Sparkling Wine 2012

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Sparkling Wine 2012
Proceedings of the Second International Sparkling Wine Symposium
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Sparkling Wine 2012
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Proceedings of the Second International Sparkling Wine Symposium
FlavourPress
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Sparkling Wine 2012
© 2012 Elevage LTD
Published by Flavour Press
www.flavourpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored on a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by whatever means without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Disclaimer: this book is intended to supply accurate information on the
subject matter covered. By writing this book the author(s) is/are not engaged
in supplying professional services or consultancy advice to the reader.
ISBN: 978-0-9553035-3-1
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Proceedings of the second International Sparkling Wine Symposium, held at Denbies
Wine Estate, Dorking, Surrey, UK, November 2011
Editor: Jamie Goode
Contents
Introduction
1
Sparkling wine: the quiet achiever
Chris Brook-Carter
3
Opportunities for sparkling wine in emerging markets
Andrew Le Breuilly
7
The road to success for Champagne in emerging markets
Pierre-Aymeric du Cray
23
Consumer perceptions of sparkling wine
Robert Joseph
31
Methode Cap Classique: uniquely South African, passionately
world class
Pieter Ferreira
43
Brazil: a sparkling future
Mario Geisse
51
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Sparkling Wine 2012
How Prosecco has developed its consumer franchise
Silvia Baratta
53
Autolysis and its impact on the sensory qualities of sparkling
wines made with the traditional method
Jaume Gramona
59
What is a traditional fermentation? Exploring the house style
in Cava production at Codorníu
Arthur O’Connor and Bruno Colomer
65
An on-trade strategy for sparkling wine
Joan Torrents
73
The use of jetting technology for a better quality management
at bottle (disgorging) stage
Bertrand Robillard
85
Challenges and opportunities for making low alcohol sparkling wines
Jane Robichaud
91
How to get journalists talking about your wine
Adam Lechmere
100
Using PR Effectively
Bryony Wright
103
Social media in the wine industry
Jamie Goode
109
1
Introduction
The second International Sparkling Wine Symposium was held at Denbies
Wine Estate, Dorking (UK) in November 2011. It was a great success, and
this book is an attempt to capture some of the highlights of the symposium
for a wider audience.
Of course, it is not possible to include all the content from the meeting. One
of the strengths of a symposium like this is the level of discussion among
participants, both in question and answer sessions at the end of each lecture,
and also more informally during the coffee breaks and lunches. Also, the
symposium has a strong practical element, with tastings used to illustrate
some of the talks. And then there were two excellent panel sessions—one on
closures, with participation from Amorim, Oeneo (Mytik), IOC and Zork,
and another on the future of English sparkling wine with a star-studded
panel. Sadly, neither of these could be included in these proceedings.
But what we do have in this book is a broad range of presentations covering
all aspects of sparkling wine, from technical to marketing.
We’d like to make special mention of our sponsors, whose involvement
made the Symposium possible. They are as follows:
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Website: www.sparklingwinesymposium.com
The International Sparkling Wine Symposium is owned and organised by
Elevage Ltd, a company established by Sam Harrop MW, Dr Jamie Goode,
John Worontschak, Bryony Wright, Mike Florence and Rachel Child.
3
Sparkling wine: the quiet achiever
Chris Brook-Carter
Just-Drinks.com
The goal of this paper is to set the scene by presenting a global overview of
the market for non-Champagne sparkling wine. I have titled this paper ‘The
Quiet Achiever’, because this sector continues to be one of the unsung
success stories of the wine world. Even in the throes of the global recession,
sparkling wine has outperformed most global categories.
Such has been its success, that in a report recently available on JustDrinks.com by our partner IWSR, the research group was led to ponder
whether this drink—which was once confined to special occasions—is now
actually encroaching on the traditional stomping ground of every day spirits
brands and even beer.
In fact, our research predicts that the global market will reach 202 million 9
litre cases by 2016, up from 177 million in 2010. It has been growing
worldwide at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.9% since 2005.
This rate is due to flatten out a little to 2.3% from now until 2016, but there
are still many, many regions where that worldwide number will be beaten
easily.
Most of this growth is taking place against a backdrop of huge local wine
markets where consumers are increasingly willing to experiment with new
grapes and new wines. Sparkling wine is just an extension of this but is also
something a bit more special.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
In Russia we are predicting growth of about 4%, the same for the UK.
Australia and the US should see CAGR of around 5%. And these are big
markets, off already healthy bases.
Challenges for the sector certainly remain. Although sparkling wine is
associated with special occasions, in many markets it still holds a relatively
poor image amongst consumers who view it as a lower-price, poorer-quality
imitation of the real thing—Champagne. There is also relatively little
understanding among the majority of consumers about the various sparkling
wine sectors—cremants, cavas, sekts or even cap classiques—outside of their
home markets.
But most importantly—particularly in key sectors such as Prosecco and
Cava—there is a dearth of strong brands.
It is an unusual feature of sparkling wine that compared to other categories
the sector has not really developed any globally recognized category
champions. Champagne, along with almost all other major drink categories
such as Scotch, vodka, gin, liqueurs and even still light wine, is dominated
by a handful of export-driven brands. To date, however, only really
Freixenet and Martini have developed internationally recognized sparkling
wine brands.
Stronger branding is an imperative if the market is to continue to grow at
impressive levels, particularly in these straitened times. Consumers look for
brands, especially when money is tight. As it stands, the risk is that they will
fall back into other categories in search of recognisable labels.
That said, the positive way in which the category is performing should far
outweigh these concerns in the short term.
5
Prosecco (and to a smaller extent Cava) is enjoying growth in countries as
diverse as the USA, Brazil, Australia and Belgium as consumers trade down
from Champagne in difficult economic times. But Prosecco has also carved
out market share irrespective of the economy.
Meanwhile, Australians have latched on to the sector via the trend towards
low-alcohol and low-carbohydrate drinks.
Elsewhere, the category is benefitting from consumers diversifying their
consumption occasions for sparkling wine away from just one-off
celebrations. The re-emergence of the aperitif as a real force across Europe
has been integral to this. And, the category should also be raising a glass to
Italy and the expansion of the Aperol spritz from local tipple into national
(and increasingly international) star.
What is most encouraging about all these trends is that the growth is being
replicated across a broad number of diverse markets. And, key to the sector’s
long-term outlook is the breadth of factors that is generating that growth.
Fads are driven by one-off factors often in single markets. This has all the
hallmarks of genuine sustainable growth.
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7
Opportunities for sparkling wine in emerging
markets
Andrew Le Breuilly
Wine Intelligence
Progress is being made in emerging markets, but perhaps not quite at the speed we
were hoping for
The challenges facing sparkling wine in emerging markets are very different
to those we have seen in the more established markets. The traditional
approach for launching luxury products, such as Champagne, was to flood
the market with marketing, invest in distribution and then fight for
dominance.
However, in many emerging markets, this approach is so resource intensive
and risky as to render it untenable as a strategy. Take China for example,
with a population of 1.34 billion, and the barriers to entry so high, it’s clear
that the approach needs to be more targeted and refined.
Another major difference is that, in emerging markets, most consumers still
don’t naturally associate celebrations with sparkling wine as they do in so
many established markets. They may have seen Westerners popping
celebratory Champagne corks in films or on TV, but it’s not something that’s
ingrained in their own culture. If sparkling wine is to be relevant to their
lifestyles, marketers have to give them reasons.
The internet is now the dominant force in many emerging markets.
Traditional media such as newspapers and TV are widely accessible to an
educated and more affluent population. However, in many cases this
mainstream media remains state controlled, and whilst its ubiquity has some
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impact, it currently does not have the high levels of trust and affinity that
media generally enjoys in developed economies. In this context, usergenerated content from social media and the internet in emerging markets
enjoys far more respect and affinity, primarily because it is perceived as
transparent and less biased.
So are the emerging markets the next big thing for the sparkling wine
business, and a refuge from the economic uncertainty that is gripping many
of our established markets?
Wine Intelligence believes that change is certainly afoot in these markets—
but perhaps not quite at the speed producers and marketers were hoping for.
If the pace of progress is to increase, three key messages should be borne in
mind:
Stereotype the emerging markets at your peril. Each one has its
own characteristics and peculiarities, and some very different
approaches are required.
Consumers in emerging markets are constantly evolving. A focus
on what has been described as Consumer 2.0 is essential for longterm success.
Online and social media have leap-frogged traditional marketing
approaches.
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Stereotype the emerging markets at your peril
The following table demonstrates how we define the emerging markets in a
global context.
Traditional
established
Wine
producing
countries with
high residual
per capita
consumption,
but stable or
declining
Argentina
Croatia
France
Georgia
Germany
Italy
Portugal
Spain
Mature
established
Markets with
strong
historical
growth which
is tailing off
Belgium
Denmark
Ireland
Japan
Netherlands
Switzerland
UK
High growth
established
Markets where
wine is
becoming a
mainstream
product and is
experiencing
above-trend
growth
Australia
Canada
Finland
New Zealand
Norway
Sweden
USA
Emerging
Markets where
wine is
experiencing
growth from a
relatively low
base
Angola
Brazil
China
Hong Kong
Mexico
Poland
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
New
emerging
Markets
where wine
is still a
relatively
new and
unknown
beverage
India
Malaysia
Nigeria
Taiwan
Thailand
UAE
Table 1 Wine Intelligence Wine market evaluation model March 2011
Typically the characteristics of the emerging markets are:
generally significant growth, but from a low base in terms of
market volume and value;
low per-capita consumption rates for wine;
a narrow range of available wines, although there is a choice of
countries of origin and styles;
the market is dominated by domestic wine or spirits.
But when we take a look at the countries in more detail, it becomes clear
that beyond this broad-brush classification, the differences between them are
considerable.
In the rest of this section, we have set out the key characteristics of the
emerging markets with the highest potential for sparkling wine. Specifically:
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Russia – new opportunities expected as they become members of
the World Trade Organisation
Brazil – plenty of opportunity for imported sparkling
opportunities, however, locally produced sparkling dominates
with a lower retail price
China – still wine dominates, though the trend for giving wine as
a gift offers real potential
South Korea – the younger wine consumer and EU free trade
agreements will drive future growth
Russia – new opportunities expected as they become
members of the World Trade Organizations
Russia has a long history with sparkling wine, dating back to the time of the
Tsars, making the country a key export market for many Champagne
houses.
Russia has now joined the World Trade Organisation (December 2011). Its
membership means that import tariffs will have to come down. For wine,
they are expected to fall from 20% to 12.5% within four years. Despite this
change imported wine still suffers from heavy regulation that may hinder
growth for imported wine in the short to medium term.
In line with the government’s long-term strategy of persuading Russians to
moderate their prodigious vodka intake, and to switch to less alcoholic
products like wine, it is also expected that excise duty on vodka could rise by
30% in 2012 alone. Wine could gradually become more popular and harder
spirits may decline.
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However, this does not mean that Russians will automatically switch to
expensive imported wines. After a five-year embargo, some Moldovan and
Georgian products are being allowed to return to the Russian market, where
they were once enthusiastically consumed.1
In addition, the quality of domestically produced wines is slowly improving.
In 2011, Russian wine producers agreed to stop calling their sparkling wines
Champagne, and to work towards creating geographical indications or
appellations. Other signs of progress include the first Russian gold medal at
Mundus Vini, along with increasing acclaim in other competitions. The
Russian wine industry also held its first stand at the London International
Wine Fair 2011, reflecting a growing confidence among producers.
Brazil – plenty of opportunity for imported sparkling,
however, locally produced sparkling dominates with a lower
retail price
Over the past five years, Brazil’s sparkling wine category has been the fastest
growing area of the wine market, achieving 7.4% CAGR between 2006 and
2010. This growth has been driven principally by domestic sparkling wines
(also up 7% CAGR, 2006-2010).
Statistics from IBRAVIN, the generic body for the Brazilian domestic wine
industry, reveal that sales of Brazilian sparkling wines have doubled from 4.8
million litres in 2004 to 8.7 million litres in 2009.2
Brazilian sparkling wines account for 78% of the market and are perceived to
be good value for money; competing strongly in the sub R$50 price bracket
1
Source: http://www.winereport.ru/2011/12/political-changes-not-wto-to-influencethe-wine-market/
2
Source: Comercialização de Espumantes Finos, Empresas do Rio Grande do Sul, 200409.
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against imports from South America, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. This
again runs contrary to the market for Brazilian still wines that struggle to
compete against Chilean and Argentinean wines at everyday price points.
But there has also been a large increase in the consumption of Cava, Chilean
sparkling wines, and non-Champagne French sparkling wines, albeit all
from a smaller base. Consumption of Champagne has increased slightly, but
it still remains a niche sector by comparison to the volumes of domestic
sparkling wines. It’s restricted by inflated prices: the price of a bottle of Moët
NV, for instance, is roughly twice that of the most expensive domestic
sparkling wine.
China – still wine dominates, though the trend for giving
wine as a gift offers real potential
While most wine drinking populations around the world are ageing and
getting poorer in real terms, China is a nation where wealth is being created
at an unprecedented rate among a burgeoning, urbanising, increasingly
consumer-centric population.
Still wine is the dominant force in the Chinese market, and sparkling
remains a long way behind in terms of volume and value.
Despite this, there is a surge of interest in sparkling wine, with imported
products achieving CAGR of 33.1% in the 2006-10 period. Wines from
France lead the market, but Italian sparkling wines are catching up fast and
are achieving double the volume growth rates of their French rivals.
Australian, German and Spanish sparkling wines are also increasing in
popularity.
Giving wine as a gift is one of the key reasons for purchasing wine in China,
and the prestige associated with sparkling wine offers great potential.
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South Korea – the younger wine consumer and EU free trade
agreements will drive future growth
South Korea has already enthusiastically embraced wine culture and has a
young wine consuming population with a thirst for more knowledge.
Imported wine may be expensive, but it is also regarded as a sociable,
fashionable and even healthy drink.
The retail market for wine is about 3 million cases annually, which equates
to just 0.6 litres per head of population—lower than in China. But in
common with advancing Asian economies, younger people—particularly
women in their 20s and 30s—are using wine as a way of demonstrating their
new-found economic power and cultural sophistication.
Imported sparkling wines experienced CAGR of 37.2% between 2006 and
2010. Italian wines dominate the South Korean sparkling market, a situation
which is unlikely to change any time soon: sales are nearly double those of
their nearest rivals, the French, and growing more than seven times as fast.
The boom-and-bust economic cycle of the past 15 years—which dented
demand for luxury goods like imported wine—could be stabilising as South
Korea cements its global position as an industrial and technology
powerhouse. The recently ratified free trade agreement with the EU will
reduce import duties on wines and will favour the trade and consumers’
choice.
