Inside the Vancouver Wine Festival

Felicity Carter spends time at the wine fair and hears an argument for declaring French wines the greatest in the world.

Vancouver Wine Festival/Christine McAvoy Photography
Vancouver Wine Festival/Christine McAvoy Photography

The Eiffel Tower, made from white gauze stretched over wire, dominated the room. Around it, producers poured wines for the hundreds of Canadians who had come to the Vancouver Wine Festival to learn and discover new things – particularly about France, this year’s theme country.

Canadians, according to a recent Wine Intelligence report, are becoming wine knowledgeable at a rapid clip, thirsty to learn more. And it’s events like this, that put consumers in the room with top professionals, that is helping Canada become one of the world’s most important import markets.

Small beginnings

Back in 1979, John Levine, a member of the board of the Vancouver Playhouse, thought a wine festival might help generate revenue for the theatre. “He got a commitment from Robert Mondavi to come, and the first festival was about whatever Robert Mondavi was about,” said Sonia Fraser, awards show producer for the festival. “Year two was about another winery and by year three there were a few Californian wineries.”

Today, the festival attracts around 25,000 people and an international array of wineries. The growth of British Columbia’s wine industry over the same period, with its spectacular wine tourism offerings, has also helped the wine market to grow. “People’s level of knowledge about wine has definitely grown and their expectations of what an event should look like has driven a lot of our programming,” said Fraser.

Consumers now want to do more than just hold out their glasses. “If you’re a first-time person, chances are you come to the tasting room, where you get access to the participating wineries, because that’s what a lot of people associate with the wine festival,” said Fraser. “Once you’ve experienced that, the next layer is any kind of event where you can eat as well as try some wines. The lunches, the dinners are hugely popular.” After that, people sign up for seminars and tutored tastings.

The 2020 tastings were packed, with the audience sitting elbow to elbow – a way of doing things that now seems part of a pre-virus past. The platforms at the front were packed as well, as the producers commented on their wines, allowing the audience to hear directly from leading Okanagan and French producers.

Another development that Fraser has seen is a change in where consumers get advice. Two decades ago, she said, people looked to Wine Spectator and Robert Parker. Today, however, people are much more interested in the opinions of people who are closer to them in some way, such as friends or people of the same age. “They’re also willing to learn more about varietals that are less popular,” said Fraser. “They’re not afraid to try new things and they’re not afraid to have their own opinions.”

After the fair is over

If more consumers are turning to peers for advice, what does that mean for professional wine communication? 

“Has the democratisation of wine language been a good thing?” asked Neal McLennan, food and wine editor at Vancouver magazine, at a panel on speaking to consumers. “Universally it’s accepted that it has. But is there a flipside to that? Ask any medical doctor now and they say WebMD is the worst thing that ever happened.”

The audience of buyers, retailers, sommeliers, winemakers and wine writers, generally agreed that while Vivino is now an important source of advice, it also leads to consumers rejecting wines that don’t have enough Vivino stars.

Buyer and educator Tyler Dawson said the reverse could sometimes be true; he said he’d give recommendations to people, only to see them pull out their smartphones and check the stars on Vivino. Once they could see that Dawson’s choices were highly rated, they were more willing to trust him. He added that, “even though you get all sorts of tasters, quality stands out” on Vivino.

Sommelier Shiva Reddy said that as the industry changes and becomes more diverse, it’s also coming up against the problem of stereotypes. She said someone like herself, who is “young, coloured and female” can struggle to establish authority with consumers. Her solution is to listen to guests, rather than talk at them. “My responsibility is to be a wine detective, to instantly perceive what they might like.”

Another issue was what to do when consumers themselves use fuzzy language, such as asking for “fresh and sweet” wines when they meant a wine with generous fruit, or a “dry” wine when the consumer clearly preferred something with high residual sugar. The room generally agreed that “dry” was such a confusing term, it was probably better to drop it altogether. Using gendered language – “this is a feminine wine” – was also a no-no, particularly with younger drinkers.

In the end, everybody agreed, the task of the wine professional is to read the customer and to try and understand what they want. “Don’t throw crazy stuff at people, because they will back away,” finished wine director Ken Collura.

Are French wines the best?

One speaker who had no problem using language was the star of the 2020 festival. The British wine writer Andrew Jefford, author of multiple books plus a regular Decanter column, captivated people with his quiet, but provocative keynote speeches on French wine. 

“With the greatest respect to Italy and to Spain and to every other wine-making nation,” he began. “Nowhere else on earth can quite match France in terms of fine wine quality and diversity.” Yes, he went there – Jefford argued that French wine is the greatest in the world. “If you want to make great wine, what we call ‘France’ is the luckiest land mass on earth,” he said. “It is the only major wine-producing nation on earth which covers both propitious cool-climate, high-latitude zones and warmer-climate, mid-latitude zones.”

Italy and Spain are mid-latitude, Germany is high latitude, and the southern hemisphere’s high latitude zones are storm-swept and harsh, he said. North America’s east coast may indeed have the right latitude, but it doesn’t enjoy the benefits of the Gulf Stream as much as France does.

“There is no land mass which has the positional advantages of France, sitting astride latitude 47oN in a temperate maritime zone,” Jefford went on. “It’s also, geologically speaking, a relatively young place,” with vast chalk and limestone deposits, and the alkaline soils that result. “It also means propitiously youthful land forces, with a profusion of hill slopes and gravel terraces,” all of which are relished by vines. And then there are France’s cool, dry winds.

But, Jefford went on, French wines are as much about nurture as about nature. “The French capacity for complaining, moaning and disputing is almost limitless,” he said. “There are many negatives to this, as any French politician or business leader will tell you. But if you want to make great wine, this is a very good thing.” 

Jefford said the way that dissatisfaction had driven incremental progress over 1,000 years has “brought us today’s Musigny, Yquem, Morgon and Madiran. France’s intricate wine offer isn’t just due to terroir; it’s also the fruit of divine dissatisfaction.”

The French have two other key attributes. The first is that they “honour difference. Most French winemakers, even at the grandest addresses, are fundamentally modest. They know they are there to serve the place,” he said. “The only question is what the place most wants to do or to give. The focus is always on origin, not the market.”

The French also taste well. “Most people truly care about food and flavour in France. They value and reward subtlety of aroma and flavour,” said Jefford. “Palates come into being within cultures. I now believe these different sensual cultures are of great consequence to wine creation.”
Above all, Jefford concluded, the French have never betrayed their potential. “They’re not perfect, but they do justice to their land and in that sense, they act as a model and inspiration for those who craft wines everywhere around the world.”

Consumers up close

Meininger’s had a chance to get close to both French wines and Canadian consumers, after volunteering to spend an evening pouring bottles from the Rhône Valley, under the gauzy Eiffel Tower.

The audience were highly engaged, wanting plenty of details. Just as discussed at the wine communication seminar, however, a significant number asked for “dry wines – I only drink dry” or for “big” wines. Yet while the richer whites and rosés quickly emptied, and the bone-dry rosé did not, many of the tasters who insisted they only wanted big, heavy wines were delighted with the elegant reds they sampled.

Can anything be done to get consumers to drop their preconceptions about “dry” and “big”? Maybe it doesn’t matter. If people are turning up in large numbers to festivals, and checking in with Vivino before they buy anything, it means they have forged an identity as wine drinkers. And perhaps the memories of Jefford’s words will encourage them to explore a few French wines they might never have encountered.

Felicity Carter

Felicity Carter attended as a guest of the Vancouver Wine Festival.

This article first appeared in Issue 2, 2020 of Meininger's Wine Business International magazine, available online or in print by subscription.

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