European Wine Fighting for Survival

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DER SPIEGEL 44-2005 - November 5, 2005 European Wine Fighting for Survival

In Vino Vilitas

By Barbara Supp

They are fruity, soft and pleasant -- and anathema to traditional European vintners. As foreign wines make inroads into the German market, wine makers argue over the globalization of taste. Is it more important to conform or to preserve tradition?

Globalization is threatening European wines. It's cold up here at night, and sunny during the day -- ideal conditions for these grapes, which should stay on the vine as long as possible, preferably until November. It's a mild autumn in the slate terraces where the grapes grow that are used to make Winninger R=F6ttgen. Vintner Reinhard L=F6wenstein walks through his steep vineyards, sifting the brownish-yellow slate soil through his fingers, 100 meters (about 330 feet) above the village on the Mosel River where he now lives.

Tourist season is still in full swing in Winningen and cheerful tourists are still busily quaffing wine at the "Moselst=FCbchen." It's autumn in Winningen -- almost time for local vintners to start getting their wine into tanks. According to a sign posted by the Ministry of Agriculture of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, it's also the vintners' duty to make their reports: their "enological procedures," their "possession of additives," whether they "elevate the alcohol content" of their wines, and any procedures used to deacidify or sweeten their product.

L=F6wenstein plucks his Riesling vines, tasting the grapes. He doesn't need deacidification or sweetening. These vines have roots that reach down as deep as 12 meters (about 40 feet), deriving their flavor from deep beneath the surface; flavors of peach, quince, honeydew, and then nougat and chocolate. He prefers to hold off with the harvest, to allow his grapes to extract as much flavor as possible from the earth, the terroir. It seems to be his favorite word. Terroir.

A manifesto of quality

L=F6wenstein has written a manifesto that has caused an uproar in the industry, what he calls a "Manifesto of the Terroirists." He complains about the "infantilization" of taste, about people who want their wines to be as fruity as "strawberry jam or chocolate syrup." He also curses the addiction to mbutt-produced wine and a German law that measures wine quality by sugar content. He scoops up a handful of soil and crushes it in his hands. It's "as if the sun had baked out the oil," says L=F6wenstein.

Soil, climate, weather. These factors should determine what the wine will ultimately taste like, is L=F6wenstein's philosophy. Not technology -- after all, technology determines everything else. It's a philosophy that has earned him a reputation in the industry. A reputation as a troublemaker.

A winery in Oakville, California. American techniques are crossing the Atlantic.

L=F6wenstein is against the practice of concentrating and lowering the water content of the must, or fruit juice used to make wine. He's against using bentonite to clarify the must. He also opposes the use of enzymes and uses his own wild yeasts to ferment his wine -- the yeasts that grow naturally on the grapes and in the wine cellar. He rejects the standard cultivated yeasts available by mail order, and in return he has trouble sleeping on many a summer's night, wondering whether his natural yeasts are really working.

For L=F6wenstein, there are real wines and there are Frankenstein wines, and it looks as though the Frankenstein camp is currently gaining ground. L=F6wenstein has old fashioned ideas, and he wants to return to the past. And he doesn't shy away from controversy.

And controversy is something he has had plenty of lately. Specifically, a controversy over what some -- especially those in North America -- call progress. It involves procedures like adding wood chips, tannin and water to the wine, breaking it down into its basic components with a machine called a spinning cone column, and then putting it back together as needed.

How to respond to globalization?

But it's also a controversy over a globalization that has now reached the wine industry, just as it has reached the auto industry, the blue jean industry, the toothbrush industry. And how does one respond to this globalization? What should one be allowed to do with wine to make it conform to the world's palate? And does the resulting product even deserve to be called wine anymore?

The dispute was triggered by a new trade agreement between the European Union and the United States -- a pact that has divided trade buttociations and wine drinkers, vintners and researchers. Monika Christmann, a lecturer and winemaking expert with the OIV, or "Organisation internationale de la vigne et du vin," sits at her desk in the Hessian town of Geisenheim and smiles knowingly. The OIV is the body that normally makes the rules and sets limits on how wine is made. But ever since the US withdrew from the OIV and American vintners stopped adhering to its rules, individual state treaties have become necessary.

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The EU and the US initially agreed on a few temporary conditions, such as allowing the Americans to use oak chips but banning the use of the spinning cone column. But now Washington wants a more permanent agreement. A draft has been initialed by the European Commission and will come up for approval by the European Council of Ministers in late November.