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Consumption of sparkling wine
1000s of 9 litre cases
27810
Russia
3025
Brazil
China
416
South Korea
163
Source: IWSR Copyright 2011
Proportion of sparkling wine that is imported
% of sparkling wine consumption that is imported
Russia
12%
Brazil
22%
China
69%
South Korea
69%
Source: IWSR Copyright 2011
New types of consumers are evolving and we predict
significant growth over the next 10 to 15 years
When we talk about established wine markets like the USA and the UK, it’s
easy to forget that they did not reach this level of maturity overnight. It’s
taken several decades for British consumers to develop a taste for wine, and
despite all the progress the market is still largely driven by discounting. The
USA, meanwhile, may be a major wine producer in its own right, but much
of the country has had a difficult relationship with alcohol for the best part of
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a century. Only very recently has wine gained widespread acceptance, and
even now, nine decades after the repeal of Prohibition, per capita
consumption of wine in the USA remains low by international standards.
Will the emerging markets for wine take so long to reach similar levels of
maturity? It’s a question that cannot be answered with absolute certainty,
but there are reasons to believe that the pace of consumer acceptance may be
quicker.
Let’s take the USA as our benchmark. Here, marketing analysts have
described a fundamental change in the way consumers have behaved over
the past 20 years. They talk in terms of Consumer 1.0 evolving into
Consumer 2.0. But what do these labels actually mean?
Consumer 1.0
Earned their wealth in the nineties, and now have high spending
power
Predominantly male and aged over 40
Drawn to the gravitas of premium brands
Purchase wine as a symbol of status and wealth
Consumer 2.0
Currently in their late teens or early twenties
Will reach their economic peak in 10 to 20 years
Generation wanting to diversify and form their own identity
Consumer 2.0 is generally aged under 45, and in the USA this age group is
providing the biggest stimulus to the wine market — even though they don’t
drink as much, in volume terms, as the over-45s. They select from a wider
repertoire of wines (and other drinks), and tend to spend more on a bottle.
They are far more likely to drink sparkling wines, and generally have a
greater interest in, and involvement with, the wine category than did their
parents’ generation.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
When we look at wine drinkers in emerging markets, it could be argued that
the majority are currently in Consumer 1.0 mode. That’s not to say that they
are all over 45, male or obsessed with premium brands: the point is that they
are still relatively conservative in their tastes, tend to regard wine as a luxury
item, and are influenced by a smaller range of factors than their Western
counterparts.
But this is changing fast. The internet is opening up international
communications in a way that was impossible even a decade ago, and wine
culture is now at the fingertips of anyone with access to a computer or smart
phone. Social media is linking people in a way that few people in the wine
industry —or indeed any industry —ever imagined.
The Beijing Olympics of 2008 did a great deal to bring China into the
international fold, and the same is likely to happen to Brazil when it hosts
the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Such events
increasingly occupy the attention of the entire planet, and provide a platform
for marketing at every conceivable level, making the world seem like a
smaller place than ever before. Certainly there are fewer international
backwaters, in wine terms, than at any other time in history.
There are still factors which could derail the wine revolution in emerging
markets: natural disasters, political unrest and economic meltdown can
never be ruled out. But there are many reasons to believe that the
transformation from Consumer 1.0 to Consumer 2.0 could happen very
quickly in these countries, as a new generation of wine lovers starts to make
its own choices over the course of the next 10 to 15 years. A surge in
demand for sparkling wine is well within the scope of possibilities.
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Online and social media have leap-frogged traditional
marketing approaches
Another key characteristic of the emerging markets is that they have
embraced the internet and social media. In markets where state control has
hindered marketers’ ability to get their brand out there, the online campaigns
gather significant traction. The chart below signifies the sheer volume of
internet users in the emerging market countries. Whilst the internet
penetration rate in China (36%) is not as high as countries such as the UK
(82%) any medium with such reach requires a detailed strategy.
Internet usage - Top 8 countries
Millions of internet users
420
China
240
United States
99
Japan
India
81
Brazil
76
Germany
65
Russia
60
United Kingdom
51
Source: www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm - June 30 2010
Copyright © 2010 Miniwatts Marketing Group
The rest of this section provides a short review of the impact of the internet
and social media in China and Brazil.
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China – internet will play a leading role in the development
of sparkling wine
Anyone who has spent time in China knows how central the internet is to
the Chinese upper middle class consumer. Recent studies have confirmed
that Chinese consumers are among the most connected in the world, and
many observers have argued that China is possibly the most interesting
country right now for online marketing.
The internet in China is more than just a straightforward source of
information. For many consumers, it’s a way of life. A McKinsey survey in
2009 found that people in China’s 60 largest cities spend a staggering 70% of
their leisure time online, and one in five consumers aged between 18 and 44
won’t buy a product without first researching it on the web. In China,
perhaps even more than in the rest of the world, the internet matters.
We know that Chinese consumers are using the internet for online shopping
and general product research. The question is, are they using it to source
information about wine?
This question has been addressed by Wine Intelligence’s consumer research
in China, and the answer is a resounding yes. Not only is the internet an
important source of information for wine—69% of upper middle class
imported wine drinkers say that they often go online to look for wine
information—it’s actually the most important source, more important even
than recommendations from friends and family. If we include those who say
that they sometimes use online sources, almost our entire sample has at least
occasionally gone online to learn about wine.
As we’ve discussed, sparkling wine has made some excellent progress in the
Chinese market, but has some catching up to do. It’s almost inconceivable
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that that this will happen without internet marketing, and social media,
playing leading roles.
It is also worth noting that the websites that would dominate in other
markets such as Google, Twitter or Facebook are either not common or not
permitted in China. The chart below illustrates the top 5 websites used to
source wine information from our latest Chinese consumer survey.
Baidu: Search engine similar to Google
Winechina.cn: Wine information website providing wine
industry information and news
Sina Weibo: China’s largest micro-blog, similar to Twitter
Baidu Zhidao: User-generated Q&A, similar to Ask.com
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Winechina.com.cn: Wine magazine website/sales platform, the
only wine magazine approved by GAPP (General
Administration of Press & Publication of the People’s Republic
of China)
Brazil – the big players have already started to embrace the
social media presence
As we’ve seen, sparkling wine sales are enjoying healthy growth in the
Brazilian market. So what, if anything, are the leading players doing online
to ensure they claim their fair share of the sales boom?
It's no surprise to see Chandon, the Brazilian outpost of Moët & Chandon,
making good use of Facebook (www.facebook.com/chandonbrasil) and
Twitter (twitter.com/#!/chandon_brasil). Both sites are updated regularly to
keep their target audience engaged.
Brazil's biggest sparkling wine producer, Salton, uses its Facebook page to
feed into its own food and wine matching blog
(saltonharmoniza.blogspot.com). Aurora, the co-operative established in
1931 and one of Brazil's biggest producers of sparkling wines, also has
dedicated pages on Facebook and Twitter. Miolo, a large wine producer and
distributor (whose portfolio includes Osborne) also makes use of both social
media sites.
Leading Champagne brands like Taittinger, Mumm and Piper Heidsieck do
not yet have dedicated promotional websites or social media pages in Brazil.
Freixenet has embraced the virtual marketing space, having a dedicated
Brazilian website (www.freixenet.com.br), a Brazilian Twitter site
(twitter.com/#!/FreixenetBrasil) and a Brazilian Facebook page
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(www.facebook.com/freixenetbrasil). All three are updated regularly to
provide details of the brand's promotions and products.
Conclusion
Wine marketers are rightly excited by the potential of emerging markets, and
it’s no surprise that the focus has fallen initially on still wines. Notoriously,
first-growth Bordeaux has found an eager audience in the Far East, with eyewatering prices being paid at merchants in Hong Kong. Mainstream brands
have also started to colonise these new territories—along with some
unremarkable bulk wines that are less easy to offload in more mature
markets.
What of sparkling wines? So far, these have played a supporting role.
Culturally, they can seem rather alien to consumers for whom still wine still
appears strange and exotic (in China, white wine occupies a weird niche,
because red wine is considered luckier, and healthier).
But the cultural and economic barriers to entry are gradually coming down
in many parts of the world where sparkling wine has yet to make a real
breakthrough. Consumer wealth is growing, tariffs lowering, wine
knowledge expanding, and the flow of information ever increasing.
The wine industry still has work to do, and the winners will inevitably be the
producers and marketers that get closest to the markets they are targeting,
and work hardest at understanding what makes consumers tick.
About Wine Intelligence
Wine Intelligence is the leading research-led strategy consultancy serving the
global wine industry. It conducts client-specific research projects to enable
companies to gain greater insights into wine markets and wine consumers,
and helps business leaders develop business strategy and marketing plans.
The company also assists businesses in developing new brands, and in
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formulating and communicating marketing messages within the industry.
For more information, please visit www.wineintelligence.com
Andrew Le Breuilly, Research Manager at Wine Intelligence [email protected]
Further reading
Further insight on the markets discussed in this report can be found in the
following Wine Intelligence publications:
Brazil Landscapes report – April 2011
China Internet and Social Media report – September 2011
China Landscapes report – May 2011
UK Sparkling report – December 2011
US Sparkling report – January 2012
Russia Landscapes report – April 2011
South Korea Landscape report – July 2011
White paper: Style trends in the American wine market: A future
of diversity? - May 2011
White paper: Global Wine Market Evaluation Model - March
2011
23
The road to success for Champagne in emerging
markets
Pierre-Aymeric du Cray
Global Sales Director Champagnes G.H. Mumm and Perrier-Jouët
This paper will focus on four topics. First, I will look at luxury in emerging
markets, and then specifically at Champagne in the emerging markets. Then
I will discuss the key factors needed to create a success story in emerging
markets, looking at the case study of Champagne Perrier-Jouët in Brazil.
Luxury in emerging markets
A key indicator of the luxury market is the number of HNWIs (high net
worth individuals). These are defined as people having more than $1M of
available assets, excluding real estate.
Globally, the financial wealth of HNWIs grew 9.7% in 2010 to reach
US$42.7 trillion, surpassing the 2007 pre-crisis peak. In 2010 the global
population of HNWIs grew 8.3% to 10.9 million.
Regionally, the population of HNWIs in Asia-Pacific, at 3.3 million
individuals, is now the second largest in the world behind North America,
and is ahead of Europe for the first time. The combined wealth of AsiaPacific HNWIs had already topped Europe’s in 2009, and that gap widened
in 2010.
Europe’s HNWI wealth totalled US$10.2 trillion after growing 7.2% in
2010, while Asia-Pacific HNWI wealth was US$10.8 trillion, up 12.1%.
North American HNWI wealth hit US$11.6 trillion in 2010, up 9.1%.
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Latin America saw another modest gain (6.2%) in its HNWI population in
2010 and HNWI wealth rose 9.2%.
The Latin American HNWI segment has proved relatively resilient and
stable in recent years (the number of HNWIs shrank just 0.7% in 2008) and
HNWI wealth is now up 18.1% from 2007.
India’s HNWI population entered the Top 12 for the first time in 2010.
HNWI population and wealth grew faster in the emerging market than in
the ‘Old world’. The Asia-Pacific HNWI population expanded 9.7% to 3.3
million, while Europe’s grew 6.3% to 3.1 million.
Asia-Pacific HNWIs’ wealth gained 12.1% to US$10.8 trillion, exceeding
the US$10.2 trillion held by HNWIs in Europe, where the wealth increase
was 7.2% in 2010.
Overall, HNWIs’ wealth in Asia-Pacific is now up 14.1% since the end of
2007, despite the significant crisis-related losses incurred in the interim.
North America and Europe have yet to fully recoup those losses so have
experienced negative growth over the same period.
In Latin America, the general population of HNWIs is still small, numbering
under 0.5 million. However, the prevalence of Ultra-HNWIs multiplies the
aggregate level of HNWI wealth, which grew 9.2% to US$7.3 trillion in
2010. The disproportionate number of Ultra-HNWIs has also contributed to
the gains in HNWI wealth, which is now up 18.1% since 2007.
Strong and consistent growth has been seen in the Middle East. In the
Middle East, the size of the HNWI population gained 10.4% in 2010 to 0.4
million, while their wealth jumped 12.5% to US$1.7 trillion.
Mainland China continues to be the fastest growing market for luxury. It
will become the third luxury market worldwide in 5 years. Tier 2/3 Chinese
25
cities will be the new battleground for luxury brands, but with growth also
driven by strong organic growth.
The overseas luxury market will still account for >50% of total Chinese
luxury spending. Consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and
selective: in-store experience and after-sales service will become a key
success factor. Players are testing new in-store innovative solutions and
digital initiatives in China.
Champagne in the emerging markets
China is a key worldwide growth relay. From a base of zero 10 years ago,
China has grown into an emerging Champagne market (+37% per year
growth over the last 10 years), with a strong acceleration in 2010 (+48% vs.
2009).
There is a strong #2 position for G.H. Mumm (growth leader in top 4 brands
with +36% in 09–10) and #3 for Perrier-Jouët.
Brazil is a key market for luxury champagnes, with consistent growth over
the last 10 years (+5% per year), and a growing demand for exclusive
cuvées.
India is an emerging market despite high level of duties in some major states.
We are seeing the early beginning of strong growth, although still on a
limited basis.
Russia presents opportunities for growth in this solid market for luxury
goods. It has shown a very strong recovery from the crisis (+68% in 09–10)
and consistent growth over the last 10 years (+22% per year).
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Sparkling Wine 2012
What are the key factors for growth in emerging markets?
1. Show off
2. A tailored offer
3. Heritage and legacy
4. A western touch
5. Refinement
6. Selectivity in distribution
Case study: Perrier-Jouët in Brazil
Brazil is:
•
Top 5 luxury market for more than 300 luxury worldwide brands
•
Top 2 potential market for luxury accessories (1st - Asia)
•
Top 2 executive jet planes buyer (1st - USA)
•
Top 5 market for Mont Blanc pens and Top 1 Mont Blanc pen with
diamonds
The wealth is extremely concentrated:
•
5 k families (0.001% of total population) own 40% of GDP
•
São Paolo city, Rio de Janeiro city, Brasília and Belo Horizonte
concentrate 50% of wealth
27
•
10 of the wealthiest cities = 60%
•
100 wealthiest cities = 80%
•
São Paolo state has 47 of the wealthiest cities
Luxury brands annual growth rate in Brazil:
•
Cartier – 54%
•
Emporio Armani – 40%
•
Mont Blanc – 32%
•
Ferrari – 12.5% (sold 18 cars last year)
Luxury Market vs. Brazilian Market
•
While GDP had grown 3.5% (2007), Brazilian Luxury Market grew
17.5%
•
Brazilians spend USD 1.5 billion on luxury products in Brazil
Perrier-Jouët
A Family House for almost 200 years. Pierre-Nicolas Perrier married Adèle
Jouët and set up together their champagne house in Epernay in 1811. PierreNicolas Perrier already owned vineyards in Epernay, Aÿ, Avenay, Pierry,
Dizy and Chouilly, a legacy from his father.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Perrier-Jouët has 65 hectares of vineyards, almost exclusively rated as Grand
Crus (99.2%). These are exceptional vines, ideally located in the Champagne
Magic Triangle.
