Latour is top wine of Bordeaux 2009, says survey

Chateau Latour has beaten Margaux and Lafite to be the wine of the 2009 Bordeaux vintage, according to a survey of the international wine trade.

Meanwhile, Calon-Ségur was the winner in value for money terms, and Cos d'Estournel was the most disappointing wine of the harvest, according to the poll conducted by fine wine exchange Liv-ex.

Tasters gave the vintage as a whole an average points score of 96 out of 100, narrowly ahead of 2005 (ranked 95+).

They expect release prices to be up 120% on 2008 and up 6% on 2005 in euro terms.

However, the weakening of sterling against the euro means this would equate to a 30% price increase over 2005 for UK buyers - or, if prices soar, it could be as high as 50%, according to Liv-ex.

The top ten wines of the 2009 vintage, regardless of price, were named as: Latour, Margaux, Lafite, Mouton, Ausone, Pétrus, Haut-Brion, Lafleur, Palmer and Le Pin.

Top ten in value terms (expected to release at less than £500/case) were: Calon-Ségur, Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Léoville Barton, Domaine de Chevalier Rouge, Gruaud-Larose, Pontet-Canet, Léoville Poyferré, Haut-Batailley, Armailhac and Langoa Barton.

And the most disappointing were: Cos d'Estournel, Pavie, Troplong Mondot, Léoville Barton, Pichon Lalande, Talbot, Lascombes, Clos Fourtet, Figeac and Léoville Las Cases.

Asked to rank 2000, 2005 and 2009 in terms of quality, 53% put 2009 at the top of the pile, followed by 2005 and 2000.

Many described the vintage as 'excellent', but a number voiced concerns about consistency, particularly on the Right Bank, where some wines were judged too alcoholic and over-extracted.

Uruguay is wine world's rising star

Argentina has its Malbec. Chile has its Carmenere. Now Uruguay, not to be out-muscled by its more famous wine-producing neighbors, is taking the world of viticulture by storm, with its distinctive Tannat wines.

Uruguay, the fourth most important wine-producing country in South America, grows a variety of grapes, but none more celebrated than Tannat, which is fueling this tiny country's rise to prominence in the wine world.

Over the years Tannat has come to be seen as the quintessential Uruguayan grape and wine, representing about 40 percent of the country's entire wine production.

Now bold and full-bodied Tannat wines are putting upstart Uruguay on the map, and winning prizes against competition fronted by more established regional rivals.

"Tannat is opening doors for us," winegrower Virginia Stagnari proudly told AFP. Her Italian immigrant family founded the Antigua Bodega Stagnari, some 20 kilometers north of Montevideo, one of this countries leading vineyards.

Although Uruguay's wines are just beginning to gain a global foothold, it has a long history of viticulture, dating back some 250 years when French and Spanish immigrants brought the vine to the New World.

The hardy Tannat grape, originally from southeastern France, was introduced to Uruguay in 1870 by the Basque Frenchman Pascual Harriague, an immigrant who was looking for a varietal that would thrive in Uruguay's soil and climate.

Since the 1990s, Uruguay has been exporting high-quality wine throughout Latin America, the United States and even in the countries of the Gulf.

This tiny country of some 3.4 million inhabitants, dwarfed by its larger neighbors Brazil and Argentina, now enjoys a growing reputation as a producer of superlative wines for a reasonable price.

Some 8,200 hectares of vineyards have been cultivated by some 1,800 wine producers.

Stagnari said her family's vineyard was established in 1929 by her maternal grandfather, an immigrant from Italy, and today produces 140,000 liters of various types of wine, exporting every fifth bottle out of the country to destinations like Brazil, Mexico, Belgium and Sweden.

Another highly regarded label here, Bouza, although barely a decade old, produces what are generally deemed to be some of this country's most exquisite wines including not only Tannats but varietals as Albarino, Chardonnay and Merlot.

To obtain top quality wines "we have to expend a lot of man-hours," said the company's resident eonologist, Eduard Boido.

The quest for memorable wines also means "maintaining the biodiversity of the vineyard," Boido said, as well as cultivating the grapes "in parcels of land no larger than a half-hectare in size."

Small scale viticulture allows for quality control and ensures the "traceability" of each bottle -- something that Uruguay's industry overseers INAVI, the national institute of wine culture, insists upon.

According to INAVI Uruguay exported 1.2 million liters of wine in 2004, with a value of some 3.3 million dollars. In 2008, it sold 13.4 million liters valued at 10.6 million dollars.

But viniculture in Uruguay was dealt a major setback by the global financial crisis. In 2009, it succeeded in selling only two million liters, worth about six million dollars.

Uruguay expects to make up lost ground quickly now that the economic recovery is underway, especially given its position as a purveyor as one of the best values to be had in any wine store.

But even the most avid oenophiles agree that Uruguay's wine industry will rise and fall on the quality of each individual bottle of ruby red Tannat.

And they say downing a glass as much of an art form as producing one.

First uncork a bottle pour it into a glass and allow it to sit for a half-hour.

