With the cost-of-living crisis and import challenges ratcheting up, Andrew Catchpole catches up with our 50 Best Indies list topper Hal Wilson to discuss the path ahead.
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In 2024, Ramón Bilbao will celebrate its centenary, 100 years of fine winemaking that has firmly established it as one of the leading producers in Spain and one of the world’s most admired wine brands. However, since the start of the current millennium Ramón Bilbao has become famous for more than just great winemaking. Under head winemaker Rodolfo Bastida, who assumed the reins in 1999, and the ownership of the Zamora Group, the Haro-based producer has been at the forefront of innovation in Rioja Alta and beyond. While pursuing excellence, it has cast aside many of the conventions that led many people to brand Rioja as boring and predictable.
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In many ways, Rueda has been a counterpoint to Galicia’s roll call of increasingly sought-after (but often niche) whites. As Spain’s premier white wine-producing region, Rueda has long provided crisp, easy-going styles, with the ‘green’ notes of its flagship Verdejo grape dubbed the ‘terrace tiger’ for its popularity as a summer refresher. Not that Rueda is without quality credentials; sitting at 700-800m above sea level on pebble-infused sandy soils, with big diurnal shifts in temperature and many old vines, these green (‘verde’ – Verdejo) wines have thrived here for up to 10 centuries. But as a category, it has more often played the everyday crowd-pleaser to Galicia’s more exalted status among independents and sommeliers.
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Spain’s north-west corner challenges the cliché of full-bodied, fully ripe wines associated with the country. Galicia is the gateway to Atlantic storms and Rías Baixas, its largest DO, a succession of estuaries that allow the ocean to penetrate inland and one of the world’s wettest wine regions with an average rainfall of 1,400–1,600mm. Its lush vines trained mainly in pergolas yield small, thick-skinned Albariño berries that are behind some of Spain’s best whites.
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Modern and traditional are surprisingly slippery terms in Rioja and should be handled with caution. Techniques, ideas and debates that are considered contemporary turn out to have strong historical precedents. Reading Ludger Mees’ new book The History of Rioja Wine (Routledge), I was struck by how often the present echoes the past. As early as 1771 – long before Rioja became a famous wine region – people were grumbling about excessive yields and low prices, the very subjects that still exercise commentators, growers and producers today.
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Cava’s image has been bruised in recent years, not least by an exodus of nine influential producers in 2019 from the DO. Nonetheless, it remains a sparkling powerhouse, led by corporate giants Codorníu and Freixenet. The numbers speak for themselves: global exports rose by 16.45% in the first nine months of 2021, according to the Consejo Regulador. However, with stagnant growth in the UK, there are challenges ahead if the DO hopes to reconquer one of Europe’s most dynamic sparkling wine markets.
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With more than 211,000ha under vine and over 800 wine producers, Argentina is constantly awash with change. It isn’t only a numbers game, Argentina is also in a new golden age of winemaking with its wine industry at its most innovative to date.
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The sparkling wine industry has arrived at a crucial moment. As markets have expanded and consumer attitudes evolved beyond the ‘just for celebrations’ paradigm, brands can expect to achieve growth that would have been impossible in the 20th century. As the hottest consumer wine topic in the UK, the scope to encourage further premiumisation across different sparkling categories is unprecedented.
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Three-word slogans have bombarded the UK under the current government, from ‘Get Brexit Done’, to ‘Hands, Face, Space’ and, most recently, ‘Get Britain Moving’, which sounds more like an ad for a laxative than a treatment for the country’s overall ills. But now we’re getting ‘Winter of Disconnect’, courtesy of the press, which is summing up both how a majority of consumers feel not only about the three-hour blackouts that the National Grid is warning of over the coming season, but also how they feel about the government’s
approach to the economy.
Retail can sometimes feel like the centre of the world in business. It joins customer to distributor and producer, as arbiter of supply and demand. This is particularly true in the wine trade, where its gatekeepers provide a vital entry point into an often obscure product category. However, in this new era of hyper sustainability sensitivity, retail has a less obvious – if equally important – role to play, with less power over sustainability related goals than some might think.
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Unemployment levels are at a record low, while the total number of job vacancies in May-June 2022 was 1.3 million, according to the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
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It seems no matter where the cost increase comes from – whether it be energy bills, business rates or fuel increases – the consumer will always pay the ultimate price.
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In April 2021, Asda unveiled a major change to its wine aisles by becoming the first major UK supermarket to group all wine by grape variety instead of country.
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There’s nowhere in the wine world quite like Georgia. Anyone visiting the country will have heard this mantra. It seems to accompany any discussion of the country’s wines, with their unique qvevris – egg-shaped earthenware buried underground – helping to make wine on the slopes of the South Caucasus for some 8,000 years.
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Being recognised as a Unesco World Heritage Site certainly helps turn heads when Austria’s Neusiedlersee DAC tells its as yet largely unknown story. Not least because this relatively compact appellation, with 6,239ha of vineyards wrapped around the eastern and southern half of the lake from which it takes its name, combines diverse terroirs with the ability to produce high-quality wines that reflect the status of the region. Moreover, this is Austria’s sunniest winegrowing area, but with cool nights matching warm growing days, all moderated by the lake. And the resultant wines are typified by cool fruit character and fresh, delicate acidity, which can deliver an appealing combination of elegance and depth.
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Industrious, dynamic and diverse, northeast Italy is one of the nation’s viticultural powerhouses. Yet the region has arguably become a victim of its own success: exports to the UK are largely dominated by Prosecco and other internationally renowned styles, such as Amarone and Pinot Grigio. A great deal of excellent wine, very much on-trend in terms of moderate alcohol, has been sidelined. However, with consumers starting to grasp the profusion of what northeast Italy can offer, key stakeholders have a renewed focus on bringing esoteric styles to our indie merchants and restaurants in 2022.
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On a long enough timeline, everything comes back into fashion. Not so long ago, it was the alcopop revolution, which caught the imagination of the younger generation, alongside a slew of low-rise jeans and trucker hats (mutter what you will: it was the epitome of 2004 popular style). While some might wish such things were relegated to the annals of fashion – and fashionable drinks – it’s also true that things never come back in quite the same way.
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Casa Real is a fitting poster child for the agrarian revolution sweeping across Chile today. The nation’s winegrowers, passionate and highly driven, continue to refine their knowledge of local soils, matching the vine variety to the place. “Casa Real represents an apex of terroir expression in the Maipo Valley. Since the wine’s inception in the 1980s, our journey has been a legacy of understanding the environment,” says Santa Rita winemaker Sebastián Labbé. “We are custodians of the soil – nothing less.”
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In 2021, the German wine culture garnered newfound global attention after it was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. The Committee of Experts at UNESCO cited German wine culture as welcoming and vibrant, an adaptable tradition “firmly anchored in German society”, while highlighting its positive social and cultural aspects. In Germany, as elsewhere, wine culture has determined the rhythm of life of people in winegrowing regions for centuries. This gave rise to numerous customs, seasonal festivals and a vocabulary
of its own, as well as familiar phrases such as “pouring pure wine”, which means to tell the truth.
With the cost of living crisis set to get worse, how can indies best protect their businesses? Andrew Catchpole listens to some differing views.
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