EU-DIGEST

The next time you have a goblet of white wine, do drink it in a room back-lit with red or blue ambient lights -- it will taste better, says a new study.

Researchers in Germany have found drinkers' brains are tricked into thinking a glass of white wine is better and more expensive tasting when exposed to the red or blue background lighting than those in rooms with green or white lighting

Labels: Wine Industry

Under French law, Beaujolais Nouveau cannot officially be released until the third Thursday of November. Hence, the global glass-clinking that breaks out at countless restaurants and special events on this same day, from Cannes to Cape Town to Chicago.

Labels: Beaujolais, EU, France, Wine Industry

Wine - Vive la France - reclaiming top wine output crown - by Svetlana Kovalyova

Reuters - France has regained its status as the world's biggest wine producer, after having been overtaken by Italy last year, Italy's largest farmers' association Coldiretti said Friday. France, with its expected 4.8 billion liter wine output in 2009, is set to surpass Italy, which is forecast to make 4.7 billion liters this year, Coldiretti said citing the French agency FranceAgriMer and Italian research published in July. Italian wine output has slowed this year after farmers dug up vines, wooed by incentives under the European Union wine sector reform, farmers' research center ISMEA and wine industry body Unione Italiana Vini (UOV) have said.

Labels: EU, France, Wine Industry

France reports sharp drop in wine, champagne sales - by Scott Sayare

As wallets grew thinner around the world, fans of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne cut back heavily on their purchases of French wine in 2008, according to French government statistics released Tuesday. French households drank almost 10 percent less wine last year than in 2007, and exports by French vintners sank 15 percent by volume and almost 30 percent by value in the first quarter of 2009, the agriculture ministry reported. "It's a phenomenon of the current economic situation, so we need to be prudent and not sound the alarm," said Xavier de Volontat, who heads an association of French vintners. "We'll have to be prudent vis-a-vis our members in the months to come. It's true that they're being patient, but they have to be able to get by economically." France's chateaux and vineyards have voiced concerns for their future after seeing orders plunge since the end of 2008.

In 1960, the average French adult drank almost 175 liters of wine per year — more than four times as much as the average for an entire household in 2008. And wine has been harder hit in recent years than beer or spirits — the French drink only half as much total alcohol today as 50 years ago.

Labels: EU, France, Wine Industry

Morocco has become one of the largest winemakers in the Muslim world, with the equivalent of 35 million bottles produced last year. Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically. "Morocco is a country of tolerance," said Mehdi Bouchaara, the deputy general manager at the Celliers de Meknes, the country's largest winemaker, which bottles over 85 percent of national output. "It's everybody's personal choice whether to drink or not."

On paper, wine is "Haram," or forbidden to Muslims. But Bouchaara said the firm's distribution is all legal since it only sells to traders authorized by the state, who in turn officially sell exclusively to non-Muslim tourists. Statistics, however, show that Moroccans consume on average 1 liter (a quarter of a gallon) of wine per person each year, and the Moroccan state itself is the largest owner of the country's 12,000 hectares (29,652 acres) of vineyards. Alcohol is completely forbidden in hard-line Iran or Saudi Arabia. In Sudan, offenders regularly get sentenced to lashings in court. Even in nearby Algeria, another large wine producer, alcohol consumption is fast shrinking to just the capital and a few exclusive tourist resorts.

Labels: Morocco, Wine Industry

Italian economy boosted by strong wine sales

The Italian economy has received a timely boost with the news that the country's winemakers are on course to become the world's top producers of wine. According to Coldiretti, the representative body of Italian farmers, 4.7 billion litres of wine will have been produced by the end of the year, which is an eight per cent increase on last year's levels. With France, the world leaders last year, seeing production fall by five per cent in the last 12 months, Italy is expected to seize the top spot. This will be good news for Italy's economy and it may serve to entice more property investors to expand their portfolios in the Mediterranean country.

Labels: EU, Italy, Wine Industry

Spanish wines offer plenty of personality - by Geoff Last

It's difficult to keep track of all the great wine from Spain these days. It is a rare week when I don't taste yet another well-made vino from Spain, usually at an attractive price. Even regions once regarded as strongholds for mass-produced table wine, such as La Mancha, are turning up the quality dial.

Mencia is a somewhat obscure Spanish varietal once thought to be related to Cabernet Franc, but recent DNA fingerprinting has revealed it to be a unique varietal native to Spain and Portugal, where it's known as Jaen. It yields wines either soft and fruity or dense and concentrated, not unlike Tempranillo, Spain's most famous red grape.

Labels: EU, Spain, Wine Industry

France-Wine: The Purest Pour - by JEFFREY T. IVERSON

"The French wine world seems to have been bitten by a bug," observed food writer François Simon in Le Figaro recently. The pest in question is a tiny but evangelistic movement devoted to vin naturel — wine made completely without chemical intervention. It's an approach that "flies in the face of the practices widely used in viticulture," says Dominique Lacout, author of a natural wine-lovers' guide.Pioneered in the 1960s by Beaujolais enologist Jules Chauvet, natural wine-making strives for a pure expression of the vintage and land through organic farming and the banning of modern cellar practices like adding laboratory yeasts, chaptalization (adding sugar to increase alcohol content) and filtering. The results range from sublime to suspect: some natural wines go down more easily than fresh grape juice, while others have distinctly earthy, leathery or even barnyardy aromas that can be hard to tolerate.

Perhaps that's why natural-wine bars often brim with newcomers to wine — and foreigners from countries without ancient viticultural traditions. "The Japanese are not as infected by the traditional wine culture," says wine importer Yasuko Goda. "And modern, over-concentrated blockbuster wines never go well with Japanese food." In the end, getting too caught up in vinification politics means missing the point of natural wine. "It's not just a protest movement," says Lacout. "It's a search for flavors and authenticity, the real taste of food and wine."

Labels: EU, France, Wine Industry