Quite a profound article. What do you guys think?

DER SPIEGEL 44/2005 - November 5, 2005
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...383331,00.html
European Wine Fighting for Survival

In Vino Vilitas

By Barbara Supp

They are fruity, soft and pleasant -- and anathema to traditional
European vintners. As foreign wines make inroads into the German
market, wine makers argue over the globalization of taste. Is it more
important to conform or to preserve tradition?



Globalization is threatening European wines.
It's cold up here at night, and sunny during the day -- ideal
conditions for these grapes, which should stay on the vine as long as
possible, preferably until November. It's a mild autumn in the slate
terraces where the grapes grow that are used to make Winninger
Röttgen. Vintner Reinhard Löwenstein walks through his steep
vineyards, sifting the brownish-yellow slate soil through his fingers,
100 meters (about 330 feet) above the village on the Mosel River where
he now lives.

Tourist season is still in full swing in Winningen and cheerful
tourists are still busily quaffing wine at the "Moselstübchen." It's
autumn in Winningen -- almost time for local vintners to start getting
their wine into tanks. According to a sign posted by the Ministry of
Agriculture of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, it's also the
vintners' duty to make their reports: their "enological procedures,"
their "possession of additives," whether they "elevate the alcohol
content" of their wines, and any procedures used to deacidify or
sweeten their product.

Löwenstein plucks his Riesling vines, tasting the grapes. He doesn't
need deacidification or sweetening. These vines have roots that reach
down as deep as 12 meters (about 40 feet), deriving their flavor from
deep beneath the surface; flavors of peach, quince, honeydew, and then
nougat and chocolate. He prefers to hold off with the harvest, to allow
his grapes to extract as much flavor as possible from the earth, the
terroir. It seems to be his favorite word. Terroir.

A manifesto of quality

Löwenstein has written a manifesto that has caused an uproar in the
industry, what he calls a "Manifesto of the Terroirists." He complains
about the "infantilization" of taste, about people who want their wines
to be as fruity as "strawberry jam or chocolate syrup." He also curses
the addiction to mass-produced wine and a German law that measures wine
quality by sugar content. He scoops up a handful of soil and crushes it
in his hands. It's "as if the sun had baked out the oil," says
Löwenstein.

Soil, climate, weather. These factors should determine what the wine
will ultimately taste like, is Löwenstein's philosophy. Not technology
-- after all, technology determines everything else. It's a philosophy
that has earned him a reputation in the industry. A reputation as a
troublemaker.


A winery in Oakville, California. American techniques are crossing the
Atlantic.

Löwenstein is against the practice of concentrating and lowering the
water content of the must, or fruit juice used to make wine. He's
against using bentonite to clarify the must. He also opposes the use of
enzymes and uses his own wild yeasts to ferment his wine -- the yeasts
that grow naturally on the grapes and in the wine cellar. He rejects
the standard cultivated yeasts available by mail order, and in return
he has trouble sleeping on many a summer's night, wondering whether his
natural yeasts are really working.

For Löwenstein, there are real wines and there are Frankenstein wines,
and it looks as though the Frankenstein camp is currently gaining
ground. Löwenstein has old fashioned ideas, and he wants to return to
the past. And he doesn't shy away from controversy.

And controversy is something he has had plenty of lately. Specifically,
a controversy over what some -- especially those in North America --
call progress. It involves procedures like adding wood chips, tannin
and water to the wine, breaking it down into its basic components with
a machine called a spinning cone column, and then putting it back
together as needed.

How to respond to globalization?

But it's also a controversy over a globalization that has now reached
the wine industry, just as it has reached the auto industry, the blue
jean industry, the toothbrush industry. And how does one respond to
this globalization? What should one be allowed to do with wine to make
it conform to the world's palate? And does the resulting product even
deserve to be called wine anymore?

The dispute was triggered by a new trade agreement between the European
Union and the United States -- a pact that has divided trade
associations and wine drinkers, vintners and researchers. Monika
Christmann, a lecturer and winemaking expert with the OIV, or
"Organisation internationale de la vigne et du vin," sits at her desk
in the Hessian town of Geisenheim and smiles knowingly. The OIV is the
body that normally makes the rules and sets limits on how wine is made.
But ever since the US withdrew from the OIV and American vintners
stopped adhering to its rules, individual state treaties have become
necessary.


NEWSLETTER
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der
Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In-Box
everyday.





The EU and the US initially agreed on a few temporary conditions, such
as allowing the Americans to use oak chips but banning the use of the
spinning cone column. But now Washington wants a more permanent
agreement. A draft has been initialed by the European Commission and
will come up for approval by the European Council of Ministers in late
November.

The material Monika Christmann is kneading in her fingers looks like
something out of a child's toy chest, or perhaps a breakfast cereal.
Oak chips. They're added to wine to make it taste like vanilla or
chocolate, as if it had been stored for a long time in an oak cask, or
barrique. It's a practice that winemakers have been using abroad for
years.

