How serious and widespread is wine fraud? Should it concern ordinary wine drinkers, or those of us who sell to them?
I can’t say that I or anyone really has an answer to the first question, but something came up this week that made me think hard about the second.
Jim Budd hosts a wine blog called Jim’s Loire here: http://jimsloire.
On Feb 8 Budd wrote: Despite a record rainfall in October Domaine des Baumard has declared nearly 80 hectolitres of ‘Quarts de Chaume’ in 2012. This has been achieved by picking unripe grapes between 15th and 28th October and boosting their sugar content to the level required by the appellation rules through cryoextraction or cryoselection as Florent and Jean Baumard prefer to call it. This industrially created wine might qualify as a Vin de France but certainly should not be passed off as Quarts de Chaume, one of France’s greatest sweet wine appellations.
Cryoextraction (freezing grapes before pressing to concentrate sugars) is not itself illegal for Quarts de Chaume [it’s pronounced kar’d shome], but in order to qualify for the appellation designation grapes must come out of the vineyard with ripeness equal to a minimum of 18.5 degrees of potential alcohol. Budd claims that in visits he made to the Baumard vineyards in September, several of weeks before harvest, he saw vines overladen with fruit (the legal limit is 1.7 kilograms per vine) and that much of said fruit was at a level of ripeness that would only be suitable to make dry, sparkling wine. Conditions in October were in no way conducive, Budd says, to bringing those grapes to 18.5 degrees of potential alcohol. It’s his contention that Baumard is picking unripe grapes, putting them through cryoextraction as a means of achieve the necessary sugar levels and making his Quarts de Chaume with this material: essentially, making a kind of ice wine. Budd’s accusation is that Baumard’s are thus not entitled to be called Quarts de Chaume. It is fraud.
I bring this up because it’s worth remembering that it takes more to qualify for an appellation designation than properly LOCATED vineyards. The Cahier des Charges (I’ve mentioned this before: it’s the entire text that governs how an AOC French wine must be produced) lays out all the requirements including how much juice can be taken from a single hectare, how many kilos of grapes each vine can bear, how the vinification may proceed – it goes on and on.
Particularly disturbing have been the comments left by readers on the Jim’s Loire blog. Several say that they like to drink Baumard wines and they don’t really care how they’re made.
You won’t look far to find winemakers who feel constrained by appellation rules. Over the years many have decided to surrender their right to call their their product Chianti, for example, in favor of a simple vino di tavola designation which gives them more flexibility in how the wine is made and from what materials. You’ll also find winemakers and wine writers who deny that AOC rules make anyone’s wines better simply by adhering to them. But for a winemaker to flaunt the rules in this way seems to me a very serious accusation indeed and one that, if true (the Baumards have expressed indignation but so far have not presented evidence that would refute Budd’s claims), should give all of us reason to be very uncomfortable, even embarrassed — and a tiny bit less certain that what we represent a wine to be to a guest is actually the case.
You can read Budd’s post & comments and see his photos here .
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If your head is spinning a bit from all that, take a breather and remember that wine doesn’t have to be so very complicated. John Wurdeman is an American who came to the country of Georgia to research traditional music and stayed on to make traditional wine. Here’s a video guaranteed to lower your heart rate and restore you faith in honest winemaking. You’ll also learn what it is for a wine “to be without a mother.” http://goo.gl/rdlPd
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I thought I would pass along a reminder that everyone on the staff is free to access the Jancis Robinson site with user name stephen.meuse@gmail.com and password lilliput. There’s a lot there and its fun to browse.
-stephen