The French agriculture minister yesterday ducked the controversial issue of wood chips in a speech to open Vinitech.

Dominique Bussereau, speaking on the first day of Vinitech, the world’s largest wine techniques and machinery trade fair, said he welcomed the modernisation of French wine but made no mention of the divisive issue of wood chips, recently banned for use in AOC winemaking.

‘The state encourages the modernisation of the French system of wine segmentation, in order to adapt to evolving consumer demand,’ Bussereau said. ‘The aim is to conserve our leadership.’

‘What he didn’t say,’ a Bordeaux winemaker observed, ‘was anything about wood chips or the decision to ban them.’

The French government had tried in a recent report to encourage openness about the use of wood chips outside the AOC system – and also possibly within it.

But the use of chips in AOC winemaking was banned by the French AOC regulatory body, INAO, earlier this month – two months after the EU finally legalised their use.

At the time a disappointed Roland Feredj, director of Bordeaux’s regional wine body, the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vins de Bordeaux (CIVB), said the decision basically meant French winemakers did not have the same rights as their competitors.

He also pointed out the ambiguity of the new ruling, which will still allow appellations, four of them in Bordeaux, to ‘experiment’ with chips.

Prior to the ruling seven appellations Anjou, Muscadet, Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur, Medoc, Haut-Médoc and Côtes du Rhône were granted special dispensations, allowing experimental use of wood chips as of the 2006 harvest.

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Scientists in the UK have identified “oligomeric procyanidins” as the likely ingredient in red wine’s polyphenols that contributes to heart health and longevity. And some red wines contain more procyanidins than others.In the journal Nature, Dr. Roger Corder, from Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry in London, and his associates note that not everyone agrees that red wine actually possess heart-healthy properties, which they say may be due to the complexity and variability in the constituents in different wines.

To look into this issue, the investigators cultured human blood vessel cells and exposed them to 165 different wines to identify the polyphenols with most potent effects on blood vessels.

They found that procyanidins suppress production of a protein called endothelin-1 that constricts blood vessels. High-performance liquid chromatography identified oligomeric procyanidins as the specific phenolic constituent responsible for this effect.

People living in Nuoro province, Sardinia, and southwest France have higher than normal average longevity. And wines from those regions, Corder and colleagues found, had a 2- to 4-fold higher inhibitory effect on endothelin-1 and significantly higher oligomeric procyanidin levels than wines from Australia, Europe, South America, the US, and Sardinia.

Corder and his associates maintain that traditional wine-making methods and use of the flavonoid-rich grape Tannat commonly grown in southwest France result in high levels of oligomeric procyanidins in the local wine.

The researchers are hopeful that further investigation of oligomeric procyanidins-rich wines and foods will provide insight into how blood vessel function might be optimally maintained.

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The head of the Riverland Winegrape Growers Association says there is enough water available for growers in the region to produce a reasonable crop this year.

The association’s chief executive, Chris Byrne, says although Riverland irrigators are restricted to 60 per cent of their allocations this year, expected yields are only slightly down on the last vintage.

He says in 2006 the region produced 410,000 tonnes.

“There is still sufficient water for most growers to grow a reasonable crop, so for this year we would think the tonnage will come in at perhaps 385,000 to 390,000 tonnes, which is just down a fraction on last year’s,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wine Grape Growers Australia says after very low prices last year wine grape prices are now firming.

Executive director Mark McKenzie says the change in the market follows projections of a more rapid than expected correction in stock levels and lower volume vintages over the next two years.

Mr McKenzie says while the return to a balance between supply and demand is welcomed, growers should be warned that prices are not expected to return to the high levels of the 1990s.

“Really our advice is that they should be talking to their regional associations about current price movements, talking to regional selling groups about selling on their behalf if that’s what they’d like to do, or if they have a relationship with a winery or wineries they should be talking direct to them if they wish to market their own fruit,” he said.

Licensed retailers and restaurants in New York State can now buy directly from out-of-state producers on the internet, a state lawyer says.

Thomas Donohue, the lawyer for New York’s State Liquor Authority, has given the nod to the use of newly-developed technology that enables New York to hand middlemen a new commercial benefit without essentially changing the state’s three-tier system.

