Before I landed a job reporting on the world of wine for Harpers, one of my tasks in life was to sell wine at a restaurant near the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Soon after opening, it was apparent that the legions of lawyers who populate Chancery Lane were not turning up in the expected numbers.
The restaurant soon ran out of money - although it was almost half a year later that it began to run out of most of its wines. It all became rather problematic: May I strongly recommend this wine, sir? It has been drinking very nicely.
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At a recent lunch at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, six Chinese businessmen ordered five bottles of wine. Malcolm Zacanaro,
the executive assistant manager for food and beverage at the hotel, initially thought nothing of it until he saw the bill, which came to more than RMB 120,000 (US$15,000) for the wines alone. Zacanaro says, The Chinese market is extremely price-sensitive. At the top end, hosts want to impress, so they order the most expensive bottles. And at the bottom end, people are less knowledgeable, so they order by price.'
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What is your wine-buying strategy?
We have a very unusual business situation. Although we are completely independent, we lease the restaurant space from The Gleneagles Hotel and buy the majority of our wines through its main cellar. We are only charged for the wine as we sell it, so from a business perspective it's superb.
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Monthly MAT breakdowns of wine sales provide an essential guide to the marketplace, giving retailers and shippers an important snapshot of where the market is heading. But not all data is collected, or made available, on a month-by-month basis; and when the long view is required - producers work to an annual cycle, for example - series based on the calendar year can provide useful additional detail. And while sales data
are pre-eminent in the short run, volume data comes into its own when a longer perspective is required. In order to build
a multidimensional picture of the UK drinks industry, incorporating on- as well as off-sales, the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) brings together numerous sources of data, including official imports and clearance statistics,
as well as household expenditure and regional breakdowns, in one convenient document. The Drink Pocket Book is published every October in association with AC Nielsen.
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AUSTRALIA
Across the continent it appears to have been an extremely good year, with the happy combination of high - indeed, record high - quantity and quality. The chief reason for this success was the absence of extremes: a comparatively mild spring and summer, and a dry, warm autumn in most regions, resulting in a healthy, ripe crop. As always there were exceptions to the rule - a little frost and hail in Western Australia and Hunter Valley, New South Wales, in the early spring and summer, continuing drought in Hunter Valley, heavy rain for a few days in Eastern Victoria, and wet weather between the picking of the whites and the reds in Western Australia and New South Wales. But the exceptions were fewer than normal, and consistently high quality across all regions and varieties is one of the hallmarks of the vintage.
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The Slow Food movement, an international non-profit association founded as a response to the standardising' effects of fast food and the frenetic pace of the fast life', has been far from slow in spreading its doctrine. In less than 20 years, what began as a small gathering of food- and wine-loving friends in the Italian town of Bra has grown to 83,000 members in 107 countries.
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How did television's latest celebrity chef end up in Dartmouth?
Back from France, we were originally looking for a small country-house hotel. Then we heard that the Horn of Plenty, a place of pilgrimage once owned by the legendary Sonia Stevenson, was on the market, but prices had doubled in the last three years and we couldn't afford it. That brought us to the West Country, and we were about to take on a restaurant in Topsham when we were offered the Carved Angel. We initially turned it down because the owner wanted too much, but he persisted and we finally agreed a deal.
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Have you always wanted to work in a restaurant?
Not really. My big plan was to become an actress and join RADA, but I didn't really like the people at the university drama group - they were too precious. So I chose rugby instead, which was a good move. We won the girls' rugby university final at Twickenham two years in a row. I played flanker and then winger, which means you have to run a lot. I don't have the time now but I'm still fit - restaurants are the best diet plan. Forget Atkins - just serve lunch and dinner, finishing at two in the morning.
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It was once a truism that even the most ardently Anglophobic producer would not have disputed: though it was never going
to lead the world in terms of production, the UK was the most dynamic, most diverse and most influential wine market in
the world. More than that, it was both the spiritual home and the shop window of the global wine trade, the place where the reputations, styles and sales of the world's wine production were made and broken, and where the world's most knowledgeable merchants and consumers gathered to discuss, buy and drink the results. Forget New York - when it came to wine, if you could make it in London, Bristol or Edinburgh, you could make it anywhere.
