bottle for elite French vintages, Duckhorn said. "Our job is to open up the middle market, $15 to $100 a bottle," he said.
Imported wine in China is slapped with a 50 percent tax, so it's pricier for Chinese to explore California vintages than it is for Americans.
Cost is not the only challenge. California winemakers face tough competition in China, especially from the French, who have been selling wine in China for decades and who aren't above a little vinous trash-talking. They promote their wine as superior to all others, ignoring the historic 1976 "Judgment of Paris" blind tasting in which California chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons triumphed over their French counterparts.
"The French wines always come in first in China," said Yanguang Jin, general manager of AWA Shanghai Trading Co., a 1-year-old company that is importing California wine. In 2008, French wine represented 46 percent of all imported bottled wines, while the United States had only 5 percent of the market, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Wine Institute has launched a marketing push in China to educate the newly wealthy masses about California wine, whose fruity intensity is more in line with the Chinese palate, some sellers say.
In addition to competition from France, Italy, Australia, Chile and other winemaking nations, California wineries also face a threat common to many industries in China — copycats.
"There are a lot of fakes and the government has one eye open and one eye closed," Wu said. "The fake wine industry will employ a lot of people."
Widespread official corruption in China is another problem.
"A full case arrives on the dock and the inspector says, 'I have to keep one bottle. It's called inspection,' " Wu said. "A cargo comes in and two cases are taken."
It also is common for restaurants and other companies to sign exclusive agreements with one supplier — which shuts out newcomers.
The success of California wines in China will depend largely on word-of-mouth branding and guanxi — gaining favor through networking and relationship-building. A bit of unorthodox salesmanship might help as well.
Exporter Richardson, a big man, sometimes slings a wine bag around his body and charges through the streets of Shanghai: When he spots a restaurant, he walks in and asks if the managers would like a taste. On other days, he organizes wine tastings at Via Pacifica's wood-paneled outlet that includes comfortable living-room furniture arranged around a fireplace. Wine racks along the wall hold such star wines as the Goldeneye Pinot Noir, served at President Barack Obama's Inaugural Luncheon.
"This is a very immature market. They don't know much about wine," Richardson said one recent morning as he hoisted two cases of wine into a taxi to personally deliver them to two restaurants. "But the drive to know about wine is there."
Napa and Sonoma counties may be unfamiliar to many in this nation of 1.3 billion people, but California and the American spirit are well known.
"When I taste the red wine of America, I can feel the American culture," said Sun, the successful Beijing executive who is discovering California wine. "The wine produced by the Americans is more connected to the age — the times — than the French wine."
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Chilean Wine Industry Damaged |
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Written by Davet Pichette
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Wednesday, 03 March 2010 05:52 |
 As Chile tries to cope with the widespread devastation caused by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded, it may seem trivial to wonder about the country’s wine industry. But wine is an important segment of Chile’s economy, and the Maule Valley, Chile’s oldest wine region, was not far from the epicenter.
Reports from the Maule and elsewhere in the country have been sketchy as communication between Chile and the rest of the world is still difficult. The good news is that very few casualties in the industry were reported, if any. This is partly because the quake struck very early in the morning on a Saturday when wineries were largely empty, limiting the human toll caused by falling barrels and equipment. Many people were also away from work, as this is late summer in Chile, the height of the vacation season.
But many facilities were damaged, though specifics were hard to come by as wineries were still assessing the aftermath.
“There is much destruction,’’ Mario Lobo, director of Los Vascos in the Colchagua Valley, north of the epicenter, said in an e-mail message. “We are looking after our people first to provide the neediest with shelter, water and food. There is still no electricity, water or any type of phone service.’’
Miguel Torres, a Spanish wine company with holdings in the Curico Valley just north of the Maule, reported no casualties but major damage.
“The losses are significant at the winery: around 300 casks smashed, 1 stainless steel vat with a capacity of 100,000 liters has been cracked, losing all the wine, thousands of bottles destroyed,’’ the company said in a statement. “But luckily the main structure of the buildings has withstood the quake.’’
Elsewhere in the Maule and Curico the news was not as good. Reports of major losses have been coming in, though few of those reports were confirmed.
“I’m just hearing second- and third-hand accounts,’’ said Agustin Huneeus, whose family owns Veramonte in the Casablanca Valley, well to the north of the epicenter. “Where the earthquake hit, there were a lot of older wineries, and many were built on concrete tanks and adobe structures, and it’s been a disaster.’’
As for Veramonte, Mr. Huneeus estimated that about 100,000 liters of wine were lost as tanks buckled, and about 500 cases of wine in bottles were destroyed. But he said there was no structural damage.
The damage not only destroyed wine, but threatens the coming vintage as well. Harvest is nearing, and wineries with severe structural damage and loss of equipment will not have the capacity to make and store wine.
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Written by Cathy Alvarez
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Wednesday, 12 May 2010 17:30 |
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 You may be surprised to find out that 53 percent of wine drinkers in the U.S. are women, according to the Wine Market Council. And last year, women matched men as “core drinkers,” those who drink wine at least once a week.
