Melon from Oregon? Now that’s a wine that could qualify for Wine Blogging Wednesday 47, whose theme is “Brought to You by the Letter S”. ‘Cause it’s oh, so Surprising.

But no, I have another idea for WBW 47 that I will be posting later today, and for which the letter S is a much clearer sponsor.

Still. Melon de l’Oregon? Really?

Melon or Melon de Bourgogne is the default grape from which the refreshing Muscadets of the Western Loire Valley are produced. It became popular in the 17th Century, near Nantes, because it easily produced lots of rather neutral wine that Dutch distillers loved to use for their various hard-drinking products. Which is why Muscadet has a long tradition as a very light, refreshing drink. Many producers have brought their wines to another level, emphasizing the wine’s mineral character and floral character.

Which is also what small Oregon producer La Bête, mostly well-known for some well-rounded pinot noirs, has done with a very limited production (50 cases!) of Melon from a single vineyard in Yamhill County

Not unlike Muscadets, La Bête’s 2003 Melon displays a bright mineral, flinty character, along with lemon zest and floral aromas and flavors. It also shows some slight pastry notes, which in all likelihood comes from having been aged for a time on its lees, a process that develops similar flavors in champagne and cavas, among others.

But the wine also displays a roundness and weight that come from aging, surely, but also from the wine’s style and ripeness. Jon and Kay Kusy-Eliassen, who work in an approach that is not so far from biodynamic principles, also make an Aligoté that I find scrumptious and delightful, and that doesn’t scream for a good dose of cassis to become palatable as a kir, as many of Burgundy’s aligotés do. It’s much riper and well-rounded, and as surprising as the Melon. And if you haven’t tried the reds, like the solid gamay and the luscious pinots, you really, really should.

I was invited for a second time by CJAD host Sharman Yarnell to do a wine-related bit on her Saturday-morging show called Showtime. And since our little chat was to air soon after Canada Day (and Quebec City’s 400th anniversary, by the way), she thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the state of Canadian wines today - and also, at the state of Canadian wine availability in Quebec.

One great question she asked me was if Canadian wines can provide all the styles of wines you would want. I said yes, and after thinking about it, after taping the interview a few days ago, I’m even more convinced.

One of the wines I mentioned from the outset was Osoyoos Larose’s Le Grand Vin, a solid Bordeaux-style blend (merlot, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot) produced in the Okanagan Valley, whose 2004 vintage sells for just above 40 dollars at SAQ. It’s one great examples of the big, structured wines that can come out of the BC vineyards, and that are able to compete with similar wines from around the world.

In a completely different style, Le Clos Jordanne is producing some of the most subtle chardonnay and pinot noir in the Niagara valley. The vineyards are still young, but the wines already show great promise, with beautiful, light-colored pinots that could pass for great Burgundy, and mineral, lively chardonnay reminiscent of chablis.

Heck, you can even find some chardonnay at Vignoble Les Pervenches, in Farnham, on of the best vineyards in Quebec. Light-bodied, of course (climate change hasn’t turned us into California yet), but well-defined and tasting of actual chardonnay. And the reds from this organically-managed vineyards, like the delightful Solinou, made from quite a blend of grapes (Frontenac, maréchal foch, baco noir, seyval noir and zweigelt), are also something to watch for, a sign that Quebec vineyards are coming into their own.

While wine lovers from the rest of Canada must absolutely come to Quebec to taste these emerging wines, Quebecers are still only getting a small taste of the vast, fast-growing Canadian production. At SAQ, only a handful of producers from Ontario and BC are represented on a regular basis, like Inniskillin and Château des Charmes (look for the always solid St Davids Bench series), Colio Estates, Henry of Pelham, Peninsula Ridge (really beautiful, refined wines), Mission Hill or Cave Spring (whose rieslings I’ve always particularly liked). The latest edition of the Canadian Wine Annual includes nearly 400 wineries. So we’ve got some ways to go yet.

