Table Of ContentANOTHER VERY GOOD YEAR – TO LEARN ABOUT WINE
BY
HERALD VAN DER LINDE AND MICHAEL GILMORE
Copyright 2013 Herald van der Linde and Michael Gilmore - Smashwords
Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment, and we sincerely hope you
do enjoy it enough to recommend to your friends. Or maybe buy one for them. It
should be available for less than the price of a nice glass of wine.
We appreciate that. Cheers.
Introduction
The Flying Dutchman and the Mad Englishman have known each other for more
than 15 years. During that time the Flying Dutchman has learnt a lot about wine
recently learning a diploma from WSET (kind of a CFA for wine, and the entry-
level qualification for becoming a Master of Wine - for which the only financial
industry equivalent must be having a multi-billion dollar fund named after you!).
He now spends some of his spare time teaching wine to sommeliers and other
wine experts for Berry Bros in Hong Kong.
During that same time, the Mad Englishman has drunk a lot of beer and
developed a bit of a belly in the process. These emails are how the Flying
Dutchman attempts to teach the Mad Englishman a little appreciation as he
switches from beer to Bordeaux in the hope that his belly will disappear.
In 2012 they published this collection of their emails:
www.amazon.com/Very-Good-Year-Learn-ebook/dp/B00AE5QGPO
In 2013, they had "Another Very Good Year"...
Table of Contents
Friday Wine: What should we expect in 2013?
Prices - And How (Not) To Taste Wine Like An Amateur
Good Investments... And Other Dubious C.L.A.I.M.s?
Going Long On Languedoc - or so we CLAIM
A Sweet Finish To Bonus Season
For All Tomorrow's Parties!
Tucker's "Massive Mid-Section" & Other Questions
Synthetic Friday Wine: No, really...
The Girl From Brazil & Argentine Purity
Two Strategists - And Many More Strategies - For Port
Serving First-Growth Bordeaux With Spam!
What do I do Herald? What do I do?
The Rhone Way To Organise A Wine Tasting
To Live The English, N'Est-Ce Pas?
Not Just Any Port In A Storm
No Intoxication Without Taxation!
Drinking To The Arab Spring. And Spiders.
The Best Of British!!!
Out Of This World!
Is this all wine stuff complete and utter....?
The King Of Fruit(y)
Friday "Last of the Summer" Wine: A Mixed Case Or A Barrel
Canada Sweet or Canada Dry?
An Inconvenient Truth
A Three Year Vintage? Maybe In Scotland...
Not Exactly Angels
Shall We Go Dutch On The Gin Instead?
Back To Bargain Hunting
Running Between Barolo and Barbaresco
More Than 2 Hours Could Be Risky For Older Vintages
Friday Wine, Sake and Cake
A Perfect Wine For Breakfast? Or Perfect Tongue-twister?
Friday Wine And Cheese Party: No pineapple or wife-swapping though
Send Me A Blank Cheque For The Hospice
Not A Very Good Year... Or Is It?
What To Buy For Christmas - Six Of The Best (Tips)
Bonus Chapter! Does Myanmar (Wine) Need To Open Up More?
Another Very Good Year-End Quiz
A Selection of Chapters/Emails from last year's…
Friday Wine: What should we expect in 2013?
Hi Herald,
Well, 2012 was truly "A Very Good Year - To Learn About Wine" (particularly
on amazon.com), but other than non-stop shameless plugs for your book, what
else can we expect in 2013?
Cheers, Michael
- 0 -
Thanks Michael,
And speaking of shameless, did I tell you that I got an email yesterday from
Amazon suggesting that I might like to buy "A Very Good Year" - but it quoted
you as the sole author!!! I know that salespeople like to take the credit for work
that analysts and strategists do (and even wine-tasters), but I'm impressed that
you managed to get amazon to join in to!
Anyway, I can't expect that to change - and so maybe I should go back to my
day-job of writing about what markets will bring us in the year ahead... but this
time about wine.