That trend may accelerate if women heed the results of a recent survey of 20,000 women over 13 years by Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The poll showed that women who regularly drink a moderate amount of alcohol, particularly red wine, are less likely to have long-term weight gain than nondrinkers.
Nevertheless, when a man and a woman sit down to dinner in a restaurant, it’s usually the guy who grabs or is handed the wine list and chooses the bottle.
“In our more up-scale dining restaurants, eight times out of ten, it is the gentlemen at the table still making the decisions,” said Virginia Philip, sommelier at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
Philip, 42, is one of only 13 women certified as a Master Sommelier out of 130 worldwide. She oversees a cellar of 28,000 bottles and 1,600 selections at the resort’s L’Escalier fine dining room and eight other restaurants, with prices ranging from $35 to $15,000.
“If women are drinking with other women, obviously they choose the wine,” she said in a phone interview. “European women tend to be more comfortable ordering wine when men are present at the table.”
In the past, men were always automatically handed the wine list everywhere, she said.
Bruised Egos
“Unless someone knows who I am, the list is passed to the man, who then hands it back to me,” she said. “We have worked very diligently in our restaurants over the last five to eight years to not allow that to happen and to offer the list to the table. Still, if the host is the woman at the table, nine times out of ten she passes it to the man. I am convinced women do this to not ‘bruise the ego’ of the gentlemen they are dining with.”
Despite her renown -- the American Sommelier Association declared her the Best Sommelier in the World in 2002 -- she said her fellow male Master Sommeliers pounce on the list.
“I sit back and allow them to make their selections, within reason,” she said. “I may order a glass of something else just to get what I really want or to put my two cents in. If I want to see that list, I have to ask for it.”
Philip said she finds that women have an idea of what they “think” they want to drink when they come into the restaurants. She sees her role as one of guidance and education. Usually that means starting with lighter white or sparkling wines, then moving to pinot noir, tempranillo and malbec as the next most likely stepping stones, she said.
Alternative Whites
“In our Seafood Bar and our Asian restaurant Echo, white wines are generally a done deal,” Philip said. “White wines such as torrontes, riesling and soave as alternatives to pinot grigio and sauvignon blanc are varietals women generally do like and are more likely to order than men.
“By far, it’s the men who are ordering the big, expensive, red cult wines out of California,” Philip said.
In that stratosphere L’Escalier sells wines like ZD Abacus M/V for $950, Colgin Tychson Hill Vineyard 2005 for $1,000, and Harlan Estate 2004 at $1,525.
At Corton, in New York’s Tribeca, management has devised a system that seeks to avoid embarrassment.
“When the guests sit down the captain will place the cocktail and wine list right on the table and see who reaches for it,” said sommelier Ame Brewster. “We give them a few minutes to look at it, then I’ll go up to the person going through the pages.”
Advance Call
While Brewster says she has never had a woman who will be hosting the dinner call in advance to ask the list to be handed to her, some have phoned to ask for a specific wine to be chilled or opened upon arrival.
“Over the eight years I’ve been involved with wine service I’ve noticed more people have discussions among themselves about the wine,” said Brewster. “I find that women are more open about discussing the possible wines with me.”
The assumption that women tend to order a “nice dry chardonnay” by the glass has changed, Brewster said. “Women order seasonally. In winter they tend to go for red and in warm months for whites.”
Corton offers chef-partner Paul Liebrandt’s eight-course, $145 tasting menu, with a $120 option of matching wines, a choice where she sees no real difference between men and women. But when it comes to ordering big, expensive bottles from a list famous for its selection of rare burgundies, males tend to be the show-offs.
“Even there, though, women are moving up in price,” she said. “I’d say with those kinds of wines we’re running four to one, men to women.”
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The Curious Tale Of The Scandal, The Pot And The Kettle... |
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Written by Leo Fiorentino
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Wednesday, 21 October 2009 09:49 |
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 Canada has never been particularly good at scandals. And so it was with the great “cellared in Canada” wine fiasco. The squawking was over almost before it started. And, if you ask me, it wasn't much of a scandal in the first place.
Responding to a sudden chorus of consumer complaints, British Columbia and Ontario this month declared war on bottles made with cheap foreign grapes that traditionally were stocked on or near domestic-product shelves. About 40 such brands, typically made with juice from lower-cost regions such as Chile or Australia, are sold by Canadian companies, including Naked Grape from Vincor Canada, French Cross from Andrew Peller Ltd. and Sonora Ranch from Artisan Wine Co.
If you've ever bought one of those brands for a 100-mile dinner, you goofed big time. Ontario law requires that just 30 per cent of the juice in cellared in Canada wines be domestic, while B.C. law requires not a drop of domestic content. You should have bought a wine emblazoned with the Vintners Quality Alliance, or VQA, logo, which guarantees 100-per-cent domestic content and always has.
Lest I appear to be anything but a consumer advocate on this issue, let me say first that I support the initiatives. Clearer labels were necessary and separate store sections are good.