A store or restaurant interested in buying, say, six bottles of a boutique’s limited-edition wine will be able to order the wine on the internet by visiting a site listing all wineries participating in the program.

Instantaneously a transaction takes place in which the order goes to a prearranged wholesaler, whom the winery’s computer bills for the purchase.

The wholesaler’s computer sets aside taxes on the purchase, bills the retailer or restaurateur and, deducting its margin, pays the winery. The producer sends the bottles directly to the buyer.

For a nominal extra outlay, the system gives middlemen additional business because previously they had declined to carry the wine in question on the grounds that supplies were too limited and demand too small to warrant the costs of buying, shipping, warehousing, selling and delivering the wine.

All this has been brought about by the Liquor Authority’s lawyer, who has advised the Inertia Beverage Group, a Californian company, that its technology can be used to automate sales this way.

Paul Mabray, Inertia’s chief executive officer, calls New York’s approval ‘groundbreaking.’ He is in talks with five wholesalers and two have expressed interest in coming aboard.

After debuting his system in New York, Mabray hopes to enter California, Arizona, Washington State, Texas and Florida next year.

Jean-Michel Cazes of Chateau Lynch Bages is handing over the running of the property to his son Jean-Charles.

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This year’s Hospices de Beaune auction was marked by the spectacular prices achieved for white Burgundy.

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Desperate Vinexpo bosses have have offered the Australians a 20% discount in a bid to get them on board next year.

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Australia’s wine industry surplus is only about half the 900m litres it was thought to be, decanter.com has learned.

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The Guida Vini d’Italia has launched a prize for sustainable viticulture.

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Wine producers in the south of France have allocated around €7m - half their total budget - to export markets.

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Europe’s first bio-climatic winery has been unveiled near Cenicero in Rioja.

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Prince Charles is joining the greatest artists of the 20th century as he becomes the latest painter to feature on Chateau Mouton-Rothschild’s label.

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What a princely book. Never has a promise been so effortlessly reached and surpassed as when these authors said ‘we’ll take a picture of some dogs in American vineyards and it might be fun to look at’.

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Calvet, one of Bordeaux’s oldest negociant houses, has been sold to Grand Chais de France, owners of the JP Chenet brand.

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The European Court of Justice has dashed hopes of UK consumers buying cut-price wine from other European countries.

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A century-old monastery has revived its winemaking with help of Austrian wine guru Fritz Miesbauer.

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There may be criminal prosecutions following the collapse of Uvine in September.

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Jacob’s Creek is to put its entire UK range under screw-cap, including its flagship Johann Shiraz Cabernet.

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Fifty cases of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1982 have been sold for over $1m in New York, in what Sotheby’s claims is a new record for a single lot at auction.

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Licensed retailers and restaurants in New York State can now buy directly from out-of-state producers on the internet, a state lawyer says.

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Freixenet’s Japanese winemaker has developed a wine purely for Japanese food.

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The French agriculture minister yesterday ducked the controversial issue of wood chips in a speech to open Vinitech.

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Constellation’s Europe head, Jon Moramarco, has launched a blistering attack on the UK’s discount culture

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Producers working on the film of the Paris tasting have signed up one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters for the script.

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When storing wine the degree and the speed of the temperature change are critical. A gradual change of a few degrees between summer and winter won’t matter. The same change each day will harm your wines by ageing them too rapidly.

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One of the great joys of wine is being able to select a bottle of wine from your own cellar, perhaps one that you’ve been storing for some years, draw the cork and enjoy it with friends.Storing wine is very simple …It requires a constant temperature, humidity, darkness, stillness and a well-ventilated and clean environment.

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I love Italian wine and food so much that I am doing a series on the typical and special wines and foods of Italy’s twenty regions. This article explores the Italian new wines of the 2006 harvest. I’ll make specific recommendations, and won’t be silent if I’m unhappy with a wine.

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A series of four stamps issued by Canada Post to pay tribute to the international success of the Canadian wine and cheese industries is proving to be extremely popular.

Five million of the stamps went on sale at the country’s post offices August 23 in booklets of eight. More than 75 percent of the stamps have been sold in less than three months.

