November - The cold rush

Winter seems to be well and truly upon us now, I donned four layers and a scarf this morning! Even now, seated in my chilly cellar, I wish I’d bought my bobble hat and maybe some mitts. Whilst enjoying the warmth of my cup’a soup, I read in the paper about yet another silly syndrome: seasonal affective disorder. SAD but true, apparently the awful weather this year and the loss of light moving into the winter has gotten on top of many of us, a little pathetic if you ask me! I thought we were stalwarts, braving the elements for barbeques and such, but it turns out we’re all a bit wet. Spare a thought if you will though for the wine makers, 2007 has pretty universally been a bit of a wash out. For many of them though it is not as disastrous is it once would have been, nowadays we have the viticultural understanding and also the chemicals to cope with these conditions. Also the invention of winemaking techniques that compensate for shortcomings in the raw materials (grapes) have made the bad years not nearly as bad as they used to be. Some are thankful for this ‘progress’ others long for a time when wine had more of a personality without the sort of processed consistency it has today.

In the era of brands and globalisation, wine has become a new form of alcoholised coca cola. If you want a £3.99 merlot, be it Chilean, Australian or Bulgarian it will be what you expect from a merlot and offer no surprises. This is the future and it is a very sorry state of affairs: where before there were variations between vintages and a sense of place and individuality to a wine now you have a formula, easily reproduced.

The artisan and more traditional winemakers – and by the way I hate these phrases: they sound backward looking and cranky when in fact there are almost always progressive – are attempting to convey the true essence of their wines. I was talking to a Sicilian winemaker last week who has stopped using oak barrels instead reverting to the traditional and more inert vessel of the amphora, all in an effort to allow the wine to communicate its true self. As you can imagine this ‘true self’ is all about the annual differences in climate; what’s happening in the soil and ultimately what happens to the grapes from picking to squishing and everything thereafter. I know to many it all sounds a bit poetic and smacks of marketing packs, but honestly the potential for variation is staggering and earnest. Why anyone would want to smother these nuances is difficult to understand and frustrating especially for the enthusiast who encounters an ever-increasing plethora of homogenised vino-pops.

What we will see with 2007 is a uniform decrease in production levels, for many producers however there will be little difference in the taste of the wines, it will be business as usual although prices may have to increase a little. For the rest, if they did their job properly, the drop in vintage will be accompanied by a wines distinctly different form ’06 perhaps with a welcome lightness and elegance. The whole myth about good years and bad years has never really added up anyway, there used to be years when the weather was so bad and we were so badly prepared that next to no wine was produced. There were two of these years in the last century! The truth is that vintage normally just meant drink young or drink old, it was never case of don’t drink at all. It seems that in the modern age the relevance of vintage in confined to speculation on premium Bordeaux wines and the wild inflation of their prices.

Now more than ever it is time to follow your nose and sniff out something different, that is of course unless you are completely SAD!