A New Year. Out With The Old and in with the.........Old

by Mark Deamer

As you may or may not have noticed, I have been absent of late. A combination of illness and end of year apathy has stymied me. But I did keep my oar in in the world of wine during this time.

 I took part in two events that for different reasons were of great interest as a wine drinker. But it got me thinking 'what interest were they to me as a wine buyer?'

The first event I attended was a wines of Croatia dinner at the Notting hill brasserie. A genuinely pleasurable wine  tasting event (even if some of the food pairings didn't help some of the wines much) The wines were of good quality and whilst not cheap, they were for the most part worth their money or there or there-abouts. 

The second event was a trip to Calabria to sample and assess the wines (and food) of what was a fairly unknown region of Italy for me. Again this was invaluble to me as a wine enthusiast. Learning about new grape varieties and how the cuisine of the area ties in, as well as the geography and topography of the appellation. I tasted some very good wines here too.

 But here's the thing. Neither of these two wine making regions or indeed any new wine making region will ever crack the U.K. market. There simply is not the mechanics to do it anymore. In an industry that is dominated by supermarket pricing or Parker thinking there is little or no room for risk takers. The golden age of wine experimentation is gone.

Where are Peter Dominics, Augustus Barnett, Unwins, Wine Rack and to a certain extent Oddbins now? National High Street chains all trying to find new and different wines from their competitors. All with knowlegable staff helping to educate their customers and dictating trends. It's a role that, (no matter how good) the sommelier or the restaurant can  never fill, and no supermarket has any interest in filling.

 The chance to be able to buy something weird or different for a fiver  will never come around again either. When Chile and Australia broke the market there was a plethora of interesting wines £5 or less, it's a price point customers are happy to experiment at and there was industry geared up to support and promote such things. But time, interest rates, duty and taxes have moved on, and now for example the introductory wines I was trying in Calabria were being offered at ex-cellar prices of 3 to 4 Euros. By the time that hits the shelf that is about nine quid; That's 3 bottles of Hardy's Nottage Hill in Sainsbury's!!!!! (probably).

There are other mitigating factors stopping success. A lot of the new countries producing wines do so at very small volumes, either because they don't have the space to plant vast vistas of vineyards or because traditionally they have only catered for the local market and they have left it to late to catch up with an export mentality. This makes them commercially unviable for supermarkets. As does the use of indigenous grape varieties. Nothing to do with their quality, merely their difficulty to be pronounced and recognised. And if the supermarkets won't touch them, then the importers and wholesalers won't touch them. And with no high street mavericks to open doors then wines from places such as Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovinia, Switzerland, Calabria, Canada, New York State and even the likes of Argentina will continue to fight for the scraps of market share we place upon our window sill while they peer through the window envying the big boys feasting at their private table.