Then swirl it in a slow, circular motion. Next, close your eyes, inhale deeply into the wine glass.

Finally they say, sip the Tannat, holding the contents in your mouth a few second before swallowing, in order to fully savor the full bouquet of Uruguay's most treasured export.

Charles always hunting for top choice !

Is the Cult Cab dead?
The current economy has created ominous rumblings in the market for Napa Valley wine. Demand for high-end super-premium Cabs, even so called "cult" wines, has weakened considerably with the recession. Sales are stagnant, inventories are high and direct-mail customers -- a vital piece of the high-end model -- are abandoning once-coveted positions on mailing lists, while those who have waited years for the opportunity to buy in are overwhelmed with offers.
And for those wineries whose flagship productions climb above 5,000 cases, the forecast is even more challenging. Such formerly untouchable wines as Rubicon Estate, Caymus "Special Select," Pine Ridge "Fortis" and Joseph Phelps "Insignia" have made appearances at "back-channel" quick-sale retail websites, such as Cinderella Wine and WTSO (Wines 'Til Sold Out), at substantial discounts. The law of supply and demand suggests that the days of stratospheric pricing for Napa Cabernet may be numbered.
Even wine critic and Cult Cab kingmaker Robert M. Parker has issued warnings: "Wines priced over $300 have encountered considerable resistance, with their mailing list customers dropping off, or taking much smaller allocations," he wrote in the December issue of his widely read newsletter, the Wine Advocate.
"Sadly, far too many proprietors of high-end Napa wines are in denial, and have failed to recognize the dramatically changing parameters in the wine world of the consumer."
Slowing of sales is not restricted just to expensive wines. California wine shipments fell in 2009 for the first time in 16 years, by a whopping 4%, or 4 million cases, according to wine industry analyst Jon Fredrikson of Gomberg-Fredrikson and Associates. No winery executives would speak on the record about specifics of their sales numbers, though they all acknowledged that the industry in general was going through a hard time.
Despite the shift in the market, some producers are defiant. "I'm not dropping my price," says Ron Wornick, owner of Seven Stones Winery in St. Helena, "and you can put that in writing." That price is $175 a bottle, to which Wornick feels entitled, comparing his wines to other luxury goods, like fine watches and diamonds. "A hard-to-find, precious, high-end product, whether it's from Ferrari or from a tiny vineyard in Napa, is still fine and precious," he says.
Perhaps. But such swagger may prove to be hard to sustain as collectors shy away from the Next Big Thing. "This used to be a game about discovery; what's the next great wine to try?" says Jim Weinrott, founder of the online wine merchant Wineaccess.com. "Now all consumers want is value."
At Twenty-Twenty Wine Co. in West Los Angeles, owner Bob Golbahar sees the same trend among former big spenders. The market, he says, is "over-culted. Our average bottle sale used to be $100; now it's $50. Unless you're giving it away, they're not interested."
As a case in point, Golbahar cites the posh Napa standard Opus One, which usually sells briskly during the holidays, when it's frequently employed as a business gift. In past seasons, he's sold as many as 150 bottles of the wine, which retails for $140 to $170 a bottle. This year he sold six. "It's a whole different world out there," he says.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the attrition rates on wineries' direct-mail customer lists, an important segment of the business for many so-called cult wineries, which not only receive full retail markup on direct sales but have enjoyed a virtually guaranteed purchase among dedicated customers.
In flush years, wineries had hundreds of customers clamoring for a chance to buy a few precious allocated bottles. That demand, however, has shrunk considerably, and wineries are, in the words of one potential customer, practically "spamming" the in-boxes of wait-listed candidates with offers.
"Four years ago [customers would] buy from 10 different mailing lists," says Heidi Barrett, who owns La Sirena Winery and who has made many of Napa's most coveted Cabs, including Screaming Eagle, Dalla Valle and Vineyard 29. "Now they're going to pick their top three. And you want to be in that top three."
On wine bulletin boards like erobertparker.com, collectors herald new opportunities to each other daily, even as interest wanes: "I am on a bunch of lists, but have come to the conclusion that I don't actually need any of them," wrote one collector in a typical post. "There is so much great wine out there that lists are kinda silly."
In the same thread, another collector was considerably more blunt: "Cults," he wrote, "are dead."
Not all of Napa's Cult Cabs are dead, of course. Wines still in the good graces of critics like Robert Parker and James Laube of the Wine Spectator are weathering the storm well, including Shrader, Screaming Eagle and Harlan, as well as the more recently anointed, such as Scarecrow, Maybach and Kapcsandy.
But many more may be out of luck. "For a winery with no track record, this is a nightmare," says Barrett. "If they came into the market thinking they could start in at a $200 price point, they have no chance."
Even before the economic downturn, Tim Mondavi knew the challenges in establishing his new brand, Continuum. As the former winemaker for Robert Mondavi Winery, whose troubled final years as an independent winery forced its sale in 2004 to the wine business giant Constellation Brands, he had a wealth of lessons to draw from on what not to do, such as overextending himself.
Continuum makes just one wine, a Bordeaux blend. At $150, it's priced slightly below the stratosphere as cult wines go but is still a significant piece of pocket change. "We know that nobody's going to be asking for Continuum with just two vintages," he says.
So he has personalized his message, employing members of his famous family, including sister Marcia and daughter Carissa, on sales calls and as spokespersons; though it's not on the bottle, the Mondavi name is an integral part of the brand message.
Practically next door to the Continuum vineyard on Pritchard Hill lies Ovid, a super-premium venture whose debut 2005 vintage was first offered in 2008. Interest has been high for this $200 Cabernet blend, though it hasn't been helped by recent assessments from Parker. Though his tasting note was full of flattering prose ("opulence," "purity," "burgeoning complexity"), the all-important score was merely a fairly pedestrian 93 points -- far from a knockout by Parker's standards.
And yet, according to managing partner Janet Pagano, the brand has received persistent attention on bulletin boards and blog sites, which has kept the brand in play. In fact, she says it was early buzz on wine boards that generated brisk sales for Ovid's first vintage and obliged critics like Laube to review the wine. "The people evaluated the wine before the critics, in a manner of speaking," Pagano says.
Perhaps one of the most interesting cases is Bond Estates, a high-minded project established in the late '90s to showcase some of what the winemaking team believed were "Grand Cru" Napa Valley sites. Until this year, the winery sold boxed sets of five wines, each with the price tag of $275 per bottle. For its first few vintages, those boxes flew out the door.
The last two years, says managing director Paul Roberts, have been more difficult. Roberts has recently "unbundled" its offering, giving buyer and seller greater flexibility. And they are actively trying to sell in regional markets that weren't initially being considered, both here and abroad. With wine on hand and an interested, untapped clientele, suddenly Kansas doesn't seem like such a bad place to sell wine -- Bond's recent offering to that state's wine shops sold out in a matter of weeks.
None of these wineries has yet taken the final, inexorable step of officially reducing their suggested retail prices. Instead, they are trying, even in such a soft market, to convince people that their wine is worth the money they're asking -- an increasingly difficult task as inventories rise and consumer thinking shifts, perhaps for good.
"As much as I hate this recession," says Jim Weinrott of online merchant Wineaccess, "it's going to make people turn around and say, 'I'm going to buy things I value; I'm going to drink wines that have an intrinsic worth to me.'"