Christmann has nothing bad to say about California, though many in her
industry are behaving as if it were the source of all evil. Christmann,
who spent two years working as a laboratory director for one of the
major wine producers in Sonoma County, says she has tasted "wonderful
wines" there. In fact, she and her viticulture students recently
returned from California, where they tasted the region's heavy, fruity
wines and took a look at techniques that are still banned here in
Germany. For now, at least. But that hasn't stopped the Geisenheim
Institute from trying them out. Tests with oak chips have been underway
for years and even spinning cone columns have been tested. Is this the
future of wine-making? Does it have to be?

Europeans are afraid

Christmann smiles. "I know the Europeans are afraid," she says. The
Europeans think of the old days, when vast quantities of Riesling from
vineyards along the Rhine River were shipped to England. Christie's
began auctioning off bottles of Rhine Riesling in 1767, and German wine
was 19th-century monarch Queen Victoria's favorite. It used to be more
expensive than Bordeaux. Once upon a time, that is.

Now, the harvest workers are out in the research institute's vineyards
-- picking the grapes that will be pressed, fermented, taken apart,
studied and tested. How will they react to certain yeast cultures?
Which enzyme works the best?

Monika Christmann is no dreamer. She's energetic, in her mid-40s and
open to new ideas. The topic of her dissertation? "Changes in
Ingredients, with Special Consideration of Wine Aromas during the
De-Alcoholization of Wines using Combined Dialysis Vacuum
Distillation." In other words: Does non-alcoholic wine taste like wine?
Not really.


DPA
Germans wonder if tradition is worth saving in a globalized wine
market.

At one point she mentions her "bleeding heart" when it comes to these
oak chips. "I do like barrique," she says, but research is also
important. Research, she believes, means progress, and not sticking
with the status quo.

The Geisenheim facility is Germany's leading wine research institute,
and Christmann has the difficult task of making sure that German wine
can survive in the face of globalization. As she puts it, it's
important to "change things. And vintners happen to be especially
resistant to change."

But some are not, and have even opted to make far-reaching changes --
to their wineries and their wine. Vintner Arjen Pen, at his Chteau
Richelieu winery in France's Bordelais region, is an example of one of
these progressive winemakers.

"It's astonishingly dark," says Pen, introspectively, standing on an
oak cask and pulling a glass tube from a bunghole, mustering the
contents.

A crisis in Bordeaux

Pen, a blonde, 35-year-old Dutchman, climbs down from his cask and
fills glasses with Chteau Richelieu's Cuvée La Favorite 2004. It's
been in the barrique for eleven months now, and it's fruity, dense and
already incredibly drinkable. This isn't the kind of Bordeaux we know
from the past. "Very nice," Pen says. He's clearly pleased, tasting and
swallowing the wine, and smiling as he says, "it's going in the right
direction."

He says that no one in the village was aware that Chteau Richelieu
was for sale, this winery with its imposing 16th-century country house
that Cardinal Richelieu, the Duke of Fronsac, had renovated in the 17th
century for himself and, as legend has it, his favorite mistress. An
industry consultant told him that the chteau was available, and that
its then owners, burned by the economic crisis in the Bordeaux, could
no longer afford to maintain the estate.

The Chteau has 10 hectares (about 25 acres), mostly in Cabernet Franc
and Merlot -- not one of France's huge estates, but one with potential.
It is part of Fronsac, on appellation on the right bank of the Dordogne
River, a small tributary of the famous St. Emilion.

It's a good name, Chteau Richelieu, and a good brand.

Pen, now managing director of the company he founded, WECM, or "Wine
Estate Capital Management," had three months to find investors. He
succeeded and he is now one of 20 partners in Chteau Richelieu -- not
a small change from his previous job as director of marketing at
Lufthansa. Now he has made the bold assumption that there's money to be
made in wine -- in the middle of a Bordeaux wine crisis.





DDP
The quality of the grapes used to be decisive for the quality of wine.
Soon, it could be the quality of the additives.
In the press, it's called "Chteau Misère." The market for the top
Bordeaux, once a sure investment, has evaporated. Even the plain AOC
from Bordeaux, more costly than red wines from Chile, Australia and
Argentina and often not even worth the money, has lost its reputation.
The 6 percent return Pen has promised his investors seems a bit
overconfident given such a trend.

Pen shows off his vineyards and a crumbling building with high windows
and ledges he is having renovated. He talks about the life he left
behind as head of marketing at Lufthansa and Crossair. Back then, he
says, most of his dealings with wine had to do with passengers'
complaints in first class.

He helped developed the Swiss brand when Crossair acquired what was
left of Swissair. He left when a new boss and he conflicted over the
direction the company should take. He decided to start a new life and
began looking for a way to finance it.

