Dr Vino's wine blog

Why don’t green-minded vintners and vignerons always display their eco-friendly methods on the label?

I’ve often asked why and replies generally come in the form of the producer’s desire to have the wine liked for the quality as opposed to the methodology per se. Or, where organic in spirit, a common reply has been a dislike for administrative costs of filing and/or wanting to maintain the flexibility to spray if necessary.

An academic paper presents findings that may not lead to more eco-labeling: Certifying a winery as organic or Biodynamic will raise the price of wine 13 percent but putting that on the label will see the price fall by 20 percent.

Magali Delmas and Laura Grant, of UCLA and UCSB respectively, examined 13,400 California wines from an eight-year period ending in 2005 to reach their conclusions, which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Business & Society. It’s certainly possible to quibble with their data: only 28 of the all-California wineries were certified and only 16 of the wines in the data set received the eco-labeling. The wines were expensive (about $37 a bottle) and the quality bump, as measured by WS scores, was slight (less than one point) as well as low, scoring less than 84.

They explain the premium for certification largely as the good will recognition akin to club membership. It would be interesting if they could explore quality further as I think that could be more convincing than the social effect in explaining the premium.

To explain the discount for labeling, they cite various winemakers who say that “organic” remains a stigma in the eyes of consumers. Such a comment seems oddly disconnected with the current era of Whole Foods and local and sustainable foods; younger consumers don’t see it as a stigma, I’d venture to say.

Part of the reason for the discount, they argue, is consumer confusion over the various labels and certifications, particularly since so few wines qualify for the organic standard, thus only qualifying for the looser “made from organically grown grapes” standard. They also show that consumers have little knowledge of Biodynamics with only 17 percent of respondents in a previous study being familiar with the term and only eight percent having tried a Biodynamic wine. (Of the respondents who were unfamiliar with the term, the single largest response as to what it meant was that it was genetically engineered or modified.)

What do you think–why is there an apparent discount for eco-labeling as opposed to eco-certification?

Delmas, M. and Grant, L. Forthcoming. “Eco-labeling Strategies and Price-Premium: The Wine Industry Puzzle.” Business and Society. (pdf)

I got a few wines from Astor Wine & Spirits in Greenwich Village via UPS the other day. When I opened the box, there was no Styrofoam. There weren’t any cardboard inserts. Instead, each bottle was wrapped in an inflatable plastic sleeve. It was the first time I’d seen this.

Styrofoam is popular with retailers and wineries shipping wine because it cradles and insulates the bottles. While it is ultralight, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the shipment, it essentially never biodegrades. I always try to bring my Styro shippers back to a store so that they can be used again before their life taking up space in a landfill. One store, Grapes the Wine Company, actually includes a pre-paid label so consumers can return the empty box back to the store via Fedex for reuse and a store credit. Corrugated cardboard inserts are recyclable but they are quite heavy, increasing the carbon footprint. Pulp inserts are light and biodegradable.

The plastic sleeves that Astor uses, branded as Air-Paq, are both light and recyclable (though they are resin code 7, which many municipalities don’t recycle). Their staff inserts the bottles in the sleeve, then use a gizmo to inject the air and seal the sleeve (you can see a scintillating demo video here).

Reached via email, Andrew Fisher, owner of Astor, pointed out that it is much more space-efficient in their shipping area than Styrofoam, since there is just a plastic roll and a compressor. He elaborated, “Since Astor produces its own electricity and recaptures the waste heat to provide heating and cooling for our space, it seemed both incongruous and inconsistent to cling to Styrofoam shipping materials.”

Each bottle rests in an independent sleeve from the others so it can also be separated and used again for your wine travel needs. Or, if you have two boys like us, they each can put them on a hand and have a sword fight!

Related: “Poll: Styrofoam or cardboard for your wine shipping?“

Jason Haas went to Sacramento thinking thin. He came away disappointed.

Although it’s known for belt-tightening of a different kind, Sacramento is not known as a weight-loss destination. In fact, Haas, the general manager at Tablas Creek Vineyards in Paso Robles was attending an enormous wine trade show. He recounts on his blog how set out to find a lighter bottle for his top wine, Esprit de Beaucastel, a red blend that retails for about $50. But, in the end, he wasn’t happy:

It became clear that the bottle manufacturers have been taken by surprise with wineries’ desires for lighter bottles. Most of the lightest bottles that they make still are intended for the lowest-end wines. They look cheap. What we’re looking for is a bottle that looks like a top-end bottle, but weighs half as much. And, somewhat to our surprise, those bottles just don’t exist yet.

