Last year I made several new years resolutions, which for the most part I kept (I could have done much better with the last one — exercise — but that one just rolls over to this year, and the next, and so forth — sigh).
This year I’ve decided to forge ahead with a few predictions, coming on the heels of what was an exciting, tumultuous 2008. It was a year of continued growth for the American palate, a year where curiosity and interest in wine never flagged, even as our buying power did. It was the year we lost several of the great figures in the wine world — Robert Mondavi, David Lett, Didier Dagueneau, and Alois Kracher — but saw the work of these visionaries carried forward in the markets, the standards, and the regions they pioneered. Despite a gloomy economic picture, the prospects for the wine industry seem as robust as ever.
So here are my top 5 predictions:
5. Champagne will cede the market to Prosecco and other delightful Sparklers.
Unless you went to bed early last New Year’s Eve, you’ve probably noticed that most Grande Marques Champagne has made some audacious, ludicrous price jumps in the last year. Coming in a period where the dollar is weak and a global recession is underway, the gesture seemed to have less to do with demand and more with greed. Champagne may once have been the unsurpassed King of Wines, but it now bore a closer resemblance to Marie ‘Let ’em Eat Cake’ Antoinette.
Think you’ll miss it? Perhaps (a small number of values among grower producer wines still exist, if you’re desperate). But Champagne’s tactless money grab will make it easy for American consumers to reacquaint themselves with the simpler pleasures of the Cremants and Petillants from Alsace, Vouvray, Bourgogne, and the rest of France; the Moscatos, Lambruscos and Proseccos of Italy, Cavas from Spain, Sekts from Germany and Austria, and the always improving Sparkling Wines from the U.S.
There is so much to choose from. In the last decade, the world has gotten to be a very good place for bubbles. There are more varieties, more price points, the quality is higher across the board, and there are more occasions to use them. So bit adieu to Champagne until they come back to their senses, give your pocketbook a rest, and see what the rest of the world has to offer in the realm of bubbles.
4. Americans will go Spanish American.
Consumers wondering what’s new on the domestic front are likely to find Spanish-inspired wines on their horizon. As the Rhône variety wine movement completes its third decade, having succeeded in pulling off one of the greatest varietal incursions in domestic vineyard acreage, there’s mounting evidence that time has come for the Spaniards.
True, it will be their second incursion, their first occurring with the settlement of the California Missions in the 18th and 19th centuries. But a small number of intrepid California wineries (and a few in Oregon and Washington, too) are gearing up with new plantings of Albariño, Tempranillo, Graciano, Mataro, and Garnacha, and while the results are early, they’re very promising. Those early out of the gate include Albariños from Tangent, Verdad, and Havens, Spanish red blends from Parador and Bokisch, and estimable Tempranillos from wineries like Abacela in southern Oregon. Ask for them in your local wine shop, the next time you’re whipping up tapas or paella.
3. Consumers will Embrace Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.
There are a number of places in the world that grow and make superb Sauvignon Blanc. Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé serve as a kind of standard, and the Sauvignons from New Zealand continue to thrill with their iteration of herbaceous, nervy, mineral wines, as do the few that you can find from the Alto Adige in Northern Italy. I am generally impatient over the tiny number of imports of SSBs (or SBSs) from Western Australia, their distinctive blends of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, and hope that more will be imported this coming year.
But in the meantime I must confess that every time I unscrew a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile, my pulse starts to quicken. Country-wide, these stunning, inexpensive and underrated whites share many of the attributes of the wines mentioned above — nerve, herbaceousness, minerality — but to my palate no Sauvignon is as fresh and alive, as exuberantly delicious, and offers more quality for the price.
2. $25 will be the new $40.
We begin the year facing one of the most uncertain economic climates in recent memory. It might feel as if your expendable dollar has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. You’ll still want wine with dinner — that genie’s out of the bottle, and it’s not going back — but you’ll want to drink better, for less.
Don’t despair. There are strong indications that the retail market will be adjusting to fit your buying power. I predict that 2009 will come to be known as the Year of the Shrinkage, and the savvy wine consumer (yes, you) will be able to find unprecedented deals.
The biggest erosion is likely to come at the crowded $40 to $50 price point, the place were many if not most premium wines now aim, whether they’re the latest Walla Walla Syrah or Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, Barossa Shiraz or fancy cru from Alsace or St. Joseph. As one retailer put it to me recently, ‘If you’re a $40 wine, you’re probably a pretty lonely bottle about now.’
Already, distributors are coming to retailers with killer deals on closeouts or end of vintage specials, or in crowded categories where the quality is fine but there are simply too many wines for one or another to stand out — places like Australia, the Languedoc, and the fancier regions of Spain. The consumers who used to buy $40 will find their comfort zone south of $30, in the $25 range, and wineries would do well to heed this. Just like the real estate bubble, the wine bubble was due for a correction.
Those corrections probably won’t come from California at first — for the moment, California wineries are refusing to give ground on the high prices they’ve earned in the last decade — but as the economic conditions persist, some will no doubt cave, and others will follow.
So, dear wine-loving reader, don’t despair. The wine world is going to fall in line with your pocketbook, and if you’re the patient or the adventurous type, this will be a very fruitful time.
1. Balance Will Be Restored
Recently there has been a thin steady trickle of California wines in release that don’t sear the tongue from alcohol, or numb the taste buds with extract and bombast — not a lot, but enough to read as a hopeful sign. In an era in which domestic wines routinely go the route of spin and spoofulation, this just might be the year in which some balance returns to California wines (Oregon may have to wait for the 2007 releases — a disappointing number of 2006s, ripe as jam, have gone too far).
This is a decision not just in winemaking, but in planting and direction, too. If you’re out to make sweet, concocted, overripe monstrosities, you’re probably not going to plant Albariño, or Gamay, or Roussanne or Freisa or Nebbiolo or Picpoul or Grenache Blanc. These varieties may never reach a critical mass in acreage, but they’re being scrutinized with new fervor, and planted in a slow and inexorable uptick. Adventurous winemakers are taking back some of the momentum stolen from them by some very bad picking habits in the Napa Valley and elsewhere, and from the questionable judgment of certain critics with undue influence.
Just as we face a new era in the White House and the potential return to something close to reason, maybe wines with a newfound sense of balance will return to vogue. Maybe consumers will tire of thick, sweet, high alcohol reds and demand a return to saner brix numbers, to more sensitive winemaking. That’s change we can hope for.