Drilling a little further on the recent themes of consumer tastes and trend-driven production, I thought it would be interesting to look at the case of falanghina grapes from Italy. The varietals are some of the oldest in Italian history and formed the base of major Roman winemaking, but fell out of favor for most of the 20th century amid critiques that they produced flat, uninteresting and otherwise mediocre wine. Nowadays, there's been a resurgence in interest in cultivating the grapes (primarily in Campania) as advances on both the vineyard and winery ends have begun to "tease out" some of the floral/citrus notes that previously lay dormant. Falanghina is by no means challenging any of the established whites, but there may be potential here to follow the much-documented success of rose. You could argue that the rise of rose is due in no small part to the increasing pairing of wine with casual meals, the preference of consumers for simpler, less complex vintages and the emergence of a consumption-focused market (given that rose generally ages poorly). Once those trends take root in an appreciable segment of the market, the previous stigma attached to bringing a bottle of rose to a social event is nullified--or even arguably reversed these days. Similarly, if falanghina is representative of a class of "easily drinkable" wines that are characterized by relatively little complexity, a mid-tier price point but an appellation (Italy) that connotes at least a base level of quality, one could imagine a campaign that carves a space out for it as a "casual white" (much as rose has become the "picnic wine").
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/dining/wine-review-falanghina.html; http://www.italiantribune.com/the-resurgence-of-falanghina/)
Jeff
I think one thing your post highlights is just how many different varietals there are in the wine world and how few of them we recognize or drink on a regular basis. I was amazed when I traveled in Portugal this summer how few grape varietals I recognized among the ones I was drinking on a regular basis there. Some more Alicante Bouschet, anyone?
ReplyDeleteTo see this visually, check out this wine grape varietal table http://www.delongwine.com/products/wine-grape-varietal-table.
I can only recognize ~35 of the red grape varietal. Think about all the untapped opportunity there is in the wine world to make unique wines out of unknown grape varietals in known or unknown wine regions! Falanghina might be just the start!
That has to be one of the coolest things I've seen this quarter! Reminds me of how new elements are being discovered/synthesized all the time (I think four were just filled into the periodic table this year). I think one of the areas we didn't cover in our China presentation that could be interesting is hybridization of grapes--both within Vitis vinifera and labrusca, and inter-species. A quick search tells me there are some varietals such as the "Rondo" being experimented on for viticulture but it could be an interesting opportunity for a capital-blessed emerging market like China to explore.
DeleteJeff