Savoie: Rough time for Old standbys

Following up on Tom Ward's recent comments regarding the impact of the weak dollar and other factors on the cost of a bottle of wine -- particularly the cases coming from abroad -- is this response from wine author and journalist Pat Savoie, a wine columnist for Primetime A&E magazine. My appreciation to Pat for checking in.

She writes in an e-mail:

"Wine prices. Afraid there is no good news either from the Euro-bloated Old World or the wineries of California, which have worked their way through what was a glut of plantings and supply. The overproduction has dried up. Frost has imperiled the '08 crop. The Euro continues to float at high-water mark, and importers and retailers, many of whom have tried to keep prices down, are now passing along the exchange-based price increases.

"In addition, the rush to plant new vineyards in CA has tapered off as land, vines, supplies and labor costs have increased, which means the supply is not increasing, so the value of grapes will climb.

"However, despite the economy, consumers don't seem to be trading down to less-expensive wines, probably because wine has insinuated itself onto the tabletop-- as part of the meal. I've seen research indicating that people are drinking more wine at home as restaurant prices continue upward. In fact, the highest sales growth is in wines priced at $12 a bottle or more.

"So, a good strategy is to focus on wines from areas that are not smacking down the dollar. Argentina and Chile are sources of good value wines. Portugal, despite its Euro currency, also offers a lot of great wines at bargain prices. South Africa is a great source. In the US, consider wines from NY's Finger Lakes and Long Island or from Virginia, Oregon and Washington.

"Or, start drinkng all those Old World wines you have been saving."

Heading into Tuscany? Let Vittorio take you

Glimpses of the LaSala Winery and Fiaschetteria
del Chianti eatery.


It took years to finally get to Europe, but once we got there in January the biggest surprise was the beauty of Florence, Italy. Rome, of course, deserves its accolades. There's nothing like Venice either. But we could have stayed a week in Florence, in part to see EVERYTHING and in other cases to see some things twice, like the incredible view accessed from a high spot across the Arno River at Piazza Michelangelo, and the centerpiece of that picture-perfect spot, the Duomo. It was at the Piazza that Vittorio Del Bono Venezze picked us up in his van on a springlike January morning and gave us, since we were his only guests that day, what amounted to a private tour of Chianti country.

That included a few hours walking around the estate at LaSala Winery, sitting in our own classroom in the tasting room while Hilary took us through the basics of savoring and appreciating a glass of wine, then stopping at an eatery called Fiaschetteria del Chianti in the town of San Casciano in Val di Pesa and wandering down into the cellar for a Tuscan meal. It's of one of several restaurants that Vittorio uses as a place to stop between wineries to fill the tummy and interact with his passengers. You felt worlds away from reality downstairs, a hideaway composed of brick and stone. The final stop was Villa Carfaggio, settled amid the Tuscan hills. In that Vittorio was a perfect guide, this is a chance to say thanks and plug his service, which still includes the Chianti Classico tour on Mondays and Wednesdays starting at 9.45 a.m. and on Thursday starting at 10 a.m.

Vittorio wrote in an e-mail that, like almost everyone else, he's been hurt by the cost of the Euro for Americans. "The weak dollar has affected my business . . . 20%," he said. "Now people are more inclined to get my semi-private tour instead of the private one that it is getting too expensive." And the cost of fuel? "The gas price for the moment [has not] hit my business."

Maryland announces Winemasters' winners

Courtesy of Kevin Atticks of the Maryland Wineries Association, a link to the 2008 Winemasters' Choice Awards following a gathering of winemakers and winery proprietors in April.

On the holiday, a bit of a global perspective

Tom Ward says his interest in wine began to grow in 1980 when he started working in the advertising and marketing field. Seven years later, he took on the role of building the subscriber base for a publication called Wine Advocate, under the direction of Robert Parker Jr. The two of them remain friends; in fact, Ward wrote in an e-mail, “Keep an eye out on the wine news … [Parker] just did a wine tasting on the Great Wall of China!”

