D.O. Catalunya blog contest

The Denominació de Origen Catalunya is launching a blog contest for the best Catalan wine blog. The contest is open to all non-corporate wine-focused blogs written in either Spanish or Catalan with a top prize of 3000 euros.

Entries can be made until 12 September and the winner will be announced on 23 September at the 28th Presentation of Catalan Wines and Cavas in Barcelona.

Women winemakers: Bodega J. Miquel Jané

In May I had written about the National Womens Wine Competition and the overall white winner from Spain. Recently I heard from another awardee from this competition, Bernadetta Miquel, of Catalan winery J. Miquel Jané. This winery won a double gold best of class medal for their Blanc de Blancs 2006.

Bernadette handles multiple roles: managing director of the family winery, succeeding her father José Miquel, the current president; head enologist, wife and mother of two young children. Bernadetta and J. Miquel Janés Export Director Ana Efford were excited about the NWW Competition as an opportunity to gain recognition in the US and as a reflection of the increasing visibility women are gaining in a such a traditional industry as wine making.

Congratulations on the award to Bernadette and her team. Here's hoping it leads to more inroads in the US and other markets.

Spanish wine export data: doubtful figures for cava sales to Italy undermines credibility

In their most recent press release, the Spanish Wine Federation (FEV in Spanish) released glowing numbers for Spanish wine exports for the first quarter 2008. The data, based on figures declared to Spanish customs, showed that the value of wine exports rose by roughly 16% in value and volume terms (454 million Euros on 411 million liters).

However, as had happened last year, the sales data of Cava to Italy is blatantly unbelievable. The total Euro amount of wines and cava alledged to have been shipped to Italy in 1Q 2008 had increased by 511% to 42 million euros. Of this 31 million was supposedly spent on Cava with the volume indicated at 684,000 liters or roughly 100,000 cases. At these numbers the export price per bottle would be over 25 euros. Subtracting this result would put the value of Spanish exports up by on ly 6% for the period. Requests to the FEV to clarify this data have gone without response.

Aside from this, Germany retook top value destintation on 81 million Euros, followed by the UK (56 m€) and the demand in Russia seems to have eased significantly (down 26% in volume) with France as the largest volume market for Spanish wines to 82 million liters (86% of this in bulk wine).

Special offering: summer course in Barcelona

Next month, my company, Manfatta, will be offering a course for non-native English speakers on wine: technical vocabulary, descriptive terms, presentations and explanations. The course is geared toward professionals in the wine sector seeking to expand and polish their abilities to promote and sell their wines to English-speaking audiences.

The subject material will focus on:

• Characteristics of grape varieties: species, varieties, clones, etc.
• Vineyard management techniques and factors affecting cultivation, vine diseases and treatments.
• Structure and composition of wines
• Harvesting techniques
• Grape processing
• Maceration, fermentation, vinification and blending
• Techniques for stabilization, tartrate removal, bottling and labeling
• Sparkling wine production
• Wine marketing and wine business issues

Cost: 260 Eur.

For more information, please write to Manfatta reception.

Talking about Debatdevi

At the presentation for the upcoming wine promotion project Debatdevi, I was asked to give some comments on the need for wineries to craft messages that are not cliches and also the importance of listening to the voices of the consumers. Excerpts in Spanish on the Debatdevi YouTube channel.

Debatdevi: support for local wine consumption in Catalunya

Yesterday, the Catalan Institute of Wine and Vine (INCAVI) with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development of Catalunya launched Debatdevi, an inciative to support Catalan wines in Catalunya.

Debatdevi will be carried out on two levels: the first will be five independent publicly held debates from July through October. The five planned debates will explore the issues of quality, wine and terroir, promotion, changing consumers and commercial strategy. The second level will be the creation of an online exchange among the speakers of the five debates. Once a critical mass of interaction has been created, the on-line forum will be opened up to the general public for their participation. In addition there will be other materials made available via YouTube, Slideshare and Facebook. It should be an interesting experiment that generates more ideas for supporting consumption of local wines.

I will be panelist on the first debate to be held on July 1st, titled: New consumers, New habits.

Indigenous grapes of Catalunya and the quest for individuality

In the continuing quest of winemakers to make wines that are distinctive from all the rest, bodegas here in Catalunya have been making greater efforts to restore indigenous grape varieties to commercial use. The thinking is that if the raw material is unique, the greater chance that the wine produced will have a distinctive originality, too.

Two of the leading local grapes are white grapes and are mainstays of Cava: Parellada and Xarel·lo, with over 8,000 hectares of vines in the region.

The next most plentiful grape is the red grape Trepat, which has been the tradition source for rosado cavas, but is used for red wine production, most notably in the Conca de Barbera D.O.

Also gaining attention is Picapoll, a white grape grown in the Pla de Bages D.O.

Other local varieties include Garnacha peluda (hairy Garnacha, so named for the texture on the underside of its leaves), Garnacha Roja, Samsó, Mandó.

For more than a decade, Bodega Torres has been gathering some 62 varities of local grapes. They have so far been unable to identify eighteen of these varieties, not even using DNA testing. According to Mireia Torres, Technical Director of the winery, four of these unidentified grapes show promise for commercial use, however more testing will be needed before they can be used. However, Torres has been able to recover the Garró variety, which now makes up 5% of the blend for one of their leading wines, the Gran Muralles from Conca de Barbera.

The Catalan Institute for Wine and Vine (INCAVI) is currently working with wineries to further develop clonal stocks of Picapoll, Trapat, Garnacha Roja and Xarel·lo.