Decanter November 2019

French wine production down in 2019 Extreme weather including frost, drought, hail and high temperatures, has been blamed for a predicted fall of 12% in French wine output in 2019. France’s agriculture ministry added that this year’s estimated harvest puts it at 4% below the average national production over the past five years. The full gamut of severe weather conditions have been thrown at French growers this year, from widespread heatwaves to violent hailstorms and wildfires, slashing overall production to 43.4 million hectolitres – down from 49.4m hl last year. The regions of Burgundy and Beaujolais were particularly badly hit, with harvest volumes said to be down 26% year-on-year. ‘What we are seeing, as the meteorologists have said we would, are extreme climatic events,’ Inter Beaujolais vice-president David Ratignier told Decanter. ‘There is no middle…

Some of New York’s richest wine lovers have filed a $8.3m lawsuit against businessman Omar Khan. They claim he conned them into investing in luxury dinner parties with some of the world’s rarest wines. Despite Khan reporting that these investments were profitable, it was discovered that ‘most of the “ventures” were in fact not real’, claim the 13 plaintiffs. Khan has denied any wrongdoing and blamed ‘cashflow issues’ for some dinners not taking place. Tempranillo and Touriga Nacional are among varieties to be trialled at a new research vineyard at Larkmead winery in Napa. Larkmead posits that climate change may force Napa Valley to grow less Cabernet Sauvignon in the future. Larkmead winemaker Dan Petroski said the region needs to prepare for the possibility that Cabernet ‘may no longer be…

Explaining ‘travel shock’ I read with much interest the article on ‘Travel Shock’ by Jonas Tofterup MW (October 2019 issue) where he found that of all his samples, only those that had been air freighted showed any change, and this was consistent with slight oxidation suggesting extra ingress of oxygen. Commercial airlines flying at 30,000 feet are not pressurised in the passenger cabin to ground-level pressure but only to the equivalent of about 6,000 feet. The air pressure in the cargo hold may go even lower. During flight, air will be expelled out past the cork and when the plane lands (at sea level or below 6,000 feet) air will be drawn back into the bottle headspace. As cargo holds are generally also very cold in flight, more oxygen from the headspace will…

A timely article from Rupert Joy on the environmental impact of the wine industry (July 2019). Initiatives such as reducing water waste, lowering emissions, reducing pesticides and improving soil quality are commendable and likely to be easier for consumers to support than moves to increase pricing or even a switch to lighter bottles. Consumers are not deaf to the calls of the environmental lobby, but initiatives that compromise drinking pleasure may be a hard sell. I feel this article missed an obvious way in which both consumers and the environment can benefit. Drink local! Winemaking expertise and the number of vineyards in the UK have soared and quality continues to improve. No one wants to forfeit the pleasures of Rioja, Chianti or Provence rosé, but surely given the challenges posed by…

Stand by, over the next month or two, for a torrent of images from 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague’s Velvet Revolution, the Christmas Day execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau¸sescu. I tuned in to the BBC World Service on Christmas Eve 1989 to get news from Romania – and found only the traditional Cambridge carol service, simultaneously available on two other BBC radio stations. When I rang to complain, I was told by a patronising duty manager that he didn’t think what was happening in Romania merited disrupting the transmission of a carol service on the BBC’s global news station. Well, it did. The economic and political emancipation of those Europeans and others who had spent most of the 20th century living under the Soviet shadow has been…

Since its birth in 1964, Champagne Jacquart has nurtured and cemented a reputation for its expansive network of growers and their vineyards, encapsulated by its Mosaique range which pulls together all these individual strands of Champagne to form an all-encompassing portrayal of the region’s finest. Its latest venture turns that concept almost entirely inside out. The aim of representing the essence of Champagne remains paramount; however Jacquart has fastidiously examined each of those threads and pinpointed one which deserves a stage entirely of its own. The consequence of this project is an extraordinarily limited release of just 1,000 bottles of unadulterated Chardonnay from a single grower and the renowned Montaigu vineyard in Chouilly Grand Cru in the Côte de Blancs. Its rarity is compounded by the distinct possibility that this cuvée will…