February 2012 - click here
March 2012 - click here

By Christina Pickard www.decanter.com

The continuing success of Prosecco is good for Champagne, Lanson managing director Paul Beavis has said.
Prosecco’s sales were up by nearly 50% in 2011, the Champagne Category Report for 2011, launched by Lanson International last week, found.
Such success was good for all sparkling wines, Paul Beavis, managing director of Lanson International, told Decanter.com. ‘I think it proves its point as an introducer to the sparkling category. Prosecco’s done a good job in terms of value.’

The report, which used research from analysts Neilson and CGA Strategy, comes shortly after the news that Champagne’s 2011 exports were up by 5.1%, most of which increase came from countries like the US, China, Russia, and India, where sales were up a massive 58%, from 0.18m in 2010 to 0.29m in 2011.
The UK, Champagne’s largest export market, experienced a decline in volume of 2.7% to 34.5m bottles in 2011.
The second biggest export market is the US, which saw shipments of Champagne rise by 14% in 2011 to 19.4 million bottles.
However, despite this decline, Champagne has increased in value by 4.3%, due in part to last summer’s royal wedding driving up sales. The hope is that the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics will mean a similar increase.

In other sparkling categories, while Cava sales in 2011 stayed about the same, Prosecco soared to nearly £90m, a 47.9% growth rate.
Although Champagne sales in retail outlets like high street chains and supermarkets grew only minutely, the on-trade showed most growth.
Despite the closure of 2.6% of Britain’s on-trade outlets, most notably nightclubs and hotels, and a 14% decrease in volume, Champagne sales in this sector grew by 8% to £327m.
Lanson also announced the results of consumer research which found Champagne is now being purchased more frequently than just for special occasions, and that 69% of those surveyed admitted that brand combined with price deal was the most important factor in their buying choices.

On the state of the market in the UK, Beavis said, ‘Champagne has been remarkably resilient through the global downturn…the thirst for Champagne will always be there.’

by Adam Lechmere www.decanter.com

Lovers of Brunello di Montalcino would benefit if the appellation were to be split into subzones – but it's politically highly unlikely, Italian experts argue in this month’s Decanter.

Kerin O’Keefe and Ian D’Agata say in the April issue of Decanter magazine that ‘Montalcino’s varied subzones’ should be officially recognised. The terroir varies significantly across the 2000ha of the Montalcino appellation, O’Keefe says.

‘Summertime temperatures can vary by as much as 7C between Montalcino’s northern and southern extremes’, and altitudes can range from just above sea level to 500m.
Many producers recognise that Sangiovese - the only permitted grape in Brunello di Montalcino and Rosso di Montalcino - cannot grow equally well in so many different terroirs, hence moves to allow international blends in Rosso, the region’s 'second' wine.

But any attempt to introduce different quality levels via subzones is doomed to failure. ‘With all the commercial interests in Montalcino, it’s probably too late,’ O’Keefe writes. And she is backed up by Ian D’Agata. Writing on the same pages, the critic and journalist argues that Brunello is in danger of losing its character.

‘I believe it is impossible to make truly great wine from such a large area,’ he says, going on to argue that it is necessary to zone the region in order that the terroirs most suited to Sangiovese are allowed to stand out.

The problem in Montalcino is that it was allowed to expand ‘without taking into account that great Sangiovese cannot be made just anywhere.’

Montalcino and Chianti are two areas of the world in which ‘Sangiovese reaches qualitative heights unattainable, and unimaginable, elsewhere.’ To lose that, D’Agata says, would be ‘beyond stupid’.

Article from www.decanter.com

Giuseppe Quintarelli, the man recognised as the father of Amarone, has died aged 84.

Quintarelli: 'uncompromising' [Image: vinoalvino.org]

Quintarelli's death was confirmed by his grandson Francesco Grigoli, who said he had Parkinson’s disease.

Tributes have been pouring in on social media for a winemaker described as ‘maestro’ whose ‘stunning Amarones were legendary’, and who was respected as an uncompromising perfectionist.

Giuseppe Quintarelli was born in 1927, in Negrar in the Veneto, the heart of Valpolicella. His father Silvio had been making wine since before the First World War, cultivating vines with his family under a sharecropping system, and managing to buy his own land after the war.

Giuseppe took over the estate in 1950, and started a programme of gradual improvement and expansion. Today the 12ha of vineyards stretches along the eastern side of the Negrar valley, the grapes brought in and vinified in the estate cellars located on the peak of the Cà Paletta hill in Cerè di Negrar.

As well as its renowned Amarone della Valpolicella Classico and Amarone Riserva, the esate produces a Valpolicella Classico and a Recioto della Valpolicella, and a handful of IGT wines - a Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Corvina blend called Primo Fiore, Rosso del Bepi, Alzero, Amabile del Cerè, and a dry white, Bianco Secco, from a rare local variety called Saorin.

In many ways Quintarelli was one of the most traditional of the Amarone producers, ageing his wine for seven years in Slavonian oak 'bottis', hand drawing – and hand-glueing – all his labels. It was part of the Quintarelli legend that every bottle could be slightly different, even of the same wine in the same vintage. This was regarded as proof of true artisanality.

As many point out, however, Quintarelli may have been traditional but he was not afraid of innovation. In 1985 he introduced new grape varieties such As Nebbiolo, Croatina, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon. Bianco Secco was one of the first dry white wines in Valpolicella.

Italian critic and blogger Franco Ziliani, on his blog Vinoalvino, said that after the death of Guilio Gambelli at the beginning of the month, this was turning into ‘a cruel January, with another serious loss to the world of Italian wine…Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Quintarelli was ‘the true soul of Amarone della Valpolicella.’

Others paid tribute to his uncompromising nature and his ability to craft wines that were ‘light years away from commodity wines,’ as Ziliani said.

Polish blogger Wojciech Bońkowski wrote, ‘Quintarelli was uncompromising as a person and as a winemaker. Although firmly of the Old School, he did allow new things to be introduced, he grew some Cabernet and Merlot in the vineyards and even used small oak barriques in Alzero, his stunning reinterpretation of Amarone.’

David Gleave MW, managing director of Liberty Wines, toldDecanter.com, ‘The most amazing thing about him was the fact that about 20 years ago he passed on the business but found the quality of the wines dropped, so in his 70s he took over and started making the wine again.’

Many tried to copy the wines, which were ‘traditional but without defects,’ Gleave said. ‘They were not in the modern style but it’s important to have that diversity.’

Giuseppe Quintarelli leaves his wife and three daughters, the eldest of whom, Fiorenza, supervises the winery. Her son Francesco Grigoli runs day-to-day operations along with veteran cantiniere Luca Fedrigo.