5 Things We Learned in September 2024

Year-round Aperol Spritzes, plus pension fraud, high-flyers buying English vineyards and more for our September Fine Wine Trends.

September 2024 was a big month in wine, with even more news of falling wine sales and difficult harvests in Europe. But those weren’t the only things that caught our attention.

Prosecco sales set to soar and other wines may follow

Campari is working on a plan to “deseasonalize” the Aperol Spritz, that beloved combination of Aperol and Prosecco, so that people drink it all year round. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Compari Group is planning to host a concert series in the Alps throughout the upcoming ski season, while marketing to bars in ski resorts across the US and Europe.

“Summer remains the bedrock of Aperol’s marketing strategy,” according to the article. “In new markets, Aperol makes its entry in the warmer months via bars, training bartenders to make the perfect Aperol spritz, which Campari Group says is best served in a balloon-shaped, stemmed glass.”

This could be very good news for the wine trade, and not just for Prosecco makers. According to Gary Ross from Union, the bar point-of-sale system, bar patrons in the US who order an Aperol Spritz are 370% more likely to go on to order wine.

Wine isn’t as effective as pension fraud

Have you heard about the blue zones, those mythical places where people live to more than 100 thanks to their healthy lifestyles? There are five of them, and in four of the five, moderate consumption of wine is a part of daily life. According to the Blue Zone website, two glasses of wine a day will help you to live longer.

Alas, it’s not true. In September, Dr. Saul Newman won an Ig Nobel prize for his work debunking the blue zones. According to his research, people in the so-called blue zones do not live longer than anywhere else. Instead, the blue zones are more likely to be populated by relatives who never fill out the death certificates, so they can keep claiming the pensions.

But that doesn’t mean that moderate drinking is bad for you. Just that the blue zone work doesn’t support it.

For more information on Wine, Health and Changing Regulations, join our next in-person Insight Series on Oct 21st, Institute of Masters of Wine, London.

The City heads to the British countryside

Some years ago, it was possible to predict where rich people would buy vineyards. If they were from Silicon Valley they went to Napa, Burgundy or Virginia; British lawyers went to Languedoc; Swiss bankers went to Tuscany; and Australian doctors went to the Yarra Valley. Well, now there’s another demographic snapping up vineyards: British professionals are buying up vineyards in Kent and Sussex.

“There has been a boom in the number of smaller growers driven by high-flying City workers taking early retirement to try something new, while well-known wine houses from elsewhere in Europe have snapped up English vineyards or blocks of land to plant vines, in part to mitigate against climate risks, said Will Banham, a partner at the property company Knight Frank in charge of viticulture,” according to The Guardian, which says the UK’s booming wine-growing industry has been compared to California in the 1970s.

As for who is moving to the countryside, it’s hedge fund managers, solicitors and corporate lawyers “buying land typically owned by existing small vineyard owners or farmers looking to sell off excess land”. 

Perhaps nobody has told these high-flyers about the ironclad law of wine: to make a small fortune, start with a big one.

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Visiting New York? Take your own wine

New York City is the most expensive city in the world to buy a bottle of wine, according to a new study. Kitchen company Magnet dove into crowdsourced data from Numbeo, and ended up with a list of which cities are the most and least expensive for a bottle of wine. New York came out on top, with an average of $20 per bottle.

Columbs, San Francisco, Oakland and Philadelphia — all in the US — came out as the next most expensive. Perhaps surprisingly, the next two most expensive cities in the world for wine were in Tasmania: Launceston and Hobart, where the average bottle of wine is $16.45. 

The places to find a bargain, however, are also all fun places to go: Cordoba in Spain and Rome in Italy, where wine is an average of $3.55 a bottle. Not only that, the wine is probably pretty good, too.

Whites are on the up

Plantings of white grapes are increasing, even in regions that are renowned for their red wines. French nursery Pepinieres Mercier has certainly noticed the change. Since they were founded in 1890, they have sold more red varieties than white — until the past two years, when white grapes took top position. Not only that, but they are seeing double digit sales of PIWIs.

Pepinieres Mercier will be discussing this and other issues at the World Living Soil Forum 2024 in Arles, France, on October 8 and 9.
Areni Global’s CEO Pauline Vicard will also be there, to lead key conversations on soils, vegetable material and climate change. Stay tune for her takeaways!

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