New Champagne Trends + Napoleon's Taste in Wine 🍷
HEADLINES 🗞
😠Angry French winemakers plan mass protest in Narbonne. Whilst French producers’ costs have risen, prices for their wines have not.
🇮🇹 Last week, the LivEx most-traded wines by volume were significantly influenced by the Wine Spectator’s Wines of the Year announcement, with Tuscany leading trade by both value and volume.
💰The Duckhorn Portfolio has agreed to acquire Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards, a major player in luxury Chardonnay, for US$400 million. It is expected that the acquisition will significantly elevate the company’s position within Chardonnay, the number one white variety in the US.
HISTORY
‘Boozing with Bonaparte’🍷
Louis Thomas enlightens us on Napoleon’s appetite for fine wine.
Napoleon came from a culture where heavy drinking was “frowned upon”🤫. He was a ‘typical soldier’ and drank whatever there was at his posting. His taste was far from refined, especially during the earlier campaigns. For instance, he liked the basic working man’s Piemontese wine during his time in piedmont, made from Barbera.
‘That’s what he drank after the Battle of Marengo [1800] with his chicken.’
Nevertheless, there was one fine wine that Napoleon adored - good red Burgundy, especially Gevrey-Chambertin.
What he didn’t like was Champagne, even though the industry was very loyal to him. Apparently, it was fizzy and made him feel gassy…👎
WORLD MARKET🌎
The face of the global bulk wine market (The Buyer)
‘Bulk wine’ refers to wine bottled in the country of sale (e.g. the UK) after being shipped in a large container from the country origin (e.g. Australia). This category represents over 34% of global wine sales in terms of volume - but only 7% in value terms.
Bulk wine offers buyers multiple benefits:
✅ Allows the creation of exclusive brands and labels, catered to a particular market with pricing set by the buyer.
✅ A far more sustainable than shipping individual bottles, reducing carbon emissions along the supply process.
✅ Affords peace of mind to suppliers. Holding bulk in the UK, for instance, allows ‘swift replenishment’ of stock and reduces risk that comes with trading oversees.
✅ Protects quality, as the variation of the wine’s temperature is vastly reduced compared to bottle.
In this year’s Bulk Wine Exhibition in Amsterdam, there was a focus on the no/lo sector, which is currently showing the fastest growth in the drinks sector. Interestingly, one major trend is the move to more mid-tier wines being shipped in bulk.
💭🏺 My own thoughts - the surge in bulk shipping, ironically, signals a return to the past when wine was shipped in amphorae or barrel and bottled in the country of sale. One step forward, two steps back.
TRENDING 📈
An explosion (excuse the pun) of new Champagne cuvées! 🍾
The Champagne houses have started to release exciting new offerings in recent years, spurred by a changing climate, a greater focus on expressing terroir and increasing demand for this sparkling wine, reports Jim Clarke for Seven Fifty Daily.
Here are the trends:
We are seeing more and more non-vintage blends, special cuvées and ‘mono-terroir’ Champagnes.
Consumers are particularly demanding about transparency and sustainability.
There is an increased emphasis on red grapes in new cuvées — contrasting to the common Blanc de Blancs style (e.g. (Piper-Heidsieck - the Essentiel Blanc de Noirs, also certified sustainable). Climate change is helping to ‘coax’ more elegance and ripeness from the red varieties.
Single-vineyard Champagnes have been on the rise since the mid-1990s, emphasising Champagne’s repositioning as a ‘terroir-based’ wine.
Apparently, the fundamental reason for this new crop of cuvées is demand - ‘Champagne has never been more popular’.
Thanks for reading!