Just watch out for the Cellared in Canada wines that have seeped into SAQ shelves, over the last year. The Esprit line from Jackson-Triggs, for instance: when you buy a bottle, you are contributing to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the success of Canadian athletes, but you’re not buying Canadian wine, and you’re not contributing to the success of Canadian vintners and vineyard owners. And that is too bad.

A few months ago, I wrote about the great system that Erin and Michelle at Grape-Juice.ca use for rating wines. Great fun at all levels, and a well-needed dose of laid-back unpretentiousness for the wine blogging world.

It is a spirit they are now bringing to the Wine Blogging Wednesdays, as they get ready to host the 47th edition of the monthly online rendez-vous. Their theme, in a really fun nod to Sesame Street, is Brought to You by the Letter S. Which means that you can put anything you want into it, as long as there is some connection to the letter : sangiovese, sauvignon blanc, Savennières, sweet, Strewn Vineyards, sherry, single vineyard, sémillon… That’s just off the top of my head.

The tasting is scheduled for July 9 – it’s a Wednesday, in case you’re wondering. I learned about it through Dr Debs, from Good Wine Under 20$, who hosted WBW 47, and I’m relaying the news because the official site of the Wine Blogging Wednesdays remains inactive since early May. I’m still wondering what’s going on there, and I hope things will get back to normal as soon as possible : after four years of tastings, the WBW has great momentum, with over 60 participants in May, and it would be a shame if that was to dissipate. Anybody has an answer – better yet, a solution?

Just a quick word to share a site I’ve been reading with great interest over the last couple of weeks. It’s called The Wine Economist, and it’s written by Michael Veseth, a professor of International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound - which is obviously near one of the West Coast’s most interesting wine regions.

The blog is full of interesting articles about how the various roads that wine takes from the vine to your glass. Recently, he’s talked about the effects of the exchange rate on the price of wine in the United States and on the domestic market for American wines, and about a series of trades, buyouts and acquisitions by wine giants such as Constellation, The Wine Group, Ascentia and Fosters.

It’s insightful, well-researched and original in that it offers a point of view too rarely seen as we discuss the aromas of green pepper and grapefruit in sauvignon blancs or which bottle of 2005 Bordeaux we’re getting en primeur.

Why do wines tend to taste one way or the other? It may, in part, have to do with what The Wine Economist is discussing. It’s a worthwhile read, in any case.

Decanter magazine made quite a bold statement this week - and a bit of a marketing move for their August issue. “Screwcaps are best: Decanter Verdict“, says the title, as if the pronouncement was the definite word on the issue.

Many of the big guns are on deck to affirm the position. Steven Spurrier calls the Stelvin screw cap enclosure “one of the best things to have happened to wine in my lifetime”.

Yet if you keep reading, there is a big if that pops up further down in Adam Lechmere’s article:

Decanter may champion screwcap even for many robust reds, but on the subject of ageing wines, the jury is still out.

Anyhow, just reading the host of sometimes harsh and fiery comments (like the one from Neil Larson, winemaker at Tahbilk, an Australian winery I particularly like) that have been posted in reaction to that news bit shows that the debate is very, very far from over.

I’ll stick with a more moderate view that was beautifully and sensibly expressed by Tablas Creek’s Jason Haas, on the Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog. Which enclosure is best? It’s “not an open and shut case”, he says. Tablas Creek uses both. For rosés and whites that are best drunk young, crisp and fresh, he’ll go for Stelvin. For roussanne-based whites and red, which improve with aging and slow contact with oxygen, he prefers cork. Do read through his arguments, on his blog post and in a great interview on Appellation America, it’s quite precise and far away from the black and white views too often seen in this debate.

Mind you, on a recent update, Haas seems to be leaning a little further towards the screw cap, but again, in moderation. I completely applaud the view that we should take a gradual approach to this, instead of throwing the wine out with the enclosure, and waking up in twenty years with old wines that have aged in weird and unpleasant ways. Would that be the case? I don’t know. As the Decanter article says, the jury’s still out.