The global world of wine is under pressure. Demand in the major economies is
weak and weather is bad. For brokers, margins are under pressure and volumes
have fallen. I read somewhere that a wine broker in the UK had said 2012 was
the worst year in the last 30. But wine supply appears to consolidate faster than
demand.
Here are my trends: 1. Wine prices will rise. Prices are so low, especially at the
supermarket level, that some producers cannot afford to do business. This is why
supply is consolidating. Persuading consumers to pay more for good wine is
essential. However, at the high end of the market, I believe some prices will rise
too as buying power returns from the larger emerging markets. China is key
here. But even in unlikely markets such as Indonesia there is a growing trend of
drinking wine, as witnessed by the numerous wine bars in Jakarta.
2. At the high end of the market, Burgundy outstripped Bordeaux prices in 2012.
This will continue. Burgundy is much more fragmented and is smaller (quantity
wise) thus a wide divergence between these prices is not unreasonable to expect.
This is driven by demand from emerging markets, and assumes that that we will
see a further diversification of this demand (mostly from China) into Super
Tuscans and Barolo in 2013.
3. At the end of last year, it emerged that Robert Parker has sold a majority
shareholding in his magazine, the Wine Advocate. This presumably implies he is
stepping back from wine criticism. His dominance will start to wane and new
critics of wine, many of them online, will come to the fore. Hey, maybe it's the
two of us!
4. A growing interest in “new” wine regions and grapes. Some UK retailers are
leading this trend by selling wines from Turkey, Greece, Georgia, South Africa
and, yes, the UK. All offer wonderful and largely unknown flavors. Jancis
Robinson, another influential wine critic, just co-authored a book called
“Grapes” in which the writers go in detail into the 1000 or so grapes. There is
more beyond Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
And 5. I predict that you will get better at tasting wine... Or at least try!
Cheers - and keep keeping off the beers - Herald
- 0 -
Thanks Herald,
Actually, one of my New Year resolutions is to get better at tasting wine... so I
am working on it. I'll send you my first one next week. Maybe that's why Robert
Parker is retiring - he's scared of the competition!
Cheers, Michael
- 0 -
Prices - And How (Not) To Taste Wine Like An
Amateur
Hi Michael,
Last week we looked at general trends in wine, and this week I want to look at
price trends - but it's not an easy subject. The wine market is unregulated and
murky. Prices differ by country, by retailer and also can differ within a store,
depending for example on how the wines have been stored.
For general trends, it's best to look at Liv-Ex. This is a wine exchange used by
all major wine traders globally. I believe that they connect to 420 members
across 35 countries to both check prices and to trade. On this Liv-ex exchange,
trades take place according to a standard contract with the same terms for
payment, delivery and the condition of the wine to make wine prices
comparable.
Another good thing is that it's on Bloomberg:
* LIVX100 Index gives you the price index for the 100 most sought after wines
around the globe, mostly Bordeaux but also Burgundy, Champagne and Italian
wines are included.
* LXFW50 Index gives you a top 50 fine wine index. Mostly Bordeaux and only
of the last 10 vintages.
Looking at this shows a couple of things.
First of all, wine prices have come down since mid-2011 but are still some 20%
above the previous trough seen in 2009, when a financial crisis hit the wine
industry.
Another trend is that Burgundy wines have (price-wise) done much better than
Bordeaux. While prices for Bordeaux have fallen by some 25% since mid 2011,
Burgundy prices are up some 10%. At a prominent annual Burgundy auction
(Hospices de Beaune), the average price of red wines at this wine auction rose
by 69% over last year, while those of the whites rose by 18%.
It seems that this divergence is driven by a broadening of Chinese demand. They
first went for top end Bordeaux, now for top end Burgundy and in the last
months the prices for Super Tuscan wines from Italy have shown some
resilience, presumably because this could be the next wine they are looking for.
Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Solaia were all the rage in the late 90s and maybe the
Chinese will create another boom in these Tuscan wines.
But what if you need to get a reasonable estimate for the price of an individual
wine? In that case, I suggest you use www.wine-searcher.com. Type in the wine
and country and ‘voila!’, it shows the price for the bottle at different associated
merchants. A very useful way to find wines, and it makes sure you don’t pay too
much for them.