The material Monika Christmann is kneading in her fingers looks like something out of a child's toy chest, or perhaps a breakfast cereal. Oak chips. They're added to wine to make it taste like vanilla or chocolate, as if it had been stored for a long time in an oak cask, or barrique. It's a practice that winemakers have been using abroad for years.

Christmann has nothing bad to say about California, though many in her industry are behaving as if it were the source of all evil. Christmann, who spent two years working as a laboratory director for one of the major wine producers in Sonoma County, says she has tasted "wonderful wines" there. In fact, she and her viticulture students recently returned from California, where they tasted the region's heavy, fruity wines and took a look at techniques that are still banned here in Germany. For now, at least. But that hasn't stopped the Geisenheim Insbreastute from trying them out. Tests with oak chips have been underway for years and even spinning cone columns have been tested. Is this the future of wine-making? Does it have to be?

Europeans are afraid

Christmann smiles. "I know the Europeans are afraid," she says. The Europeans think of the old days, when vast quanbreasties of Riesling from vineyards along the Rhine River were shipped to England. Christie's began auctioning off bottles of Rhine Riesling in 1767, and German wine was 19th-century monarch Queen Victoria's favorite. It used to be more expensive than Bordeaux. Once upon a time, that is.

Now, the harvest workers are out in the research insbreastute's vineyards -- picking the grapes that will be pressed, fermented, taken apart, studied and tested. How will they react to certain yeast cultures? Which enzyme works the best?

Monika Christmann is no dreamer. She's energetic, in her mid-40s and open to new ideas. The topic of her dissertation? "Changes in Ingredients, with Special Consideration of Wine Aromas during the De-Alcoholization of Wines using Combined Dialysis Vacuum Distillation." In other words: Does non-alcoholic wine taste like wine? Not really.

DPA Germans wonder if tradition is worth saving in a globalized wine market.

At one point she mentions her "bleeding heart" when it comes to these oak chips. "I do like barrique," she says, but research is also important. Research, she believes, means progress, and not sticking with the status quo.

The Geisenheim facility is Germany's leading wine research insbreastute, and Christmann has the difficult task of making sure that German wine can survive in the face of globalization. As she puts it, it's important to "change things. And vintners happen to be especially resistant to change."

But some are not, and have even opted to make far-reaching changes -- to their wineries and their wine. Vintner Arjen Pen, at his Ch=E2teau Richelieu winery in France's Bordelais region, is an example of one of these progressive winemakers.

"It's astonishingly dark," says Pen, introspectively, standing on an oak cask and pulling a glbutt tube from a bunghole, mustering the contents.

A crisis in Bordeaux

Pen, a blonde, 35-year-old Dutchman, climbs down from his cask and fills glbuttes with Ch=E2teau Richelieu's Cuv=E9e La Favorite 2004. It's been in the barrique for eleven months now, and it's fruity, dense and already incredibly drinkable. This isn't the kind of Bordeaux we know from the past. "Very nice," Pen says. He's clearly pleased, tasting and swallowing the wine, and smiling as he says, "it's going in the right direction."

He says that no one in the village was aware that Ch=E2teau Richelieu was for sale, this winery with its imposing 16th-century country house that Cardinal Richelieu, the Duke of Fronsac, had renovated in the 17th century for himself and, as legend has it, his favorite mistress. An industry consultant told him that the ch=E2teau was available, and that its then owners, burned by the economic crisis in the Bordeaux, could no longer afford to maintain the estate.

The Ch=E2teau has 10 hectares (about 25 acres), mostly in Cabernet Franc and Merlot -- not one of France's huge estates, but one with potential. It is part of Fronsac, on appellation on the right bank of the Dordogne River, a small tributary of the famous St. Emilion.

It's a good name, Ch=E2teau Richelieu, and a good brand.

Pen, now managing director of the company he founded, WECM, or "Wine Estate Capital Management," had three months to find investors. He succeeded and he is now one of 20 partners in Ch=E2teau Richelieu -- not a small change from his previous job as director of marketing at Lufthansa. Now he has made the bold buttumption that there's money to be made in wine -- in the middle of a Bordeaux wine crisis.

DDP The quality of the grapes used to be decisive for the quality of wine. Soon, it could be the quality of the additives. In the press, it's called "Ch=E2teau Mis=E8re." The market for the top Bordeaux, once a sure investment, has evaporated. Even the plain AOC from Bordeaux, more costly than red wines from Chile, Australia and Argentina and often not even worth the money, has lost its reputation. The 6 percent return Pen has promised his investors seems a bit overconfident given such a trend.

Pen shows off his vineyards and a crumbling building with high windows and ledges he is having renovated. He talks about the life he left behind as head of marketing at Lufthansa and Crossair. Back then, he says, most of his dealings with wine had to do with pbuttengers' complaints in first clbutt.

