DAN'S WINE BLOG- NEW YEAR'S BLOG 2022

Friday, January 14, 2022

Welcome to 2022! May it be a much better year for all of us, except for maybe those people who made billions out of last year’s misfortune –?may they rot in hell!!

Kicking off on a positive note:

FRANCE:??For several years I have been promoting/pushing the Riesling sweetness scale devised by the American Riesling Society (free to download), which has been adapted and used by a handful of Australian white wine producers such as Mesh – Grosset, Hill (Eden Valley), Parish Vineyard (Adelaide Hills) and Robert Stein Wines (Mudgee).

Well now in a most progressive move, the wine region of Alsace in France has enacted legislation so that as from vintage 2021 their wines will need to include the sweetness scale shown below on all their PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) wines. In typical French understatement, the scale not only needs to be on the wine labels, but also in all advertisements, leaflets/flyers, invoices, including consumer invoices –?Bureaucracy rules again!!!

EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS:??I can remember in the 1980s when I joined the wine industry there were three types of bottles (Burgundy, Claret & Riesling) in two colours – green or brown –?that was it!?The bottle shape/image played almost no part in the marketing of the wine. Grange came in the same type of bottle as Jacob’s Creek. Somewhere along the way people became besotted with big, chunky, heavy wine bottles.

Please, please, please,?in 2022 let us all shy away from monstrously heavy wine bottles – especially as most were expensive attempts to impress the Chinese. Every little bit helps towards battling/mitigating global warming.

We have made some progress towards reducing our carbon footprint, as the World Buk Wine Exhibition (WBWE) promote and explain, more and more wine is being exported in bulk and bottled at destination, thereby reducing its carbon footprint by not lugging heavy glass bottles half way around the world. At the same time more and more wineries are switching to solar power and a few so far have even achieved Zero Carbon Emission status. There is also a significant shift around the viticultural world toward the much more eco-friendly Organic and Bio-Dynamic viticulture. Each year thousands of hectares of vineyards commence the process of converting to Organic. Last year alone over 3,000 hectares of vineyards in Bordeaux (one of the most ultra conservative regions) were certified as Organic.

Added to this there has been significant advancements in non-glass wine bottles, which are not only significantly lighter (lower transport carbon footprint) but also require significantly less energy to produce (as glass needs a lot of heat to produce it). I have previously mentioned the ingenious light weight oval bottles of Gar?on Wines which fit 10 bottles of wine into a current six pack sized carton (as recently launched in the UK by Accolade), the paper bottles with the film lining being trialled in Europe and of course wine casks (bag-in-box). Well here is a new one – 100% plant based bottle. This is currently being trialled by Japan’s Suntory on soft drinks but with a view to roll it out across the categories – check it out at the link below.

Article Link:

www.beveragedaily.com/article/2021/12/06/suntory-reveals-100-plant-based-bottle

So every little bit helps, and as time moves on you will find more and more people will become environmentally friendly and aware. They will lean (with their wallets) towards those wineries which are better, more responsible environmental citizens. So as this subtle but inevitable tsunami approaches the wine world, will you be a forward thinking leader and benefit accordingly or a reluctant?“me too”?follower and suffer the consequences in the market place?

You don’t have to make radical changes. Start by reducing the weight of your bottles by 50-100 grams each (thereby slightly reducing your carbon footprint), consider going back to a paper label instead of plastic and then in due course consider using the newer, more environmentally friendly wine “bottles”.

Make a big song and dance about any changes you make to your consumers, they will understand and appreciate your efforts and probably buy more of your wine as a result.

As a small start I am not going to review or buy any vintage 2021 (or onwards) wines in heavy, fat bottles.

Come on let’s do our part for the environment and our children’s, children’s children.

Have a great week, may V22 be sensational for you and stay safe while enjoying?#chooseaustralianwine?and where possible drink?#emergingvarieties.

Cheers!