Besides, there are a number of issues to be taken into account. Different enclosures may well be more tools for the winemakers, depending on what they’re hoping to achieve. Matt Kramer pointed out in a Wine Spectator column that winemakers need to adjust their techniques to ensure that wine under screw cap doesn’t develop “sulfide characters, which typically produce rubbery or burnt-match odors.” Would that be a kind of screw cap taint I’m smelling there? (Kramer’s piece, based on French research, also debunks some myths about storing wine, like the idea that storing bottles upright will cause them to spoil.)

The type of wine, the sensitivity of various varietals to oxydation, the aging potential, or the quality of the cork itself, which is certainly a major issue. The presence of cork taint in wines is certainly related to quality issues in the cork industry, but as an article in the January 2007 issue of Wines & Vines points out, chlorinated cleaning products may have as much of a responsibility in the prevalence of cork taint than cork itself.

(The article even gives a solution for saving corked wines: “There’s a nifty home remedy for single TCA-ridden bottles: pour the wine in a bowl, crumple in a couple feet of Saran Wrap and stir–the polymers in the plastic pick up the TCA.” I’ll have to try that: I’ll let you know how it works the next time a corked bottle… pops up.)

And there is a sort of “best of both worlds” solution emerging with DIAM corks, made from natural cork but treated in order to eliminate the 2,4,6-trichloroanisole or TCA, a fungi-related compound at the source of cork taint. There are convincing arguments for that enclosure, as can be read on the Hugel et fils blog. After years of experiment, Hugel has concluded that the DIAM is more reliable and the results in the wine’s evolution are more predictable. Anyone at Decanter care to comment on that?

There are a lot of conversations going on on the internet, a lot of communities coming together through blogs and Web 2.0 sites, a lot of people talking and learning about subjects of common interests through social media. But in the end, there is nothing yet that can truly replace face to face meetings and live conversation.

This is why, in August and October, there will be not one but two Wine Blogger Conferences that will allow wine bloggers from around Europe and the Americas to come together and discuss issues that matter to them and to the wine world. Oh yeah. And to taste wines and have great meals together - something that still can’t really be done over the Internet.

The first one, held in Logroño, Spain, in late August, is the European Wine Blogger Conference. It is open to bloggers from all over the world, the “European” in the title referring to the place where it is being held. Roundtables, conferences and panels on themes like the dilemmas linked to advertising on blogs, ways to better engage readers, and how to use (or not use) rating systems will be held, along with tastings and vineyard visits. The folks behind Catavino and The Wine Conversation, two well-established blogs, are organizing this first get-together.

The second one, the Wine Bloggers Conference 08, announced officially last week, will be held on October 24-26 at the Flamingo Resort in the Sonoma area. Keynote speakers Gary Vaynerchuk and Alice Feiring are confirmed, live blogging sessions (with everyone together in front of their laptop, I gather), vineyard walks and thematic sessions, as well as a blind tasting challenge are on the program.

The Open Wine Consortium, an online community of wine-loving people from all walks of the wine world that now numbers more than 1000 members, has been central in making the Sonoma project come true and is actively supporting the European conference as well. Clear signs that the online wine community is gathering steam.

The two conferences are, in fact, proof that wine blogging has reached a certain critical mass, and enough weight, at least, to interest significant sponsorship to the events. The way the discussions develop and what they will tell about the wine blogging community remains to be seen. It will be important, however, that the conferences are not limited to more inward-looking concerns for bloggers, but also interested in outward-looking, open discussions about the wine world in general, and what role wine bloggers can play in that world, parkerized or not.

I’m hoping to attend one of the meetings - and for various reasons, the Sonoma WBC seems more likely to be my destination this fall.

I’m certainly hoping the two conferences will be the first of many to come, and I’m certainly ready to contribute so that these meetings can evolve and grow with the wine blogging world. I’m even ready to take part in organizing an East Coast WBC - how about in May 2009? - something that several participants in the Open Wine Consortium have been rooting for. Maybe we’ll form a committe at the West Coast conference, when we’re all together in one place…

In the meantime, congratulations to the bloggers that have been determined (and crazy) enough to make the projects come to life. I hope both events will be a great success.

