The Vinorati Blog

I came across this Decanter article today. Apparently British wine consumers are starting to balk at the >14% alcohol wines that are becoming so common these days. According to the Marks and Spencers wine techologist ‘High alcohol wines have had their day. We will be trying to source more wines at 12% alcohol, rather than 14% in the future.’

Yeahh!! As someone who is somewhat sensitive to alcohol levels in wines I applaud this movement. Average alcohol levels in red wine produced in California was 14.8%. That’s enormous. In the U.S. 14% alcohol is a major cutoff above which an alcoholic product is taxed at a significantly higher level. How ironic that the average for California is above this cutoff. It’s very hard, if not impossible to make a balanced wine at these alcohol levels. More often they come across as hot, bitter or just plain alcoholic.
Unfortunately the increase in a alcohol levels in wine doesn’t merely reflect a change in consumer taste and stylistic decisions by winemakers. It’s a reflection of the climate change that is occurring in grape growing areas around the world. It’s not just in Californian wines, or in wines made by certain micro-oxidation loving consultants, or in wines made to please a certain lawyer turned wine-critic, that we find increased alcohol levels. Even in more traditional Bordeaux wines the average alcohol levels have crept up from an average of 12.5% to 13%.

I appreciate Marks & Spencer’s decision from a consumer perspective, but I question it’s realism from a grape growers’ perspective.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.