A remarkable consistency thanks to an inherited obsession for quality. Five
times, Perrier-Jouët decided not to release any bottles due to a bad harvest,
in 1879, 1882, 1902, 1908 and 1910. The preferred supplier of the great
Royal Courts of Europe, with a Royal Warrant to Queen Victoria (PerrierJouët 1857), Napoleon III, Leopold 1 of Belgium.
The Perrier Jouët 1874 is the most expensive champagne in the world: the
price fetched at a Christie’s auction in London in 1888 has never been
surpassed.
In 200 years, Perrier-Jouët has had just 7 cellar masters, each one trained by
their predecessor, like craftsmen who jealously pass on the secret of their art
from father to son. This is an exceptional advantage in preserving the style.
Current cellar master and guardian of this precious knowledge, Hervé
Deschamps, spent ten years working with his mentor André Baveret in order
to master the subtleties of each cuvée.
Today, it is a boutique champagne that has always favoured quality over
volumes in its development. The primary markets are USA, Japan, France,
UK, Switzerland and Italy. The strong emerging markets are China and
Brazil.
The Perrier-Jouët strategy in Brazil has been through the key luxury success
factors.
Show off: through a very selective distribution via high-end night clubs. An
example would be Club A, which opened in 2009. In a multi entertainment
complex in the Sheraton Hotel Design Shopping Mall, which is an event
complex for 5000 people. Club A positions itself among the AA-Class
29
consumer in Sao Paolo, offering a unique experience with state-of-the-art
technology and generating a differentiated environment. It is a membershiponly Club (R$4000 per year for 1 person). Perrier-Jouët built a Belle Epoque
bar in the pool area. The partnership was based on an 18 month contract,
with a listing of Perrier-Jouët in different styles and formats, Belle Epoque
exclusive visibility, and Belle Epoque service rituals.
Tailored offer: top events and selective partnerships. Special Dates: Women´s
Day (La Perla), Valentine’s Day (Bulgari). Sponsorship of Luxury
Conference: Atualuxo. Sponsorship of key events – Chanel, Hermès,
Missoni.
Launch of Perrier Jouët ‘By and For’ Cuvée in Rio and Sao Paulo. In Brazil,
the By and For program is sold through a top premium company proposing
bespoke travel and gifts to high society. Perrier Jouët presents the first tailor
made Champagne Cuvée, showcasing the brand’s Haute Couture approach.
Heritage and legacy: launch of the Bicentenary pack by Daniel Arsham.
Western touch: highlighting of the Belle Epoque bottle, symbol of French Art
Nouveau by Emile Gallé.
Refinement: association with famous Brazilian chef Helene Rizzo.
Selectivity in distribution: a very selective distribution through special
channels, such as top premium weddings, and the Fasano Group with two
very exclusive hotels, one in Sao Paulo, one in Rio.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
31
Consumer perceptions of sparkling wine
Robert Joseph
Do I Like It?
I am a recovering wine writer. For over 20 years, in the pages of Wine
International magazine, The Sunday Telegraph and a series of some two dozen
books, I used to talk to people, to tell them what I thought and, although I
didn’t really appreciate it at the time, act as an unpaid communications
medium for wine producers and regions who didn’t like doing their own
communication. A kind of Cyrano de Bergerac if you like. I was also cochairman of the International Wine Challenge (IWC).
Then, in 2005 I discovered that I was talking to myself, and had been doing
so for a very long time. It wasn’t a pleasant discovery, but it became just a
little more palatable when I realized that some of my best friends were also
talking to themselves. Most of them were wine writers.
I kept going to dinner parties where lawyers and doctors who made ten
times what I’ll ever earn, didn’t know that Chablis was made from
Chardonnay. They were surprised to learn that wine was made in Argentina.
This was stuff that my colleagues and I had been writing in newspapers and
magazines for decades. It had gone straight over their heads. Maybe, I
thought, this isn’t the most productive way of spending my working life.
English sparkling wine offers a great example of the gap between what I
wanted to write about and what wine drinkers seemed to want to know. In
2005 I was in the back room preparing for that year’s IWC awards, with my
co-chairman Charles Metcalfe. It was a memorable moment for Charles and
myself because we had just been told that the magazine and the IWC that
we had both founded had been sold to the owners of Off Licence News. We
did not have time to ponder the implications of that announcement,
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Sparkling Wine 2012
however, because we were busily talking to the media about the biggest news
stories of that year’s Challenge. Among these, two concerned sparkling
wines. A Tesco own-label Champagne and a Camel Valley sparkling wine
had both beaten a range of top Champagnes.
Charles and I were most excited about the David-and-Goliath success of the
Cornish wine, but we couldn’t persuade any newspapers to take an interest;
all they wanted was a piece about supermarket bargain fizz. The fact that,
now, six or seven years later, those same newspapers are so often ready to
carry stories about English wine, is hugely to the credit of its producers. But,
despite official announcements that most British wine drinkers would prefer
to drink English fizz to Champagne, I have met surprisingly few who have
actually tasted it more than once or twice. If that.
In 2005, I started getting into wine production myself. With two partners,
and some great producers in Languedoc Roussillon, we now make and sell
around a million bottles of le Grand Noir IGP d’Oc to over a dozen
countries. That experience, coupled with my role as editor at large of
Meininger’s Wine Business International has given me a rare insight into
what happens in other countries, and a clear realization that the UK is no
longer the centre of the wine world. I also now know what it feels like to
have to present your wine to a supermarket wine buyer.
But my view of the wine world has been changed far more fundamentally by
another stage in my metamorphosis away from being a consumer wine
writer. Just over two years ago, with two partners—Hazel Murphy and Judy
Kendrick—I started a consumer insight company called ‘DoIlikeit?’ whose
declared aim was firstly to help the wine industry understand the way the
people who buy, sell, serve and most importantly, drink their wines actually
think. Secondly, I set out to help those same companies to create
communities of people with whom they could develop ongoing
relationships. So, we talk to a large online group of wine drinkers of every
33
kind and meet them at public events. We test wines and packaging in real
life settings such as pubs and bars. We look at labels and we taste wine blind.
And we very deliberately don’t do focus groups.
Jumping the fence between writing and researching has led me to some
strange conclusions. First among these is the growing belief that that wine
industry really doesn’t like consumers very much. Look at the evidence: If
we did like them, we would treat them better. We create a jungle for the
people who pay our wages to hack their way through with almost no maps.
We print wine labels that are often entirely incomprehensible, we change the
flavour of the product every year—and blithely propose that anyone who has
a problem with this needs ‘educating’. To listen to many a member of this
industry talking about wine drinkers is all too often like hearing a man in a
bar complaining that his wife doesn’t understand him.
Actually, I need educating about ballet; I need educating about nuclear
physics; I need educating about how to look up at the sky at night and know
what all those stars are. We only have a certain amount of space in our
brains. Why do I have to fill my brain with all this stuff? And why should
wine come anywhere near the top of the pile?
What do most of us do when we don’t understand what someone is saying
to us—someone who makes no useful attempt to make themselves
understood? We walk away and look for more congenial company. We turn
our backs on wines with complicated and/or uninformative labels and make
for simpler, branded efforts. And we increasingly cold-shoulder the
communicators who don’t seem to understand us either.
In early 2008, Tim Atkin, one of the UK’s best wine critics, wrote a
newspaper column in the Observer headlined Dumb Blond about Pinot Grigio
in which he wrote that he’d been ‘conducting a none-too-subtle, one-man
campaign against this innocuous but generally palate-numbing Italian white
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Sparkling Wine 2012
for more than two years now’. Wrily, he continued, ‘And guess what? Pinot
Grigio sales have gone through the ceiling. There is even talk of a shortage.’
It’s not only wine critics that are apparently out of touch with their readers.
The Social Network was the most critically applauded movie in the USA in
2010, and Freedom was the top book, according to critics. Despite all the
hype, The Social Network was only the 29th best-selling movie and Freedom
was the 39th best-selling book. Sex and the City 2 was hated by critics and
loved by the audience.
Perhaps this gulf between arbiters of taste—the goats—and the ticket and
bottle-buying sheep always existed, but today, the latter group has
somewhere else to look for more congenial advice. They can go online and
read what like-minded souls thought of the wine or the movie. In 2010, over
65 US film critics, including some with columns in high profile publications
such as USA Today, lost their jobs. Tim Atkin, a self-confessed voice in the
wilderness also lost his slot in The Observer.
There’s a direct link between sparkling wine and the gap between critics and
drinkers. One of the brilliant ways that New Zealand has solved its
overproduction problem has been to invent a new style called Sparkling
Sauvignon Blanc. It didn’t exist five years ago, and its arrival on the scene
has not been unreservedly welcomed. One US critic described it as ‘truly
wretched’. A top NZ blogger dubbed it ‘sickly sweet and off balance’ and
says he hates them all. Sparkling Sauvignon is now one of the best-selling
wines in New Zealand supermarkets and is rapidly making friends in the
UK.
Most experts are dismissive of sweetness in wine. We have done a lot of
work for clients on this subject. One of my favourite tests involved giving
Bordeaux drinkers—usually men of over 60—samples of Claret with and
without sugar. The results were clear. The sweeter the wine—up to 12
35
g/litre—the higher the score. We repeated the test with Australian red wine
and rosé: in each case, the conclusion was the same. As sugar is added, fruit
becomes more apparent, often to people who appear unaware of the
sweetness. I am not saying that everyone should dump lots of sugar in their
wine, but I’d suggest that anyone who ignores this fact, does so at his or her
peril.
Why do consumers choose to buy particular wines? My answers apply to the
UK; if you asked people in the US, Australia or France, you might get
different answers, but a lot of them are pretty consistent. Brand and name
are quite important, but more significant is something consumers have
previously tasted and liked. Price, and especially discount and promotion are
vital, but right at the top of the list of reasons is ‘recommendation from a
friend or family’ (93%). Sadly for wine writers, they don’t really compete
with Bill the wine drinker’s brother, Gladys next door or Henry in accounts.
Obviously somebody must have told Bill, Gladys or Henry about the wine
they have recommended to others, and maybe that person was a keen
Decanter subscriber or follower of a good blog. But most consumers are not
buying a bottle of wine because they read about it in a blog, newspaper or
magazine.
This raises the issue of what people want to know about wine when they do
read about it. To judge by most winery websites, wine professionals imagine
that the most essential pieces of information involve the person who made
the wine, where and how they made it. We gave consumers these and other
options and asked what kind of information they were looking for. The
results were revealing.
Just 18% wanted to know who made it. A healthier 38% were interested in
where it was produced but only 28% cared about the production process. For
those who believe there to be a big audience for a video clip of the winery,
fewer than one in ten of our respondents had any need for this.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
These responses are not surprising. The identity of the winemaker, his
location and methods offer no benefit to the buyer. They are features of the
wine. Most people selfishly value benefits over features. The fact that my
iPhone was designed by someone called Sir Jonathan Ive who works for
Apple doesn’t in any way change my relationship with the phone. The
reason I like or don’t like it is what it does, what it costs and how it works.
Once I have bought and fallen in love with my iPhone, I might possibly be
interested in who designed it, but that knowledge is not an early part of my
relationship with that brand or product. This is one of the mistakes that the
wine trade goes on making. Some people might buy a book because of an
article they have read about the author’s childhood; few find this a
compelling reason to purchase a bottle of red or white.
What they do want is information about how the wine might fit into their
life. So, 41% of the people we asked were interested in food-and-wine
matching. This is a benefit: I am actually going to cook something special,
and I want to know which wine is going to go with it and make it even more
special. I am buying the wine to drink and serve to my friends; not to
increase my knowledge of nice people who make wine. What I’d like to
know is how it tastes and how to get the best out of it.
So what do non-professionals know about wine? To find out, in late 2010 we
asked wine drinkers at the Wine Show, who had paid £15 each to attend a
wine-focused event. That ticket price means that these were more involved
than the average wine consumer. 33% of them knew that Moulis was a
region, which was impressive. Only 26% knew that Malbec was a grape,
however. Just 19% knew that Guigal was a brand. 57% of people recognized
Torres as a brand.
At the Taste of London show in 2011 and online, we asked people where the
best-selling wines in the UK come from. 20% don’t, it seems, know that
Jacob’s Creek is Australian, 25% don’t know that Concha y Toro is Chilean,
37
and only 67% know that Kumala is South African. These figures are worth
bearing in mind when we all start to wax lyrical about regionality. I’m sure
we can get some people focused on the fact that a wine comes from a
particular corner of Mudgee. But let’s not overestimate the number of
Mudgee fans we are going to create.
This may not be welcome news to some of my winemaking friends in New
Zealand and Australian regions like Mudgee where they are busily
introducing Tempranillo, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese. In fact, they are
increasingly making wines that have no resonance with most consumers;
doing, in fact, what the French, Spaniards and Italians did 20 years ago
before the Aussies came and knocked them off their perch. They are
forgetting that one of the reasons we began drinking New World wines was
that they were easy to understand. You didn’t have to go and read a book
and do a course.
Knowledge of sparkling wines and Champagnes is not strong either. 74% of
the Champagne drinkers we asked believe that the words ‘Premier Cru’ are a
good reason for purchase—and a better reason than Grand Cru which
scored just 64%. A third (34%) would be strongly influenced by the fact that
a wine is a Blanc de Blancs; compared to 35% for Blanc de Noirs. 83% voted
for Brut; 81% voted for Vintage.
We ran an interesting study with 42 Champagne drinkers and a set of four
high quality different Champagnes: a dry Blanc de Blancs (Moutard), de
Castelnau Brut (standard Brut NV), a vintage and an extra dry Blanc de
Noirs. When asked to describe the Blanc de Blancs the participants
mentioned grapefruit, lemon, peach and a bit of yeast and apple, but they
found it a bit sharp and acidic. For Brut they got a bit more yeast, a bit of
peach, a bit of lemon and some grapefruit but thought it a bit dry, sharp and
earthy. The favourites were the vintage—rich, classy, dry, creamy, with
flavours of biscuit, yeast, toast and nuts—and the Extra Dry—creamy, rich
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Sparkling Wine 2012
with yeast, biscuit, grapefruit and nut. Interestingly, the Extra Dry scored
higher points for ‘classy’ than the vintage. The Blanc de Blancs was the
weakest performer of the quartet, with just 12% first choices, compared to
34% each for both the Vintage and Extra Dry.