Since 2000, Ward has been working full time in the wine trade, largely in sales and extensively with imports. “I helped to set up and run an import company [Vinocopia],” he wrote, “did a lot of work for the Australian Trade Commission, all done as an ‘independent contractor’ under the company name Green Tree Wine Company. He also has been working with winemaker Paul Smith, whose OnThEdge Winery in Calistoga, Calif., includes former Eagles and St. Louis Rams coach Dick Vermeil as a partner. Those include the Jean Louis Vermeil line of wines, which pays homage to the ancestors of Vermeil that, prior to Prohibition, used to own and farm that same Napa Valley land.

Ward responded quickly to my e-mail inquiry about how the weak dollar is affecting imports and whether buyers might see any trends during what figures to be a summer long on crisis and short on stability. He wrote:

“I just checked historical data Paul. The Euro on May 23, 2001 was worth just under 86-cents US; it now takes a little more than $1.57 US to buy a Euro. That is an 83% increase in the value of their currency.

“I was an Economics Major in college and studied under two great professors who were trained at the University of Chicago, so I understand market financial dynamics quite well. Our current administration has always favored a weaker dollar to drive down the cost of US produced goods overseas. Not an opinion…they have made plenty of statements supporting this position. What is scary (and this is commentary) is that we are now at the mercy of market forces that could prevent us from getting back to any of level of relative equilibrium, and indeed could make the gap more dramatic, for years to come.

“In terms of how that has affected the price of imported wines, the brunt of the dollar devaluation has been picked up by (1) foreign wine producers and (2) the wine trade, especially importers. I haven’t formally studied pricing changes on imports, but I’d venture to guess they have only increased about 1/3 versus the 83 percent valuation swing in the dollar; that’s a rather wide margin discrepancy.

Just some things to consider . . ."

The obvious follow-up question was two-pronged: How much longer will producers and importers carry the load before the burden switches to the consumer, and for American consumers looking for bargains, how steady will prices remain on South American and Australian wines?

Ward responded within a couple of hours: “Actually South American wines haven’t gone up as much in price because the Argentine and Chilean Peso have remained stable versus the US Dollar relative to the dramatic changes of the Euro,” he said. “But there is another factor; consider that prime Napa Cabernet Sauvignon fruit now goes for $6,000+ a ton. That translates to almost $10 per bottle. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but that is just the cost of fruit! Now factor in oak (another $4 per bottle for French Oak, again thanks to the weak dollar), two plus year aging, cost of bottles, labels, corks, capsules…you get idea. The cost just to produce the wine is probably $20+. Then the winery has to make a profit, the distributor has to make a profit, the retailer has to make profit – voila, you are at $55 a bottle.

“Alternatively, I have a Spanish producer I’ve represented whose family has owned the vines going back to 1640 (documented). Low tax structure, government support, etc, etc. … they can put out a 90-point Wine Advocate rated wine that retails for under $20 a bottle. Now in reality they are assuredly selling it at a lower price point than they would like to because they, like every producer in the world, want very, very much to be in the U.S. marketplace. Life is a series of tradeoffs, and their presence in the US market is what helped to get them in front of the Wine Advocate and help to build their brand for many years to come.

Lots of dynamics at play . . .”

Listing the Pennsylvania award winners

This list and link are courtesy of Jennifer Eckinger, of the Pennsylvania Winery Association, whose help has been so valuable in my getting this blog off the ground.

2008 Keystone Wine Competition

When: March 1, 2008
Where: Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell, Conn.
Conducted by: Amenti Del Vino
Entries: 354
Winners: 180 - 79 bronze, 60 silver, 35 gold, 6 double gold, 4 special awards

BEST WINE IN COMPETITION
2006 Cherry Valley Vineyards Marechal Foch
BEST RED WINE IN COMPETITION
2006 Cherry Valley Vineyards Marechal Foch
BEST WHITE WINE IN COMPETITION
2007 Pinnacle Ridge Winery Riesling
BEST FRUIT WINE IN COMPETITION
2006 Rose Bank Winery Apple Mulled

For further results, including a listing of all award-winning wines of the 2008 Keystone Wine Competition, visit pennsylvaniawine.com/Awards.aspx. That link includes not only all the winners from the recent Keystone competition, but lists Pennsylvania wines that have earned recognition in other regional and national competitions dating back to 1999.

A chat with Fridays Creek's Cleary

The photos are courtesy of Fridays Creek Winery. They include (clockwise from above) a waterfall in front of the building; the remodeled portion of the original tobacco barn; grapes on the vine; the tasting room (bar); and vines and the winery building.