White wines are certainly the neglected side of the Rhône vineyards. The reputation of the whites is greatly overshadowed by that of reds like Cornas, Côte-Rôtie or Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

It might just be a question of math, mind you: according to official statistics, red wine represents 86% of total Rhône wine production. White is only 5%, a little more than half the production of rosé (9%). In Australia, Roussanne, Marsanne and Viognier, all together, represent less than 2% of the total area planted in white varietals, according to government statistics (see page 17 of the publication). Same thing in California, where the 15,757 tons of viognier crushed in 2007 are the only noticeable white Rhône blip among the 1.37 million tons of white grapes produced in 2007 (see page 6 of the California Department of Agriculture grape crush report). I’m beginning to agree with James, who started a discussion on the Open Wine Consortium about the most underrated white varietals, and put roussanne as his choice of underdog.

Mind you, the varietals can be challenging. When overripe, they quickly get heavy, overly sweet and overloaded with tropical fruit. I know, some people might call that luscious and rich, but I find it all gets a little cloying. Which is why I appreciate the balance found in, say, Tahbilk’s Marsanne and D’Arenberg’s Money Spider Roussanne, two solid examples from Australia.

Recently, though, I had a couple of reminders of how great and complex and, somewhat surprisingly, long-lived Rhône whites can be. At a tasting, we had four Rhône whites, before stepping into the redder side of the Rhône. The most memorable, for me, was a 1999 Château Grillet, 100% viognier, yet remarkably tightly-wound and fresh, still, at nearly ten years of age, with the moderate alcohol level (12.5%) and bright acidity leading the way - and showing the potential advantage of limited hang time. I’d love to taste it again in ten, maybe even twenty years.

I was also surprised by a white Crozes-Hermitage called Les Gravières, by Jean-Luc Colombo. Very surprised, in fact, because I’ve had Colombo reds before and to me, they were a complete turn-off. The Cornas Terres Brûlées (Scorched Earth, litterally) felt extremely well-named, the Les Abeilles Côtes du Rhône red was overly dense: both felt overextracted and tannic, even compared to other Cornas, which have a reputation for being dark and brooding wines.

So when I found out that the white Crozes we had was from Colombo, I was stunned. Bright flavors of honey and apricots, beautiful mineral notes, balance… A little wood, but neatly integrated and discrete. Wow.

A couple of weeks later, I found a bottle of La Redonne 2005 Côtes du Rhône white, a lovely mix of viognier and roussanne that was starting to develop a touch of spice, along with the beautiful honey and peaches, all on a gorgeous pale-gold color. Lovely stuff, with good length and balance, and a lovely match for roasted chicken or grilled shrimp, for instance. All for… just a tad more than 20$ - in Quebec, at least.

All the reason to drink more white Rhône varietals, bring up demand, and make sure it becomes less of a well-kept secret. And good enough to even make me want to take a second look at Colombo’s reds.

While beer remains the alcoholic drink of choice of Canadians, wine has been gaining consistently over the last ten years, according to the latest figures from Statistic Canada. Between 1997 and 2007, the market share for beer has gone down from 52% to 47%, while wine increased its share from 21% to 28% (spirits went down slightly, from 27% to 25%, over the same period).

The trend seems to be accelerating, too. Between 2006 and 2007, the value of wine sold in Canada increased by 9.5%, while volumes vent up 7.1%. So Canadians are drinking more wine (61% red), and apparently spending a little more per bottle to get some good stuff.

In terms of per capita consumption, Canadians are now drinking around 15 liters per person per year - compared to over 50 in France, and over 30 on average in Western Europe - with Quebecers leading the way at 20 liters per person per year. A closer look at the data, thanks to StatCan’s online tools, also shows that Quebec’s “lead” in wine culture and consumption is only increasing: per capita consumption increased 55% in Quebec from 1998 to 2007, while the Canadian average is 40%, with only 30 percent in Ontario and 23% in British Columbia.