Pen founded WECM and pursued the idea that wine is a unique product --
one that can appeal to more than just hard drinkers and investors
looking to make a buck. Pen believes that wine also appeals to a
special type of person, someone who can spend evenings discussing the
grassy bouquet of a Sauvignon, or the question of whether a critic's
statement that a particular wine tastes like a "well-ridden saddle"
should be taken as a compliment.

The market wants fruity wines

These are the kinds of investors Pen needed, and he found them.
Attorneys, notaries, chemists -- the kinds of shareholders who aren't
looking to turn a quick profit. His investors take their 6 percent
returns in the form of about 150 bottles of La Favorite and the right
to spend a three-week vacation at the Chteau. But Pen still has to
make money, and he knows more about marketing than wine.

Knowledge can be bought, and Pen gets his from his wine consultant,
Stéphane Derenoncourt, who helps Pen's young cellar master throughout
the year. Derenoncourt knows the technology and the taste that's in
demand. He also knows Robert Parker, the wine critic America and half
the world listens to. Parker loves a fruity, sweet and heavy wine.
Derenoncourt knows this, and he also knows when Parker happens to be
visiting the Bordeaux region, and takes the opportunity to bring the
wine critique some samples of his clients' wines. Parker gave a 2003 La
Favorite 88 to 90 points and he praised this "fleshy" wine and its
"wonderful texture, sweetness and seductiveness" -- not bad. "The fact
that he even reviewed the wine," says Pen, "even that's a success."

The market wants fruity wines. The market wants brands that are easy to
remember, wants myths and the kinds of stories that turn into myths.

And Arjen Pen has a good story. He has Cardinal Richelieu -- the cinema
star who fought with the Three Muskateers. The next day, Pen sits in
the offices of a graphic design firm in Libourne, reviewing a graphic
that depicts three swords. The company is designing his new labels, one
for his top-selling cuvee, "La Favorite," one for his "Chteau
Richelieu," and one for his third wine, dubbed "Trois Musketeers." Pen
came up with the bilingual name for his US customers -- it sounds a
little French and yet not completely foreign. On the back label, he'll
write that this wine harbors the kind of tension that existed between
the Musketeers and the Cardinal.


AP
Harvesting the grapes in France.

A graphic designer in the next room draws a mockup for a Chteau label
-- a design that incorporates finely drawn lines and a garishly-colored
parrot. It's the kind of label that's in demand these days. People want
brands they can remember. The director of the design firm stands in the
background, looks at these modern labels, and sighs. Les jeunes --
young people -- no longer appreciate complicated phrases like "Premier
Grand Cru Classé." All they want in their wines is "sucré, sucré."
He shrugs his shoulders. What can one do? It's globalization.

Ecstatic Californians

"The French," says Rudolf Nickenig darkly, sipping a 2003 Silvaner from
the traditional Bocksbeutelflasche (wide, rounded bottle containing
Franconian wine), "are soft-boiled. And the Californians are ecstatic."

We are sitting in the "Haus des Frankenweins" (House of Franconian
Wine) in the central German city of Würzburg. Rudolf Nickenig, General
Secretary of the German Winegrowers' Association, is talking about the
trade agreement between Europe and America.

The French, with their export problems, couldn't agree to disagree, and
so they finally agreed that a less-than-perfect pact is better than no
trade agreement at all. The Germans were deeply opposed to the draft
agreement. But that isn't likely to do them much good.

Under the agreement, European winemakers will be permitted to use the
same tactics that are allowed under US law -- adding tannins and water,
using the spinning cone -- and export the resulting product. Rudolf
Nickenig, a lobbyist experienced in dealing with the EU, worries that
the EU ministers will approve the agreement in late November.

Once the agreement is ratified, Europe will have to deal with the World
Trade Organization, which will demand that whatever concessions are
made to one member must be made to everyone else -- that is,
wine-producing countries like Chile, South Africa, Argentina.

And then? "The pressure will increase," says Nickenig, a worried look
on his face, and the assembled German officials nod pensively. "They'll
say: What about us?"

They do their market research and they know their numbers -- and they
know the consumers. They want brand-name wine from big producers --
producers like German firm Racke, Foster's from Australia and the
Constellation Brands from the US.

One in four bottles for less than €1

They pay an average of €2.60 for a liter of wine, but they want the
fine taste of barrique -- the flavor wine gets from being aged in
barrels. They prefer shopping at discount stores, and for one out of
four bottles of wine they spends less than €1.

Experts predict that 2005 could be the first year in which Europe
imports more wine than it exports. So what should European producers
do? Conform or resist?

Germany's research institutions are already busy coming up with new
ways to improve wine. They're studying the use of genetically modified
lactic acid bacteria in biological acid reduction, or genetically
modified yeasts that haven't been used yet because producers aren't
sure how consumers would react if they knew that they were being used.



