You really have to hand it to the new US administration. In a world of politicians who don’t always mean what they say, the new team in Washington can sometimes be crystalline in its clarity. Steve Bannon – Donald Trump’s chief strategist – recently explained to a conservative audience why so many of the new members of the cabinet have histories that appear to be completely at odds with the departments they have been given to run. They were chosen, he said, with the aim of the “deconstruction of the administrative state”.
Now, I happen to share very few of Bannon’s (or Trump’s) views, or their attitude to facts and a free press and judiciary, but I do rather like a bit of deconstruction every now and then. I thought it might be interesting to imagine the effects of applying some Bannonization to the administrative state of wine.
In the US, this would result in a speedy demise for both the three-tier system and the rules that permit 17 states to have monopolies over alcohol distribution. It would also involve the dismantling of the US bureaucracy that requires bureaucratic approval for every label that appears on a bottle on sale in the US.
Ancient rules in Greece
Stellios Boutaris, head of the leading Kir-Yianni estate in Greece, clearly believes that some fresh thinking might benefit the wine industry in his country. As he wrote in a 2016 article for the first edition of a magazine called Greece is: “Existing regulations on new vineyard plantings, clonal selection, vine nurseries, protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI), local winemakers’ associations, modern winemaking techniques and agriculture ministry controls are all outdated and inhibit growth.”
It was the word “all” that particularly caught my attention.
In other countries attempts have been made to tidy up some outdated regulations.
The creation of the Vin de France designation has belatedly allowed French producers in traditional areas to experiment in ways that were previously impossible, but Gallic bureaucracy still imposes stupid and badly applied rules in some appellations. One of my favourites was in a southern region where the white wine regulations require the inclusion of a grape called Bourboulenc. As one of the region’s top estate owners quietly told me, “I detest it, so while I grow enough to keep the authorities happy, none goes into my wine. I sell it off in bulk.”
I encountered similarly stupid rules when talking to a Bordeaux producer about declassifying an undistinguished Médoc into AOP Bordeaux. “Can’t be done,” came the reply. “We’ve passed the last date for declassification”. When the consumer pulls the cork from a bottle bearing a smart Médoc label, presumably the knowledge that no date-related rules were broken will make him happy to accept how ordinary the liquid in his glass is.
Yielding to temptation
One explanation for that ordinariness could lay in excessive yields. According to current legislation, vineyards producing basic AOP Bordeaux and planted before 2008 have to have a minimum of 3,300 vines per hectare, a figure that rises to 4,000 for younger plots. Quite often the problem of missing, sick, or newly planted vines can reduce the figure in older plus to as little as 2,500. Some estates, such as Chateau Signoret in Entre-Deux-Mers, however, boast a density of more than twice that many.
Logically, any administration intent on limiting yields would simply acknowledge these variations in density by setting a maximum production in kilos per vine. But no, even in times when drones can easily and cheaply permit the auditing of the number of productive plants, Gallic rules still work on the basis of hectolitres per hectare.
Other rules that could benefit from at least a review include European bans on the addition of malic acid while allowing tartaric; outlawing irrigation from AOP vineyards (supposedly to prevent excessive crop sizes that are already strictly controlled by the hl/ha limits I’ve already mentioned); French bans on making rosé by blending red and white wine (unless it’s sparkling) and Italian rules favouring cheap and nasty corks over reliable screw caps.
And then of course, there’s the thorny issue of experimentation into GM yeasts and vines.
Ultimately, though, my frustration with all these flaws in the administrative state of wine, is still firmly trumped by my fear of the unchained libertarianism of men like Bannon. On balance, it is generally wisest not to invite bulls into china shops, but that’s not to say that the shelves couldn’t benefit from a bit of tidying.
Robert Joseph
