Circle of Wine Writers

Current Circle Update

The current issue of Circle Update, Sept-Oct 2008, contains the following:

CWW Trip to Cognac – Tuesday 23rd to Thursday 25th September

Introduction: John Radford

Detailed reports on the various visits were volunteered by members, for which see below, but as a general overview the trip was a great success, and a triumph of organisation by Janet Burns of Accent Communications. If only the individual visits had been so well organised, but this is something we are working on with the trip guidelines which had not, of course, been formulated when this trip was originally conceived. Many thanks to Timo, Caspar and Roshna for their detailed reports, and indeed to the Cognac houses for their generous gifts and hospitality. On a personal level the trip, as well as providinng some wonderful tasting opportunities, restored my faith in the ’big brands’ after seeing the meticulous selection and blending work that goes into them. It was also, as always, a great pleasure to meet and travel with other members of the Circle. My own reflections on the trip generally are on my blog at www.johnradford.com.

•••

(In September Robert Joseph was the guest speaker of the Wine Communicators of Australia and gave the annual lecture. Update is grateful to Robert for permission to republish.)

Robert Joseph

Wine – how much more than just a drink?

An exercise in the heretical.

The speech began with a video clip of an elephant on a trampoline, which can be seen online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK27aknWVI4. For those who are reading this in bed or on the loo, or somewhere else that is not conveniently close to their computer, the clip was produced by a Frenchman in order to show off his computerised skills at creating three-dimensional video images. It credibly depicts an elephant strolling into a gym, mounting a trampoline and happily bouncing in the air and turning head over heels.

I wanted to share this little clip with you, partly because I think it’s really rather wonderful and it never fails to raise my spirits. But also to illustrate a point. I imagine that everyone in this room has realised that a real-life Dumbo wasn’t genuinely turning those somersaults. But I’ll bet that somewhere within each of us there’s a wish that all that trampoline action really did happen. And much of what I’m going to talk about today is the gap between wishing and reality. Much of it will sound like heresy, and some of it may sound downright irrelevant. Especially when I take in subjects like coffee, the rationality of oral sex among US teenagers and sales of cheesy classical music and a couple of the biggest but most widely believed lies in western civilisation.

But before we head off on this magical mystery tour, I suppose I ought to say a few words about myself. Most of you, if you know me at all, know me as a wine writer, founder of the International Wine Challenge and occasional judge at wine shows in Australia , ranging from the Adelaide Hills to the Tri Nations, which I chaired in Sydney last week. All of this is true, but I should also reveal that three years ago, I effectively gave up consumer wine writing. Since then, I have become editor at large of the trade magazine Meininger’s Wine Business International, working alongside your colleague Felicity Carter, analysing the ins and outs and the who’s doing what to whoms of the wine world. And I have also been walking on the wilder side, producing, branding and trying to sell a few wines of my own. I am stating this, partly as a declaration of interest, and partly as an additional justification for standing in front of you and pontificating.

In fact, I now feel rather like someone who, after a lengthy career writing academic books about sex, finds that he’s taken on a part-time job in a brothel. Which, I guess takes me back to the ins and outs of the wine world.

•••

Andrew Jefford

Everything you always wanted to know about the Champagne area revisions but were afraid to ask

Champagne intends to expand its growing area. Here’s the nitty-gritty, based on a recent visit.

Is this a new idea?

No; they’ve been fussing over boundaries for a century. Remember that Champagne has just one AOC, and that it lies in the far north of the European wine world. The result is an intricate pattern of thousands of small parcels spread over a very wide area between the southern Ardennes and northern Burgundy : soil, slope and exposition all have to be perfect if you’re going to coax grapes to bare ripeness up here. Thousands of small parcels mean thousands of potential arguments.

How does it all work?

Champagne has two zones. One, rarely mapped, is the broad zone d’élaboration: the zone within which Champagne can be made (and within which other wines can’t). By contrast, when you see the usual map of Champagne , covered with little splodges and looking like an accident with a can of paint (http://www.champagne.fr/files/pdf-fr/vignoble-carte.pdf), this is the zone de production: the vineyard area. If you want to grow grapes to make into Champagne , this can only be done in the zone de production, so when we talk about ‘the expansion of the growing area’, this is what we mean.

To read these articles in their entirety, plus all the usual sections – members' news, books, other news, your diary, etc – get Circle Update Sept-Oct 2008.

Subscriptions

e-Circle Update, the Circle's newsletter, has been published since April 1991, and is now in electronic format. To subscribe to e-Circle Update, please contact Andrea Warren, CWW Administrator, at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it. The cost of an annual subscription is £60 for five issues a year – February/March; April/May; June/July; September/October and November/December. Special deals on our membership list and e-Circle Update are also available.

Website guidelines Privacy Administrator Site by Orpheus Software