He helped developed the Swiss brand when Crossair acquired what was left of Swissair. He left when a new boss and he conflicted over the direction the company should take. He decided to start a new life and began looking for a way to finance it.

Pen founded WECM and pursued the idea that wine is a unique product -- one that can appeal to more than just hard drinkers and investors looking to make a buck. Pen believes that wine also appeals to a special type of person, someone who can spend evenings discussing the grbutty bouquet of a Sauvignon, or the question of whether a critic's statement that a particular wine tastes like a "well-ridden saddle" should be taken as a compliment.

The market wants fruity wines

These are the kinds of investors Pen needed, and he found them. Attorneys, notaries, chemists -- the kinds of shareholders who aren't looking to turn a quick profit. His investors take their 6 percent returns in the form of about 150 bottles of La Favorite and the right to spend a three-week vacation at the Ch=E2teau. But Pen still has to make money, and he knows more about marketing than wine.

Knowledge can be bought, and Pen gets his from his wine consultant, St=E9phane Derenoncourt, who helps Pen's young cellar master throughout the year. Derenoncourt knows the technology and the taste that's in demand. He also knows Robert Parker, the wine critic America and half the world listens to. Parker loves a fruity, sweet and heavy wine. Derenoncourt knows this, and he also knows when Parker happens to be visiting the Bordeaux region, and takes the opportunity to bring the wine critique some samples of his clients' wines. Parker gave a 2003 La Favorite 88 to 90 points and he praised this "fleshy" wine and its "wonderful texture, sweetness and seductiveness" -- not bad. "The fact that he even reviewed the wine," says Pen, "even that's a success."

The market wants fruity wines. The market wants brands that are easy to remember, wants myths and the kinds of stories that turn into myths.

And Arjen Pen has a good story. He has Cardinal Richelieu -- the cinema star who fought with the Three Muskateers. The next day, Pen sits in the offices of a graphic design firm in Libourne, reviewing a graphic that depicts three swords. The company is designing his new labels, one for his top-selling cuvee, "La Favorite," one for his "Ch=E2teau Richelieu," and one for his third wine, dubbed "Trois Musketeers." Pen came up with the bilingual name for his US customers -- it sounds a little French and yet not completely foreign. On the back label, he'll write that this wine harbors the kind of tension that existed between the Musketeers and the Cardinal.

AP Harvesting the grapes in France.

A graphic designer in the next room draws a mockup for a Ch=E2teau label -- a design that incorporates finely drawn lines and a garishly-colored parrot. It's the kind of label that's in demand these days. People want brands they can remember. The director of the design firm stands in the background, looks at these modern labels, and sighs. Les jeunes -- young people -- no longer appreciate complicated phrases like "Premier Grand Cru Clbutt=E9." All they want in their wines is "sucr=E9, sucr=E9." He shrugs his shoulders. What can one do? It's globalization.

Ecstatic Californians

"The French," says Rudolf Nickenig darkly, sipping a 2003 Silvaner from the traditional Bocksbeutelflasche (wide, rounded bottle containing Franconian wine), "are soft-boiled. And the Californians are ecstatic."

We are sitting in the "Haus des Frankenweins" (House of Franconian Wine) in the central German city of W=FCrzburg. Rudolf Nickenig, General Secretary of the German Winegrowers' buttociation, is talking about the trade agreement between Europe and America.

The French, with their export problems, couldn't agree to disagree, and so they finally agreed that a less-than-perfect pact is better than no trade agreement at all. The Germans were deeply opposed to the draft agreement. But that isn't likely to do them much good.

Under the agreement, European winemakers will be permitted to use the same tactics that are allowed under US law -- adding tannins and water, using the spinning cone -- and export the resulting product. Rudolf Nickenig, a lobbyist experienced in dealing with the EU, worries that the EU ministers will approve the agreement in late November.

Once the agreement is ratified, Europe will have to deal with the World Trade Organization, which will demand that whatever concessions are made to one member must be made to everyone else -- that is, wine-producing countries like Chile, South Africa, Argentina.

And then? "The pressure will increase," says Nickenig, a worried look on his face, and the buttembled German officials nod pensively. "They'll say: What about us?"

They do their market research and they know their numbers -- and they know the consumers. They want brand-name wine from big producers -- producers like German firm Racke, Foster's from Australia and the Constellation Brands from the US.

One in four bottles for less than =801

They pay an average of =802.60 for a liter of wine, but they want the fine taste of barrique -- the flavor wine gets from being aged in barrels. They prefer shopping at discount stores, and for one out of four bottles of wine they spends less than =801.