So, how did your first attempt at "tasting" go? Wasn't that your homework?
Cheers - and keep tasting - Herald
- 0 -
Hi Herald,
Ok, you asked for it...
Chateau de Sainte Gemme, 2000. Bought in Enoteca, basement of Takashimaya,
Singapore. Don't remember how much. Not a great start, I admit.
It's a Bordeaux, Haut Medoc, and 50/50 blend of Merlot and Cabernet
Sauvignon, which I would think was a high degree of Merlot if I knew what I
was talking about, which as we both know, I don't.
I decanted it, as I thought this might help, and then tried some straight away,
which would seem to defeat the purpose of decanting, but couldn't wait. Ok, I
did actually pause to look at the colour, and it wasn't particularly dark, even in
the middle. And was definitely moving towards orange (is that what you mean
by "garnet"?) towards the edge. I am colour blind for red/orange/brown so I have
no idea if that colour even exists...
I thought I might be having a bit of a "Herald moment", though, as I could
immediately smell licorice, and rich tobacco, maybe even something tar-like.
Not road tar though, or cigarette tar. More like the coal-tar soap they used to
give to the kids with flaky skin. (Do kids at school today still get flaky skin, or
was that just a 70s thing?).
Ok, enough looking at it and sniffing it and thinking about it. Tasting time. I
have to say the first go was under-whelming. Not as much going on in the mouth
as in the nose, and not the same thing either, more watery than you'd expect. It
was light, I suppose, not at all what you'd expect, but it wasn't exactly vivacious.
It reminded me of being young and going to a friend's house and being given a
glass of Ribena by their mum, but she's obviously a health-freak and she hasn't
put enough Ribena in it, and you're thinking, "It looks like Ribena, but it doesn't
taste like it. Is it because your kid's got flaky skin?"
Mrs G didn't like it at all. Said not her thing and left the room, saying she'd see if
it "opens up" later... You see, Herald, even she's been reading the emails. An
hour in the decanter, though, and Mrs G is accusing me of changing the wine
over.
It's warmer and more heady. The beginning, middle and end are far far more
intensely fruity, almost as if you've sneaked back into your flaky-skinned
friend's kitchen, and poured five times the amount of Ribena into the glass. The
aroma is much fruitier now too, and I'd like to think I was picking up red fruit,
but I don't know... I may have been influenced by the colour of the wine.
It's now got a much more rounded finish too. Not a hint of over-dilution, but
almost over-ripe. Plenty of tannin too, which is a good thing, as the next glass is
going to have to wait until I've burnt some Argentinian grass-fed steaks...
Oh, whatever the steak was just too damned good! Practically hoovered it and
forgot all about the wine-tasting!
I'm not very good at this am I?
I need a more rigorous system to help me with my tasting attempt. I mean, at the
end of this exercise, looking at it, sniffing it, tasting it, thinking about it, I still
don't even really know if I (in quote marks so big I decided to actually write
them out like this) "like" the wine when I've finished, let alone know if it was
worth what I paid for it, however much that was.
So, fully fed, and most of a bottle of wine to the good, I decided I would embark
on creating my own wine-tasting system. What does it need?
1) I want it to be comparable to price. Starting with an end goal in sight, I want
to have PE for wine. What's the point in having a system that doesn't compare to
the pricing? Some wines cost 100x more than others, so why not have rankings
that reflect that? It has to be points and the points have to have a wide spread.
2) The points should be a "compilation". Who the hell can say, with accuracy,
that a 92 wine is better than a 93? Surely better instead to have separate "bits"
that add up to 100... Again, to compare to PE, the E of the EPS isn't something
that analysts just think up on the spot (well, most don't): it's the compilation of
many other factors.
3) And those bits should, to a certain degree, be process driven or automatic. Or
as close to objective as you can be. And some should be entirely subjective. So
that helps.
Anyway Herald - my homework for next week is to draw up a system that helps
me do ratings... I'll let you know how I get on.