SACRAMENTO -- The nation's wine industry descended on a packed hotel ballroom Wednesday to hear a sobering message: Rocked by tight consumer spending and import competition, the industry reeled in 2009 and faces uncertain prospects this year.
The "State of the Industry" presentation kicked off the second day of the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, expected to attract 11,000 industry members to the Sacramento Convention Center and the Hyatt Regency through Friday.
Last year was "brutal," said John Fredrikson, a wine-business consultant with Bay Area-based Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates.
 
 
"Usually, we're raving about how great the year was," he told the Hyatt audience of winery professionals and grape growers. "But this was probably the worst year you ever had."
Despite the nation's continued slump, "we're beginning to see slight improvement in some areas" of the wine industry, Frederikson said, particularly among the lowest-priced brands. "It's going to take a while, but we'll come back."
For the first 11 months of 2009, California wine shipments were down an estimated 4 million cases, a drop of nearly 4 percent from 2008. For the entire domestic wine market, shipments were down by 3 million cases.
Wine sales also fell an estimated 6 percent to 10 percent at restaurants nationwide as consumers tightened their budgets in a slumping economy and avoided dining out.
For consumers who did buy wine in 2009, a low price point was more important than ever.
"As we basically had a financial heart attack, people just reined in their spending and were very cautious," Fredrikson said. "They moved dramatically down to lower price points, below $5 and $7. Small wineries in the North Coast that sell bottles from $25 to $100 were basically shut out. Inventories backed up, and that just made it an ugly year."
Global import competition is also on the rise. Some countries, such as Spain, are planting popular varietals to take on the U.S. industry. Chile, in particular, has focused aggressively on the U.S. market, producing affordable and well-crafted cabernet sauvignon that's favored by American palates.
"We are the target," said Glenn Proctor, a grape and wine broker with San Rafael's Joseph Ciatti Co. "Other areas are saying, 'How can I sell them wine?' "
Not all was doom-and-gloom in 2009, especially for large commercial producers that focus on value wines. California's top seven wine producers, including Modesto-based E.&J. Gallo and Constellation, enjoyed overall growth of 6.9 million cases.
Trinchero Family Estates, which oversees such budget brands as Sutter Home and Menage a Trois, saw its shipments rise 16 percent in 2009. Trinchero was awarded "2009 Winery of the Year" at the symposium because of its strong financial performance.
Wine industry representatives expressed hope that the recession will lift soon and wineries will develop new strategies to compete globally.
"We have too much invested here," said Nat DiBuduo, president of Allied Grape Growers, a Fresno-based trade association. "We're taking this on as a challenge. I haven't given up. The industry hasn't given up. We have to change our mode of operations and build a better mousetrap."