In 2007, Quebec purchased 34% of all wine sold in Canada, and 42% of all red wine sold in the country, even as it represents less than a quarter of the population. Talk about cultural differences.

It is intriguing, however, that the two main producing provinces, BC and Ontario, are not seeing wine take a greater place in the glasses of their residents. I don’t know. Maybe they’re just not liking the Cellared in Canada wines all that much…

I’ve been pondering on two separate, yet related bits of news about the world of French wine.

1. The French Government wants to make French wine simpler.

Trying to compete on international markets with New World chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons, France is creating a simpler category of plonk made without any geographical obligation. Called “Vignobles de France”, the category will allow varietals to be placed front and center on the labels, and allow winemaking practices like oak chips and added tannins. Also, it will be possible to make them with a varietal that is planted outside of its traditional region (you want to make a gewurztraminer in Pauillac? It’ll be a Vignobles de France). And you’ll even be allowed to mix wine from different regions.

Clearly, this is a wine industry decision, not unlike the Cellared in Canada approach that is allowed in the Canadian bottling industry, in order to help the domestic industry win market share, more than to promote wine culture. A concerned Jancis Robinson calls it “the clearest sign so far that France has capitulated to the New World way of selling wine“, pointing out that the approach is aimed at increasing French wine exports to 16 million hectoliters per year, compared with an average of 13.6 million hectoliters in the 1990s.

I’m very skeptical. Without even getting to the question of distinctiveness and personality, which I’m sure would be a better fighting ground, I’m unconvinced that France is in a position to fight on a battleground where price is the main issue. Competing against Chile and Argentina, where land and labour cost so much less, seems nearly impossible, especially in a context where the vignerons are facing low prices that are leading them to bankruptcy (see this article, in French, in Le Figaro, about recent angry demonstrations in Southern France). Bulk wine prices are much lower than they were ten years ago, and a category that allows wine to be shuffled from one end of the country to the other seems unlikely to help in any way.

Besides, the winemakers that are doing better - on the export front, particularly - are going after quality, terroir, personality, through careful, sensitive approach to regional characteristics. Something where New World wines have a lot more trouble defining anything precise and significant.

2. Young people in France are turning away from wine.

Wine consumption per capita has been plummeting in France for the last twenty years. But a recent study adds to the worries of the French wine world, by pointing out that, contrary to previous generations, twentysomethings are not making wine part of their daily rituals:

Roughly 50 percent of young people in France never drink wine, according to the Montpellier report, and less than 10 percent are regular consumers. The rest limit their consumption to two to three times a month.

Of course, the fact that French vignerons are severely limited in their capacity to promote their wines on the internal market may have a lot to do with this continuous drop in interest in a drink so intimately associated with traditional French identity. When you’re not allowed to say how great drinking wine can be, on the grounds that it encourages public drunkenness, but that Bacardi or Absolut are allowed to promote a cool image, it’s no wonder that young people will tend to find the latter more attractive.

Indeed, the French attitude is quite opposite to what is going on in North America, and so is the drinking trend:

“This trend is in complete opposition with the United States, where the major group responsible for increasing wine consumption is the Millennials [people who reached adulthood around the year 2000],” said Liz Thatch, professor of management and wine business at Sonoma State University. Americans aged 21 to 29 are the fastest growing segment of the wine market, according to a 2005 study by the Wine Market Council, a trade organization of winemakers, importers, retailers and others.

I had an interesting moment, last week, at a popular Quebec City spot called Le Cercle, a combination tapas bar/wine bar/DJ place/alternative concert venue run by the owners of L’Utopie, my favorite gastronomical restaurant in the city.

I was chatting with Christophe Pacalet, nephew of famed Beaujolais producer Marcel Lapierre and co-owner of Les Marcellins, a domaine that harvests selected vineyards “rented” from vignerons in the best terroirs of the Beaujolais region. As I was taking in the intensity and depth of his terrific Chiroubles (you read right, Beaujolais with depth and intensity - as it should be), the bright fruit and the serious mineral structure, and discussing his approach, Pacalet interrupted himself in something like disbelief.