When would our Champagne drinkers pop these corks? They thought Extra
Dry perfect for special occasions: it’s what they thought of as the bottle to
pull out for a birthday or a special time. Vintage got similar comments, but
was not reckoned to be quite as special. Brut and Blanc de Blancs were
described as party wines.
When one considers that the Extra Dry is a Blanc de Noirs (and the
consumers’ recognition of that term) it is interesting to compare these
findings with the current trend in Champagne towards making bone dry
Blancs de Blancs.
In late 2010, we asked a broader range of people what they thought
Champagne cost. We gave them a whole set of names, and asked them to
give prices. They didn’t recognize all the names, but generally the estimates
were in the £20–25 range and lower. We had in fact bought the bottles from
Waitrose and were able to reveal what they had actually cost. Most of the
respondents were fairly sure they could buy them cheaper elsewhere. ‘Only a
tiny amount of Champagne is sold at full price,’ said one. ‘Moët and
Bollinger were on offer at £14’, said another. These people weren’t lying:
they thought they had seen these offers, even when no such discounts had
been available.
When we told consumers how much the most expensive Champagnes—
Krug and Cristal—cost, there wasn’t any aspiration to buy them among the
respondents: not one of them said ‘I wish I had the spare money to buy this’.
Their response was that the pricing was a joke. One of the dangers of
39
sparkling wine in England is that consumers have a price ceiling in their
minds. There are a limited number of consumers who are not price sensitive.
We also researched attitudes to sparkling wine as a category. This included
face-to-face surveys and blind tastings of Champagnes, Cava, Prosecco,
Australian and English sparkling wine. Professionals believe that
Champagne, made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and with little or no
residual sugar, is the gold standard. Some consumers share that opinion;
others actually prefer richer commercial New World wines and Prosecco
made by Cuve Close and containing generous amounts of sweetness. These
varied responses raise the question of whether we are right in automatically
thinking that dry, yeasty Methode Champenoise should be the default choice
for anyone wanting to make and sell a successful sparkling wine.
In one study of 52 consumers, using masked bottles of different sparkling
wines, we found that the wine for which they would pay the highest price on
the basis of its taste was Jacob’s Creek sparkling Pinot Noir. In their
estimation, this moderately priced wine was thought to be worth more than
a far pricier Champagne which, in turn, struggled - and competed closely
with the Prosecco, Both outscored the Cava. On some occasions, the wine
the consumers liked best was also the one they thought—judging by its
taste—carried the biggest price tag. On others, they freely admitted
preferring a sparkling wine they perceived to be more affordable.
The consumers described the Cava as dry, fresh, slightly acidic, with a bit of
apple and grapefruit. The Champagne shared these characteristics but also
had lemon fruit, with a bit of peach and some creaminess. The Prosecco, by
contrast was said to have flavours of peach, apple, grapefruit and melon. It
was, tasters said, fruity, sweet and refreshing. As for the Australian wine, it
tasted of biscuit, nuts and toast—just like a typical Champagne.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
In another study, a blind tasting at the Three Wine Men event, the New
World wine was replaced by Chapel Down English Sparkling wine. This
time, the Brut Champagne was the highest scorer but it evidently confused
consumers, eliciting descriptors like ‘it smells of alcohol’; ‘very oaky’.
Sweetness was also mentioned by some, while others thought the wine dry.
Classic terms such as ‘biscuity’ and ‘bread-like’ featured rarely.
Some people actually thought that the Cava tasted more expensive than the
Champagne, though they did not necessarily enjoy it. It is possible that it
was the extra acidity they noted that made them imagine it to be French.
Others were confused between Cava and Prosecco, revealing interesting
confusion between what professionals might think of as two intrinsically
very different wines. Most, however, did recognise the sweetness in the
Prosecco, though a few found it ‘harsh’. The interesting thing about
‘sweetness’, in many of our tests is how often it correlates with liking. Most
consumers don’t seem to mind residual sugar in their fizz.
Just over half the participants in this test enjoyed the Chapel Down but they
did not perceive it to be a high-cost wine. Comments included ‘bland’, ‘easy
drinking’ and ‘basic’. The Cava was said to ‘taste more expensive’, to be
‘Champagne-like’ and to have ‘more character’. Worryingly for the English
winemakers, 43% of the tasters thought it worth more than £10 compared to
54% for the Prosecco.
To finish, let’s look at what we are seeing in the real world of sparkling
wine. While we professionals wax lyrical about yeast autolysis and
regionality, there are many consumers who find a £4.93 Mateus all they
want sparkling wine to be. We have helped a company to develop and
launch a brand of aromatized 5.5% pink fizz and get it onto Tesco’s shelves.
It doesn’t taste bad. We gave this wine-cocktail and some of its competitors
to consumers in a wine bar; few of them reacted to it as if it wasn’t a full
strength wine. I don’t know how many of you are drinking sparkling white
41
zinfandel, but this is what has driven the rosé boom. It has not been driven
by dry pink wine from Provence. The pink wine most people are drinking is
sweet and not very winey. The next big thing in wine is going to be Moscato.
It is going to blow everything else off the table, but it won’t be as successful
as it could be or should be because people like us will do everything to stop
it. But people love it, and one reason they love it is because it doesn’t taste
like wine.
We are looking at a very polarized market. There’s a group who understand
Champagne and buy high-end sparkling wines. Neither I, nor I suspect does
anyone else, know how big this group is and whether it is growing, but they
tend to like some maturity on their wine. These people often don’t like their
fizz too dry. There is another group that really does love the more austere,
challenging character of Chardonnay-based bone-dry wines. I don’t know
how big that group is either but I’m pretty certain that it is substantially
smaller.
Then there are Prosecco drinkers. What we have discovered is that
Champagne drinkers don’t necessarily trade down to the Italian wine that
willingly. Many Prosecco drinkers enjoy its soft creamy character and
actually prefer it to Champagne. Finally we have our last group, which is
absolutely huge and is growing: drinkers of frankly sweet sparkling wine of
one kind or another.
Over the last few years, I have had to rethink a lot of what I believed in. I
have been involved in chairing over 50 wine competitions and blind-tasting
thousands of wines and still viscerally think that the flavour and quality of
the liquid should be more important than the look of the bottle and the label.
But with sparkling wine more than any other style, the appearance is crucial.
When you give someone a bottle, they see the label, and this inevitably
changes their perceptions. The words Champagne and Prosecco, have
greater value than the word Cava, for example. The challenge for English
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Sparkling Wine 2012
sparkling wine makers is both to create styles that strike the right chords with
consumers’ taste-buds, and to package and brand the wines in ways that ring
the right bells with their emotions.
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Methode Cap Classique: uniquely South
African, passionately world class
Pieter Ferreira
Graham Beck Wines
The Methode Cap Classique Producers Association (MCCPA) was
established in May 1992 and celebrates 40 years of traditional method
sparkling wine production in South Africa. Simonsig Wine Estate produced
the first bottle fermented sparkling wine in 1971.
The Association was started by 14 members, and currently has 82 members,
representing 20 different geographical areas in the Western Cape.
Approximately 7 million bottles produced each year, with seven producers
accounting for 5.2 million bottles. MCCPA today is known simply as MCC
or Cap Classique.
Quality Charter Standards are the next challenge. The aim is to get the new
criteria in place and signed by all members by 2013 and legislated by 2015.
We have developed a website and Facebook page (www.capclassique.co.za).
We also have a social responsibility charter, which is a first for any
association in South Africa.
Geographical Distribution of Cap Classique Members:
•
Stellenbosch – 20 members
•
Franschhoek – 13 members
•
Robertson – 8 members
•
Constantia – 6 members
•
Paarl, Tulbagh, Hermanus & Paarl – 4 members each
•
Somerset West & Elgin – 3 members each
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Sparkling Wine 2012
•
Darling, Durbanville, Hout Bay & Breedekloof – 2 members each
•
Bonnievale, Botrivier, Cederberg, KZN, Plettenberg Bay, Riebeek
Kasteel & Vredendal – 1 member each
Activities of the Association
Generic bubbly festivals are held where we collectively promote each other’s
Cap Classique and have a united front to promote the category.
Base Wine Tasting is held once a year and all base wines are tasted and
constructive criticism is encouraged to make sure that the quality is good
enough to go to bottle for the secondary fermentation. We are in the process
of establishing technical criteria and organoleptic approval of base wine.
The Association is constantly striving to improve the quality standards of all
the members’ wines made using this method.
A Technical Program and Seminar day is held one a day, once a year with
topics that are presented by international professionals and winemakers
alike.
The Association also has a Social Responsibility Program that is funded by
the profits of the generic bubbly festivals. The project is known as the “1000
Sparkling Faces” project.
Major soil types in the Western Cape
Derived from Table Mountain Sandstone
Sandy with low nutrient and water-retention properties (Fernwood,
Longlands, Westleigh, Dundee).
Derived from Granite
45
Usually red to yellow coloured, acidic, and found on mountain foothill
slopes and on ranges of hills, with good physical and water-retention
properties (Oakleaf, Tukulu, Hutton, Clovelly)
Derived from Shale
Usually brownish, strongly structured, on partly decomposed parent rock,
with good nutrient reserves and water-retention properties with normally
high natural limestone properties (Glenrosa, Swartland, Klapmuts,
Estcourt).
Vineyard sites vary from Coastal/Maritime influence to Continental Shelf
influence and vineyards are planted from 30m above sea level to 1120m. On
average the vineyards will be planted between 120–400m. Average mean
temperature varies hugely in different areas and is related to the aspect of the
soil or position. In most cases every sub-ward has cooler areas with-in.
Major grape varieties used for Cap Classique
Whites grapes: Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris,
Grenache Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Viognier
Red grapes: Pinot Noir, Pinotage, Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon.
Current legislation for Cap Classique
•
Have to be fermented in the same bottle that goes to market.
•
Three Bars of pressure in the bottle after disgorgement.
•
Minimum of nine months on the lees. However there is already an
undertaking by members that they keep it on the lees for 12 months.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
The way forward for the Cap Classique Association
We are collectively always in search of the more refined bubble. It remains
aspirational. The growth in the category has forced the Association to focus
more on quality criteria. Statistics confirm that the category doubles every 5
years.
With clear guidelines towards improving the product, it is possible to
develop Cap Classique wines of distinction which are a benefit and of service
to our industry and of value to our consumers. So we have a white paper for
two Quality Charters. The plan is to launch by 2015.
The Cap Classique Association is committed to the following quality
standards:
STANDARD/ORDANAIRE CHARTER
Grapes are selected from a diversity of regions in the Cape and the different
terroirs ensure a wide range of aromas and flavours leading to style
differentiation and individualism.
Any white and red grape varieties are permitted that ensure delicate fruit and rich
complexity.
Grape selection in the vineyard ensures that only perfectly healthy grapes
come to the cellar for vinification. These grapes are only hand-picked.
Whole bunch pressing is recommended to ensure low phenolic content and
minimum colour pigment in the juice.
When pressing the whole bunches, careful selection and separation of the
quality juice from the press juice fraction must be done for better blending
opportunities.
47
Fermentation of the base wine is done in temperature controlled vessels but
could also be in small oak barrels. Malolactic fermentation could be
considered depending on the style of wine.
Reserve wines may be used from time to time to maintain specific styles
during the blending of the different cuvées prior to the secondary
fermentation in the bottle.
Every bottle of Cap Classique must be matured on the yeast for a minimum of
12 months. The bottles ferment and mature in a horizontal position for
maximum yeast exposure and in cool conditions. There are individual
members who ensure much longer yeast contact periods, depending on the
style and vintage.
After riddling and disgorgement of the Cap Classiques the pressure must be a
minimum of 3 Bars. Some maturation on the cork is required to ensure
integration and balance prior to labelling and dispatch.
The Association has developed its own Cap Classique logo and members
have the right to use the logo on the packaging or elsewhere to endorse their
commitment to quality.
Additional Notes: Standard/Ordanaire Cap Classiques may be sold as certified
or non-certified.
You must be a member of the Association to enter National competitions.
In short: The STARDARD/ORDANAIRE will hold status quo on existing
criteria to call it Cap Classique:
•
Minimum of 3 Bars Pressure
•
9 Months on Lees (CHANGE TO 12 Months)
•
Permitted to use any cultivar
•
Recommended whole bunch handling
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Sparkling Wine 2012
•
Un-certified and Certified product
•
No identification marking
SUPERIEURE/ELITE/EXTRAODANAIRE CHARTER
Grapes are selected from a diversity of regions in Cape and the different
terroirs ensure a wide range of aromas and flavours leading to style
differentiation and individualism.
Specific varieties: Only Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grape
varieties are permitted to be used to ensure delicate fruit and rich
complexity.
Grape selection in the vineyard ensures that only perfectly healthy grapes
come to the cellar for vinification. These grapes are only hand-picked.
Whole bunch pressing is compulsory to ensure low phenolic content and
minimum colour pigment in the juice.
When pressing the whole bunches, careful selection and separation of the
quality juice from the press juice fraction is required for better blending
opportunities.
Fermentation of the base wine is done in temperature controlled vessels but
could also be carried out in small oak barrels. Malolactic fermentation could
be considered depending on the style of wine.
Reserve wines may be used from time to time to maintain specific styles
during the blending of the different cuveés prior to the secondary
fermentation in the bottle.
Every bottle of Cap Classique must be matured on the yeast for a minimum of
24 months. The bottles ferment and mature in a horizontal position for
maximum yeast exposure and in cool conditions.
49
After riddling and disgorgement of the Cap Classiques the pressure must be
a minimum of 3 Bars. Some maturation on the cork is required to ensure
integration and balance prior to labelling and dispatch. These Cap
Classiques are subjected to certain tasting criteria and must be subject to
certification.
The Association has developed its own Cap Classique Superieure/Elite logo
and members have the right to use the logo on the packaging or elsewhere to
endorse their serious commitment to quality and the improvement of
standards.
In essence the Superieure/Elite/Extraordinaire will be:
•
Minimum 3 Bars of Pressure.
•
24 Months on Lees prior to disgorging.
•
Permitted to use selected cultivars – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot
Meunier, Chenin Blanc and Pinotage.
•
Compulsory whole bunch handling and juice separation.
•
Certified Product only (Vintage and NV).
•
Identification marking.