But this has been a tempest in a crystal decanter. Canada has a long history of importing bulk wine and grapes. Governments supported the practice largely to stimulate cash flow for new winery investments, and that's happened. The current “cellared in Canada” designation was endorsed by a broad coalition of growers, winemakers and government officials when it was hammered out in the mid-1990s.
But recently a number of boutique producers have been making noise about the plight of trying to market $50 pinot noirs alongside $8 and $9 bargain wines that appear to come from the same province. Admittedly, not an easy sell.
But few consumers or politicians seemed to care – until Jancis Robinson rode into town. The high-profile British wine writer visited B.C.'s Okanagan Valley this summer.
She followed up with a scathing column on her website under the headline “The Canadian con contd [continued].” Vincor was subsequently lambasted in the B.C. legislature for pasting its Olympic-sponsorship logo on bottles containing foreign juice – inventory that has since been voluntarily pulled.
“I think it is doing a disservice to real Canadian wine and its reputation abroad to continue with this misleading practice,” Ms. Robinson wrote. “It is just so difficult to take Canadian producers seriously when they are allowed to mislead the wine-buying public to this extent.”
I'll grant her the “disservice” part. But the rest of her complaint strikes me as unfair and, frankly, patronizing. Difficult to take Canadian producers seriously? Really? A Briton need not fly thousands of kilometres to British Columbia to uncover scandal in the wine industry. She need only cross the English Channel.
Here's a riddle. France is the world's third-largest importer of Sicilian wine, almost all of it in bulk. Ever encounter a bottle of Sicilian vino on your French travels? Didn't think so. I don't want to suggest all or even most of France's many struggling winemakers are so unscrupulous as to goose their juice with richly coloured, high-alcohol stuff from Italy's sunny south. But the Sicilian paradox would be interesting to ponder next time you're sipping an unusually rich glass of the house “Burgundy” at a French bistro.
Fact is, winemakers around the world, and especially in sun-deprived northern Europe, have a long history of misleading consumers. It's all supposed to be a thing of the past, of course. But it's clear illegal practices persist. In 2006, Georges Duboeuf, one of the richest and most famous producers in France, credited with turning Beaujolais Nouveau into a worldwide craze, was found guilty of defrauding consumers by mixing wine from lesser appellations into tanks of more expensive stuff. The case involved about 300,000 bottles worth of wine.
Was it an isolated case or rather the tip of an iceberg? I know where I'd place my bet. In 2007, a French consumer group published a report saying that up to a third of wines sold under France's hallowed appellation system could be from a different region than that listed on the label. The group, UFC-Que Choisir, pointed a finger at award panels for the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, or AOC, saying they were populated by local industry workers with vested interests. It declared the AOC system was turning into a joke.
I'm not condoning Canadian practices that have misled many consumers. Foreign content should be clearly labelled. But to single out Canada as some kind of cowboy frontier for snake-oil peddlers smacks to me of picking on the little guy.
You want seriously misleading but legal practices? In 2003, when New Zealand faced a harvest shortfall, a few prominent producers pulled a bold stunt. They started blending foreign juice into premium brands that had formerly contained 100-per-cent New Zealand wine. In one case, Montana, a large producer, made its Corbans Sauvignon Blanc with 54-per-cent Chilean grapes. Sacred Hill made two versions of its 2003 Whitecliff Estate Sauvignon Blanc – a 100-per-cent domestic bottling intended for restaurants and high-end retailers and a Chile-New Zealand blend for supermarkets.
It's easy to see conspiracies. But I'm not convinced our provincial retailers here were actively trying to hoodwink shoppers. If anything, stocking cellared in Canada wines next to the VQA offerings, many made by the same parent companies, seems to me a simple matter of merchandising logic and convenience.
And, frankly, there are plenty of Naked Grape and French Cross consumers who don't care where their grapes are grown. They just want wine that tastes good and – something most VQA wines can't boast but which flexible international blends sometimes can – is as consistent as Blue Light or Coors from year to year.
Retailers tend to prefer selling higher-margin brands, after all. In Ontario, the LCBO was already taking steps to literally distance cellared in Canada brands from the VQA shelves. LCBO spokesman Chris Layton says the retailer has been giving marquee treatment to VQA wines through its regular “Go Local” catalogue campaigns and special in-store displays, helping drive VQA sales to double-digit growth over the past year compared with flat sales for imports.
“I think the LCBO has done a good job in making changes to the signage,” says Laurie Macdonald, executive director of VQA Ontario, an authority of the provincial government. “They now have signs that say ‘VQA – 100 per cent Ontario' and I think it's been a few years since the cellared in Canada wines were shelved under an Ontario banner.”
As I said, not exactly world-class scandal material. But I'm kind of amused that at least one esteemed foreign wine writer thinks so.
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My eight and six-year-old sons are more technically advanced than I am. I was given an iPod – or was it an iPlayer? – for my birthday and within moments my boys had mastered it while I soon gave up. The damn thing never seems to play what I want to hear. As for iPhones, until recently they were a complete mystery.