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Coonawarra's potential as a great wine region was first recognised during the Gold Rush by Scotsman John Riddoch, but it was Samuel Wynn's investment in 1951 that started the ball rolling towards the international recognition that Coonawarra enjoys today.
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Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting
Date: Tuesday 20 September 2005
Venue: Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground, London NW8
Time: 10am-5.30pm
The Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting will take place on Tuesday 20 September at the Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground. Approximately 70 producers have registered to participate, and a separate, themed tasting will look at Malbec and More', for which exhibitors have been asked to submit wines that retail at 5.99 and above. For further information, please contact Tina Coady: call or fax 01480 384 806, or e-mail t.coady@ntlworld.com
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On a balmy evening last March, at the tail end of the Chilean summer, a group of local vineyard workers from the Colchagua Valley gathered on the terrace of Franois and Jacques Lurton's house in Lolol to enact a song-and-dance dramatisation of the local grape harvest. Soulful and entertaining, this involved a slightly gawky but winsome teenager in a fetching cowboy hat plucking' the grapes from a busty matriarch, doing double duty as a vine', as she sang about the trials and tribulations of the harvest, as well as the challenges facing the itinerant grape pickers.
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Was there ever anybody better at selling himself than Chris Carson? If ours had been a job interview I'd have given him the job. In fact, I'd probably have given him my job. It says a lot for the resilience of the Sands family of Constellation that they're still in charge.
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Is the City clientele different from that of other parts of London?
The City clientele is very civilised, although in some ways it is a very clinical audience. They don't really want us to talk that much. It's really about providing them with food and beverages, then leaving them to discuss the business that they need to. We don't check back on customers, which is very different after working in a hotel. We try to drum into the staff an awareness of body language. Could there possibly be a problem? If so, then we will ask if everything is satisfactory. We don't really get into conversations with people, apart from finding out the pet likes and dislikes of some of our regular customers.
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Brandyclassics, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
Interview: Anastasia Edwards
Photography: Tristan Newkey-Burden
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Hungary is the most significant producer of wine among both new EU states and the next-round hopefuls, Bulgaria and Romania. Even though the country has only 87,000 hectares (ha) of vineyards, compared to just under 90,000ha of Vitis vinifera in Romania and a similar area in Bulgaria, its wine production dwarfs that of its neighbours at some 4.8 million hectolitres in 2004 (Romania produced around 3.4 million hl and Bulgaria just 1.4 million hl in the same year). In spite of this, Hungary's reputation as a wine-producing nation has fallen off most consumers' radar (if it was ever really there).
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The 2005 Napa Valley Vintners tour rolls into London next week. Stuart Peskett profiles the headline acts
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So what to make of the whole Allied Domecq-Pernod-Fortune Brands mnage trois? Reminds me of playing Monopoly when I was 10. No strategy at all - just furiously buying all the property in sight until the money was gone or you had driven all the other players into bankruptcy.
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On your appointment as president and CEO of Mot & Chandon in January 2004, Christophe Navarre, chairman and CEO of Mot Hennessy, described your mission as to strengthen Mot & Chandon's leadership and to continue both its growth and that of Dom Prignon. How are you doing?
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To do this we need your help. Harpers is offering two free subscriptions, worth 145 each, to UK readers, selected at random, who answer the following questionnaire. Pull out these centre pages, fill in the blanks and return them to:
Trade Questionnaire, Harpers, Media House,
Azalea Drive, Swanley, Kent BR8 8HU.
If you wish to be entered into the prize draw, please print out these pages and fill in your name and details in the space provided at the bottom of the page. To guarantee your confidentiality, the name will be removed and placed into the draw by a member of staff not connected to the wine trade BEFORE the questionnaire is passed on to the Harpers editorial team.
Deadline: 1 September 2005
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