“Usually we expect to sell out a series within a year,” said Nicole Lemire, Canada Post’s manager of marketing and public relations. “So this is a very strong turnaround.”
Each year Canada Post attempts to capture what it means to be Canadian and to showcase Canada through some of its stamps. “This series was a good stamp-collector item because it recognizes Canadian industries that are world-class,” Ms Lemire noted.

The latest Statistics Canada data indicates 190 Canadian wineries have produced wine shipments worth almost CAN$800 million, and continue to draw international acclaim for both table wine and icewine. Over the past decade, Canadian wines have garnered awards at Vinexpo, Vinitaly, and the International Wine Competition.

Canada is also considered one of the world’s greatest cheese-producing nations. The industry’s approximately 200 manufacturers have produced more than 300 varieties and garnered international prizes for many of them, especially cheddars.

Stamp designer Derwyn Goodall collaborated with photographer Robert Wigington to give the stamps the look and feel of wine and cheese labels.

In the midst of some of France’s most celebrated vineyards, a row of giant machines is busy at work distilling some of this year’s vintage in a high-tech process winemakers hope will help them stay afloat.The result is a kind of reverse alchemy: quality wine turned into near-pure alcohol for use in disinfectants, cleaning products or gasoline additives.

The steaming grape juice that’s left is pumped into an enormous open-air vat — something like an oversized Jacuzzi — sucked up by cistern trucks and hauled back to the vineyards, where it will be used to fertilize next year’s vintage.

Chronic overproduction, dipping domestic consumption and fierce overseas competition have converged to create a European wine crisis of unprecedented scale. With lakes of unsold wine threatening to undermine prices, the European Union has resorted to paying vintners to destroy some of their stock each year, distilling billions of bottles of perfectly drinkable wine into pure alcohol.

Skeptics say the measure, which cost EU taxpayers €150 million (US$190 million) last year alone, is merely a quick fix that does not get at the root of the problem — which is that Europe simply produces too much wine for too few consumers.

A contested new EU plan aims to fix at least the production side by downsizing Europe’s wine industry. The proposal would shift away from distillation in favor of ripping out huge swaths of vineyards. Some 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) of vines, more than 10 percent of Europe’s total, could be grubbed up over the next five years. Across Spain, France and Italy, Europe’s vintners are putting up a united front against the proposal, which they see as draconian and defeatist.

But as more wine is distilled each year — reaching 2.8 billion liters (740 million gallons) in 2005 — even the most virulent opponents of the EU plan acknowledge that something has got to give.

“For years, we shrugged the crisis off as a temporary downturn,” said Gilles de Longevialle, who heads a group representing the vintners of Beaujolais. “But we’re beginning to see it’s here to stay.”

Until last year, so-called “crisis distillations” were considered only for the cheapest table wines. Now, however, quality wines are also boiled away in large quantities.

So for the second autumn in a row, Philippe Terrollion, director of the Beaujolais Distillery in central-eastern France, sent out a fleet of trucks to pick up an expected 8.5 million liters (2.3 million gallons) of unbottled, unsold Beaujoulais wine. That’s enough to fill about 125 swimming pools.

“For vintners, the decision to distill is a hard one,” said Terrollion. “But in the end, they have to do it to get rid of the old stuff to make room for the new.”

With funds from the EU and local authorities, Terrollion paid vintners the EU-fixed price of about 35 euro cents per liter (US$1.66 per gallon) — about one-fifth of the average price paid by wholesalers for bottled wine sold for consumption.

The problem is, the wine just doesn’t sell. European vintages are languishing on the shelf as consumers around the world reach for bottles from New World producers in Chile, the U.S., South Africa, and elsewhere.

New World imports now account for 70 percent of wine sales in Ireland, for example, and Australia recently overtook France as Britain’s main supplier.

European vintners were too slow to respond to the so-called “New World threat,” said Louis-Fabrice Latour, who heads the prestigious Louis Latour label in the Burgundy region, just north of Beaujolais.

“In France, we used to think we were the biggest and the best and no one could touch us,” said Latour, and the feelings of superiority blinded vintners to the threat from by foreign rivals.

