Hail! Let sanity prevail

While many of us basked in a remarkably settled, warm spell of something that in olden days was called summer, spare a thought for our vine growing friends on the continent.

Gale force winds, thunder, lightning and most damaging, hail have been unleashed on a number of French wine growing regions with alarming consequences. Last Friday's hail storm in Bordeaux are alleged to have destroyed 20000 hectares of vines - that's potentially 12 million cases lost. Now, whether that loss of wine will have any real effect on the end consumer is doubtful as competition is such that others will take its place. However, what it does do is clearly illustrate how perilous the position is of many vine growers around the world and, critically, how little attention is given to this by those involved in the supply chain.

We know competition is tough but when those who risk their livelihoods on an annual basis can barely make ends meet in a good year, there is something wrong.

Perhaps we need to accept that (try telling a French vinegrower this) many areas of the world need to grub up their less good vines in order to put a floor under the price of the better fruit? Of course, many regions have already gone some way down this road but will it be enough?

I'm not sure it will be until we efficiently differentiate the industrially, reliable, consistently produced but ultimately mediocre wine from something with a little heart and soul. Many people, even in the trade, talk about wine in the same breath as beers and spirits and expect wine to be able to do the same consistent job for them - taste ok and make margin. We need to be able to deliver for them but we also need to make a clear distinction between the wine that can be produced year in year out, consistently yielding and with stable pricing and the wine that is produced in areas where climate is a more variable factor.

In the mind of the consumer, this needs to be very clear. To straddle my hobby horse once again, one of the clearest ways of doing this is through packaging. Lets welcome the growing trend in the on-trade of selling wines by the glass from bag in box, lets encourage the retail sector to do the same. Lets not do what the Swedes do and confuse the message by putting very high quality in bag in box but make it a clear differentiator between the consistent and palatable and the artisan and the exquisite.

Give the consumer a real, understandable retail ladder to climb and we might be surprised just how high they are prepared to climb.