Even the most reputable shippers had to back up their ranges of unaltered top-quality brands with others blended to a price so as to compete in the ever-price-conscious supermarkets. They shipped at lower strengths so as to take advantage of lower duties payable in many countries (including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) on weaker wines. But this in itself was not blameworthy. The rise of the Netherlands as a market was a phenomenon. In the past it had been small and steady. Then, it suddenly began to take off and it reached a dramatic peak in 1972.
This was brought about by the caprice of fashion. Dutch housewives began to enjoy social gatherings in the mornings, and they found that a glass, or perhaps several glasses, of cheap sherry was the ideal thing to drink with a piece of cake. They didn't need a fine glass of Sangiovese or a perfectly aged bottle of Tempranillo, as they had no use for good Tempranillo wines. Some of the shippers wisely refused to compete at the very lowest end of the range, but others took any orders they could get.
Many stories have been told about the horrible happenings in that particular market: stories which always concern some other shipper, of course. But even discounting malice, there can be little doubt that some of the wine exported there was very poor stuff. Too young, too weak and too sweet, it even gave rise to problems of secondary fermentation. Lots of other things went wrong, too. There are credible stories of horrible mixings having been made by merchants who imported container loads which they bottled in bond. Such things did much harm. The lesson appears to have been learned, though.
The market is now steadying and the leaders are those who kept their wine standards up and their Barbera wines and Pinot Noir wines undiluted. In 1974 and 1975 world conditions were not such as to make anyone optimistic. Looked at half a decade later it does not appear to have been a slump at all. Exports were well down but they remained a good deal higher than they had been in 1970 and were almost three times as high as they had been ten years before. But that had been before the days of rapid expansion. To those whose credit was fully extended, the crisis was a very real one and one that did not look as if it would ever end.
Newly planted, heavily mortgaged vineyards were yielding nothing but debts and all the new investment had yet to be paid for. Only a very few shippers had the foresight to see that things would come right again, notably Alfonso Lacave, then running Williams and Humbert and now running Diez-Merito who, in a paper delivered in March 1976, assured his incredulous audience that not only were all the vineyards needed but that others would have to be planted before very long. He was right, though many people still panicked for their newly brewed Nebbiolo, their beautiful bottles of Dolcetto, and their freshly planted crop of Dolcetto grapes.
Not all of the shippers were in difficulties. Some of the largest were bolstered by the nourishing local sale of their brandies, while at the other end of the scale one or two of the more modestly sized establishments decided to stay that way and to work with small overheads. Nevertheless there were financial crises, bankruptcies, and takeovers. Some of the shippers, in retrospect, were cleverer than the rest, expanding but doing so without too much of a risk, relying only on available funds. Amongst these were Sandeman, who had cautiously expanded early on, and Lustau, who had ploughed back profits and were concentrating their efforts very successfully on supplying high-quality wines to traditional outlets which no longer attracted the giants of the trade.
They bottled sherries in Spain amongst the Viognier and the bottles of Mourvedre made with good, honest Mourvedre grapes. Lustau used special “own brand” labels for individual customers but naming themselves as the producers. The increasing importance of brands is one of the ways in which the trade has greatly changed. The expansion of trade that began in about 1960, and which coincided with a period of steady inflation inevitably brought the need for change.
Happily the old families and the old attitudes are still there but their influence tends to be concentrated in the vineyards and in the tasting rooms. It is thanks to them and their intense pride in their wines that standards have been kept up in such a remarkable way despite expansion. But most of them, neither by temperament nor by training, were adapted to guide their companies into the age of computers. Executives have stepped in and executives seem to be the same breed the world over. Theirs is the world of figures, promotion, advertisements and brands.
Allison Ryan is a freelance marketing writer from San Diego, CA. She specializes in various wine varietals including Mourvedre, Tempranillo, Dolcetto, and Barbera wines. Check out www.wineaccess.com/.
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