Frank Cleary of Fridays Creek Winery in Owings, Md., has had about two years to see first-hand all that's involved in running a winery. Fridays Creek opened in August 2006.

One are the rules that wineries in Maryland live by. "I am just amazed at what a tangled
web [it is]," he said of the state's wine laws during an interview Thursday. "Maryland wine laws are just as royal mess, I dont know how else to say it, and it really needs to be something that is looked at from a consumers standpoint."

Much of what Cleary was refering to was covered in this Baltimore Sun piece that was published March 31, 2008.

"I'm [also] really just flabbergasted at which the speed of the new hybrids are coming about," Cleary said.

One thing that Cleary doesn't expect to see is the state's capacity ever catch up with its demand for grapes, an issue covered in this Capital News Service story. "There will never in my opinion, ever be excess capacity [of grapes] in the state of Maryland," he said. "California and New York have excess capacity of grapes to winemakers; but both of those, of course, Califronia is 100, 150 years old in its grapegrowing and New York, I”d say, is 75 or so years old in their grapegrowing capacity. That’s not something I can see in the foreseeable future as far as excess capacity."

On the other coast, Russian River Passport debuts

While this blog is directed toward what is happening in this region, it doesn't preclude my looking nationally for stories and events that wine drinkers here would find interesting. Such is the case with the inaugural Russian River Passport Weekend, scheduled for the first weekend of June in the northern California.

The Russian River Valley is the largest of 13 appellations that make up Sonoma Wine Country, according to the Web site, and includes more acres of vineyards than Napa.

I e-mailed a couple of questions to the Passport site and within a couple of hours received these answers from Eric Hall. The photo, by the way, should be credited to Chris Knapp.

Q: How many passports are you limiting this to and what prompted you to start this event?

A: One thousand passports this year, and I’ve been doing a October event called Pinot on the River (see www.pinotfestival.com) for the last 5 years, and a lot of the local wineries make some great non pinot wines, that I thought would be great to get people up here to try them too!

Q: Modeled after something others are doing?

A: The “Passport” model is a well understood one out here, and there a many successful ones in California., the Russian River area did not happen to have one tho.

Q: For those traveling from our neck of the woods, are any hotels tying into this?

A: Yes see www.russianriverpassport.com/accomodations.html

Q: How far apart are all these wineries? Be one of those events I'd love to try all, obviously impossible in one weekend. Seeing how it goes and then judging whether to expand it to more weekends next year?

A: I’d that end to end, they are within a less than 10 mile radius. Hard to say whether we’d expand the days, more likely just more wineries.
Thanks!

What follows is the release. For me, something to circle on next year's calendar.

Russian River Passport Weekend
June 7 & 8, 2008 40 Wineries - Great Wines, Food & Entertainment
40 acclaimed wineries from the famous Russian River Valley will open their cellars to wine lovers in the first Russian River Passport, to be held June 7-8, 2008. The event will showcase the wineries, vineyards and exceptional beauty of the Russian River Valley wine region.
There are more than 150 wineries and 300 growers in the Russian River Valley, all producing a variety of world class wines to please any wine lover. The goal of the Russian River Passport is to introduce these wineries - both large and small - to wine lovers and partygoers from all over Northern California.

Winery locations will also feature great food and/or entertainment for their guests.
Since Russian River Passport is limited to only small number of participants and offers access to many smaller wineries that normally have no public access, it allows participants a chance to speak to and connect with the winemakers and vineyard owners on a personal level, and learn more about the history and topography of Russian River Valley and its wines.
For more info, either e-mail Info@passportrussianriver.com or visit passportrussianriver.com.

Passports available here (and by contacting participating wineries) Saturday, June 7, and Sunday, June 8, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Your ticket will grant you access to all of the following:

· Commemorative wine glass
· Wine tasting at up to 40 wineries
· Prerelease, library and limited edition winery-only wines
· Discount pricing on select wines
· A wide variety of great food and desserts.
· Live music
· Tours
· Wine Education directly from the people who make the wines
Ticket InformationTo purchase Advance Tickets: weekend pass $89 (direct from wineries) Saturday or Sunday $59 (online only).