Read more…

Dave Pearce crunches carbon numbers for breakfast. The kiwi winemaker at Grove Mill winery has studied the carbon footprint of wine, reduced what emissions he can at his winery, and purchased offsets for the rest.

We sat down over a macchiato in NYC one morning and discussed his views on alternative packaging. Although he recognizes the weight of glass and its role in the overall carbon footprint, his own wines still come in glass bottles. His thoughts, in brief: Read more…

BLOWN: box wine
After news of an implosion yesterday, today we bring you an explosion for all your demolition needs. (Via @upgradetravel)

SIPPED: Jancis, rocked
A German sommelier who goes by the nom de internet of Finkus Bripp drops by Jancis Robinson’s house to interview her. No exploding microwaves, sadly, but worth a look nonetheless. [Wine on the Rocks]

SIPPED: slim bottles
The wine bottle makes good on its resolution to lose weight: Tesco introduces an ultralight glass bottle that weighs just 300g, or, significantly less than normal bottles. That means more wine shipped around the world, and less packaging. Take a look at the bottle over on wineanorak.com.

SIPPED: more freedom of shipping
A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Massachusetts law could not offer free shipping to in-state wineries over 30,000 gallons a year while preventing out-of-state wineries from shipping. Wineries producing more than the 12,618 case limit rejoiced at the ruling–as did free trading consumers. [AP]

SIPPED: the “new normal”
What’s in store for the wine biz? “Slow growth, lower prices and younger fans who are drinking more at home than at fancy restaurants.” [Wines & Vines]

SIPPED and SPIT: new wineries
The number of new wineries in the USA increased by six percent, according to Wine Business Monthly. Although this is up, the growth slowed to from 15 and 10 percent in 2006 and 2007, respectively. It was the same growth rate as last year. Related question: does the US need six percent more wineries?

SIPPED: Discussion
Randy and Kaz, the hosts of WineBizRadio invited me on last week to talk about my post about wine samples at the Wine Advocate.

SIPPED: user feedback
[Yellow Tail], the ubiquitous Australian wine, wants your help! The producer has decided to open the naming of their new, unoaked Chardonnay up to readers. The contest may have risks as this article points out, the crowd sourcing initiative for naming the new blend of Vegemite and cream cheese (really, why ruin good cream cheese?) drew 48,000 entries, but the winner drew “near universal” condemnation. The [Yellow Tail] contest comes with a prize–[Yellow Tail]! Make your name suggestions in the comments here (sorry no, prize).

SIPPED: place names
Chateau Montelena and other wineries in Calistoga will soon be able to put Calistoga on the label. After a protracted struggle over whether wineries with Calistoga in the name would have to use exclusively Calistoga fruit, federal authorities granted AVA status to the area in the north of Napa. Wineries with Calistoga in the name have three years to begin using grapes from Calistoga. [SF Chronicle]

SIPPED: lightening up
When you have a collection of 450,000 bottles, is it time to lighten up? If you’re the owners of the Tour d’Argent restaurant in Paris, the answer is yes to the tune of 18,000 bottles, including some 18th century cognac and Corton from 1895. The auction today and tomorrow is estimated fetch about $2 million, which will aid the restaurant’s bottom line as it feels the tourist slowdown. Apparently, during the occupation, the owners built a fake wall in the cellar to prevent the Nazis from finding some 20,000 bottles. NYT, Telegraph]

SIPPED: Craggy Range
I participated in a kiwi Pinot showdown over at Forbes.com Tower. Eric Arnold has the story.

SIPPED: Green certification
A national certification program on various environmental factors have been launched for Australian wine. Quotage from Stephen Strachan from the Winemakers Federation: “The retailers more and more are requiring the companies that are selling to them to be able to come to them with certain proof in terms of their environmental credentials.” [ABC, WFA]

Are some in the wine trade exploiting consumers’ willingness for environmentally friendly products when the practices don’t measure up to more than a pile of manure? Consider an example.

In late summer, The Moment blog at nytimes.com wrote a paean to lambrusco, the purple fizzy wine from Emilia-Romagna. The author had high praise for one in particular: “a rustic biodynamic beauty from Cantina Ceci, whose mild, deep fizz buoys its brooding purple embrace.” At least one New York City retailer also calls the $16 wine Biodynamic, a process of grape growing (and, to a lesser extent, winemaking) that goes beyond organic to synchronize some winemaking practices with the lunar cycle. Several other commentators have called it Biodynamic as well.

While the wine may be tasty, according to correspondence with Demeter Italy, the certifying authority in Italy, none of Cantine Ceci’s wine has ever been certified Biodynamic .

