And speaking of the growers....

As per my previous post, I have severe reservations considering certain adjustments to regulations in the wine industry.

If the growers in California aren't careful, they could be looking at a very similar situation.

It is a pretty interesting transcription of a news report and one worth reading. In the interest of time, I offer one little bit:

JOHN SFYRIS: If I had 20 semitrailers, because one semitrailer takes 20 tonnes, 20 semitrailers full of fruit, that's how much fruit that's getting to get dropped on the ground. We could place a lot of wineries here, interstate, no-one wants it.

JIM SFYRIS, GRAPE GROWER: No interest.

JOHN SFYRIS: There's no interest in it. We've had one offer for around $80-100 a tonne.

JIM SFYRIS: That's 8-10 cents a bottle.

JOHN SFYRIS: It's not worth growing it.

Think about it.

Capitulation - The Beginning of the End

Or maybe a better title would be 'Money gets what Money wants'. Either way I find this more than a little troubling.

Feds institute looser standard for vintage wines

I'm sure the vast majority of people (wine drinkers and Non - alike) have no idea and probably no interest in the subtleties of various regulations that govern the wine industry or anything else for that matter. Consequently, those fine folks 'up on the hill' get away with whatever they want to.

"Currently, at least 95 percent of a vintage-dated wine must come from grapes harvested in the vintage year cited on the label. The new rules will lower this standard, so that at least 85 percent of a vintage-dated wine must be derived from vintage-year grapes."

That's right. No longer does the vintage matter. One of the base arguments for this whole thing was to put American wineries on 'equal footing' with their competitors, specifically Australia. I'm sure t goes without saying that I find this a less-than-desirable 'solution' to what those out west consider a 'problem' Recently, the EU made a similar move. Used to be that they had 'standards' concerning the processes by which wine was made - reverse osmosis, watering back, addition of oak chips as opposed to the far more expensive (and traditional) use of oak barrels. Well those things are long gone now. The argument used then??? 'We can't compete with the Americans and the Australians.' Well, it appears that everyone is getting in on this process of driving the bar as far into the ground as possible.

"Older wines can be made to taste younger and fresher," prominent Lodi, Calif.-based grower and vintner John Kautz advised regulators, "(and) younger wines can be blended to add some aged characteristics."

While the words that he uses 'make sense', that doesn't prevent this from being one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. What's the point of aging a wine in the first place, jack-ass?!?!

I know that I'm sounding a bit like ol' Chicken Little and most people would say 'You'll never see the reputable producers taking advantage of such a thing' blah, blah, blah. Well, I have my doubts. From what I've read, there is absolutely nothing to repvent them from doing so. And what exactly is a 'reputable' producer anyway. It wasn't all that long ago that Mondavi et al was the cream of the crop, so to speak.

Tom over at Fermentation says that this 85/15 rule only applies to wines that carry the generic 'California' label, i.e. no winery that labels their wines winth an appellation will be allowed to use this practice. He may be right. But it is only recently that certain 'appellations' have been granted the right to enforce the idea that the fruit comes from the place on the label. Do a Google on the Napa Valley Vintners Association and their recent legal battles.

And given that there is so much grey area in the delineations of appellation, fruit source, why is that crazy that this 85/15 rule won't ultimately be applied to all wines. After all, the crux of this latest argument is to give 'equal footing'

One last thought. Suppose that at some point, Harlan does blend in 15% from a previous vintage(s). Is it reasonable to assume that this would be disclosed to a Parker, Laube, Tanzer, et al? And furthermore, if it were, would this then be disseminated to the masses via Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, etc...? I suspect the answer is 'Hell No!'.

And what would be the fallout if one of the aforementioned clowns were to proclaim, say 2007, the vintage of the century, only for it to become known that a certain percentage of the wine wasn't from said vintage.



Oh, forget about it. That would never happen.







And what about the growers.....?

Sweet Sassy Mo-Lassy

There are those of us in the industry (myself included) who from time to time get all wrapped up in the 'romance' of wine, the small vineyards, hand crafted, miniscule production kind of stuff. On the contrary, every now and then, something comes down the pike and you start to feel like your head is going to explode.

This is one of those times.

The stunning growth of the Australian wine industry has come to a dramatic halt with at least 60,000 tonnes of grapes -- equivalent to 55 million bottles -- left unpicked and almost an entire 12-month supply of wine still in vats from last year.

For the mathematically challenged, that 55m equals jsut under 4.6 MILLION cases of wine. I feel it no understatement to say - that's a shit-ton of wine to just leave on the vine.

It goes on:

He said estimates of wine still in storage varied from between 500 million and 900million litres.

Again, going back to the calculator, the amount of juice sitting in 'storage' amounts to somewhere between 375M and 675M bottles of 'finished wine'. Granted, a great deal of this stuff will processed out into various 'alco-beverages' but still, has there been a better example of the old phrase 'Too much of a good thing'.


I would think that even a leviathan such as [yellow tail] might have a little difficulty dealing with these sorts of numbers.



Maybe this could become the 'alternative fuel' that the clowns on TV keep talking about. Anyone interested in R/D for this type of thing ought to head down under, I suspect you can get testing material for pennies on the dollar.