A few weeks ago I was at an event to launch new wines made by Le Clos Jordanne, a Niagara winery that began as a joint venture between the big Boisset company of Burgundy and Canada's Vincor. Le Clos Jordanne makes wine in the Burgundian manner, stressing vineyard character, and the results are quite stunning. These Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays are establishing new benchmarks for the region -- indeed, for Canada.
But that's not the point of the story -- especially because Le Clos Jordanne wines are still produced in such small volumes that it will be some time before they're anything like available.
The point of mentioning Le Clos Jordanne is that one of the speakers at the opening of this small-scale winery was Robert Sands, president and chief operating officer of Constellation Brands, the biggest wine company in the world.
Mr. Sands was present because Constellation recently purchased Vincor, adding it to the long list of wine producers it has acquired in recent years. The U.S.-based company now owns so many producers -- big and small, commercial and boutique -- that "Constellationization" has become shorthand for concentration of ownership in the world of wine.
This tendency feeds the fear that wine will become homogenized and internationalized in the sense that wine will taste more or less the same even though it comes from different regions of the world.
I never thought I'd become an apologist for multinationals, but I have to say that I don't detect this as an effect. After all, if all Constellation wanted to do was market millions of bottles of mediocre wine in an international style, it could do it easily enough by creating new brands. It certainly wouldn't buy up small, iconic wineries such as Kim Crawford in New Zealand, Goundrey in Australia, and Estancia in California.
(Come to think of it, the most successful wine customized for the mass market is Yellow Tail, produced not by a big corporation but by a small,
family-owned winery in Australia.)
I think the point is made by Hardys, the venerable Australian winery that was bought by Constellation a few years ago. Hardys remains a distinct brand with a distinct style, something that was emphasized by Bill Hardy -- the company oenologist and a member of the fifth generation of his family to be involved in the company -- when he visited Ottawa recently.
Mr. Hardy is a sort of walking repository of the company's history, which is also his family's biography. He's good for the kinds of stories that give life to otherwise dull corporate history.
Take the great fire of 1904 that threatened the winery. When the firefighters found they had no water to fight the flames, they stood by and watched until the fire chief realized that barrels of wine were starting to burst. In a moment of clarity, he directed his men to douse the fire with wine.
Unfortunately, much of the wine had been fortified with brandy, and the result was that the winery was totally flambeed.
Maybe there's a parable for Constellation's takeover of Hardys here. Despite fire and Constellization, the company remains a hardy perennial.
The new crop of nouveau wine is out, and these are my three top picks:
- Jeanjean Syrah Primeur 2006 $9.95 (899938);
- Pisse-Dru Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2006 $13.95 (669259);
- Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau 2006 $15.95) 932780 (Vintages).