•
New criteria for wine Competitions such as VERITAS, Amorim Cap
Classique Challenge.
Some unanswered questions still remain:
•
How do we get this message across to the consumer?
•
Will it not create confusion in the category?
•
How distinguishable should the two tiers be for this distinction to
have the right message?
•
There are producers that would like to refer to the MCC’s tier if they
keep the wine longer on lees +24 months.
•
Then there are the purists! … And the debate continues!
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Sparkling Wine 2012
1000 SPARKLING FACES PROJECT
This is our Social Responsibility project that is administered by The Edge of
Life Fund. One of our members is a trustee to this fund and is responsible for
identifying the needs and steering funds in the right direction. See below
more about the project.
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Brazil: a sparkling future
Mario Geisse
Casa Silva and Cave Geisse
Brazil is a country with a wide diversity of ethnicities, with people from
different backgrounds, which over time have been mixed. It has 192 million
people, with a middle class of 94.9 million. There have been five big
immigrations: Portuguese, German, African, Italian and Asian. This makes
the Brazilian psyche positive and cheerful. Brazilian people find in sparkling
wine a product which, by its nature, accompanies not only their food, but
also their lifestyle. Good quality sparkling Brazilian wine is gaining more
and more domestic consumers.
When people think of Brazil, they generally consider it to be a tropical
country. But there are actually a variety of different climates here. In the
south of Brazil (in the state of Rio Grande do Sul), in the Serra, at an
altitude ranging between 450 and 800 metres, there is a semi temperate
climate. It’s quite cool here, with conditions such that grapes when fully ripe
still have a very good acidity and an alcohol potential between 10 and 11%.
That condition of full maturity yields base wines, suitable for producing
sparkling wine.
Brazil is the fifth largest wine producer in the Southern hemisphere, with
83,717 hectares under vine, making 440 million litres of wine. Of these
vines, an estimated 10,000 hectares are Vitis vinifera. There are 1162 wineries
in the country.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the Serra Gaucha region lies in the parallel 29° 10° S.
It is responsible for more than 90% of sparkling wines from Brazil. Its
viticulture began with the arrival of the Italian immigrants, and for many
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Sparkling Wine 2012
years produced all kinds of grape-derived products. But it has found its
greatest product in the last two decades: Brazilian sparkling wine.
There were 2059 ha of Chardonnay, Riesling, Moscato Branco, Prosecco
and Pinot Noir in 2007. Currently the planted area with these varieties is
growing faster and faster.
The viticulture is typically practiced by small growers. The rugged
topography requires a lot of hand labour, which in most cases is done by the
farmer. The few companies that have their own vineyards represent a small
percentage of cultivated hectares.
The soils are derived from bedrock that is mostly acid–basaltic in origin.
Over time, depending on their configuration, these bedrocks evolve
differently.
The soils that deliver the best quality are those where this basalt is more
degraded and cracked. These cracks allow the rootlets of the plant to
penetrate more deeply to extract nutrients and water. These soils deliver
sparkling with freshness typical of Brazilian sparkling wines, adding higher
structure and minerality.
The Brazilian consumers have lent their strong support to local sparkling
wines, considering it better than the imported sparkling wines with the
exception of Champagne. The consumption curve proves it. If we compare
this with the consumption curve of Brazilian still wines, the situation is
exactly the opposite. Despite the large increase in imported sparkling wines,
Brazilian sparkling wines, have an advantage in the marketplace. This is not
the case for still wines. It is currently a product that is solidifying its image in
the domestic market and which is beginning to take its first steps to export.
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How Prosecco has developed its consumer
franchise
Silvia Baratta
Communications Manager, Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore
Consorzio
Prosecco is an Italian white wine that can be produced exclusively in nine
provinces in the north east of Italy in the regions between Veneto and Friuli
Venezie Gulia.
All Prosecco since 2009 is produced exclusively in this area, which is either
DOC or DOCG. The Prosecco world can be depicted as a pyramid, with the
entry level wine at the bottom and the higher quality at the top.
Importantly, in 2009 the word Prosecco ceased being the name of a grape
and became used to describe the area of production. The type of grape that
up to 2009 was called Prosecco is now called Glera.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Prosecco DOC is at the base of the pyramid. As we move up the pyramid,
we have Asolani, and then the last two levels are taken up by Conegliano
Valdobbiadene DOCG and the Valdobbiadene Superiore DOCG.
The history of Prosecco
Prosecco was already known in Roman times under the name of Pucino
55
1772 first written reference in Volume VIII of the ‘Giornale d'Italia’
1876 foundation of the School of Oenology
1923 foundation of the Institute for Viticultural Research
1962 foundation of the Consortium for the safeguarding of Conegliano
Valdobbiadene Wines
1966 foundation of the Prosecco Wine Road, the first of Italy’s ‘wine
arteries’
1969 DOC recognition
2003 recognition of Conegliano Valdobbiadene as Italy’s first sparkling wine
‘District’
2009 DOCG recognition for Prosecco from Conegliano Valdobbiadene
The reasons for our success
We have identified five reasons for our success: knowledge, methods,
sustainability, identity and strength (in numbers).
The deep knowledge instilled in our wine comes from the oenological
school, and in the 1990s Padua University also took an interest in sparkling
wine production.
The second reason is methods. There are 166 producers differing in size, and
each is identifying its own special niche, tailoring its product to that niche.
There is no one great producer. There is no one great power. The fact that
there are 166 enterprises means that communication is very active, and there
is competition to constantly strive to improve the product.
The other interesting element is that there are not only wine producers in the
area, but the entire production process is managed locally. This means we
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Sparkling Wine 2012
have small and medium sized enterprises dealing with logistics, research and
so on, which means a scaleable economy locally.
Our third ingredient for success is that we have 3000 wine growers for 6000
hectares. This means everything is carried out entirely by hand. This has also
created a harmonious landscape.
Another element is the balance between vineyards and woods in the area.
For the 6000 hectares of vines we have 10 000 hectares of wooded area.
Also, our identity is important for success. Our grape is Glera (formerly
known as Prosecco), a semi-aromatic grape which gives drinkability.
Next we come to our methods. Our production is based on the second
fermentation in large stainless steel tanks. Therefore fermentation is entirely
natural.
Then we come to the area of production. It is one of the most northerly wine
producing areas in Italy.
The last element for our success is strength in numbers. 3000 vine-growers,
166 bottling companies, over 65 million bottles produced, and presence in
more than 50 countries around the world.
The market for Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG
Now, some data. These relate to Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG, but
Prosecco DOC follows a similar trend.
Since 2003 there has been a growth of 66%, which has been constant over
the period and translates to an annual growth rate of 7%. Exports have
doubled since 2003. Our first market is Germany (35%) followed by
Switzerland (15%), the USA (15%), Austria (7.5%) and the UK (5%).
57
Before closing I would like to focus on three of these markets: Germany, the
USA and the UK. Germany is our first market: a mature market which has
been growing gradually over the years.
Figure: Sales of Prosecco Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG in Germany
The USA is also doing extremely well. In last year there was an increase of
52%.
Figure: Sales of Prosecco Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG in the USA
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Sparkling Wine 2012
The UK has grown by 24% on average, but there was a downturn in 2010.
In 2010, we suspect that DOC has sold more than DOCG.
Figure: Sales of Prosecco Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG in the UK
This is a wine which comes from a very specific area in the world, but which
has had a great deal of international success. This presents a challenge for
the future. We would like Conegliano Valdobbiadene to become a
household name. We are seeking to achieve this through a series of events.
We also would like to have the area recognized as a world heritage site by
UNESCO. This is in process. Thirdly, we’d like to promote the name of
Conegliano Valdobbiadene through a range of strategies such as tastings,
tours and symposia.
59
Autolysis and its impact on the sensory
qualities of sparkling wines made with the
traditional method
Jaume Gramona
Lecturer, University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
Cava Gramona
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, in the Penedes region of Spain, is the capital of Cava
production, and the vineyards in the region produce some 85% of the total
Cava made each year. Cava country consists of 33,000 hectares of vineyards.
The soil characteristics in the Penedès region are quite varied due to the
geological diversity of the area. The central region is perfect for vineyard
cultivation, being far from the salty Mediterranean winds to the south, yet
protected by the mountain region of Montserrat. The soils of this region
contain limestone and calcium carbonate (they are described as calcareous).
There are also some slate soils in the region, as well as areas of deep clay
chalky soils with good water retention. These soils are very poor in organic
matter.
The region experiences a mild Mediterranean climate with an annual
average of 12–14 ˚C, limited rainfall and hardly any wind. This creates ideal
growing conditions for the local Macabeu, Xarel-lo and Parellada grapes, the
three key Cava white grape varieties.
The light intensity here is high, with average sunshine hours of 2548 h
annually. Average rainfall is 514 L/m2 (during the maturation period: 230
L/m2).
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Sparkling Wine 2012
The mineral content in Cava wines (Al, Ba, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, P,
Sr, Zn, Cd, Ni and Pb) of 18 samples can be easily distinguished from the
composition of other sparkling wines, which demonstrates that the
descriptors used are very reliable when determining Cava authenticity.
The grape varieties
There are 30,000 hectares of white grapes in the region. The varietal
breakdown is:
•
46% Macabeu
•
25% Xarel.lo
•
24% Parellada
•
4% Chardonnay
•
1% Malvasia
There are 2,300 hectares of red varieties, with the following varietal
breakdown:
•
33% Trepat
•
29% Garnatxa
•
22% Pinot Noir
•
6% Monastrell
Xarel.lo
This is an important variety in the region. Its tough outer skin provides great
consistency and dry extract. It is a white variety with more resveratrol even
than red varieties. In addition it possesses pterostilben. Because of its acidity
and consistency, it is the grape with most personality.
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The aromatic compounds in wines made from each of these varieties differs.
Parellada wines have higher concentrations of hexyl acetate, hexanol and
octyl acetate, while alpha-terpineol is higher in Xarel.lo. Macabeu wines
have lower amounts of all four.
Table: differences in the amino acid, protein and aromatic compound content of wines
made from the three key white Cava grape varieties.
Autolysis: ageing on lees
An important aspect of traditional method sparkling wines is ageing on the
lees, during which process the yeast cells undergo a process of autolysis.
The word autolysis comes from the Greek terms auto (self) and lysis (loss,
dissolution). It is a biological process which causes a cell to self-destruct,
either because it is no longer needed or because it is damaged, and further
damage must be prevented. It is the self-destruction of organic tissues by
intracellular enzymatic activity.
Autolysis in yeasts has been studied by many scientists. It is the enzymatic
self-destruction of cell components which begins immediately after death of
the cell. Ageing on lees is a technique of traditional ageing for white wines
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originally used in the elaboration of wines fermented in barrels in Burgundy
with Chardonnay, and the ageing in bottle of sparkling wines.
Its importance lies in the special features which it brings to the wines due to
the yeast autolysis which transfers compounds from cellular structures to the
wine while it is ageing on its lees.
During fermentation intense cell reproduction takes place. The population of
yeasts can reach 106–108 cfu/ml (cfu = colony forming unit = a live yeast
cell). This means that one bottle of Cava could contain 7,500,000,000 cells.
These yeast cells then die and form the lees.
Ageing on the lees and the poignetage
The ‘coup de poignée’ or ‘poignetage’ is a process by which autolysis is
improved and the sparkling wine on its lees is empowered. It involves taking
the bottle and rotating it to disperse the lees, and then laying it on its side.
The surface area the lees are then dispersed over is some 80 cm2, as opposed
to 60 cm2 if the bottle was upright, or 5 cm2 if it were inverted.
The poignetage improves the contact surface between the lees and the wine,
which is important to reduce the oxidation of the wine during ageing.
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Figure: compounds released during autolysis from the dead yeast cell.
This process can take place over a number of years.
Compounds released to the wine during autolysis
The dead yeast cells release a number of compounds to the wine during
ageing on lees. These include the contents of the cells, as well as compounds
from the yeast cell walls. Components from the cells include nucleotides and
nucleosides (which act as taste enhancers); and amino acids and peptides
(acting as precursors of aromas; some may taste sweet or bitter and play an
important role as malolactic fermentation activators).
From the cell wall, glucans and mannoproteins are released. These activate
the growth of lactic bacteria and interact with volatile aromatic compounds;
they have an important role in changing the structure and density of the
wine (mouthfeel), and act as colloid protectors, stabilizing colour matter,
avoiding tartaric precipitation and protein haze.
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Figure: the concentration of nucleotides released from yeast autolysis in Cava wine.
The concentration in the wine continues to increase for many years.
The sorts of descriptors used in sensory analysis to describe the organoleptic
impact of autolysis include nuts (hazelnut), honey, roasted mocha, toffee
and cocoa.
Thaumatin is an interesting product of autolysis. It is a protein with
sweetening properties, and is 2500 times sweeter than sugar. It presents a
persistent sweetness. Like other proteins, thaumatin, in addition to being
intensely sweet, also acts as an enhancer of certain other flavours. Even
when thaumatin is present in concentrations below its threshold of
sweetness, it can reduce the sensory threshold of other components. In cases
such as strawberry, orange and fruit in general, the threshold is reduced 2 or
3 times. The sweetness of thaumatin takes a few seconds to be perceived, but
is very intense and without strange notes.
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What is a traditional fermentation? Exploring
the house style in Cava production at Codorníu
Arthur O’Connor and Bruno Colomer
Grupo Codorníu, San Sadurni, Spain
At Codorníu we always talk about the house/brand style of our products.
We consider that there are three key influences on house/brand style. First
there is the vineyard, then the grape varieties, and finally vinification. We
will look at the last of these first.
Every decision you make in each one of these areas can have a significant
influence on style.
The role of tradition
Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘tradition’ as:
A long established or inherited way of thinking or acting. 2. A continuing pattern of
culture, beliefs or practices. 3. A customary or characteristic method or manner.
How long does it take to create a ‘continuing pattern of culture, beliefs or
practices’?
At Codorníu we have a long history, over 460 years. We have been making
sparkling wine, Cava, for over 140 years. What were the traditional
winemaking practices at Codorníu—the techniques used for the first 300
years? Or the technique used since we started making sparkling in 1872, 140
years ago to 50 years ago? Or is traditional winemaking from 50 years ago to
10 years ago? Or what we have done for the last 10 years?
So at Codorníu we asked the question. My job is to ask the obvious
questions of Why? What? When? and How?
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Sparkling Wine 2012
•
How has the style changed over the last 140 years?
•
What changes have taken place?
•
Why were these decisions taken?
•
When were they taken?
•
How have they impacted our wine style?
We asked ‘What is our traditional ferment?’ and ‘Is it appropriate for each
variety?’
The obvious big changes have taken place in the base wine fermentation.
