Is the low alcohol trend a flash-in-the-pan or are you keen to see more of these products on the shelves, no matter what winemaking techniques have been used to produce them?
I would just like to comment on the use of osmosis on must, a technique that in France that is not only authorised, but is now an obligation for anybody who is Grand Cru and upwards. This is to say that chaptilisation for this class of wine is no longer acceptable. This then adds a new dimension to the EU ban on the basis that osmosis is acceptable, but reverse osmosis is not!!!!!!!
Nicky Forrest
24 Jun 2008 13:24:06
I'm certain that low alcohol is no flash in the pan - the Portman Group and the news media will see that it isn't. But wouldn't it just be simpler if consumers turned to a nice light, fruity German wine, naturally lighter in alcohol and loved by wine experts the world over?
Joe Fattorini
23 Nov 2007 09:53:10
Well we could start with a little less hypocrisy and obfuscation on the whole issue. What we have at the moment are people objecting to the production of good value, commercial, low-alcohol wines (for which there appears to be a solid demand among consumers) on the grounds that their production offends the 'naturalness' of wine. Yet at the other end of the market - where invoking the 'naturalness' argument is perhaps more understandable - we have ultra-premium Californians apparently locking their de-alc contractors into confidentiality clauses and Bordeaux chateaux pretending to eagle-eyed visitors that they only use the reverse osmosis machine to produce steam to clean the barrels. 'Non, we 'av never needed to concentrate ze must... not sure how it ended up 'ere really... probably just ze winemaker doing a few experiments'. Aye, right.
This is all a consequence of the misguided belief that wine is still a single, homogenous product category. It's not, and we should credit consumers with understanding that. They know that [yellow tail] is an altogether different product from Premier Cru Chablis, in the same way they know that Dairy Milk is altogether different from Montezuma's Foundation Bars.
Get these products on the shelves - let the consumer decide. If there's no demand then it'll be flash-in-the-pan. It's pompous cultural imperialism for a few bureaucrats and trade figures to take it upon themselves to decide what the consumer can and can't choose.
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