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Green wine
A wave of books and movies like Fast Food Nation have alerted people to the benefits of ‘natural’ food and drink. So a certified organic wine should be a natural bestseller.
In the late 1960s, the Fetzer family in California created a five acre, organically-grown garden at their winery. They liked the taste of the resulting fruit and vegetables so much, they decided to trial organic methods on their vineyards. From that came the certified organic Bonterra brand, born in the late 1970s and later sold to US drinks giant Brown-Forman. Today, Bonterra, which includes a Chardonnay, a Merlot and a Cabernet Sauvignon, among others, is a 150-200,000 case international brand. So does it help to be an organic wine – or is it better to be sold as a quality wine that happens to be organic?
“Initially, certainly when we started to sell in the UK, we sold it as an organic wine,” says David Cox, Brown-Forman Wines’ European managing director. “There was concern about provenance of food and food scares – food and mouth disease and so on.” But he says the brand’s success in markets like Germany and Switzerland is partly because they’re open to Californian wine, and partly because the brand is sold as a quality wine that happens to be organic – because the whole ‘organic’ proposition, surprisingly, works less well in clean, green Europe. François Schoepfer, the general manager of Schlumberger, which imports Bonterra into Germany, says that “the clientele for organic wines is generally not willing to pay the price tag.”
Cox says that organic wine has a perception problem in Europe. “A lot of people feel all wine is natural and organic anyway and the retailers aren’t taking that as seriously as they are for other foodstuffs,” he says. Cox adds that European sommeliers can be reluctant to list organic wines, despite “making a thing on their menu about organic salmon or beef.” But not all European markets are uniform, and Cox says Sweden stands out as a country where “people have embraced the whole organic idea nicely. It’s on fire”.
He says the brand is growing at double digit rates in California, “led by Wholefoods. Even Wal-Mart and others are taking the organic sector seriously.” Cox says he expects the brand to grow to 300,000 cases in the next two years. And there’s one group who are right behind the brand, having embraced the organic concept wholeheartedly – the growers. “Our vineyard development manager not only runs her own vineyard but trains growers. It’s a three year conversion and we offer good contracts for growers. There’s a lot of interest – especially if they can get more dollars per tonne.”
A vintage style
After more than 300 years, the British Port house Taylor, Fladgate & Yeatman know a |
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thing or two about Port. One of their own styles, the Late Bottled Vintage Port (LBV) is still going strong.
A true Vintage Port comes from a single year and is aged in wood for two years. After bottling it must be aged for several years. “What Taylor’s did was to take a quality wine from a single year with Taylor’s Vintage characteristics, mature it in wood for five years and then bottle it,” says Amanda Brunner, senior marketing manager, explaining how the ‘Late Bottled Vintage’ (LBV) created a new style of wood aged port, ready for immediate drinking. She says it reignited demand for quality, wood aged Port, because “it bridged the gap between the cheaper Ports and the more expensive Aged Tawny and Vintage Port categories.” Today, Brunner says “Taylor’s LBV is the one Port category that you will find in every single market.”
Given that the fortified category has been in decline for some decades, what keeps Taylor’s committed to a Port that has to spend so many years in the winery before it can be released? For a start, Brunner vigorously contests that idea of a category in decline. “Port sales, in contrast to other fortified wines, are not declining,” she says. “According to initial statistics released by the Port Wine Institute, total export figures are slightly up in 2007. There has been a steady year on year increase in the special category sales.”
Brunner says that Taylor’s deliberately stay focused on special categories, rather than the standard end of the market, where the pressure is on price. Emphasising the brand’s heritage is another strategy. “We re-packaged our LBV a couple of years ago to re-establish the link with Vintage Port. We used a new bottle and label based on our Vintage Port.”
So who is drinking the LBV? Brunner says that while LBV appeals to older consumers, she says it also attracts the 30 to 55 year olds. People who live in the cold also like it, particularly in Canada. “Taylor’s is the biggest selling Port in Canada,” says marketing director Nicholas Heath, adding that the market there has been growing steadily for the past decade. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Taylor’s have no plans to produce a table wine. “The Port market is still growing at the quality end,” says Brunner. “Port remains our core business.”
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