The 9th International Cool Climate Wine Symposium was always going to be about English wine. It did, after all, take place in Brighton, the pleasant seaside town that is surrounded by some of the best-known English vineyards. But the extent that it wasn’t about England is a measure of the comprehensiveness of this four-yearly conference.
This is despite the best efforts of British wine personality Oz Clarke, who led a tasting on English still wines which was attended by 500-plus delegates in the big ballroom at the Metropole hotel. He gave a performance worthy of the West End actor he used to be. “They told them they couldn’t do it in Marlborough. They told them they couldn’t do it in Tasmania. And now look at them. England and Wales are taking the same challenging, turning, twisting trail to greatness.” So England dominated the tastings, but the seminars went deeper and broader.
A cooler way to work
As Chris Foss of Plumpton College, a college in East Sussex where winemaking is taught, told Meininger’s, this is a conference for producers. The organisers had spent four years putting together a group of what Jancis Robinson called “a line-up of absolutely first class, cutting-edge authorities”. Over three days, winemakers, consultants, and academics from every reputable wine faculty from Beijing to Bordeaux, discussed everything from managing phenolics in cooler climates to pests and diseases, new technological trends, and how strains of Saccharomyces yeast vary in the different terroirs of New Zealand.
The talks were focussed. Consultant Dr Kees van Leeuven covered the “striking” climate variability of the different terroirs of Bordeaux, while Dr Gary Pickering of Brock University in Ontario examined the role of MPs (2-alkyl-3-methoxpyrazines) in giving green flavours to wine. Elsewhere, Dr Damien Wilson of Sonoma State University looked at why marketers (“the guardians of the wine sector”) habitually misunderstand the power of digital communication, Dr Richard Smart (one of the small handful of people to have been at every ICCWS since Auckland in 1988) discussed how cloches can protect UK vineyards from low temperatures, and Dr Paul Read of the University of Nebraska showed how coating buds in vegetable oils and NAA (naphthaleneacetic acid) can delay budbreak and obviate the dangers of frost.
Throughout the conference every possible aspect of growing grapes in cool (and freezing) conditions was examined: sour rot etiology, Botrytis, the brown marmorated stink bug, mildew both downy and powdery, rainfall, frost and ice. Seminar rooms were dotted with winemakers taking notes.
“One of the most useful discussions was on regional identities,” Mardi Roberts, sales manager of English sparkling producer Ridgeview, told Meininger’s, referring to a seminar entitled “The challenges involved in developing strong regional identities”, in which Steve Charters MW of the Burgundy Business School looked at Central Otago’s success in creating such a powerful brand identity. “What did I take away from it? The idea that unless there is a difference between regions, then there’s no point.” For English wine producers, appellation and regionality is set to become the hottest topic of the next few years.
England first
While a wide range of regions was covered in seminars, there was a feeling that England took over the tastings. The two big showpiece tastings, with Essi Avellan MW on English sparkling and Oz Clarke, were hugely popular events, but some felt other regions didn’t get a look-in. “The conference would have had a greater impact if [tastings] were more internationally oriented, comparing cool climate wines from different regions and countries, such as Denmark or Poland, and I think this would have given the event more weight,” Willi Klinger of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (one of the sponsors of the conference) said.
Many agree with him, but many more suggested it was only natural. “We had a lot of Finger Lakes wines when the ICCWS was in Rochester,” Sigrid Gertsen-Schibbye of yeast and bacteria suppliers Lallemand pointed out.
The ICCWS is one of the most serious wine conferences in the calendar, possibly because the questions it asks are so dynamic and topical – there is no subject more on winemakers’ minds than global warming, for example. And like all complex questions, there are no simple answers, least of all to the most basic of all: “what defines cool climate wine?” In his closing remarks, wine writer Dr Jamie Goode gave his view. “Cool climate wine regions start when someone plants vines against better advice. It requires a certain mindset, and while it’s difficult to define ‘cool climate’ precisely, this symposium aligns people with a common mindset: wanting to succeed despite obvious challenges.”