But overseas competition is not the only reason behind Europe’s wine troubles. Changing continental drinking habits are also a major culprit. Wine consumption is down throughout the continent, with wine-drinking champions Italy and France leading the decline.

In 1980, the French and the Italians each consumed about 5 billion liters (1.3 billion gallons) of wine a year, according to the European Commission. By 2005, yearly consumption in both countries had dipped to roughly 3 billion liters (800 million gallons).

In the town of Beaune, in Burgundy, Jean-Pierre Charriot sat in a bar nursing an after-work drink. But instead of a chilled Chardonnay or robust Pinot Noir, both regional specialties, he was having a beer.

Like many locals, Charriot makes his living in the wine industry. A tour guide, he takes foreign tourists on visits to local vineyards and wineries.

Although wine pays the bills, Charriot said he doesn’t drink much of the stuff.

“I drink beer pretty much every day, but wine is for special occasions,” he said, adding that wine’s high alcohol content makes it a tricky choice in today’s drunk-driving-conscious France. “With wine, you can’t drive home after a couple of drinks after work.”

Many French vintners blame tougher laws aimed at curbing drinking and driving for the country’s precipitous decline in wine consumption. In 1960, the average Frenchman drank 3.1 bottles of wine per week. Today, the average intake is 1.4 bottles per week and falling, according to Michel Baldassini, who heads the main Burgundy wine growers’ association.

Once a French dietary staple as fundamental as bread or cheese, wine is increasingly regarded, and treated, as a luxury product, Baldassini said. “The French are drinking less but better.”

The change is hurting middle-market regions like Beaujolais while favoring vineyards in places like Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy — the prestigious regions on which Europe is betting its winemaking future.

The EU’s wine overhaul still needs approval from member governments and the European Parliament. Brussels officials hope to have the new rules in place for the 2008 growing season.

The winemakers warn against tearing out vineyards, saying the measure will effectively tie their hands and prevent them from adapting to a changing world wine market. They point to India and China — where an emerging middle class is beginning to acquire taste for wine.

“When the Chinese really get into wine, demand for our product is going to explode to the point where if we cut back today, we might not be able to fill it,” the Beaujolais association’s de Longevialle said.

Still, with the continent’s distilleries working overtime, nearly everyone admits the status quo is not viable.

“It’s clear we can’t go on like this,” said distillery director Terrollion. “But we can’t just snuff out winemaking either — especially in a region like ours, where wine runs in our veins.”

Fruit and oak have their place in great wine, but the top prize among wine attributes probably goes to minerality—the expression of rocks and soil in the aromas and flavors that end up in the glass. But for all its desirability and status, minerality is only vaguely defined and not well understood. In fact, the one thing we do know is that it has very little to do with minerals. One would expect that an attribute this celebrated would be well documented, but one would be wrong. In fact, the famous Wine Aroma Wheel includes no trace of “mineral” quality. According to Dr. Ann Noble, creator and keeper of the wheel, “Minerality is a concept which could never be consistently defined in words or physical standards. If someone could come up with a stone or metallic solution that had an aroma that could be used to define minerality, it could be on the wheel. But the criterion for being on the wheel is that it is objective, analytical and nonsubjective, nonevaluative, nonhedonic.”

The same concern about the slipperiness of the descriptor came from UC Davis flavor chemist Dr. Sue Ebeler: “As far as I know there are no clear correlations of any specific compounds with a ‘mineral’ aroma. It is likely a complex mixture of compounds which we associate with the smell of soils or rocky areas. To really understand the use of this term we would have to carefully define it with the use of some reference aroma/taste compounds that we could all agree on.”

Assuming we could all agree on a definition of minerality in wine, we would still need to figure out how it is produced. The leading candidate in ongoing research for an explanation of minerality is, in fact, part of the mineral kingdom, one of the few downright famous for its odor: sulfur. In his recent book, The Science of Wine (University of California Press, 2005), Jamie Goode pulls together the findings and hypotheses from a number of European researchers suggesting that what is called minerality is likely related to low levels of a number of sulfur-based compounds, especially likely to occur in reductive (highly oxygen-restricted) winemaking or under conditions of nutrient stress in yeast during fermentation.