Let’s just take a look at an example, and compare the vinification technique
from 1960 to 2010. This is a list of some of the changes that have taken
place:
•
Changes in press from basket to pneumatic presses.
•
Natural yeasts to cultured yeasts
•
Natural bacteria to cultured bacteria
•
Wooden tanks to stainless steel tanks
•
Hand harvesting to machine harvesting
•
No enzymes and high solids to enzymes/centrifuges and low solids
•
Oxidative handling to anaerobic handling
•
High copper levels (because of brass and pipe work), to low copper
levels
•
No temperature control during fermentation, to the use of
temperature control
The single biggest influence in my opinion is this last one: the impact of
temperature control on the rate of fermentation has made a huge change to
world winemaking styles.
As winemakers we conduct experiments on various new yeasts, tanks, pieces
of equipment and make decisions over a 1 to 3 year time frame. Once we
67
agree that a certain practice is superior we adopt it. What we rarely do is
take a look over, say, a 50 year time frame. The combined effect of all the
changes above is massive, and it didn’t just happen at once—it happened
slowly over time. Our ‘traditional’ winemaking slowly evolves, as it should.
But we must step back and reassess what has occurred over a longer time
frame.
Here is a timeline from 1872 to 2011 showing the type of fermentation
vessels that were in use at Codorníu. Starting with barriques, we moved to
cement tanks, and now we use stainless steel fermentation vessels
exclusively.
Not only is there an influence here of the type of fermentation vessel, but
also there is an influence of the temperature of the fermentation. In barriques
there was no temperature control. With cement tanks there was limited
temperature control through the use of juice addition to control the
temperature (known as ‘capes’). Now we have the widespread use of cooling
which became routine once we moved to stainless steel.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Well, this was the picture we thought was occurring. Of course once we dug
a little deeper and asked some of our longer-term employees and checked
some records, we found a different story.
Here is the real history. From 1975 to 1982 there were a lot of trials
conducted with the use of barriques, cement tanks and stainless steel. At the
end of these trials a decision was taken to stop using barriques and cement
tanks and conduct all the ferments in stainless steel.
If you want to talk about a traditional ferment I think it is clear from this
graphic that the traditional ferment at Codorníu was conducted in barrique
with no cooling. This change in technique after more than 100 years had a
massive impact on the style of wine, with more fruit and less oak.
So, as is our way at Codorníu, we set up some fresh trials. Our first trial in
2010, using Macabeu, looked at some ferments in barrique, cement and
stainless steel. What we found was that we really didn’t like the ferments in
barrel: these lacked fruit and the oak influence was dominating. This type of
base wine would be very good for a particular style—the old Codorníu style
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pre 1972—but it was too big a change for today’s style. It is interesting to
note that 1972 was about the time when Codorníu moved back to
Chardonnay in Cava.
What surprised us was the mouthfeel and structure of the wine fermented in
cement tank.
In 2011 we expanded our trial and we looked at 5 different types of ferments
on a commercial scale.
This figure explains what we did. Juice was clarified and sent to one large
tank to ensure it was homogeneous. From there we transferred to five
different tanks.
Tank 1. Stainless Steel No Cooling
Tank 2. Stainless Steel Cooling
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Tank 3. Stainless Steel ‘Capes’. First fill only to 1/3 full, after one day of
fermentation add another 1/3 of juice. On the second day of ferment add the
final 1/3 (fill to ferment height)
Tank 4. Cement No Cooling
Tank 5. Cement Capes, same filling procedure as Tank 3.
These two charts show firstly on top the change in temperature during
ferment, with the days on the x axis. With the Capes ferment, on the first
day of fermentation, day 3 on the chart, the first addition of juice is made
and you can see that the temperature drops as compared to the no cooled
chart. On day 4 there is another addition made of juice. The important point
is that the Capes ferment does not reach the same temperature peak as the
No Cooling. Note also that the Capes ferment finishes a lot faster than the
no cool, this is because the No Cooling ferment has reached a critical
temperature and has killed off a lot of the yeasts, which results in the ferment
taking a lot longer to finish.
71
Note also the angle of the sugar chart on the bottom graph. The Capes chart
is around half way between that of the cooling and the No Cooling.
Not only did we do 5 different types of ferments on a commercial scale with
Xarel.lo but we also did it with Chardonnay and Macabeu. All fifteen of the
wines are in 15 separate tanks currently.
This is what it looks like with the five lines showing all the different
treatments. The different types of fermentation techniques, regardless of
what vessel they were in very closely overlapped each other. In temperatures
they followed the same path until the ferment slowed, then ambient
temperature made a difference. Take a look especially at the bottom chart,
where the lines are basically identical. On the bottom chart it looks as
though there are only 3 lines.
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What this shows is that the effect of vessel here is insignificant compared to
the type of ferment. This was confirmed by our tastings, where the style of
ferment makes a bigger difference than the vessel.
Our conclusions from this trial
•
Different fermentation techniques do have a significant influence on
style.
•
It is important to consider different vinification processes for each
different vineyard and variety. One size does not fit all.
•
House/brand style tradition is more important than a particular
vinification tradition.
•
At Codorníu we consider our tradition to be a culture that
continually seeks to make the best style expression possible.
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An on-trade strategy for sparkling wine
Joan Torrents
Head of Wine Buying, Mitchells & Butlers
My strategy in the on-trade is based on the work developed in the last three
years of sourcing, selecting and deciding merchandising activities to
maximize sales. Mitchells & Butlers has 1600 restaurants and bars in the
UK, with 16 different brand concepts including All Bar One, Harvester,
Browns, Nicholson’s and Toby.
The current performance in our estate shows massive growth for sparkling
wines in 2011. There was an 8.4% volume increase in sparkling wine sales,
with 2.4 million glasses sold. Prosecco volume increased by 80%. Most sales
come from purchases by the glass, with sales by the bottle in a smaller
proportion. Out of 1600 restaurants that we have, none is Italian, so the
Prosecco figures are stunning. At the moment we have a Prosecco bubble,
which isn’t sustainable. We need to see how we can manage this.
It is interesting to compare the current situation in our business with that five
years ago (Table 1).
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Table 1. Sparkling wine sales in 2006 across the Mitchells & Butlers estate
Back in 2006 the economy was very good, and we sold a lot of Champagne.
We have a lot of sites in London and the southeast, but we also have many
in the north and Midlands. We had entry level Cava. This was before I
joined the company and I have changed this strategy. There was a little bit of
Prosecco, also entry level, and this was frizzante – low pressure sparkling
with a string on the cork. There was a lot of Charmat, mainly from Italy.
With the arrival of the recession, things changed a bit. In 2011, sales were as
depicted in Table 2.
Table 2. Sales of sparkling wines in 2011 across the Mitchells & Butlers estate.
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Since 2008 we have increased sales organically at a very good rate. There
has been a change in categories. Initially, Prosecco sales dipped but that is
because we removed the low pressure cheap frizzante Prosecco. This was
creating a lot of problems in terms of wastage and consumer
disappointment. We removed it completely to go to fully sparkling, and
since we did this Prosecco sales have increased and boomed over the last
three years. In terms of Cava, we changed strategy also. We had entry level
Cava of very low quality and cost, and there was some rejection by the
customers. They tried the cheapest sparkling wine, a cheap Cava, and found
it was unpleasant. Quality is very important. We removed this, and in the
last two years we have introduced Cava but not at entry level. It is above
Prosecco and closer to Champagne. Cava Rosé is now a good performer.
The recession hit, and customers have traded down from Champagne. They
may go out, and they want sparkling wine because they enjoy it, but they
don’t want to spend £40 on a bottle; they’d rather spend £15. The challenge
to Champagne producers and also our suppliers is to serve Champagne, but
we know we can’t put too much margin on it (as always, it’s a cash margin),
but we need to get consumers back to Champagne. Even if many consumers
have less disposable income, there are still some people with money to
spend.
At the moment we have a Prosecco bubble, where we are selling too much
Prosecco for it to be sustainable. It has increased 80% in one year alone. We
may have a 50% increase next year. The supply is limited, and the US is
asking for more too. So it’s likely that Prosecco producers will increase their
prices. In Harrods there is a Prosecco bar where they are selling a Prosecco
for £60 a bottle, which I have never seen before. The price of Prosecco will
only go up and the moment it happens, we will need to see how we can
handle it. The way I think we will do it is to move Prosecco to a more
premium level, to a better quality. We will introduce the Cogliano de
Valdabbiodene as a quality, but this will require a lot of work.
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At the moment our customers see Prosecco as one single style. They think
all Prosecco is exactly the same. If we can change the perception, so that
people will be prepared to pay more for higher quality Prosecco, then this
will be sustainable.
Cava will no longer be entry level. It will also be premium. So what will be
the entry level? What will be Charmat? Mainly new world and also from
other countries in Europe, looking at new styles and taking advantage of
international brands: the likes of Pernod Ricard, Treasury Wine Estates,
Accolade and Diageo. They have good brands, they do sparkling, and they
can produce quality.
You will notice that we have English Sparkling wine. It is 0.2% of our sales.
Interestingly, this is the first time I have put English sparkling wine as a
permanent fixture on a wine list in 100 gastropubs. In some of these, it is
available by the glass. It will never grow because of the limited production,
but it is good to have it there so it keeps point of interest. Then we have
Champagne, which is less important than it used to be. We have seen less
entry-level Champagne sales and more premium. The decline in volume of
Champagne has been at entry-level.
Looking at the strategy going forward, with 1600 restaurants and bars, you
might be thinking why don’t you sell more sparkling wines? There is a
reason for this. Figure 1 shows in graph form the proportion of sparkling
wine sales we have within the wine category and the proportion of AB
consumers that go to those outlets.
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Figure 1. The proportion of sparkling wine sales plotted against the proportion of AB
consumers, with the different Mitchells & Butlers outlet brands also plotted.
As we go to a higher proportion of AB consumers they spend more on
sparkling wine, and they buy more sparkling wine. In Browns, where we
have the highest proportion of ABs, our entry level sparkling is £21. In
Sizzling, it is around £9. It is not just about how much money people have,
it is how well exposed they are. Sizzling is an example where sometimes
people aren’t even exposed to wine, let alone sparkling wine. There is a lot
of work to be done. Growth potential is in outlets like Sizzling. We have
more than 210 of these pubs nationwide.
Figure 2 shows the trends we have seen. On the vertical axis we see the
profit per drink (are we making more money or less this year?), on the
horizontal axis the volume growth.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Figure 2. Trends in sparkling wine at Mitchells & Butlers in 2011
The top right corner is the good one: we are selling more and making more
money. Bottom left is bad. The good news is that there is no sparkling in the
bottom left, which indicates that the category is good. English Sparkling
wine is just amazing. We know the cost is high, but consumers are prepared
to pay for it. From a business perspective, we can’t really grow this much. So
let’s go for the big volume: Prosecco. Prosecco has growth but the profit is
actually down because of the cost pressures on Prosecco. We need to see
how we can move this to make it sustainable. We need to bring in new styles
of better quality.
Champagne also has cost pressures which are not helped by exchange rates.
You’ll notice that our entry level is branded Champagnes. The brand owners
have worked with us in a long term partnership, trying to find a more
sustainable cost. Entry level Champagne is an open market: you go to the
market, list the cheapest you can find, and then next month the price will
have changed. It is not really sustainable.
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Premium Champagne is growing, and we are making more money because
people are prepared to pay more. Rosé Champagne is not doing too well.
Cava is still very small, but Cava Rosé does well, and is in growth. Finally,
entry-level Prosecco, which is frizzante. In terms of costs this is good, but it
is very small because there is very little of this left in our business. There is
no traction with the consumer. Why do you want to disappoint your
customer with a product that is cheap but which is of low quality? For 50 p
more a glass, you can have good quality. We are trying to educate our
customers.
What is next? There is the taste test. I wanted to challenge how important
Prosecco is in our estate. At the moment it is our entry level sparkling. I was
conscious that some customers might be buying Prosecco just because it was
cheap. So we have worked with Bibendum to develop a taste test. This is
simply finding what consumers like in terms of taste (see Figure 3).
We are not talking about wine. This has nothing to do with wine in terms of
questions. We ask about sweeteners, salt and coffee. The science behind this
is understanding the number of taste buds we have on our tongues. Some
people can’t take salt because they are too sensitive to it; for others they like
it. The same happens with coffee and sweeteners.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Figure 3. Taste test in All Bar One
This helps people to think what they really like. No answer is right or wrong.
With artificial sweeteners, we don’t ask whether people like sweet or dry,
because people are afraid to admit to liking sweet. With the score we can
work out where people are. We also did a survey of 70,000 customers to
analyse the drinks they were enjoying, and we created a list of wines for All
Bar One on the taste test basis that we had in seven trial sites. We tell
customers that not all sparkling wines are the same. This is illustrated in
Figure 4.
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Figure 4. The All Bar One sparkling wine list with the taste test score indicators
We have a Cava that is medium dry and a Brachetto. I introduced this wine
in the UK as a main listing two years ago and I’m pleased to hear that
Sainsbury’s have recently launched a Brachetto in their Taste the Difference
range. We analysed the sales of these taste test sites compared with a control
group. The results were that Prosecco sells 2% less, while Champagne and
Cava sales are up (by 3% and 1% respectively). The moment you tell
customers, ‘if you like Prosecco you may also like these,’ they try the other
products. They are keen to explore. Sparkling wine is one of those areas
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where it is fun to explore: there are no rules. With the taste test we are telling
people that they can buy it simply because they might like it. Cava has been
growing without cannabilizing the sales of other sparkling wines. The other
sparkling wines have fallen by 2%, and this is mainly French rosés.
Prosecco may not be as strong as we thought initially. Many people are
probably buying it because it is fashionable, and because we tend to have it
on the wine list as the cheapest sparkling wine.
This autumn we have started negotiations about having a new Italian
sparkling below Prosecco, and it will be the only one by the glass. We will
see how it goes. If Prosecco keeps selling, that’s wonderful. If people end up
going for the entry level, this will show us that Prosecco’s growth has pretty
much been driven by price.
Unfortunately, Brachetto is selling less. The moment you tell people through
the taste test that this is sweet, they don’t want it.
Entry level Champagne is decreasing. People go for the Grande Marques.
This is a reflection of exposure to risk. If people are going to spend £30 on a
bottle of Champagne, they are not going to risk an entry level that they have
never heard of. They will go for a recognizable brand. The long-term
strategy is moving Champagne upmarket.
Moving Champagne up is going to give more room for sparkling wine. This
is important. In our estate, we were reaching a point where we didn’t have
space for new products, so we decided to make the price range wider,
because there are consumers for every category and we need to give them
the right quality at the right price. On the taste test we also saw that we
made more money with less volume.
