Guilty or not guilty. Happily, that is neither the question nor the answer for the Grand Jury Europen (GJE). As it sips, swirls and spits its way through the evidence presented by more than 150 anonymous vinous witnesses, it may well consider cases of assault, breach of contract, deception, extortion, fraud, negligence, price-rigging and treason, as well as mitigating circumstances such as crimes passionnels and diminished responsibility. But its decisions will not be rendered in a stark one- or two-word verdict. Rather, they will take the form of a summary, with charts and graphs and scores out of 100. As such, some will find them harder to accept than others.
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The Argento Wine Company (AWC) has appointed Amelia Nolan as its general manager.
A graduate of the University of Adelaide and Roseworthy College, Nolan joins Argento from Constellation Europe, where she worked in marketing and sales for the Cellar Door division. She has also been brand manager for Hardy's.
AWC MD Dan Jago said: I am delighted that we have got someone of such a high calibre on board - this is just what the Argentine category needs. With Amelia's leading brand experience and international outlook, we are very positive about Argento's future.'
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The picture emerging from Britain's high streets is of a mixed Christmas and New Year. While some companies are reporting better-than-expected like-for-like sales compared with 2004, others have issued profits warnings, and there are fears that business in the first few days of the New Year have been very slow. Majestic Wine, however, did better than most by increasing its like-for-like sales by 5.2% in the nine weeks from 1 November to 2 January.
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Oeneo - the French-owned closure company formerly known as Sabat - has opened a plant capable of mass-producing Diam, the world's only taint-free' cork-based closure.
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Paul Hobbs, the consultant winemaker best known for developing Argentinian Malbec for the likes of Nicolas Catena, has warned that Argentina is in danger of concentrating too much of its effort on the Malbec grape variety.
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When Warren Adamson was starting as an apprentice in worsted spinning at Feltex Yarns in New Zealand, Fernando Ferr was graduating from the Universidad Catlica Argentina with a business administration degree.
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While demand has been stronger than some traders expected in the UK, Europe and the Far East, it has been feeble in the US: the weakness of the dollar, the high prices paid for the 2003s, and the less-than-enthusiastic reports of influential reviewers such as Robert Parker and Wine Spectator have shrunk the market there. Some US shippers have even been declining their allocations of first growths.
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Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting
Date: Tuesday 20 September 2005
Venue: Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground, London NW8
Time: 10am-5.30pm
The Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting will take place on Tuesday 20 September at the Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground. Approximately 70 producers have registered to participate, and a separate, themed tasting will look at Malbec and More', for which exhibitors have been asked to submit wines that retail at 5.99 and above. For further information, please contact Tina Coady: call or fax 01480 384 806, or e-mail t.coady@ntlworld.com
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On a balmy evening last March, at the tail end of the Chilean summer, a group of local vineyard workers from the Colchagua Valley gathered on the terrace of Franois and Jacques Lurton's house in Lolol to enact a song-and-dance dramatisation of the local grape harvest. Soulful and entertaining, this involved a slightly gawky but winsome teenager in a fetching cowboy hat plucking' the grapes from a busty matriarch, doing double duty as a vine', as she sang about the trials and tribulations of the harvest, as well as the challenges facing the itinerant grape pickers.
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How did you end up running a hotel in the middle of Devon?
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Chic Knightsbridge restaurant Zuma has added two bottles of the rare 1961 vintage Cheval Blanc to its wine list, following demand from customers who have seen it featured in the film Sideways, in which two friends take a road trip through California wine country.
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Argentina is looking to grab at least 6% of the total wine market by 2020, according to Roberto Luca, president of Wines of Argentina (WoA).
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The last of the Bordeaux estates have released their prices for the 2004 en primeur campaign, two months after its start.
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Robin Fedden, travelling in Syria and Lebanon at the end of the Second World War, offers this advice to thirsty travellers in his travel book Syria and Lebanon: Quite good wine is made in certain parts of the Lebanon, particularly in the Bk'aa [sic] Valley, in the neighbourhood of Chtaura. It is relatively cheap. On the other hand, most of the wine in the out-of-the-way villages is hardly recognisable as such, and is best avoided.'
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Vincent Labeyrie, Wine buyer, Le Cercle, London. Interview: Josie Butchart
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Though the headline figure for the global surplus looks likely to decline for the third year in succession, the problem of over-supply continues to threaten the existence of wine producers of all kinds all over the world. In his latest update, Neil Beckett assesses the size, colour and increasing quality of the world wine lake
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Uruguay produces wine on a much smaller scale than its larger neighbours in South America. But as Christian Davis discovers, it is fighting bravely to make itself heard
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The Falklands, football, Evita, tango, gauchos... Everyone knows something about Argentina, but how many people know about its wines? Many more soon will, if Wines of Argentina's latest campaign is successful. Christian Davis reports
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Europeans often fall into the trap of thinking that Southern Hemisphere summers are as consistent as ours are fickle. But the 2002 vintage confounded that notion, with Australia experiencing its coldest-ever summer in some areas, and the south of Chile one of its wettest. Harpers reviews the mixed harvest in key New World countries
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In 2000, the big news for Argentina in the UK was the establishment of a new generic office. A year on, market share has not increased greatly and the country remains in the shadow of its neighbour over the Andes. Charlotte Hey asks the trade what Argentina should do now
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