Message in bottle to importers

Jun 6 2008 by Helen Savage, The Journal

SUE Wilson, former Journal nebusiness.co.uk columnist, emailed me recently asking for advice on behalf of a friend who has a vineyard in Priorat in northern Spain.

He’s finding it incredibly difficult to find a UK distributor for his high quality wines. Where is he going wrong? What should he do?

I feel for him. It’s a familiar problem and one that has no easy answer.

A stark illustration is provided by the results of competition to find the Top 100 Vins de Pays.

Vins de Pays make up a third of all sales of French wine in the UK – by both volume and by value. They are hugely and deservedly popular and, according to wine correspondent Tim Atkins, who chaired a panel of 18 distinguished judges: “Most of them are inexpensive and represent great value for money.”

The panel sniffed and slurped their way through 1,214 samples to come up with the final 100, 14 of which were awarded trophies, six white, one rosé and seven red.

I tasted all the trophy winners at the London International Wine Fair late last month, along with a fair selection of the other 100 top wines and was much impressed, and yet I was amazed to discover that almost half of them have not yet succeeded in finding a UK importer.

This even includes the wines judged best sweet white of the show, best rosé and best red! Of the ‘best in show’, only my wine of the week can be found on the supermarket shelves.

Britain is the biggest importer of wine in the world, so why is the market here such a challenge?

Part of the answer has to be the sheer size and diversity of the competition. The London International Wine Fair not only was a showcase for all the usual suspects from the familiar winemaking countries, but I’m told that there also was a sensational Nebbiolo from Brazil in the show and a fabulous sweet wine from grapes harvested on the Golan Heights. I tried, but failed, to find them amongst the bewildering choice of hundreds of producers and tens of thousands of bottles.

So many people want to sell wine here that some major brands, even some of those that count their UK sales in millions of pounds, are willing to sell at a loss just to be seen to be on the shelves of Tesco and the other leading supermarkets.

It has often been said, with some wry truth, that the only sure way to become a millionaire winemaker is to start out as a multi-millionaire; and so perhaps the only guaranteed way to be a celebrity winemaker is to be an A-list star already.

The prestigious International Wine Challenge, which also announced this year’s prize-winners at the London Wine Fair, received medal-winning entries from Cliff Richard, golfer Ernie Els, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, motoring aficionado and TV presenter Quentin Willson, and Tyneside footballing legend David Ginola, who’s remarkable Domaine Coste Brularde Rosé 2007 gained a richly deserved silver medal at the first attempt.

(I’ll tell the full, fascinating story of David Ginola’s passion for wine and his continuing love of Newcastle United very soon as I’m off to visit his vineyard in a week or two…) But even the celebs, as David Ginola told me, don’t find it easy to sell their wine.

The young couple who (somehow) managed to pick their Sauvignon Blanc grapes in the middle of the night in order to make a quite remarkably perfumed, peachy, zingy wine from their Domaine de la Coche near Nantes couldn’t afford to come to London.

It was my favourite of the Top 100 Vins de Pays and I hope someone has the courage to pick up the phone soon and sort out a deal with them.

It would be great, too, if Monsieur Guillame, whose amazingly fine Chardonnays from the Franche-Comté in the far east of France could find an importer – but this is the second year in a row he’s won a trophy and he’s still searching for one.

I hope that Coste Brularde will soon find its way to the shops, too, along with Sue Wilson’s friend’s wine and all the other prize-winners whose carefully-made vintages would grace any supermarket selection.

But you can also be sure that there are plenty of superb bottles out there already. Wine has never been so good, nor the choice so wide.

Britain is the biggest importer of wine in the world, so why is the market here such a challenge?

WINE BITES

SOME of the other prize-winning Vins de Pays – French ‘country’ wines – that are easy to find include another Marks & Spencer own-label wine from the south of France, their 2007 Vin de Pays d’Oc Sauvignon Blanc (£5.49) and their richly fruity Domaine Mandeville Shiraz 2007 (£5.49).

A pair of southern French red among the hundred also impressed me greatly – both from Camplezans. The 2007 Syrah, which won a trophy, is a hugely attractive mouthful of ripe, black cherry and licorice fruit, and has a soft, also savoury character. The 2007 Marselan (£6.49 Majestic) – a rare successful example of a grape variety created by crossing two others in the nursery – is almost outrageously fruity, with a soft, juicy raspberry taste. It would be brilliant served slightly chilled.

The same is true of Domaine Preignes les Vieux, Alicante 2007 (£5.99 Majestic). Alicante is highly unusual in that its juice is red-tinted (most grapes, even those with thick black skins, have clear juice). The wine is a deep purple with a lovely ripe plummy smell and flavour, but very little acidity or tannin. Alicante is much despised and many acres of it have been grubbed up over the last few decades, but this amazing little wine shows that, in the right hands, it still has a lot to offer.