So what is the outlook for sparkling wine sales? Business is good in our
London and South East estate, while the rest is not so good. It is very tough
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in the north, and this is now hitting some parts of the midlands, especially in
the value end of our offering. The value led brands are suffering. When it
comes to premium brands, they are doing well. And we are still strong in
London and the southeast.
The consumer is spending less and going out less frequently than before, so
it is important to have the best offer and keep customers in mind. As our first
priority, we must deliver the best service. If people don’t come back, the
business will not go forward.
All buyers are facing cost pressures with sparkling wine. Before it was
Champagne experiencing cost pressures; now it is Prosecco. We need to be
aware of this. For the next year I have a strategy where I am going to work
on the sparkling wine range to keep delivering the best offering, but also
being sustainable. There is no point in introducing a product that is good
now that because of costs I have to remove it and bring something else in.
We did some discounting before, but we are doing less of this now. Now we
are emphasizing in bundles. We have a good partnership with Codorníu,
offering tapas with Cava. You pay for the bottle and have two tapas for free.
This is how Tapas was invented, after all. You don’t devalue the product by
doing this. The moment you have Prosecco at £3.95 in the market you kill it.
It is a fragile category, and we need to grow it organically without killing it.
Sparkling is good for profit. Our margins for sparkling wine are very
sensible, and for the high-cost products we use a cash margin.
The main challenge that the on-trade is facing is to ensure sales targets are
met and consumers continue to visit restaurants and bars. The sparkling
wine category still has a big potential but it is vital that suppliers closely
work with on-trade operators to ensure a sustainable strategy is in place to
grow the category and drive additional sales.
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85
The use of jetting technology for a better quality
management at bottle (disgorging) stage
Bertrand Robillard
Institut Oenologique de Champagne, Epernay, France
According to general opinion, for both red, rosé or white wines, oxygen is seen
as a major factor influencing wine quality. Since the early 1990s, we have been
able to explain the organoleptic shift (atypical ageing) of white wines through
the appearance of molecules such as aminoacetophenone or furans such as
sotolon. These molecular structures, combined with the decrease of
thiocompounds explain the loss of freshness, perceived on the nose and/or the
mouth, of wines. Mastering oxygen is therefore to be considered as a critical
point in the quality management of the winemaking processes.
The mastering of oxygen becomes of primary importance when sometimes
organoleptic differences can be detected from a bottle to another one, even if
the bottles come from the same box (or from the same batch…) and the
problem becomes more complicated when the consumer is also able to detect
these differences. The open question is ‘Where does this heterogeneity come from?’
A lot of work has been dedicated to the determination of this problem1. In a few
words, it appears that oxygen is one of the main parameters able to create
differences that people can detect. Figure 1 shows a principal component
analysis (PCA) which demonstrates that a panel of tasters is able to detect
differences from a bottle to another one where oxygen (even at a low level) is
the sole modified parameter.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Figure 1: PCA showing the impact of oxygen amount on the organoleptic
perceptions on a white wine (base wine from Champagne). Here, the differences are
noticed after 3 months (no differences were observed after 1 month).
It is well described that during ageing on lees, only small differences can appear
from a bottle to another one (the crown cap permeability does not explain the
differences observed). However, when disgorging takes place, we can measure
high variations of the oxygen content2. The following results (Table 1) shows
that even if the oxygen level average is close from an experiment to another
one, the relative standard deviations (RSDs) appear to be high. It has been
demonstrated that this heterogenity is exclusively due to the oxygen quantity
present in the neck of the bottle (measurements are carried out just after corking
and oxygen release cannot be explained by the cork itself)2. These oxygen
variations are explained by the foam height which acts as a solid piston able to
push or pull the air in the bottle neck1. During disgorging, the foam height
depends on the way the disgorging line is driven (shocks between bottles, short
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or long conveyers between the different machines …) and on the wine itself.
Aver.
O2 level mg/L
[O2]
SD
RSD
mg/l
%
mg/l
Trial 1
0.05
0.15
1.80
1.70
0.80
0.40
0.80
0.70
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Trial 2
0.20
0.15
1.75
0.60
0.85
1.90
0.90
0.65
75
Trial 3
1.00
1.80
0.10
0.10
1.50
0.05
0.75
0.80
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Table 1: Dissolved oxygen measurements (after gas/liquid equilibrium is reached)
conducted on a single cuvée. 6 bottles are measured per trial (1 trial per day).
The principle of the jetting technology is the use of the same natural phenomena
to push out the air before the final corking. For this, a high velocity wine (or
sulfited water) jet is pulsed into each bottle (the liquid volume introduced
ranges from 50 to 100µL/bottle). This wine disturbance creates a local release
of natural CO2 and then foam. In the following figure (Fig. 2), the set-up is
calculated to have a maximum foam height for a minimum oxygen content.
Using this technology and after corking, the oxygen level drops down with a
factor ranges from 5 to 10 and a higher homogeneity of the oxygen content is
shown. The relationship is strictly linked with the physics of the system, and
does not depend on wine’s origin.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Figure 2: the jetting principle
A lot of panel sessions have been conducted to quantify the efficiency of this
new technology applied to sparkling wine. If the tasting sessions are carried
out before a few months, no sensorial difference is observed between the
routine technique (without jetting) and the jetted samples. In the following
example (see Fig. 3) we display the results on an organoleptic session 6
months after disgorging (12 bottles/modality – 61 panelists – blind test and
notation on a structured scale). The wine is a non-vintage blend cuvée from
Champagne. We observe a shift of the routine samples to oxidation by nose
and bitterness (significant differences using an Anova at a 5% threshold for
both these descriptors). 41 people gave their opinion on the preference
between either ‘jetting’ or ‘routine’ samples: 31 people preferred the ‘jetted’
samples. Other tasting sessions proved that the wines that underwent the
jetting technique were always showing more freshness and fruitiness.
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Figure 3: Graph showing the differences observed after 6 months of disgorging
between an unique cuvée submitted or not to jetting.
In conclusion, oxygen is one of the main elements able to create sensorial
heterogeneity for sparkling wines.
Our experiments have exposed that, at disgorging time, the foam present in the
neck of the bottle acts exactly like a piston, pushing outside the air contained in
the headspace. It is then possible to master the amount of air using a ‘jetting’
technology (high pressure tiny drops of liquid into the bottle) to create a foam
expansion just prior corking3.
The panel sessions have shown a higher quality during the time of the bottles
treated with the jetting technology: the wines appear more fresh and fruity. The
jetting technology—permitting a significant decrease of the air amount in the
bottle headspace—is a good opportunity to diminish the SO2 content usually
used at the disgorging step.
References
1
B. Robillard, L’oxygène au dégorgement, 2003. J. techniques des Œnologues.
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2
Sparkling Wine 2012
M. Brevot et al., 2007. Mastering oxygen at bottle stage – a proposal for
sparkling wines, 13th Aust. Wine Industry Tech. Congress, Adelaide (Australia).
3
D. Lambert, 2010. Patent Nr FR2946969. Installation de traitement de
bouteilles de liquide effervescent avant fermeture.
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Challenges and opportunities for making low
alcohol sparkling wines
Jane Robichaud
Consultant Winemaker, TFC Wines & Spirits
After thousands of years of winemaking, technologists have finally
discovered a secret ingredient that could transform the science and sale of a
whole new category of low alcohol wine.
Walk into your local supermarket and you’ll see the wine on the shelf.
In tiny writing, you might even see the secret ingredient listed on the label,
because in itself the chemical concerned is uncontroversial.
But to winemakers, it should be.
That’s because the secret ingredient is none other than water.
But is this really the best way of making low alcohol wine, let alone a
premium sparkling wine? Shouldn’t the consumer expect something better?
Are companies that make these low-cost ‘wine-based cocktails’ duping
consumers into thinking this is wine when it has upwards of 40% water
added? And is this really the best technology the industry has to offer after
those thousands of years of making the stuff?
So why have some wineries begun to offer low alcohol wines and what can
be done to ensure a positive consumer experience where no one is cheated
into thinking the product is 100% wine when it clearly isn’t?
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A sparkling opportunity
It’s no secret that the alcohol content in many table wines has crept up over
the past couple of decades, with levels at or above 14% abv becoming
alarmingly common. Interestingly, it’s not just the warmer New World
locations that are responsible for this shift (take Spain, for example where
higher alcohols are more common now than previously observed).
Whether these elevated alcohols are the result of winemakers seeking to
create riper, fuller flavours to gain stellar ratings from certain famous wine
critics, or are a function of consumer need, or simply the increasingly
warmer global vintages, is open to debate.
But savvy consumers are reacting to these often absurd alcohol levels (15%
plus) by demanding lighter, more refreshing styles of wines. The rapid
increase in sales of rosé styles has helped to convince the trade there is now
consumer acceptance for lighter more fruit-driven but interesting wines,
which can also be lower in alcohol.
The obvious health benefits and general social concerns about alcohol intake
have meant that the wine industry has begun to respond by going beyond
classic rosé to create an entirely new category of lower alcohol (5.5%–9%
abv) still wine styles. Sales of these low alcohol styles have increased rapidly
with recent figures showing an encouraging growth to 1 million cases offtrade (October 2011 Nielsen) with an expected market share of 5 million
cases within five years.
But what about premium sparkling wine? Overall the category is enjoying
modest growth at a time when all other alcohol categories saw volumes
decline in 2011. Encouragingly, the sparkling category grew by 3.3%
although more expensive Champagne fell by almost 10% (Source: CGA
Strategy data: UK on trade, MAT to 9 July 2011).
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We believe there is a significant opportunity to create a refreshing lower
alcohol style of premium (£8–10) sparkling wine that tastes more like a fruitdriven drier style of Prosecco. Within the premium sparkling wine category,
sales of Prosecco are alive and well because consumers love the flavour.
The low alcohol sparkling wine challenge
Taste is paramount—consumers will reject low alcohol sparkling wines if
they feel they’re being robbed of flavour (or cheated into thinking something
is pure wine when it clearly is not). It was not surprising that recent research
revealed the main obstacles to consumers are taste (40%) and quality (30%).
However some 16% of consumers wanted to purchase low alcohol wines
regardless, and had “no concerns” at all. (Source: YouGov Omnibus Panel Aug
2011, WDR analysis. Base size : 1,693 British adult drinkers).
So how can we deliver on aroma, flavour and mouth feel (often lacking in
lower alcohol styles) to provide a suitable alternative to regular alcohol
styles? Is it possible to create attractive sparkling wines that will generate
strong repeat purchase? Yes it is, so long as the wines are well-made.
How can the premium sparkling wine challenge be achieved?
Selection of the most suitable base wine for creation into a Charmat process
premium sparkling wine is clearly important. We have also learned much
from making low alcohol white wines that can be applied to the premium
sparkling category. However, critical to the ‘Premiumisation’ of the wine, is
the actual method used to remove alcohol.
There are numerous ways that alcohol can be reduced and these fall into two
classes, old and new technology. Not all methods are suitable for premium
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sparkling production. To be successful, wines crafted in a lighter style must
be as well balanced and have as much flavour complexity as any other
premium wine.
Rustic/low tech methods:
Early harvest – This simply means picking grapes well ahead of
physiological maturity (say 8–10 Baume so that less alcohol is produced)
and while this is a simple, low cost approach it has significant disadvantages.
Not only is it Mother Nature dependent, but wines are always rather weak
in flavour and aroma, with thin mouth feel and often contain far too much
acid.
Arrested Fermentation – Fermentation is stopped before all the grape sugar
has been converted to alcohol. This is often aided by selection of a poor
conversion (sugar to alcohol) yeast strain. It’s easy to execute but results in
wines that are too cloyingly sweet for most premium category consumers.
There’s also the added risk that the wines might re-ferment in the bottle.
Dilution – Mentioned earlier, there are a host of products now in the UK
marketplace that are nothing more than an inexpensive base wine diluted
with water, with added acid, sugar and flavourings. Such wines lack
integrity (with cloying sweetness, and diluted flavours) and thus have no
place in the premium sector. As entry level, inexpensive wines they might
have their place, so long as the consumer is fully aware they are purchasing a
product that might contain up to 40% added water. In their sparkling
formats, perhaps they are nothing more than the reappearance of the 1980s
wine coolers in a 750ml bottle?
Modern/high tech methods:
Reverse Osmosis (RO) — Although considered rather older technology
today RO (also called ‘crossflow’ filtration) is a type of filtration system that
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works in a similar way to the body’s kidney with the flow running tangential
to the membrane. The entire volume travels through a series of very long
filtration tubes so it isn’t very kind on the wine. In addition, RO requires
extracting alcohol along with most of the water, requiring reconstitution by
add back of the water. While it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to operate, and
quite portable (easy to conceal) some people do not consider it suitable for
premium wines because aroma and flavour are adversely affected.
Modified RO (Memstar) — This system represents an improvement on
traditional RO that works as a continuous process which avoids the
necessity to reconstitute wine. While the smaller models are more portable
and versatile, it’s expensive for larger volumes of higher alcohol reduction.
In addition the flavour suffers since all the wine needs treatment, so the
entire wine quality can be impacted. The large volume of low alcohol waste
can be an added complication.
Spinning Cone (ConeTech) — ConeTech uses an advanced alcohol
removal technique called the Spinning Cone column which makes it possible
to remove alcohol separately from other volatile components using a process
that fractionates the wine. The column contains around 40 upside down
cones; half are fixed and half spin. It’s a gentle process that takes place under
a cool vacuum environment, whereby the cones spin the wine into thin
liquid films, and a cool vapour rises off the wine, carrying volatiles from the
liquid.
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Sparkling Wine 2012
Figure: the spinning cone
In the first pass at one speed, the ultra-light aroma and flavour component
(called the “essence”) is carried off and condensed. This is saved for later, to
be recombined with the wine. The second pass at a faster speed, takes off as
much alcohol as required. Theoretically, one could then recombine the
remaining low alcohol wine with the alcohol and essence portions and
recreate the original wine.
The final product is 100% wine, with no water or flavourants added, unlike
many of the low alcohol wines that are flooding the market. The aroma and
flavour are preserved which results in a higher quality product. Cost-wise it
is very competitive with the Memstar method when a significant portion of
alcohol needs removal (since all RO processes charge by the amount of
alcohol points to be removed). In addition, less wine needs to flow through
the cone (perhaps only 40% of the total volume).
