Plus an update on Santorini's 2024 harvest; news at Australian Vintage and Naked Wines; and an exciting outcome for Swedish wines at The Swedish Wine Tasting, where Julia Harding MW (seen above) was a judge.
Before I begin, I have two corrections.
Last week, if you got to the news early, you heard me say that harvest had started in Russia, and then reference harvest in Crimea. Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 – it does not belong to Russia. I sincerely apologise. The article was corrected as soon as it was pointed out, and the podcast and video were both taken down immediately and reposted by midday Saturday.
Secondly, I said Santorini was projected to harvest 700 kg in total – the unit on that was supposed to be tonnes. However, yesterday the local agriculture department told Stellios Boutaris that the final number was slightly more than originally thought – 750 tonnes of whites and 130 tonnes of reds.
On to the news ...
A win for Swedish wines and hybrid vines
First, if you did not know that Sweden produces wine, you’re not alone. While Erica Landin, in her entry for Sweden in the 5th edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine, points out that there is evidence of winegrowing here that dates to the Stone Age, Sweden wasn’t officially registered with the EU for wine production until 1999. Today the country has more than 200 wine growers. To highlight the country’s progress, about a decade ago Swedish wine journalist Mikael Mölstad began organising The Swedish Wine Tasting, an annual blind tasting of 12 top Swedish wines and 12 similarly styled wines from elsewhere in Europe.
This year, on 28 August, Julia Harding MW joined 17 other judges to participate in that tasting. All 12 of the wines from Sweden were made from hybrid grape varieties. One of these, Immelen 2021 from Kullabergs Vingård – made from Solaris, Souvignier Gris and Muscaris – took top prize, and three others made the top ten. You can see the full results at thesweedishwinetasting.com.
German GGs, and harvest begins
On 1 September, the VDP, a private wine organisation that has its own, heavily regulated, vineyard-classification system, will release its top-tier dry white wines from the 2023 vintage and red wines from the 2022 vintage. These wines are known as Grosse Gewächse, or GGs, and this year there were 561 of them approved from 11 Anbaugebiete (winegrowing regions) and from eight grape varieties (Riesling, Spätburgunder, Weissburgunder, Silvaner, Grauburgunder, Lemberger, Chardonnay and Frühburgunder).
Our German-wine specialist, Paula Sidore, attended a pre-release tasting of these and will be providing her thoughts on the wines in the coming weeks. I highly encourage you to keep an eye out for both the new releases and for Paula’s report. She has shared that there are some absolutely stellar wines but there’s also quite a degree of variability due to the wet and warm conditions and condensed harvest window of 2023.
She also pointed out that the high disease pressure this year – 2024 – plus the early frost has led to predictions of much lower-than-average yields which may impact next year’s release. And, speaking of the 2024 vintage, harvest began on 19 August in the Pfalz. Since then, grapes have been harvested in Rheinhessen, Baden and the Ahr.
Brown-Forman abandons DEI programmes
On 21 August, Brown-Forman – which owns Korbel sparkling wine as well as popular spirits brands Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, El Jimador, Chambord and others – sent a company-wide email announcing that their executives’ pay would no longer be tied to DEI targets (10% of short-term compensation had been tied to DEI goals), that they would stop participating in an annual ranking of companies with an LGBTQ-friendly work environment, and that they were abandoning plans to focus more on suppliers with minority backgrounds.
Seemingly the reason that they’ve done this is because of alt-right influencer Robby Starbuck, who has been going after brands who have a traditionally conservative audience and ‘exposing’ their DEI programmes so that their target audience boycotts their products. His attacks have resulted in brands like Harley-Davidson, John Deere and now Brown-Forman cutting DEI programmes.
While I don’t buy Korbel, I do like Chambord as well as the next person – but I think I’ll be buying a different raspberry liqueur.
Losses at Australian Vintage and Naked Wines
Back in June I talked about how Accolade wines – one of Australia’s two largest producers – had backed out of plans to purchase Australian Vintage – Australia’s third largest producer. Australian Vintage immediately suspended their shares on the Australian Stock Exchange, raised AU$15 million by selling discounted shares, and secured AU$30 million in debt capacity which allowed the company to stay afloat.
But it seems that all has not gone well – on 23 August, AV posted a AU$93 million loss in the 2024 financial year. This contrasts sharply with the AU$4 million in profit it netted last year. Their acting CEO has been replaced for the third time in 12 months.
Meanwhile in the UK, Naked Wines, whose troubles I discussed back in January, posted an 18% loss for the 2024 fiscal year.
Both Australian Vintage and Naked Wines have said that they have plans in place to restructure and return to profit.
Zuccardi lightweights high-end wines
Zuccardi, a respected Argentinian producer, has decreased their bottle weights by 37%, from 900 g to 570 g. While plenty of producers are joining the lightweighting movement starting with their entry and mid-tier wines, Zuccardi is notable because they are prioritising lightweighting their most expensive and lauded offerings. Their 2021 Finca Canal Uco, retailing for around $100, will launch on the Place de Bordeaux next month in a lightweight bottle. Their mid-tier wines will follow. They’ve done this to send a clear message that bottle weight does not correlate to wine quality.
That’s all for this episode of the wine news. I will not be bringing you the news next week as I will be in London for the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards. The next newscast will be on 13 or 14 September, depending on where you are in the world.
If you have information on the start of harvest in places I have not yet mentioned or other breaking news, please email me at news@jancisrobinson.com.
Photo at top credit Magnus Skolglöf/theswedishwinetasting2024
This is a transcript of our weekly five-minute news broadcast, which you can watch below. You can also listen to it on The Wine News in 5 Podcast. And if you enjoy this content and would like to see more like it, please subscribe to our site and our weekly newsletter.