I looked to where his eyes had wandered: a table of eight young girls, around 18, were settling in for the evening and were being served a bottle of wine which they started smelling and tasting with enthusiasm. “Did you see those young chicks?”, he said. “You never see that in France, a bunch of young girls sitting down all together with a bottle of wine.” And since they were at Le Cercle, they were not having a bottle of Yellowtail, that’s for sure, but more likely a private import from Bierzo or a nice cabernet franc from the Loire, with a clear sense of place. The kind of wine and food experience that turns drinking into an actual sensory experience, not just a means to tipsiness.

The scene gave a sense of cool, and a sense of discovery: how else do you make wine attractive and interesting? It’s the kind of thing that someone like Robert Mondavi, inspired by what he had discovered in France, endeavored to bring forth all his life: wine as part of life, as part of culture.

And meanwhile, what are the French doing to improve the state of their wine industry? Turning to New World industrial approaches.

Really?

A few days ago, I grabbed a copy of Wine Access magazine’s Canadian Wine Annual for 2008 at my neighborhood news stand. It is a great reference about all that is wine (and fruit wine, and cider, etc.) in Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, and everywhere in between. Some 393 wineries are listed, with coordinates and a short but often very precise and useful description. Really cool and useful stuff, by qualified contributors, including articles on green initiatives in Canadian vineyards and on wine tasting and wine-food matching.

You also get the full listing of results from the 2007 Canadian Wine Awards, a competition chaired by Anthony Gismondi with, I must say, admirable restraint. Gold medals are few and far between, meaning that a wine decorated with gold is something truly special. Like Hidden Bench’s 2005 Nuit Blanche, Rosomel Vineyard, from the Beamsville Bench, selected as white wine of the year.

Mission Hill, of the Okanagan, won Winery of the Year for 2007, on the basis of the medals won by its submitted wines, while Hidden Bench and Cedarcreek came in second and third. I’m a little less certain of the significance of the title, however, since the grading has to do with the performance of the winery at the awards (number of wines submitted and number of medals). It’s more the top winery at the CWAs than the top winery, period.

Beyond all that, however, one statement in Editor Jim Tobler’s presentation of the Canadian Wine Annual stopped me in my tracks:

A fascinating fact of wine consumption in Canada is just how much Canadian wine we drink. I will not bore you with the numbers, but we drink domestic wines hands-down above any other country’s offerings.

Well, maybe he should bore us with numbers, because it’s hardly that clear-cut. Allow me.

Now, the latest numbers I could find date back to 2004, but there’s no reason to think that things will have turned around markedly since then. In 2004, around 100 million liters of Canadian domestic table wines were sold in Canada. That’s as much wine as the amount of wine from France and Italy combined.

Impressive? Yes and no.

While it’s not that easy digging your way through industry statistics, the true reason for this apparent Canadian dominance over the domestic market is largely the confusion between VQA wines (made from 100% Canadian grapes) and the non-VQA wines, chiefly through the Cellared in Canada category, which can contain virtually no Canadian-grown grapes and is mostly made from cheap bulk wine from who-knows-where (the label never says). The VQA and CiC wines are sold together on the same shelves, a practice that even Jancis Robinson was “horrified” at, as she pointed out last year in a very interesting article on the good and bad things about Canadian wine.

Overall, only around 15 million of those liters of “domestic table wine” were VQA wines, meaning wines that are made entirely from grapes grown in Canada. Using that figure, Canadian wines represent a third of the amounts of Italian wine sold in Canada, and half of what Chile ships north to our rather large neck of the boreal forest. It’s still a great performance for such a young industry, but it’s not quite the same thing as Mr Tobler wrote. The 100 million liter figure is a bottling industry performance statistic, not a Canadian wine statistic.

I’m surprised that the editor of Wine Access didn’t make the distinction. And if he doesn’t, imagine what that means for the average consumer.