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The downside of the Spinning Cone is the expense of the equipment (about
$US 1 M). It also requires expert technicians. As such only a couple of
global companies own machines. Most clients ship wine to ConeTech’s
facilities situated in California, Chile, South Africa and Spain (with France
close to installation). However TFC Wines and Spirits’ winemakers have
invaluable experience in creating low alcohol wines using the TFC
winemaking method. Clients are provided with the assurance that the best
quality premium product can be made, with the fastest route to market.
TFC’s 100% premium sparkling winemaking method
Premium low alcohol wines are not easy to create because they represent a
whole new set of enological challenges. Sparkling wines have added stability
complications. You can’t just put any wine into the Cone, press a button,
and expect a good result. If you do that, you might end up with something
that is completely out of balance once the alcohol is subtracted.
Many wines are just plain unsuitable for conversion to a reduced alcohol
format. To create wines that are suitable for that role, you have to start in
the vineyard, follow through with winemaking practices, and subsequently
design your blending practices to ensure the right harmony and balance in
the final product.
Surprisingly the best wines to dealcoholize are those with the ripest
characteristics, unlike regular sparkling which is typically harvested at very
low sugar content. It’s far better to select wines made from fully ripe fruit
(read higher alcohol, perhaps well over 14%) because these wines will have
the greatest expression of varietal character and correspondingly lower acid
and tannin profiles. The dealcoholisation process will increase perceived
acidity and bitterness, so some base wines are just unsuitable.
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For creation of a premium sparkling at an affordable (£8–10) price point we
recommend use of the Charmat process to achieve desired carbonation,
typically to 4-5 Bars. Since the secondary Charmat fermentation will add
about 1.5% alcohol it will be necessary to start with a dealcoholized wine of
7.5%abv if the final desired alcohol is 9%abv.
Other wines can be blended to enhance mouth feel and desired aromatic
fruit/ flavour characteristics. Typically one balances acidity to slightly below
final desired amounts, so that this can be adjusted later.
Best of all, a premium sparkling wine can be made essentially on demand,
bottled and ready to present to market within eight weeks.
What’s in it for the consumer?
Premium wines made by the TFC method are lighter and more refreshing,
offering a new way to enjoy wine.
Drinking occasions can be expanded- think lunch time, or work-related
networking events, where wine is often ignored.
Many existing premium sparkling wines taste too acidic for many
consumers. However the TFC method of winemaking can create riper, more
complex flavours that are more accessible. This doesn’t mean that these
wines are syrupy sweet just that they are full of flavour and easy to sip.
What’s in it for the wine trade?
Creating a low alcohol sparkling wine is a challenge that potentially offers a
highly attractive alternative for consumers, and huge rewards for the
industry.
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What if technology and consumer demand could coincide successfully to
create an entirely new category of premium sparkling, unique in its sector?
The opportunities are immense.
But we need to walk before we can run.
The first and far bigger challenge is to build trust with the consumer, by
showing them that premium low alcohol wines are much more than wine +
water + sugar + flavouring.
In other words, we need to offer consumers something that actually tastes
like real sparkling wine.
If lighter styles are to benefit the industry surely it should make a huge
concerted effort to convince consumers to recognize the difference between
the legit and the non-legit - rather than seek to make a cheap short term buck
with a water-diluted product.
Jane Robichaud is consulting winemaker to TFC Wines and Spirits, the partner
company to ConeTech. She has over 25 years experience in the industry, as a
winemaker in Sonoma Valley, and research winemaker for a Napa Valley-based
global wine company. She worked concurrently for many years as a consumer sensory
scientist helping clients design wines that meet consumer needs in terms of flavour. She
is Past President of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture.
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How to get journalists talking about your wine
Adam Lechmere
Decanter
I’m going to talk to you about how to catch the attention of journalists and
editors.
I was editor of Decanter.com for 11 years and during that time I should think I
got on average about 20 publicity emails a day. On a conservative reckoning
that’s some 49,500 emails over those 11 years. I read only a tiny proportion
of those, and an even smaller number made it into a news story. I’m sure all
the journalists here have the same story. If you’re trying to promote a wine,
it’s a noisy and crowded marketplace and you have to shout very loudly—or
be very clever—to get heard.
The first thing to remember is that all editors are lazy, overworked, and they
have low boredom thresholds. They want to get the story—whether it’s
about wine, beer, whisky, widgets or the new barrel-making technology at
Taransaud—onto the page as quickly and easily as possible. You have about
2 seconds to catch their attention.
So these are the basic rules
Tell the story
The subject line of an email is the headline. Make it count. Get the
information across confidently and concisely
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Keep it simple
A subject line should require no more thought than the time it takes to read
it—and the body copy should be just as simple—though not TOO simple.
Keep it concise
I could give you many examples where press releases are just too long,
larded with cliches, as long as a Harry Potter novel. Often the main story is
buried in the tenth paragraph, by which time you feel you’ve waded through
a jacuzzi full of treacle.
Be intriguing but not obscure
Be witty but not crass
Make it interesting
In every great story there’s money or sex involved somewhere, often both.
One example is from late 2005. It involves the great US porn star Savanna
Samson, whom many of you will be familiar with, star of films such as Poke
Her and Last Girl Standing, launching a wine called Sogno Uno—or ‘Dream
One’, which Robert Parker gave 91 points to. It’s the single most-read story
on Decanter.com—Parker, porn and points—an unbeatable combination.
Provide a picture
A quick word about images. No Decanter.com story ever goes up without an
image. They are vital for SEO (search engine optimization). Google
recognises alt tags and meta tags in images—so if you’re telling us a story
about Tempus Two, say, send us a picture of it!
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Gimmicks are risky
Earlier this year I was sent a safe. The key was sent separately, a few days
later. I can’t remember who sent it, but I remember being slightly
exasperated.
Make contact
This has been all about emails but nothing is better than one-to-one contact.
Every publication plans months in advance so you need to know if Decanter,
say, is planning a big feature on English sparkling for next March. Ring
them up, find out what they’re doing and which journalist is writing it, and
then ask them down to see you, or at least send them the wine. And get your
people to visit the magazine—tell the editor you’re in the area and will drop
in for coffee. He (or she) can always refuse.
Oh, and find out from your trade body what’s being planned for promotions.
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Using PR Effectively
Bryony Wright
Managing Director, Proven Communication
In this short paper, I’m going to ask the following questions. What is PR, and what
does that mean in practice? And how can we use PR effectively? I’ll illustrate this with
examples from my work.
What is Public Relations?
A popular conception of PR is that it involves a ‘bunch of pink fluffies’
taking journalists and other influencers out for long boozy lunches. This is
not entirely true! Another misconception is that PR is about dressing up the
truth—it’s spin. Or that it’s about getting press coverage for your products
without paying for advertising. There’s actually a lot more to it than this.
The CIPR Definition
PR is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning
understanding and support; and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the
planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual
understanding between an organization and its publics.
What does this mean in practice?
Step 1: strategic work
We take time to understand the client, their business, and its strengths and
weaknesses. We work to identify the current perception of the client or
brand. We ask the following questions:
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•
Where do they want to be?
•
How do we get there?
•
What are the target audiences/stakeholders?
•
What are the key messages we need to communicate?
•
What tools are we going to use?
There are a number of tools that can be used to achieve communications
objectives:
•
Sponsorship
•
Events
•
Speaker opportunities
•
Internal communications
•
Community relations
•
Experiential marketing
•
Social media
•
Consumer & trade media relations
Media relations is often seen as the central tool of PR. Ideally, it should be a
two-way relationship: a conversation, not a monologue. It is important to
remember that the key is quality, not quantity. It is no good just sending out
lots of press releases. A press release should highlight news—if there’s no
‘hook’ there’s no story for the press to write about. And media relations
MUST be carefully targeted to the right journalists and publications.
A good PR who understands your business should be able to tell you whom
you should be targeting, and hopefully will already have the right contacts.
Step 2: implementation
Now the PR must create and implement a plan of activity using chosen
tools, in order to open channels of communication with each target
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audience. It is important to maintain and manage communication honestly,
and as openly as possible. It is not about ‘spin’.
PRs must encourage two-way communication and react effectively and
appropriately to feedback. Maintaining flexibility is important. Both success
and failure can be learned from, and the campaign can be tweaked
accordingly.
Step 3: evaluation
Evaluate regularly, and make recommendations for the next stage.
But how do we maximize the effectiveness of PR?
The vital aspect here is to begin by appointing someone who really
understands your business and the market/industry that you are operating
in. You need to find someone you can trust.
Once you have appointed them, let them in! Share your business strategy
with them. The closer the relationship between you and your chosen PR
company, the better the chances of success. A good PR practitioner can help
you to achieve your business goals—but only if you let them. Treat your PR
resource as part of your management team.
Take a long term view—short term gains are great, but in isolation they are
only as effective as ad hoc advertising.
Ensure PR is properly targeted if you want to maximize its effectiveness. Be
realistic about what you want to achieve and set KPIs.
An example
A wine producer, specialising in premium still and sparkling wines (£8+
retail price) wants to launch a new sparkling wine in the UK market.
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PR brief
£15K budget for a launch event—to cover fee and all activity
Sparkling wine will retail at around £15 per bottle
Current wine portfolio distributed via supermarkets, some independent
merchants and in pubs and some restaurants
PR company solution
Winemaker dinner in London for trade and wine press
Samples sent out to key writers/bloggers with press release
Evaluation post-launch
X number of journalists at launch event
Y number of pieces of press coverage in trade media
Z number of wine reviews secured in consumer wine columns
Good buzz about the wine on Twitter and online
Could it have been more effective?
BUT, if the PR company had asked more questions, or if the client had
shared their long term aims, could it have been more effective...?
What the client didn’t say
The company wants to reduce reliance on supermarkets and build greater
distribution in independents and the on trade. The launch is part of their
new strategy to increase focus on their £15+ wines, which carry higher
margins. Long term, they plan to reduce production of the volume wines
and increase production of their top end wines.
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To create this new sparkling wine they brought in sparkling winemaking
expert Tony Jordan to consult and they have invested €8 million in new
winery equipment.
With this information, the PR company could have created a more effective
solution. For example:
Step 1 – pre launch
One-to-one meetings with key trade press to explain new company strategy/
focus and highlight halo wines in the portfolio
Supporting press release about the new focus and investment in super
premium wines
Step 2 – the launch
Workshop-style event to demonstrate wine credentials:
Technical tasting (e.g. with clear wines or different dosage trials) hosted by
company winemaker and Tony Jordan
Presentation to explain/show winemaking, reinforcing the investment
behind the wine
Supported by samples to key press unable to attend
Post launch evaluation:
Although the metrics in terms of the number of press cuttings and so on may
not be much different, the key messages delivered will have been in line with
the strategic aims of the company moving forwards. This approach has laid
the groundwork for an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of the halo
wines and demonstrate the winemaking credentials of the company.
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In Summary
PR is about managing the reputation/perception of a company or brand,
and managing effective communications between the company/brand and
its different audiences to enhance that reputation.
Effective PR is strategic, targeted and sustained
To ensure this, you need to invest in someone in-house or appoint a PR
company with the right experience and skill set. You need to share your
strategic goals, brief them properly and listen to their advice. Don’t expect
immediate returns on investment. Work with your PR to set realistic KPIs
that feed into your long term strategic business goals. And beware of starting
the ball rolling and then abandoning communications because of lack of
time/resources.
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Social media in the wine industry
Jamie Goode
Wine journalist and publisher of wineanorak.com
What is social media?
For our purposes, we are discussing the use of Twitter and Facebook. But
there are also other platforms, such as Google+, and also the social elements
of video-sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv. Blogging enters
the picture if there is a dialogue (comments) with readers.
12 things you need to know about social media
1. It won’t save the world
Social media is not magic – nor is it just a fad. It will not solve all your
problems – but ignore it at your peril. It is not all about ‘going viral’ or doing
marketing for free.
2. It is a set of communication tools
As part of a sensible, inspired, integrated communications strategy, Twitter
and Facebook are important tools. Effective communicators will use these
tools effectively. They will use different tools for different jobs.
3. It requires people with a talent for it
Who should be communicating? Find the people in your organization with
the talent and the willingness to get involved.
If you decide to do this, you need to invest time in it, but not large blocks of
time. Little and often works best. It has to be painless or it won't get done:
who in your organization enjoys communicating and is good at it?
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4. It needs a face
People relate to people better than they do to organizations. Social media
should have a face. I think people should tweet as people, not their
organization, but this is controversial. Some people worry that if they have
an employee who builds up a large following, and then leaves, they will take
their thousands of followers with them. This is a risk. But if you tweet as an
organization, you might not have those followers in the first place. Better to
have them for a time than not to have them at all.
Avoid the temptation to have multiple twitter/facebook accounts. It dilutes
the brand and is hard to do well.
Authenticity matters: you need to be yourself.
But if being ‘yourself’ leads to a stream of self-important, self-congratulatory,
self-obsessed communications, it’s probably best not to do it.
5. It requires a common-sense approach
Balanced content works best. Try to mix up the sorts of communications
you use. Engage people. Give and take: generosity in social engagement
counts for a lot. And be patient. It takes a long time to build up a following.
6. It resists measurement
Don’t try to measure the returns from your social media investment. It is
almost impossible to come up with reliable metrics, and you can't do social
media well under the pressure of achieving results. But you can measure
your following quite easily, and this is a good encouragement that you are
doing something right.
7. It allows us to be known
There’s an interesting mix of professional and personal in the social media
spehere, particularly with facebook. It is quite hard to keep the two separate.
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The positive? People get a more rounded view of who you are.
There are dangers, though. If you are a dick, people will realize this quicker
with social media.
8. It fosters relationship
The strongest use of social media is as a way to continue face-face
relationships at a distance; there are also many people who I have
communicated with online, who then I’ve met in person.
There’s a richness to these relationships.
Social media is good for establishing a relationship with consumers, but it is
also great for maintaining relationships with the trade and journalists.
9. It creates a network of uncertain value
Honesty and authenticity are critical in participating in online communities.
Your intention should not be to sell or promote: it should be to make new
connections and to be part of a larger community.
It is more in the bar or down the golf club than it is at the office.
10. It is rarely profound
Don't insist on profundity
Don't plan
Be of the moment
The first rule is that there are no rules
It depends on you!
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11. It is an investment for the future
Social media has been oversold, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
Its penetration to the baby boomer generation is low, and these are
economically still important consumers of wine.
The next generation – Millennials and beyond – live in a social media
sphere. Effective use of social media will become an increasingly vital skill.
There are still many people out there with negative views of social media,
and many more who simply don't use it. So it can’t be your only strategy.
But this will change in time.
12. It needn’t cost much to implement
Don’t hire expensive consultants: if you can do it, you can do it.
If you can’t, an expensive consultant won't help all that much (but a cheap
one might be worth it just to hold your hand through the process).