AP
Most wine drinkers prefer cheap libation to expensive quality.
Some enzymes are allowed and some haven't been approved yet. There are
enzymes that enhance a wine's aroma -- Cassis, for example, can be used
in Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Other enzymes can reduce
tannic acid content. But that's prohibited. There are those who feel it
shouldn't be. Should winemakers be permitted to produce wine to order?
Should wine be predictable? Should a Chardonnay taste almost exactly
the same, whether it comes from New Zealand, California, Australia or
South Africa?

The industry could also take the opposite approach. Winemakers could
come up with new labels, labels that identify a wine as having been
made without oak chips, without added sugar, without added water, or
without any of these components having been removed from the wine.

Rudolf Nickenig considers the idea, but shakes his head. No. Oak chips,
he says, may soon be allowed. Adding sugars is already permitted with
inexpensive German wines. And who knows what other taboos winemakers
will want to see eliminated.

Vintage losing importance

It's still late summer outside, the harvest is in full swing, and the
assembled luminaries of the Franconian winemaking industry have nothing
but praise for the 2005 vintage being picked right now. A perfect year,
they say, just the right amount of sun, just enough rain.

Perhaps all of that will soon become less important. Once the
technology and laws are in place, a 2006 vintage will taste like a 2007
or a 2008, and winemakers will never have to worry again about whether
it rains too much or too little.

The Riesling grapes that go into Winninger Röttgen will likely have to
be picked before November after all. September was too warm, causing
the grapes to mature too quickly. Will they ferment properly this year?

Of course, says Reinhard Löwenstein, one could take the easy approach
and simply buy cultivated yeasts. They're available for every type of
wine, for every flavor, but he swears by his wild, temperamental
yeasts. In return, he gets what's called spontaneous fermentation,
sometimes a bit too spontaneous.

These are old ideas, old ideas that Löwenstein has resurrected to
combat the forces of globalization.

When he and his wife, Cornelia, returned to his native village to
develop the Heymann-Löwenstein winery, the locals were leery of his
old-fashioned and yet newfangled ideas. After all, wasn't Löwenstein
the kid who had once fled the village because his father had wanted
him, his eldest son, to leave school and learn the wine trade?

He was a left-leaning radical, and he ended up in Paris, where he
worked for an organization that helped refugees from Chile's torture
chambers, and where he became a member of the French Communist Party.
He eventually got a degree in agriculture, perhaps hoping to work in
Cuba or Afghanistan, but ultimately, in the early 1980s, returned to
winemaking and to his native village, bringing his wife along.

When Löwenstein and his wife launched the business, local housewives
were warned not to work for "the Communist" during harvest season.

Porsches in China, wine in the Mosel

>From his days in Paris, Löwenstein brought along clever words and
ideas that reach beyond his vineyards overlooking the Mosel River. At
first he would write flowery speeches to his customers,
politically-tinted speeches peppered with the esoteric language of Karl
Marx and Pablo Neruda. But his days as a political activist also taught
Löwenstein how to handle committees. He infiltrated Germany's
exclusive Association of Prädikat Wine Estates (VDP), where he
campaigned for regulations clearly defining top-quality wines and
prohibiting the practice of concentrating must in making these wines.
And he made sure that terroir was on everyone's mind.

Not everyone in the industry is pleased to hear his name. He's the
Johnny-come-lately, a know-it-all who, despite everything, has managed
to be successful. He has garnered praise and won awards. This year, his
2002 "Winninger Uhlen Laubach Riesling Erste Lage" was honored in
France as the "Foreign Wine of the Year."

The French award has given Löwenstein new momentum for his campaign
against globalization. Germany, he says, will be unable to compete in
the mass-market wine industry. German producers will lose out against
the huge operations in Australia and California, against producers in
low-wage countries like Chile and South Africa. Romania and Bulgaria
will join the fray, and so will China. The Chinese are already
expanding their vineyards, buying up winemaking technology in Europe
and expertise in Australia. And everyone knows that the Chinese are
fast learners.

He stands in his wine cellar, a 51-year-old with a moustache, wearing
jeans and the glasses of an academic, listening to the bubbling of his
yeasts. His theory? Germany's only chance is to produce something
that's unique, that no one else can master. A Porsche can be made in
China, but not a terrace-grown Mosel wine.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is unfortunate that globablization leads to a homogenization of
product- most producers want to produce something that will appeal to
the widest range of consumers, which means that they make something
that tastes like everything else on the market.

That's why I make my own wine- I know what I like, and it's not the
standard stuff in the liquor store. "Everyone" seems to love
chardonnay- a grape that I cannot stand; I prefer a wine so rich, sweet
and fruity that it would put Herr Lowenstein into cardiac arrest.

Cheers,