Experts predict that 2005 could be the first year in which Europe imports more wine than it exports. So what should European producers do? Conform or resist?

Germany's research insbreastutions are already busy coming up with new ways to improve wine. They're studying the use of genetically modified lactic acid bacteria in biological acid reduction, or genetically modified yeasts that haven't been used yet because producers aren't sure how consumers would react if they knew that they were being used.

AP Most wine drinkers prefer cheap libation to expensive quality. Some enzymes are allowed and some haven't been approved yet. There are enzymes that enhance a wine's aroma -- Cbuttis, for example, can be used in Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Other enzymes can reduce tannic acid content. But that's prohibited. There are those who feel it shouldn't be. Should winemakers be permitted to produce wine to order? Should wine be predictable? Should a Chardonnay taste almost exactly the same, whether it comes from New Zealand, California, Australia or South Africa?

The industry could also take the opposite approach. Winemakers could come up with new labels, labels that identify a wine as having been made without oak chips, without added sugar, without added water, or without any of these components having been removed from the wine.

Rudolf Nickenig considers the idea, but shakes his head. No. Oak chips, he says, may soon be allowed. Adding sugars is already permitted with inexpensive German wines. And who knows what other taboos winemakers will want to see eliminated.

Vintage losing importance

It's still late summer outside, the harvest is in full swing, and the buttembled luminaries of the Franconian winemaking industry have nothing but praise for the 2005 vintage being picked right now. A perfect year, they say, just the right amount of sun, just enough rain.

Perhaps all of that will soon become less important. Once the technology and laws are in place, a 2006 vintage will taste like a 2007 or a 2008, and winemakers will never have to worry again about whether it rains too much or too little.

The Riesling grapes that go into Winninger R=F6ttgen will likely have to be picked before November after all. September was too warm, causing the grapes to mature too quickly. Will they ferment properly this year?

Of course, says Reinhard L=F6wenstein, one could take the easy approach and simply buy cultivated yeasts. They're available for every type of wine, for every flavor, but he swears by his wild, temperamental yeasts. In return, he gets what's called spontaneous fermentation, sometimes a bit too spontaneous.

These are old ideas, old ideas that L=F6wenstein has resurrected to combat the forces of globalization.

When he and his wife, Cornelia, returned to his native village to develop the Heymann-L=F6wenstein winery, the locals were leery of his old-fashioned and yet newfangled ideas. After all, wasn't L=F6wenstein the kid who had once fled the village because his father had wanted him, his eldest son, to leave school and learn the wine trade?

He was a left-leaning radical, and he ended up in Paris, where he worked for an organization that helped refugees from Chile's torture chambers, and where he became a member of the French Communist Party. He eventually got a degree in agriculture, perhaps hoping to work in Cuba or Afghanistan, but ultimately, in the early 1980s, returned to winemaking and to his native village, bringing his wife along.

When L=F6wenstein and his wife launched the business, local housewives were warned not to work for "the Communist" during harvest season.

Porsches in China, wine in the Mosel

ideas that reach beyond his vineyards overlooking the Mosel River. At first he would write flowery speeches to his customers, politically-tinted speeches peppered with the esoteric language of Karl Marx and Pablo Neruda. But his days as a political activist also taught L=F6wenstein how to handle committees. He infiltrated Germany's exclusive buttociation of Pr=E4dikat Wine Estates (VDP), where he campaigned for regulations clearly defining top-quality wines and prohibiting the practice of concentrating must in making these wines. And he made sure that terroir was on everyone's mind.

Not everyone in the industry is pleased to hear his name. He's the Johnny-come-lately, a know-it-all who, despite everything, has managed to be successful. He has garnered praise and won awards. This year, his 2002 "Winninger Uhlen Laubach Riesling Erste Lage" was honored in France as the "Foreign Wine of the Year."

The French award has given L=F6wenstein new momentum for his campaign against globalization. Germany, he says, will be unable to compete in the mbutt-market wine industry. German producers will lose out against the huge operations in Australia and California, against producers in low-wage countries like Chile and South Africa. Romania and Bulgaria will join the fray, and so will China. The Chinese are already expanding their vineyards, buying up winemaking technology in Europe and expertise in Australia. And everyone knows that the Chinese are fast learners.

He stands in his wine cellar, a 51-year-old with a moustache, wearing jeans and the glbuttes of an academic, listening to the bubbling of his yeasts. His theory? Germany's only chance is to produce something that's unique, that no one else can master. A Porsche can be made in China, but not a terrace-grown Mosel wine.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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