There is a perennial myth that French, Spanish and Italian producers keep their best wines for the local market and offload the inferior bottles to importing countries including Ireland. This is mainly driven by experiences on holiday where we come across delicious wines that don’t taste nearly as good when we try them at home. Others can be impossible to find locally.
A few very small wineries may prefer to sell all their production locally and not bother with the export market. Some may even have a list of mail order customers who snap up everything every year. I have come across a few wineries that reserve special wines for their wine club members or cellar door sales. But I can assure you that these are in a minority. Most producers, even very good producers, do not find it easy to sell their wine. They face competition from a host of other wines locally, nationally and internationally and are constantly under pressure to cut their prices. Remember, they have to empty their tanks every year before the next harvest comes in.
There is an elite group of luxury producers, who make small quantities of wine that are sought-after by wine aficionados the world over. However, as part of their marketing strategy, these producers generally want to have their wines present in every market around the world, and will ship a few cases to dozens of countries.
In most cases, the reason our wine tastes better is simple; a glass of chilled rosé sipped in the shade of the Provencal sun tastes so much better than the same wine on a wet and gloomy November day in Ireland. You are more relaxed, the weather is good, and life seems better – rosé even?
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At one stage in my career, I worked as a wine buyer and visited many wine regions. If any wine tasted amazing, I always asked the producer to send a sample to my office before placing an order.