In the case of the Ceci lambrusco, it has the packaging of an artisanal product with twine around the neck and closure. Each bottle comes with a small booklet explaining the phases of the moon and how harvesting occurs while the moon is a mere crescent, as happens both when it waxes and wanes. The wine is called “La Luna,” meaning “the moon.” It does not appear on the producer’s web site.

In correspondence about La Luna, the wine’s importer to the US, Rosalie Sendelbach, said that the wine:

use to be Certified biodynamic until 2007, certification is based on testing each year and also costs quite a bit. its is also some what political. They are considered biodynamic and but did not certified this year. Minimum sulfite is used according to each vintage year and natural sulfite present in the wine during fermentation.

Demeter Italy said, in response to an email query, that no wine has been certified from Cantine Ceci. Three emails over a period of weeks to the winemaker Alessandro Ceci seeking comment about grape growing and winemaking practices at the cantine have gone without reply. Nor has the importer replied to a further request for comment about the response from Demeter Italy.

The wines from Cantine Ceci have received praise from Gambero Rosso Italian Wines and the Italian Sommeliers’ Duemila Vini: both list the Ceci estate and its many wines and consider it important, but there is no mention of organic or biodynamic production.

Jamie Wolff, a partner of Chambers Street Wines in Manhattan, a retailer that specializes in organic and natural wines, says “we do find more and more ‘green’ wines that make us raise our eyebrows.” He continued, “it’s important to get to know the people and visit so you get to know their intentions.” Chambers Street sells the “La Luna” lambrusco, which Wolff said was popular. They do not market the wine as Biodynamic.

Tom Maresca, a longtime observer of the Italian wine trade, had this to say when queried about the situation:

Italians by and large love Americans: they think we are warm and friendly. Unfortunately, some also believe that we are absolutely stupid about wine, and those people really think they can sell us anything. So this could well be a reputable company dealing with the American market as it believes it must be dealt with, and consequently seeing no harm in a little imaginative embroidery. Or it could be more consciously larcenous than that. Or, finally, it could be exactly what it says it is. I’m afraid I can’t really tell.

So what is a consumer to do? The shopper in a wine store can’t independently verify the provenance of every bottle she picks up. There needs to be some truth in marketing, but who can verify the claims? Independent agencies who extract fees? Government regulators? Wine shop owners? Critics? Bloggers?

Incidentally, I inquired with another Italian winery recently about their organic program in the vineyards. By return email within an hour, I had–without even asking–a copy of their certificate in my inbox. Three cheers for transparency. Read more…

Does a wine from a box taste any different from the same wine in a bottle?

I recently led a tasting and we were able to put this question to the test. I poured the Domaine Grand Veneur, Cotes du Rhone, reserve, 2007 from a bottle (retail: $14) and a three-liter box ($45) and served them blind in two glasses. (search for this wine)

The assembled group couldn’t really discern one from the other. While everyone agreed that the wine was a good value, some people preferred one over the other but the reasoning was all over the map. Although this sounds like a non-finding, it is interesting that neither format outpaced the other even though one format is decidedly less expensive per ounce/glass.

I look forward to trying this experiment again but it is difficult to find the exact same wine packaged in two different formats. Domaine des Estezargues, Cotes du Rhone 2007 and apparently there’s one from Washington State; hit the comments if you’ve done a tasting like this or know of other wines in both formats for our further experimentation.

In a piece entitled, “Eat Local; Drink European,” Eric Asimov of the NYT tackles the apparent paradox at the core of some San Francisco restaurants: while the menus extol fresh local produce, the wine lists are often dominated by wines from Europe.

Why? One wine director, Chris Deegan of the restaurant Nopa, says “I find myself drinking European wines most of the time and pairing European wines more successfully with the food.” Mark Ellenbogen, wine director of a top Vietnamese restaurant, says, ““At Slanted Door, you need low-alcohol, high acid wines with residual sugar, and they don’t come from the New World.”

Asimov continues the topic of the unwieldy pairings many American wines make with food over on The Pour. He writes, “the riper and riper styles of wine that have become popular in this country simply are not versatile with food, so restaurants look elsewhere.” He also notes some exceptions that he has found.

Wine style aside, I crunched some numbers for the piece based on my previous research on the carbon footprint of wine. Even though container shipping offers greater efficiency from a greenhouse gas perspective than trucking, a 9,500 mile sea journey still comes out higher than a 60 mile truck trip.

By way of an offset reminiscent of our bottle-for-bottle challenge, several restaurants in the Bay Area have discontinued serving water bottled in the Alps and now serve local, tap water, still or sparkling. And you can even try this at home.