Henry Samuel has an interesting report in the Telegraph on Parisian winemakers seeking recognition for their vineyards and wines.  The Île-de-France is the metropolitan region around Paris and was named for the historical province that existed before the French Revolution.  Between the Middle Ages and the end of the 17th century each little town or village in the Paris region had its own vineyard and the  Île-de-France had over 100,000 acres of vines. The region shares its climate and latitude with Champagne and  in the past its wines stocked the cellars of the French Kings.  However the French Revolution, Phylloxera and the rapid spread of urbanisation took their toll on the vineyards and they practically died out.

However not all of them were engulfed by urbanisation.  Pockets of vines survived.  The vineyard of Le Clos Montmartre sits at the foot of Sacré-Coeur.  In the Middle Ages the hill was covered in vines planted by Adelaide de Savoie, the sister of the Pope, in the first half of the 12th  century. The Abbey of Montmartre continued to make wine there until the late 1400′s when, ruined by war, the nuns were forced to sell off their land to commercial wine makers.

In the early 1920′s the vineyard was in danger of being swallowed up by buildings and caused a public outcry.  The artist François Poulbot led an effort to save the garden of singer and comedian Aristide Bruant (best known as the man in the black hat and red scarf in the famous Toulouse-Lautrec poster) from a real estate development plan. As a result, the Clos Montmartre was established as public land, and replanted in vines in 1933 to honour its heritage. The following year, the first vendange (grape harvest) of the reborn Clos Montmartre was celebrated, as it has been ever since, in the middle of October. The sale of the wine goes to charity.

Today there are around 200 vineyards in the  Île-de-France  covering 30 acres.  Nearly two thirds of the vineyards are run by associations or individuals, and third by local authorities.

“Local vintners now want these Ile de France wines awarded a new official “patrimonial” stamp of approval, as practically all are currently breaking draconian French laws on planting restrictions.

“The vast majority could theoretically be ordered to grub up at any time,” said Patrice Bersac, president of l’association des vignerons franciliens réunis (the association of united Parisian and Ile de France winemakers).

He wants French authorities to take inspiration from an initiative in London in which grapes are collected from numerous gardens of the capital to create an authorised blend.

Chateau Tooting produced by the Urban Wine Company has been given the thumbs up by experts, with the rosé described as “crisp, dry and elegant”.

“The French (wine growing) policy is outdated and unbearable. You English, meanwhile are able to take more liberties with rules on planting vines. I admire your freedom and sense of humour – you certainly need it to make wine in the UK,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

New EU rules for Organic Wine have been agreed in the Standing Committee on Organic Farming (SCOF) and will apply from the 2012 harvest. Organic wine growers will be now be allowed to use the term “organic wine” on their labels. The labels must also show the EU-organic-logo and the code number of their certifier, and must respect other wine labelling rules.

Apparently up until this point the EU did not have rules for organic wine, only for “wine from organic grapes.” Those rules did not cover wine-making practices, i.e. the whole process from grape to wine. 

According to the press release:

“The new rules have the advantage of improved transparency and better consumer recognition. They will not only help to facilitate the internal market, but also to strengthen the position of EU organic wines at international level, since many other wine producing countries (USA, Chile, Australia, South Africa) have already established standards for organic wines. With this piece of legislation, the EU organic farming is now complete and covers all agricultural products.”

“The new regulation establishes a subset of oenological (wine-making) practices and substances for organic wines defined in the Wine Common Market Organisation (CMO) regulation 606/2009. For example, sorbic acid and desulfurication will not be allowed and the level of sulphites in organic wine must be at least 30-50 mg per litre lower than their conventional equivalent (depending on the residual sugar content). Other than this subset of specifications, the general wine-making rules defined in the Wine CMO regulation will also apply. As well as these wine-making practices, “organic wine” must of course also be produced using organic grapes.”

In 2009 the organic agricultural area in the EU-27 was 8.6 million hectares – 4.7% of the total utilised agricultural area. The share is over 10% in Austria, Sweden, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Figures for 2008, show that there were 190,700 organic holdings – roughly 1.5% of all holdings.

In 2010, the overall organic grape production area was estimated at more than 75,000 ha, relative to a total wine area of nearly 3.5 million ha. The biggest organic grape areas were noted in Italy (30,341 ha), followed by France (21,403 ha) and Spain (17,665 ha).

Canadian researchers have found that the name of a wine can have an effect on it’s taste. Antonia Mantonakis, associate professor at Brock University in Ontario, and her research group gave 134 test subjects identical wine under the same conditions in Brock’s consumer perception and cognition lab. One group were told that their wine was from the easily pronounced Titakis Winery and the other group were told that their wine was from the harder to pronounce Tselepou Winery. If you are wondering (like I was at this point) whether the wineries actually exist – yes, they do and they are both Greek.

Both names begin with a T and both have three syllables but Tselepou is harder to pronounce as it has unusual letter combinations (unless you speak Greek, of course). Interestingly more people pointed to the complicated name as tasting better, rating Tselepou Winery higher on a scale of 1 to 7.

After the experiment, participants were given a short quiz to gauge their knowledge of wine. Those with more wine knowledge in particular showed greater willingness to buy the wine from the hard-to-pronounce winery.

“It’s interesting how consumers perceive things,” Mantonakis said in a statement. “Something like the sound of a name can elicit a thought, and that thought can influence the perception of how something tastes.”

The idea behind the study is that a hard to pronounce name denotes rarity, ie that the wine is special – more exotic if you like.

“As such, we predicted that wine associated with a difficult-to-pronounce winery name would be associated with greater taste perceptions, and a higher willingness to pay.”

“Marketers are consistently searching for new innovative ways to maintain relationships with consumers, develop new relationships, and ultimately stimulate purchases. The current research findings suggest that the meta-cognitive cue of fluency can be leveraged to attain such a goal.”

There are lots of factors that go into the marketing of a wine and this research provides a new tool for marketers.

The average age of the test subjects was 24 and I do wonder if the research would have had different results if a selection of older people had been made.

The findings are scheduled to be presented at the annual Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute Lecture Series on February 8th.