Haydn Shaughnessy looks at a fresh approach to wine making that restores the benefits of quality control for customers.
There are two questions the modern wine drinker has to ask: Will I go for quantity or quality? Or can I get into property development and have both?
For the vast majority of us the question of quality has become both more elusive over the past two decades and more important. Drinking wine is a positive health option, a choice taken by an increasing number of people every day. Ignorance, nonetheless prevails. Guided by critics who can wax on the bouquet, wine drinkers have little to guarantee the link between what they drink and their health.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s when fewer people drank wine, the naming systems (Appelation Controllé) of the French, Germans and Italians provided a guarantee, of sorts, that grapes were grown responsibly and that wine was being produced according to a set of quality standards. No longer. We drink most of our wine made by producers who operate outside the traditional quality-controlled areas.
In addition consumer regulations do not enforce a labelling requirement on wine producers. Consumers, who might care about the origins of their weekly joint of beef, the probiotics in their butter or Omega 3 content of their eggs, really have no idea precisely what is in their bottle of wine. And more and more of them are drinking it.
So here you have a product which lays claim to extraordinary health benefits but whose producers shirk even the basic consumer transparency norms and who increasingly produce in areas of the world where traditional regulations don't apply.
Forgive me for raising the question but isn't there a paradox in allowing health claims for a product when we don't know what it contains and can't regulate its production?
Ironically a small group of winemakers from Australia and New Zealand, the countries most responsible for displacing the diverse qualities of French and Italian wine with one big taste, are now trying to change all that.
Led by former film director Julian Castagna small wine makers from around the world met in Victoria, Australia in November last year to share their views on how to counter the big fruity brands that now dominate the supermarket and off-licence shelves and to return wine to its traditional place: a product of natural soil, producing effects that should invoke a sense of awe in the consumer, grown and produced without reliance on chemical intervention but with that little extra, the biodynamic farmer's belief in following the cycles of nature when pruning, harvesting, fermenting and bottling.
The result is the International Biodynamic Wine Forum, initially sponsored by Biodynamic Agriculture Australia, which is trying to proselytise to small producers a grape growing and wine production standard, a set of agricultural and production rules, that drinkers can rely on for purity, ecological good sense and the most curious element of any "standard", individuality. The principles of biodynamic farming treat the vineyard as a living system. There are a number of homeopathic-type preparations for maintaining healthy soil - silica, camomile, stinging nettle tea, oak bark fermented dandelion, valeria juice and others. A biodynamic grower today will adapt the details to their own needs but in essence they are treating the land as we would now treat our bodies.
Do the rules of biodynamic farming and production work?
Bob Blue, wine guru at Bonterra, America's largest organic grower, has just produced his first biodynamic wine.
"It kept me awake at night, it was such an emotional experience worrying over what was going on out there," says Blue, an experienced organic grower.
Did it produce a good wine?
"The biodynamic is going to be our iconic wine," says Bob.
It's that good.
But winemakers are battling the beast of the big brand, a phenomenon that has lured many people to wine.
"Australian wine making is extremely arrogant," Castagna says, "It's all part of brand Australia, and convincing the world that we're all part of this experience. It isn't sustainable and when it backfires there'll be nothing to replace it."
Unless the small producers establish themselves on the world stage.
The International Biodynamic Wine Forum will transfer to New Zealand next year and in the interim the new generation of wine makers, established stars like Vanya Cullen of Cullen Wines, James Millton of Millton Vineyards, and newcomers like Castagna are busy pushing their philosophy at tastings across the planet.
The consequence of big brand wine is not only that consumer guarantees are diminished but also that the wine we drink is getting stronger without the culture of reserve and awe that limits consumption in wine-oriented cultures.
Wines that reach 14 per cent and 15 per cent alcohol content were previously rare. "Just over the last few years we've seen wines go up in strength. From 12.5 to 13.5 and now 15 per cent," Dublin-based Febvre Wines' head of research Monica Murphy, who is alarmed at the trend, cautioned recently.
Good wines used to come in at 12.5 per cent, fine wines might reach 13.5 per cent, 15 per cent was almost a port, a fortified wine enjoyed in a thimble sized glass. Strength though provoked respect in the drinker.
To open a bottle of full-bodied Chateau Lynch-Bages or a Gevrèy Chambertin from a good vintage was a momentous occasion. People kept such luxuries for years under the house waiting on a suitable day.
A few years ago I spoke with a whiskey merchant in Edinburgh who told me he would often open a favoured malt in the evening, sniff at it for a few hours and then return it to the bottle, unsipped, in time for bed.
In the novel Against Nature, the French writer J.K. Huysman has his hero, Des Esseintes, compose an entire symphony out of the aromas of the liqueurs and spirits in his drinks cabinet, comparing each in turn to a musical instrument and a characteristic sound, combining them all into a harmonious and melodic whole.
This is the essence of a civilised approach to wine, the interplay of imagination and the senses, rather than the consumption of alcohol. The loss of standards and diversity has curtailed the range of pleasure the wine can bring us. In short it ain't about steel chairs and quarter bottles of Cabernet.
Mercifully help is on the way.
Bonterra Fetzer launch their first biodynamic wine in London in May. Chile's Errazuriz planted its first biodynamic vineyard last year.
The momentum for a new and global system of quality assurance is gaining pace as pioneering wine makers find new inspiration in the past and in nature. It couples the ecological wellbeing of the soil to human health. The Government could do well to post the news on the new café notice boards. Respect for quality is better for you. Take note.
Cullen wines can be bought at O'Donovans in Cork, or Chapter One restaurant and Ely Wine Bar in Dublin. Millton Wines are imported into Irealnd by Mary Pawle (www.marypawlewines.com). Castagna wines are difficult to source in Europe. Interested readers should try:
[ www.castana.com.auOpens in new window ]
You can read more of Haydn Shaughnessy's views on food and health at www.lovelifelovefood.com